Burn (8 page)

Michelle backs into me and turns around. She studies my arms as I hold them out like a surgeon prepped for duty.

“What the hell happened to you?” Her face flickers in disgust. The rose pendant Marshall gave her hangs around her neck from a thin silver chain, catching the sparkle of moonlight like a fractured shard of glass.

If I were nicer, I’d yank it off her. Judging from the severe dark circles under her eyes, she’s still having Fem terrors in her sleep unlike me who has them right here in the open.

“Where’s your boyfriend?” I ask searching the vicinity. It wouldn’t entirely surprise me to see Marshall lingering in the crowd somewhere—nude.

A series of piercing screams erupt from behind.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” the words jackknife through her. She slams hard into my shoulder as she makes her way back into the crowd.

“Yes, I would,” I whisper as my teeth give way to a hard chatter. Marshall could help me get rid of a dead Fem if I needed him to.

The crowd drains in the direction of the deceased creature. Another round of cries and gasps erupts.

Oh crap. Judging by the look of horror on people’s faces he didn’t disappear.

Logan and Gage emerge from the mass of onlookers gawking at the Fem.

“Did you see it?” I jog over, fogging up the air with my heavy panting.

“Shit,” Gage moans as he inspects my bloodied hands. The moonlight bleeds out all color, leaving a dark, glossy, residue on my skin.

Logan gives a depleted smile.

Someone in the distance shouts that the paramedics are on their way.

“They’re going to take the Fem!” My fingers come just shy of covering my lips.

Logan scoops me into his arms and runs us over to the peak just above the deepest portion of the falls.

“What’s going on?” I ask. There’s something written on his face, a tension I’m not familiar with.

He gives a bleak smile.

“It wasn’t a Fem,” he says out of breath. “You killed him,
Skyla
, and now we’re going to wash the blood off.”

He plunges us both into the icy biting waters.
  
 

Chapter Eleven

Police

The smoky air illuminates in spasms with alternating shades of soft blue and red. With an escort of flashing black and whites—an entire army of police cars—each one of us is instructed to follow them down to the Paragon precinct for questioning. Dozens of vehicles commence in a line that clogs up the main artery of the island—they even shut down the other side of the highway to accommodate us.

“There are two ways we can do this,” Logan says, over the phone.

I’m riding with Gage, but I have Logan on speaker.

“The truth and a lie?” Gage says running his hand over the steering wheel as we wade through traffic.

“Exactly,” Logan states.

“I choose the lie.” I raise my hand slightly. “It’s not like anybody saw me, plus I’m dripping wet, there’s not an ounce of blood on me. And it’s not like anybody’s going to understand what the hell I’m talking about when I say I thought I was being attacked by a Fem.”

“If I saw him attacking you, I would have killed him myself,” Logan adds.

“Right,” I whisper. I sort of wish he did. “Maybe we should hang up now. With my luck this will accidently get keyed in over the radio,” I say, eyeing the barrage of cop cars escorting us like a funeral procession.

“See you there,” Logan’s line goes dead.

I slip down in the seat and watch the fog swim by like an apparition.

“It’s
gonna
be OK.” Gage cups his hand over mine.

“Is it?” I spike up hopeful. Gage has the gift of knowing. He knows all kinds of strange things about the future.

“No, I mean, I’m pretty sure it’s going to be OK.”

“Oh.”

I slump back into my seat.

I don’t think it’s going to be OK. I don’t think you can just kill somebody and have it be OK.

***

 
At the station, mass confusion erupts over who exactly the dead body was. Apparently a bunch of guys from East decided to crash the party and douse themselves in mud, because apparently, they’re idiots.

I hear names whispered all the way down the long hall as Logan, Gage, and I try and find a place to sit.

“Logan Oliver?” I hear Michelle say as we come up behind her. She turns around and lunges at him with a hug,
Lexy
follows suit.

“We heard it was you!”
Lexy
cries in a panic. Her arm lingers up over his shoulder as she cups the side of his face.

“Wasn’t me.” He turns a bright shade of red from the attention.

Lexy’s
hair has turned into a giant ball of frizz, her mascara is dripping down the sides of her cheeks and she looks darn right scary. I don’t like the way she’s letting her arm gather dust on Logan’s shoulder, so I squeeze in between the two of them pretending to get out of the way of the crowd.

I’ve never thought of
Lexy
as anything special before. Sure she’s pretty in her own way, but I’ve always classified her as more of a bitch than anything human or female.

“Anyway…” She looks over my shoulder at him as though I were invisible. “I’m glad you’re OK.”

I can see it now, that sad underlying spark in her eyes wishing he was still with her, and it makes me want to vomit on her shoes.

The clock ticks away in morbid slow motion. They have four staging areas set up. We wait impatiently until they finally seat Logan, Gage, and me in a room with the bitch squad where we wait another twenty minutes. Michelle keeps nodding off, hitting her head against the back wall from exhaustion. Strangely, I find this the highlight of my evening. I watch her eyes bolt open as she inhales a scream—all the while that black rose gleams under the harsh light from above.

A woman officer with her hair pulled back in a shiny dark knot asks banal questions about our connection to one another, the party, the location of where each of us were before the body was discovered.

Logan was plucking Gage off some guy from East, the bitch squad was swimming under the third tower of the falls, and I was wandering out by the forest with my hands buried deep in someone’s neck. Of course that’s not what I say.

“I was over there, too,” I say in a whisper, “by the falls.”

“No you weren’t.” Michelle moans half asleep. “I saw you by yourself. You were all dirty wearing some guy’s shirt with weeds in your hair. Cheating on Gage much?”

Great. She’s perfectly lucid now.

“So why were you dirty, and whose shirt did you have on?” The officer makes a notation in her journal.

“Well, let’s see…” Emily bears her canines in my direction. Her dark hair has shrunk four inches and sits on her head like a slimy black helmet. It’s hard to imagine Emily with long flowing hair the way Chloe described. “You’ve got on a guy’s t-shit, and Logan is shirtless under his jacket, which is hot, but weird, and, oh yeah? Weren’t you with Logan before you hooked up with Gage?” She dips her finger in her mouth. Her emerald eyes light up from the pleasure of it all.

“That’s right.” I cut her a long hard look before turning my attention back to the officer. “I was…” My eyes close. I can’t look at Gage—Gage who is holding me right at this very moment, nudging me to go on. I’m not going to smash his heart into a million little pieces, in a room full of people, just to save myself from the possibility of prison. And with that reality looming, I say, “I was naked, and I ran into Logan, so he gave me his shirt. Then he took off, and I fell in a puddle. That’s when I saw you.” I nod over to Michelle. “And then everyone started running around, and the next thing I knew, some jerk pushed me in the water.”

Logan raises a brow over at me.

There. I give a big sigh of relief. It feels safe here in the lie, so good. I recline into Gage and relax.

“OK.” The female officer taps her pen down on the table. “Now I’m going to have each of you phone your parents, and then you’ll be released.”

Shit.

I knew this wasn’t going to end well.

***

The bitch squad disbands pretty quickly. Turns out none of their parents wanted to crawl out of bed at three in the morning, dead body or not. I was able to hear Michelle’s dad scream over the phone that he wanted her ass home pronto.

Of course,
my
mother insists on coming down herself to see what all this debauchery is about. And since Dr. Oliver gave Logan and Gage the OK to drive home, they hang out until we hear the wild ruckus, which is undoubtedly Mom and Tad, erupting in the hall.

My mother frantically pokes her head into the room.

“She’s in here,” she shouts. Before I know it, her arms are squeezing the life out of me. “God! You’re OK! I’m so glad you’re OK.” She runs her fingers through my hair. “You’re wet.”

“You two jokers,” Tad jabs his fingers at Logan and Gage. “Get out now.”

“See you later.” Logan pats my leg as he and Gage disappear into the hall.

“What the hell is going on? You kill somebody?” Tad asks, gripped in a purple-faced tirade. He’s wearing pink and white pinstriped pajamas, so it’s hard to take him seriously.

“No.” Technically yes.

“Let’s get out of here.” Mom tries to pluck me off the bench just as Tad steps between us, examining me with a curious stare.

“
Lizbeth
, go get her cleared with the front desk. I’ll stay here.” His eyes remain locked on mine. Soon as she steps over the threshold he yanks down my scarf.

“Holy shit!” He jumps back. It takes him a full three seconds to catch his breath. “I don’t know what the hell kind of satanic crap you’ve managed to get yourself into, or if this is some new dress in black, stick an earring through every orifice in your body to piss off your parents stage you’re going through, but while you’re under my roof you’re going to knock this shit off. You can save this experimental phase for college for all I care. Got it?”

I pull the scarf back up to cover the tiny neat row of X’s that skip across my neck.

He thinks it’s some kind of weird piercing I’ve inflicted upon myself.

“If I see you prancing around with your face made up like a corpse, wearing thigh-high boots and your hair frozen up like the Statue of Liberty, I’m shipping you off to nearest boarding school.” He adjusts the invisible tie on his nightshirt in a fit of frustration. “They can deal with you,” he mutters mostly to himself.

My mouth falls open. Mom swoops back in and helps usher me into the hall. Something tells me Tad would love for me to be at that boarding school anyway.

He speeds down ahead of us, pushes the door to the precinct open so hard the glass considers shattering from the violent jolt. A frigid blast of air pours over me, reminds me with its bitter fingers that my hair is still wet in the back.