“Um… I was doing paperwork. Prepping documents for other detectives while I was waiting. I got a lot of weird looks, but we expected that.”
“We did. Was anyone particularly rude?’
I shrugged. “Nobody was very nice, but they were all just uncomfortable. Sure, they know who I am and what I can do… kind of, but not well enough to determine if any of it was true.” I took a deep breath. “Gary was grandstanding from the minute I walked in. I don’t know why.”
“Really? How?”
“He kept going into the captain’s office and the interrogation room. Trying to look busy and important, I guess. There was no one to interrogate, and the captain was out of his office almost all day. So he was just like standing in an empty room for ten minutes.”
“Wow, that’s pretty pathetic,” Sam said, laughing.
“Isn’t it?” I answered, and only then, I realized I was smiling.
Fuck, Sam, how do you do that?
The laughter faded, and we were just staring at each other. Sam blinked, still smiling, but not too much. She was putting me at ease, giving me plenty of room to describe the nightmare nonsense that followed.
“Before all this happened, they arrested somebody,” I said. “He was high on mandrake or Adderall or something, and everybody got all tense and kept looking at me. Like they were worried that the guy in custody was a friend of mine and thought I’d get offended and burn down the building just for solidarity or something.”
“Did you?’
I laughed. “No, of course not,” I said. “I left. Henry and I just drove around for a while with the radio on, waiting for… I don’t know, a robbery or something. We were also talking about vampirism and magic and stuff.”
“How’d that go?”
“Not bad. He seems pretty chill about being my partner. Weirdly chill, actually.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Um… We’d been gone about ten minutes, maybe a little longer, and then… the radio did a thing.”
“A thing?”
I nodded. “A thing.”
“What kind of thing?”
“It became all staticky and unintelligible.”
“Okay,” she said.
“And it started spinning through different frequencies and the numbers went all fuzzy and… and then there was this voice.”
“A voice?” Her face didn’t change, but her words were very quiet.
“Yeah,” I said. “Sam, it spoke my name.”
“Oh,” she replied, a little louder.
“Yeah,” I answered.
“Do you think it was Meg?”
“No. It didn’t sound like her. It was all hissy and distorted, but not just because the radio was being weird. It sounded like it was having trouble speaking.” I swallowed. “And not only that, but there were also these wicked, deep claw marks in the front doors at the precinct. Definitely not from vampire nails.”
“Okay. So the voice wasn’t hers.”
“No.”
“But you still think it was Meg?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” She took a breath, resisting the urge to straight up ask me why. “What happened next?”
“Um. We heard screaming. And then the captain’s voice, like he was trying to call for help but his radio wasn’t working. Then this weird voice said my name and the radio cut out altogether, and we drove back. We called for backup, but…” It was too late.
“Yeah,” said Sam as she took my hand.
“When we got there, everything was ruined… everybody was dead,” I said, biting down hard on the last word. “Not just dead, but mutilated. Mauled. Dismembered. There were broken computers and shattered glass… Some of the people didn’t have eyes… and…” I looked up at her. “Sam, it was a fucking bloodbath.”
Sam nodded, her lips pressed together in a firm line. She squeezed my hand and did her best to smile. She was clearly waiting for me to say more, although she didn’t want me to say it but she knew I would because I had to.
“And there was… I don’t know, something wrong with the air,” I said slowly. “It was heavy and cold and… dark… and everything was too quiet.” Like all the sounds in the world had been swallowed up. “And it was cold and I felt hollow inside.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. “And that’s why you think it was Meg?”
“I don’t think it was Meg, I know it was Meg,” I said, almost snapping. “It had to be! The carnage was too much like the thing she did in D.C. with all the shadows. Sure, it’s different, but only slightly; it felt bigger, but it was…” I trailed off, my head throbbing. Meg was still alive and she was gunning for me and everybody close to me. “It just felt like Meg.”
Sam nodded. “Then it must be Meg.”
“You believe me?”
“Well, yeah, why wouldn’t I?”
“Because I could be projecting the past trauma onto a new disaster to force it to make sense?”
“I mean, maybe?” Sam shrugged. “I trust you. And if you’re wrong, it means Meg is actually dead, and we’ll all be pleasantly surprised.”
“Yeah.” I wrapped my arms around my legs and looked at her.
“Have you told anybody else?” Sam asked—meaning, Did you or did you not do your job and call somebody at the FBI?
“No,” I said. “I called you first.”
“Okay,” she said. “Okay… you know you need to inform them.”
“I know.”
“And soon. Really soon.”
“I know.”
“Did you tell anyone on site?”
“It didn’t occur to me until I got home.”
“They need to know too.”
“I know.”
“Especially if they’re still working the scene. Magic like that comes from somewhere, even if it’s not from Meg, and if they’re exposed to it for too long—”
“I know.”
She raised her eyebrows—just a hair, barely enough for me to notice. I sighed.
“Sorry,” I said.
“No, don’t worry,” she said. “You’ve had a long, bad day. That’s normal.”
There’s that long day again. At least, I wasn’t the only one getting desensitized. I scoffed. “Normal?”
“Relatively speaking.”
I chuckled bitterly, shaking my head and biting my lip.
“Would you feel better if I went with you?”
Feel better, I thought, suddenly thinking how stupid I must sound. I’m not some little kid who can’t get a shot by themselves. “I’ll be fine,” I said. “I can just call them.”
“They’ll want you to come in.”
“Yeah.”
“You might as well go straight to them. I can go with you, if only to keep you grounded.”
I nodded. She fully intended to go with me anyway, just to make sure I actually went. There weren’t many things I hated as much as human bureaucracy—not that ours was any better, but I’m allowed to hate the stairs when the escalator’s broken.
“Okay, good,” she said. “Great. Don’t worry. I’ll be beside you the whole time.”
I nodded numbly.
“I’ll talk to Casey when I get home. Let him know what’s up so he can be ready for you in the morning.”
“You were with Casey before I called you? And you came over here?” I asked. Oh Hades, I’m a supernatural cock-block. “Fuck, I’m sorry, Sam.”
“Don’t be.” She took my hand and gave it a squeeze. “This always takes precedence, Dulcie. You know that.”
“I’m still sorry.”
“And it’s totally okay,” Sam said, smiling.
“I didn’t, like… interrupt you, did I?”
She laughed—blushing. “No,” she said, “you didn’t and even if you had, it wouldn’t matter because an emergency call from you is way more important than insane, mind-blowing sex, right?”
At her statement, I immediately thought of Knight and my stomach flip-flopped.
I stifled the sudden urge to hit something really hard and hugged my knees tighter. “I guess so.”
Sam squeezed my hand again. “Do you want to get something to eat? We can talk for a little while you settle down?”
“Yes,” I said immediately. She needed to get back to Casey, I knew that, right down in the pit of my stomach, but I couldn’t be alone. Casey would eventually forgive me.
“I’ll drive, okay?” she asked.
I almost laughed—I didn’t even have a car anymore. “Okay.”
SIX
Dulcie
Twenty minutes later, it was still dark, but colder and raining. We sat against the wall of a diner that stayed open past midnight. It was newly refurbished with green-and-white tile floors, plush green booths, and a jukebox that accepted five-dollar bills.
Sam and I were staring at the menus. I kept scanning it, not registering anything, and trying not to look at Sam. She ordered ages ago, and now she was eating, but every so often she looked at me, and tried to get me to look at her, which I could not do. If I looked at her, she’d start asking questions. Inevitably, she’d go straight to the bad stuff, the how-are-you-and-Knight? stuff, and that was the last thing I wanted.
Hades, she meant well, she really did. But a girl can only take so much traumatic analysis in one day.
I needed to sneeze, so I grabbed for a napkin—and we made eye contact.
“So,” she said. “You and Knight...”
My veins turned to steel. The world went slate-grey. I took a frosty breath and set my menu down in front of me, sneezing into my elbow. “Knight and I,” I said after a moment.
She leaned forward a little. “How do you feel?”
“Sam,” I started.
“Dulcie.”
“I thought our dinner was supposed to relieve my stress.”
“You don’t have to talk to me, but you should.”
“Can’t we discuss something else?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” I said, looking back down at the menu. “Global warming.”
“Climate change,” she said. “Global warming assumes the only effect is warmer temperatures, but—”
“Sam, I love you, but I honestly want to talk about climate change even less than I care to talk about Knight.”
“Okay,” she said. “Then let’s talk about Knight.”
“Ugh.”
“Hey, if you want, we can go talk to the FBI right now?”
I frowned at her. “Are you blackmailing me?”
“Yes.”
“You’re so brutal.”
She smiled, resting her chin on her folded hands. “Let’s start with how you’re feeling.”
I sighed. Sam loved to play psychiatrist. To take a hike through my brain, picking out all the weeds and anything that didn’t belong in my garden, asking me to smell them and explain why some had thorns… I was bristling with thorns tonight. Concertina wire and liquid death. If she asked, I would answer, and I wouldn’t stop answering until I was blue in the face, or reduced to the nonsense screaming of a child totally incapable of expressing herself. But I still wouldn’t be able to properly convey the sheer immensity of the emotional shitstorm that was ripping through my insides right now like a pissed-off asteroid.
How did I feel?
Empty. Empty and cold. Like all my organs had sharp edges, pricking the underside of my skin.
“I’m fine,” I said.
Sam nodded slowly. “That’s some bullshit.”
I blinked at her. She chewed slowly and swallowed, cutting her meat with the infuriating daintiness of a Disney princess. Calm as you like, watching me expectantly. Waiting.
“What?” I asked.
“I said, that’s some bullshit,” Sam repeated. “Dulcie, you know you can talk to me. I mean, you don’t have to if you really don’t want to, and that’s totally fine, but I’m always here if you just want to get it all out. I know!” Then her eyes went wide. “Why don’t you make a list of all the things you’re upset about? That helps me sometimes.”
I sighed. I didn’t have any list, I had a damn scroll: I envisioned it unrolling, bouncing comically down a long flight of stairs and disappearing into the abyss.
“Thanks, but um…” I picked up my glass and took a sip. “I don’t want to talk about it. Not right now.” Maybe not ever, I thought.
Sam nodded, finally resigned to my silence. “Okay. That’s totally fine. If you do, though—”
“I know where to find you.”
I wouldn’t call her, I knew I wouldn’t. I’d just sit on the couch, staring at nothing, clutching my knees to my chest, desperately wishing for someone to talk to, if only so I could unload the strangling terror in my brain. If only somebody else knew… but I couldn’t call Sam. I’d rather stare at the carpet and not do a goddamned thing, because it’s not that simple. Nothing is ever simple.
“Honey,” she said slowly, “you do this strange thing. You and Knight both do it; you lock yourselves inside your own brains, away from everybody because you think, or think you know, you have to solve the problem yourselves. You both hesitate to bother anybody about it because we’ve all got our own problems to deal with, but Dulcie—and I say this with nothing but love— you suck at solving your own problems.”
“You’re always so supportive,” I said.
“I am, and I’m honest. You don’t have to work through it with me, or with Knight, but you can’t bail out a sinking ship all on your own.”
“As long as I’ve got a bucket, I’ll be fine.” I waved a hand dismissively.
Sam slouched a little, visibly defeated. “I wish you’d let me in,” she started.
I tried to smile. Maybe I succeeded—my cheeks twitched and I’m pretty sure my teeth were showing. “I’m all right. Not really, but… you know.”
Sam nodded, smiling sadly, her lips pressed tightly together, her heart in her throat. “Making it through?”
“Yeah.” God, I was a bad liar! I could hack my way through the densest jungle with only a machete, but it’s a whole different story when the strangling vines and tenacious roots and branches are coming from inside you.
“Good,” she said. “I don’t mean good but… well, it’s better than bad.”
Here’s the rule for talking about your significant other with your best friend: it’s a lot easier if you know what you want to say. It’s better if there’s a specific problem to complain about and rattle your saber against; it’s different than just sitting at the bottom of a black hole with no concept of what you hope to achieve at the end of the day.
What the hell did I want? Did I want Knight back? Did I already have Knight back? Or did I want myself back? Did I want Knight gone? Did I still want to disappear into the mountains to become one of those pining, lovelorn shepherds from old fairytale books?
Hell, maybe.
No. I knew what I wanted, it just wasn’t something I could actually get. I wished it never happened. I wanted to go back in time and unwrite the whole damn thing: Meg, the glamour, Knight and all that time she spent using him to “teach” me how sexual intercourse should be conducted. I wished I could unsee everything and Knight and I could go back to how we were before. Go back to being with each other without ever feeling violated and betrayed whenever we touched.
And I wished all those times I’d had sex with Sebastian never happened. Sure, I was more than aware that I was guilty of the same thing Knight was, but I couldn’t help trying to justify my situation. I hadn’t been in my right state of mind. Having been glamoured by Meg, I was acting out and doing things I would have never done in a million years. Meg had basically magicked me into being her puppy dog.
But wasn’t Knight glamoured the same way? I asked myself. How can you let yourself off your hook but keep him hanging on his?
Letting him off the hook isn’t the point, I argued with myself. That’s not the problem. The problem is that I can’t get the visual of him with Meg out of my mind. And i
f I can’t the visual out of my mind, how am I supposed to look at him the same way I used to? How are we supposed to just pick up the pieces and go on with our lives? How are we supposed to pretend like nothing ever happened when it did? When I can’t get the images out of my head. How am I supposed to make love to Knight knowing he was inside that horrible, disgusting woman?
“Better than bad,” I said sadly.
Ten seconds of silence. I was listening to the diner, various voices muttering, and the odd-smelling people you usually find at twenty-four-hour restaurants in the wee hours.
“So,” I said, as brightly as I could manage, “what about you and Casey?”
Sam physically couldn’t suppress the smile that brightened her face—I saw her trying though, for my sake. It’s never fun to be deliriously happy in front of your not-quite-single friend.
Valiant effort, sweetheart, but you’re a terrible liar who also happens to be in love. But I sincerely wanted to hear about her relationship. I wanted to hear it from somebody I trusted. I needed someone to remind me that it was still possible to find happy, calm waters in the middle of a storm. I forgot that it was possible to be happy anymore at all. I needed to believe it in a weird, selfish way. Just because Knight and I had fucked ourselves sideways didn’t mean everybody else had, too.
And I really wanted to stop talking about Knight. I was this close to calling him “he-who-must-not-be-named.”
“Me and Casey,” she started.
“How’s that going?”
She hesitated, and for a second I worried she wouldn’t let me change the subject so easily. Then she sighed, smiled again, and said, “Really, really well.”
“Good,” I said. “That’s great to know.” I couldn’t remember the last time Sam had been in a relationship, let alone, a good one. The last substantial partner I could recall was Bram, and she was madly in love with him—but Captain Clusterfuck was only dating her to get closer to me.
He’s classy like that.
“He’s really sweet,” she said, suddenly wrapped up in her romantic delirium. “And he loves baking with me, although he’s not very good at it yet, but it’s so much fun. And he’s so cute when he tries.”
“Well there’s no batch of cookies the almighty baker, Sam can’t save, right?” I said.
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