Anna Dressed in Blood

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Since Anna has been free, I haven’t been able to sleep. There are endless nightmares and shadowy figures looming over my bed. The smell of sweet, lingering smoke. The mewling of the damned cat at my bedroom door. Something has to be done. I’m not afraid of the dark; I’ve always slept like a rock, and I’ve been in more than my share of dim and dangerous places. I’ve seen most of what there is to be afraid of in this world, and to tell you the truth, the worst of them are the ones that make you afraid in the light. The things that your eyes see plainly and can’t forget are worse than huddled black figures left to the imagination. Imagination has a poor memory; it slinks away and goes blurry. Eyes remember for much longer.

So why am I so creeped out by a dream? Because it felt real. And it’s been there for too long. I open my eyes and don’t see anything, but I know, I know, that if I reached down below my bed, some decaying arm would shoot out from underneath and drag me to hell.

I tried to blame Anna for these nightmares, and then I tried not to think of her at all. To forget how our last conversation ended. To forget that she charged me with the task of recovering my athame and, after I do, killing her with it. Air leaves my nostrils in a quick snort even as I think the words. Because how can I?

So I won’t. I won’t think of it, and I’ll make procrastination my new national pastime.

I’m nodding off in the midst of world history. Luckily, Mr. Banoff would never realize it in a million years, because I sit in the back and he’s up on the whiteboard spouting off about the Punic Wars. I’d probably be really into it, if only I could stay conscious long enough to tune in. But all I get is blah blah, nod-off, dead finger in my ear, snap awake. Then repeat. When the bell rings for the end of the period, I jerk and blink my eyes one last time, then heave out of my desk and head for Thomas’s locker.

I lean up against the door next to his while he stuffs his books in. He’s avoiding my eyes. Something’s bothering him. His clothes are also much less wrinkled than usual. And they look cleaner. And they match. He’s putting on the Ritz for Carmel.

“Is that gel in your hair?” I tease.

“How can you be so chipper?” he asks. “Haven’t you been watching the news?”

“What are you talking about?” I ask, deciding to feign innocence. Or ignorance. Or both.

“The news,” he hisses. His voice goes lower. “The guy in the park. The dismemberment.” He glances around, but no one is paying any attention to him, as usual.

“You think it was Anna,” I say.

“Don’t you?” asks a voice in my ear.

I spin around. Carmel is right over my shoulder. She moves to stand beside Thomas, and I can tell by the way they face me that they’ve already discussed this at length. I feel attacked, and a little bit hurt. They’ve left me out of the loop. I feel like a petulant little kid, which in turn pisses me off.

Carmel goes on. “You can’t deny that it’s an extreme coincidence.”

“I don’t deny that. But it is a coincidence. She didn’t do it.”

“How do you know?” they ask together, and isn’t that cute.

“Hey, Carmel.”

The conversation stops abruptly as Katie approaches with a gaggle of girls. Some of them I don’t know, but two or three are in classes with me. One of them, a petite brunette with wavy hair and freckles, gives me a smile. They all ignore Thomas completely.

“Hey, Katie,” Carmel replies coolly. “What’s up?”

“Are you still going to help out with the Winter Formal? Or are Sarah, Nat, Casey, and I on our own?”

“What do you mean, ‘help out’? I’m the chair of that committee.” Carmel looks around at the rest of the girls, perplexed.

“Well,” Katie says with a direct glance at me. “That was before you got so busy.”

I think Thomas and I would like to get the hell out of here. This is more uncomfortable than talking about Anna. But Carmel is a force to be reckoned with.

“Aw, Katie, are you trying to stage a coup?”

Katie blinks. “What? What are you talking about? I was just asking.”

“Well relax, then. The formal’s not for three months. We’ll meet on Saturday.” She turns slightly away in an effectively dismissive gesture.

Katie’s wearing this embarrassed smile. She sputters a little bit and actually tells Carmel what a cute sweater she’s wearing before toddling off.

“And be sure to have two ideas for fundraisers each!” Carmel calls out. She looks back at us and shrugs apologetically.

“Wow,” Thomas breathes. “Girls are bitches.”

Carmel’s eyes widen; then she grins. “Of course we are. But don’t let that distract you.” She looks at me. “Tell us what’s going on. How do you know that jogger wasn’t Anna?”

I wish Katie had stuck around longer.

“I know,” I reply. “I’ve been to see her.”

Sly glances are exchanged. They think I’m being gullible. Maybe I am, because it is an extreme coincidence. Still, I’ve been dealing with ghosts for most of my life. I should get the benefit of the doubt.

“How can you be sure?” Thomas asks. “And can we even take the chance? I know that what happened to her was terrible, but she’s done some terrible shit, and maybe we should just send her … wherever it is that you send them. Maybe it would be better for everyone.”

I’m sort of impressed by Thomas speaking this way, even if I don’t agree. But that kind of talk makes him uncomfortable. He starts shifting his weight from foot to foot and pushes his black-rimmed glasses higher up on his nose.

“No,” I reply flatly.

“Cas,” Carmel starts. “You don’t know that she won’t hurt anyone. She’s been killing people for fifty years. It wasn’t her fault. But it’s probably not that easy to go cold turkey.”

They make her sound like a wolf who has tasted chicken’s blood.

“No,” I say again.

“Cas.”

“No. Give me your reasons, and your suspicions. But Anna doesn’t deserve to be dead. And if I put my knife in her belly…” I almost gag just saying it. “I don’t know where I’d be sending her.”

“If we get you proof…”

Now I get defensive. “Stay away from her. It’s my business.”

“Your business?” Carmel snaps. “It wasn’t your business when you needed our help. It wasn’t just you who was in danger that night in that house. You don’t have any right to shut us out now.”

“I know,” I say, and sigh. I don’t know how to explain it. I wish that we were all closer, that they had been my friends longer, so they might know what I was trying to say without me having to say it. Or I wish that Thomas was a better mind reader. Maybe he is, because he puts his hand on Carmel’s arm and whispers that they should give me some time. She looks at him like he’s gone nuts, but backs off a step.

“Are you always this way with your ghosts?” he asks.

I stare at the locker behind him. “What are you talking about?”

Those knowing eyes of his are seeking out my secrets.

“I don’t know,” he says after a second. “Are you always this … protective?”

Finally I look him in the eye. There’s a confession in my throat even in the midst of dozens of students crushing the hallways on their way to third period. I can hear bits and pieces of their conversations as they go by. They sound so normal, and it occurs to me that I’ve never had one of those conversations. Complaining about teachers and wondering about what to do on Friday night. Who’s got the time? I’d like to be talking to Thomas and Carmel about that. I’d like to be planning a party, or deciding which DVD to rent and whose house to watch it at.

“Maybe you can tell us all this later,” Thomas says, and it’s there in his voice. He knows. I’m glad.

“We should just focus on getting your athame back,” he suggests. I nod weakly. What is it my dad used to say? Out of the frying pan and into the fire. He used to chuckle about living a life full of booby traps.

“Has anyone seen Will?” I ask.

“I’ve tried to call him a few times, but he ignores it,” says Carmel.

“I’m going to have to get in his face,” I say regretfully. “I like Will, and I know how pissed off he must be. But he can’t keep my dad’s knife. There’s no way.”

The bell rings for the start of third period. The halls have emptied without us noticing and all of a sudden our voices are loud. We can’t just stand here in a cluster; sooner or later some overzealous hall monitor will chase us down. But all Thomas and I have is study hall, and I don’t feel like going.

“Wanna ditch out?” he asks, reading my mind — or maybe just being an average teenager with good ideas.

“Definitely. What about you, Carmel?”

She shrugs and tugs her cream-colored cardigan tighter around her shoulders. “I’ve got algebra, but who needs that anyway? Besides, I haven’t missed a single class yet.”

“Cool. Let’s go grab something to eat.”

“Sushi Bowl?” Thomas suggests.

“Pizza,” Carmel and I say together, and he grins. As we walk down the hall, I feel relieved. In less than a minute, we’ll be out of this school and into the chilly November air, and anyone who tries to stop us is getting flown the bird.

And then someone taps my shoulder.

“Hey.”

When I turn all I see is a fist in my face — that is, until I feel the multicolored dull sting you get when someone hits you square in the nose. I double over and shut my eyes. There’s warm, sticky wetness on my lips. My nose is bleeding.

“Will, what are you doing?” I hear Carmel shout, and then Thomas joins in and Chase starts grunting. There are sounds of a scuffle.

“Don’t defend him,” Will says. “Didn’t you watch the news? He got someone killed.”

I open my eyes. Will is glaring at me over Thomas’s shoulder. Chase is ready to jump at me, all blond spiky hair and muscle t-shirt, just aching to give Thomas a shove as soon as his designated leader gives him the go-ahead.

“It wasn’t her.” I sniff blood down the back of my throat. It’s salty and tastes like old pennies. Wiping at my nose with the back of my hand leaves a bright red swatch.

“It wasn’t her,” he scoffs. “Didn’t you listen to the witnesses? They said they heard wailing, and growling, but from a human throat. They said they heard a voice speaking that didn’t sound human at all. They said the body was in six pieces. Sound like anyone you know?”

“Sounds like lots of someones,” I snarl. “Sounds like any dime-store psycho.” Except that it doesn’t. And the voice speaking without sounding human makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

“You’re so blind,” he says. “This is your fault. Ever since you came here. Mike, and now this poor schlub in the park.” He stops, reaches into his jacket, and pulls out my knife. He points it at me, an accusation. “Do your job!”

Is he an idiot? He must be unhinged, pulling it out in the middle of school. It’s going to get confiscated and he’s going to get signed up for weekly counselor visits or expelled, and then I’m going to have to break into god knows where to get it back.

“Give it to me,” I say. I sound strange; my nose has stopped bleeding but I can feel the clot in there. If I breathe through it to talk normally, I’ll swallow it down and the whole thing will start over.

“Why?” Will asks. “You don’t use it. So maybe I’ll use it.” He holds the knife out at Thomas. “What do you think happens if I cut someone alive? Does it send them to the same place it sends the dead ones?”

“You get away from him,” Carmel hisses. She slides herself between Thomas and the knife.

“Carmel!” Thomas pulls her back a step.

“Loyal to him now, huh?” Will asks, and curls his lip like he’s never seen anything more disgusting. “When you were never loyal to Mike.”

I don’t like where this is going. The truth is, I don’t know what would happen if the athame was used on a living person. To my knowledge, it never has been. I don’t want to think of the wound it might cause, that it might stretch Thomas’s skin up over his face and leave a black hole in its wake. I have to do something, and sometimes that means being an asshole.

“Mike was a dick,” I say loudly. It shocks Will into stillness, which is what I intended. “He didn’t deserve loyalty. Not Carmel’s, and not yours.”

All his attention is on me now. The blade shines brightly under the school’s fluorescent lights. I don’t want my skin to stretch up over my face either, but I’m curious. I wonder if my link to the knife, my blood right to wield it, would protect me somehow. The probabilities weigh out in my head. Should I rush him? Should I wrestle it away?

But instead of looking pissed, Will grins.

“I’m going to kill her, you know,” he says. “Your sweet little Anna.”

My sweet little Anna. Am I that transparent? Was it obvious, the whole time, to everyone but me?

“She’s not weak anymore, you idiot,” I spit. “You won’t get within six feet of her, magical knife or no magical knife.”

“We’ll see,” he replies, and my heart sinks as I watch my athame, my father’s athame, disappear back inside the dark of his jacket. More than anything, I want to rush him, but I can’t risk someone getting hurt. To emphasize the point, Thomas and Carmel come and stand by my shoulders, ready to hold me back.

“Not here,” Thomas says. “We’ll get it back, don’t worry. We’ll figure it out.”

“We’d better do it fast,” I say, because I don’t know whether I was telling the truth just now. Anna’s got it in her head that she’s supposed to die. She might just let Will in her front door to spare me the pain of doing it myself.

We decide to scrap the pizza. In fact, we decide to scrap the rest of the school day, and head instead for my place. I’ve turned Thomas and Carmel into a right fine pair of delinquents. On the way over, I ride with Thomas in his Tempo while Carmel follows behind.

“So,” he says, then stops and chews his lip. I wait for the rest, but he starts to fidget with the sleeves of his gray hoodie, which are a little too long and are starting to fray at the edges.

“You know about Anna,” I say to make it easy on him. “You know how I feel about her.”

Thomas nods.

I run my fingers through my hair but it falls right back into my eyes. “Is it because I can’t stop thinking about her?” I ask. “Or can you really hear what’s going on in my head?”

Thomas purses his lips. “It wasn’t either of those things. I’ve been trying to stay out of your head since you asked me to. Because we’re—” He pauses and looks sort of like a sheep, all lip-chewy and lashy-eyed.

“Because we’re friends,” I say, and shove him in the arm. “You can say it, man. We are friends. You’re probably my best friend. You and Carmel.”

“Yeah,” Thomas says. We must both be wearing the same expression: a little embarrassed, but glad. He clears his throat. “So, anyway. I knew about you and Anna because of the energy. Because of the aura.”

“The aura?”

“It’s not just a mystic thing. Probably most people can pick up on it. But I can see it more clearly. At first I thought it was just the way you were with all of the ghosts. You’d get this excited sort of glow whenever you were talking about her, or especially when you were near the house. But now it’s on you all the time.”

I smile quietly. She is with me all the time. I feel stupid now, for not seeing it sooner. But hey, at least we’ll have this strange story to tell, love and death and blood and daddy-issues. And holy crap, I am a psychiatrist’s wet dream.

Thomas pulls his car into my driveway. Carmel, only a few seconds behind us, catches up at the front door.

“Just chuck your stuff anywhere,” I say as we go in. We shed our jackets and toss our book bags on the sofa. The pitter-patter of dark little feet announces Tybalt’s arrival, and he climbs up Carmel’s thigh to be held and petted. Thomas gives him a glare, but Carmel scoops the four-legged little flirt right up.

I lead them into the kitchen and they sit down at our rounded oak table. I duck into the refrigerator.

“There are frozen pizzas, or there’s a lot of lunch meat and cheese in here. I could make some hoagie melts in the oven.”

“Hoagie melts,” Thomas and Carmel agree. There’s a brief moment of smiling and blushing. I mutter under my breath about auras starting to glow, and Thomas grabs the dish towel off the counter and throws it at me. About twenty minutes later we’re munching on some pretty excellent hoagie melts, and the steam from mine seems to be loosening up the old blood still stuck up my nose.

“Is this leaving a bruise?” I ask.

Thomas peers at me. “Nah,” he says. “Will can’t hit for beans, I guess.”

“Good,” I reply. “My mom’s getting seriously tired of doctoring me. I think she’s done more healing spells on this trip than our last twelve trips combined.”

“This was different for you, wasn’t it?” Carmel asks between bites of chicken and Monterey Jack. “Anna really knocked you for a loop.”

I nod. “Anna, and you, and Thomas. I’ve never faced anything like her. And I’ve never had to ask civilians to come take care of a haunting with me.”

“I think it’s a sign,” Thomas says with his mouth full. “I think it means you should stay. Give the ghosts a rest for a little bit.”

I take a deep breath. This is probably the only time in my life that I could be tempted by that. I remember being younger, before my dad was killed, and thinking that it might be nice if he gave it up for a while. That it might be nice to stay in one place, and make some friends, and have him just play baseball with me on a Saturday afternoon instead of being on the phone with some occultist or burying his nose in some old moldy book. But all kids feel that way about their parents and their jobs, not just the ones whose parents are ghost hunters.

Now I’m having that feeling again. It would be nice to stay in this house. It’s cozy and it has a nice kitchen. And it would be cool to be able to hang out with Carmel and Thomas, and Anna. We could graduate together, maybe go to college near each other. It’d be almost normal. Just me, my best friends, and my dead girl.

The idea is so ridiculous that I snort.

“What?” Thomas asks.

“There’s nobody else to do what I do,” I reply. “Even if Anna isn’t killing anymore, other ghosts are. I need to get my knife back. And I’m going to have to get back to work, eventually.”

Thomas looks crestfallen. Carmel clears her throat.

“So, how do we get the knife back?” she asks.

“He’s obviously in no mood to just hand it over,” Thomas says sulkily.

“You know, my parents are friends with his parents,” Carmel suggests. “I could ask them to lean on them, you know, tell them that Will stole some big family heirloom. It wouldn’t be lying.”

“I don’t want to answer that many questions about why my big family heirloom is a deadly looking knife,” I say. “Besides, I don’t think parents are enough pressure this time. We’re going to have to steal it.”

“Break in and steal it?” Thomas asks. “You’re nuts.”

“Not that nuts.” Carmel shrugs. “I’ve got a key to his house. My parents are friends with his, remember? We’ve got keys to each other’s houses in case somebody gets locked out, or a key gets lost, or somebody needs to check in while the other is out of town.”

“How quaint,” I say, and she smirks.

“My parents have keys for half the neighborhood. Everyone is just dying to exchange with us. But Will’s family is the only one with a copy of ours.” She shrugs again. “Sometimes it pays to have a whole city up your butt. Mostly it’s just annoying.”

Of course Thomas and I have no idea what she means. We’ve grown up with weird witch parents. People wouldn’t exchange keys with us in a million years.

“So when do we do it?” Thomas asks.

“ASAP,” I say. “Sometime when no one’s there. During the day. Early, right after he leaves for school.”

“But he’ll probably have the knife on him,” Thomas says.

Carmel pulls her phone out. “I’ll start a rumor that he’s been carrying a knife around school and someone should report him. He’ll hear about it before morning and play it safe.”

“Unless he decides to just stay home,” Thomas says.

I give him a look. “Have you ever heard the term ‘Doubting Thomas’?”

“Doesn’t apply,” he replies smugly. “That refers to someone being skeptical. I’m not skeptical. I’m pessimistic.”

“Thomas,” Carmel croons. “I never knew you were such a brain.” Her fingers work feverishly at her phone keypad. She’s already sent three messages and gotten two back.

“Enough, you two,” I say. “We’re going in tomorrow morning. I guess we’ll miss first and second period, probably.”

“That’s okay,” Carmel says. “Those were the two periods we made it to today.”

Morning finds me and Thomas huddled down in his Tempo, parked around the corner from Will’s house. We’ve got our heads pulled low inside of our hooded sweatshirts and our eyes are shifty. We look exactly like you’d expect someone to look if they were minutes away from committing a major crime.

Will lives in one of the wealthier, more well-preserved areas of the city. Of course he does. His parents are friends with Carmel’s. That’s how I have a copy of his house keys jangling around in my front pocket. But unfortunately that means there might be lots of busybody wives or housekeepers peeking out of windows to see what we’re up to.

“Is it time?” Thomas asks. “What time is it?”

“It isn’t time,” I say, trying to sound calm, like I’ve done this a million times. Which I haven’t. “Carmel hasn’t called yet.”

He calms down for a second and takes a deep breath. Then he tenses and ducks behind the steering wheel.

“I think I saw a gardener!” he hisses.

I haul him back up by his hood. “Not likely. The gardens have all gone brown by now. Maybe it was someone raking leaves. Either way, we’re not sitting here in ski masks and gloves. We’re not doing anything wrong.”

“Not yet.”

“Well, don’t act suspicious.”

It’s just the two of us. Between the time of the plan hatching and the time of the plan execution, we decided that Carmel would be our plant. She’d go to school and make sure that Will was there. According to her, his parents leave for work long before he leaves for school.

Carmel objected, saying we were being sexist, that she should be there in case something went wrong, because at least she’d have a reasonable excuse to be dropping by. Thomas wouldn’t hear of it. He was trying to be protective, but watching him bite his lower lip and jump at every tiny movement, I think I might’ve been better off with Carmel. When my phone starts vibrating, he jerks like a startled cat.

“It’s Carmel,” I tell him as I pick up.

“He’s not here,” she says in a panicked whisper.

“What?”

“Neither of them are. Chase is gone too.”

“What?” I ask again, but I heard what she said. Thomas is tugging on my sleeve like an eager elementary schooler. “They didn’t go to school,” I snap.

Thunder Bay must be cursed. Nothing goes right in this stupid town. And now I’ve got Carmel worrying in my ear and Thomas conjecturing in my other ear and there are just too many damn people in this car for me to think straight.

“What do we do now?” they ask at the same time.

Anna. What about Anna? Will has the athame, and if he got wind of Carmel’s decoy texting trick, who knows what he might have decided to do. He’s smart enough to pull a double cross; I know that he is. And, for the last few weeks at least, I’ve been dumb enough to fall for one. He could be laughing at us right now, picturing us ransacking his room while he walks up Anna’s driveway with my knife and his blond lackey in tow.

“Drive,” I growl, and hang up on Carmel. We’ve got to get to Anna, and fast. For all I know, I might already be too late.

“Where?” Thomas asks, but he’s got the car started and is pulling around the block, toward the front of Will’s house.

“Anna’s.”

“You don’t think…” Thomas starts. “Maybe they just stayed home. Maybe they’re going to school and they’re just late.”

He keeps on talking but my eyes notice something else as we pass by Will’s house. There’s something wrong with the curtains in a room on the second floor. It isn’t just that they’re drawn when every other window is clear and open. It’s something about the way that they’re drawn. They seem … messy, somehow. Like they were thrown together.

“Stop,” I say. “Park the car.”

“What’s going on?” Thomas asks, but I keep my eyes trained on the second-floor window. He’s in there, I know he is, and all of a sudden I’m mad as hell. Enough of this bullshit. I’m going in there and I’m getting my knife back and Will Rosenberg had better get out of my way.

I’m out before the car even stops. Thomas scrambles behind me, fumbling with his seatbelt. It sounds like he half falls out of the driver’s side door, but his familiar clumsy footfalls catch up and he starts asking a million questions.

“What are we doing? What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to get my knife back,” I reply. We haul ass up the driveway and bound up the porch steps. I shove Thomas’s hand away when he goes to knock and use the key instead. I’m in a mood, and I don’t want to give Will any more warning than I have to. Let him try to keep it from me. Let him just try. But Thomas grabs my hands.

“What?” I snap.

“Use these at least,” he says, holding out a pair of gloves. I want to tell him that we aren’t cat-burglarizing anymore, but it’s easier to just put them on than to argue. He puts on a pair himself, and I twist the key in the lock and open the door.

The only thing good about going into the house is that the need for quiet is keeping Thomas from poking me with questions. My heart is hammering away inside my ribs, silent but insistent. My muscles are tense and twitchy. It isn’t at all like stalking a ghost. I don’t feel certain or strong. I feel like a five-year-old in a hedge maze after dark.

The interior of the place is nice. Hardwood floors and thick-carpeted rugs. The banister leading upstairs looks like it’s been treated with wood polish every day since it was carved. There is original art on the walls, and not the weird modern kind either — you know, the kind where some skinny bastard in New York declares some other skinny bastard a genius because he paints “really fierce red squares.” This art is classic, French-inspired shore-scapes and small, shadowed portraits of women in delicate lace dresses. My eyes would normally spend more time here. Gideon schooled me in art appreciation at the V&A in London.

Instead, I whisper to Thomas, “Let’s just get my knife and get out.”

I lead the way up the stairs and turn left at the top, toward the room with the drawn curtains. It occurs to me that I could be completely wrong. It might not be a bedroom at all. It might be storage, or a game room, or some other room that would conceivably have its curtains shut. But there’s no time for that now. I’m in front of the closed door.

The handle turns easily when I try it and the door swings partially open. Inside is too dark to see well, but I can make out the shape of a bed and, I think, a dresser. The room is empty. Thomas and I slide in like old pros. So far, so good. I pick my way toward the center of the room. My eyes blink to activate better night vision.

“Maybe we should try to turn on a lamp or something,” Thomas whispers.

“Maybe,” I reply absently. I’m not really paying attention. I can see a little bit better now, and what I’m seeing, I don’t like.

The drawers of the dresser are standing open. There are clothes spilling out of the tops, like they’ve been rifled through in a hurry. Even the placement of the bed looks strange. It’s sitting at an angle toward the wall. It’s been moved.

Turning in a circle, I see that the closet door is thrown open, and a poster near it is half torn down.

“Someone’s been here already,” Thomas says, dropping the whisper.

I realize that I’m sweating and wipe at my forehead with the back of my glove. It doesn’t make sense. Who would have been here already? Maybe Will had other enemies. That’s a hell of a coincidence, but then, coincidences seem to be going around.

In the dark, I sort of see something next to the poster, something on the wall. It looks like writing. I step closer to it and my foot strikes something on the floor with a familiar thump. I know what it is even before I tell Thomas to turn on the light. When the brightness floods the room, I’ve already started backing out, and we see what we’ve been standing in the middle of.

They’re both dead. The thing that my foot struck was Chase’s thigh — or what’s left of it — and what I thought was writing on the wall is actually long, thick sprays of blood. Dark, arterial blood in looping arcs. Thomas has grabbed my shirt from behind and is making this panicky gasping sound. I pull gently free. My head feels disconnected and clinical. The instinct to investigate is stronger than the urge to run.

Will’s body is behind the bed. He’s lying on his back and his eyes are open. One of the eyes is red, and I think at first that all the vessels have popped, but it’s only red from a blood splash. The room around them is demolished. The sheets and blankets are torn off and are lying in a heap by Will’s arm. He’s still wearing what I assume were his pajamas, just a pair of flannel pants and a t-shirt. Chase was dressed. I’m thinking these things like a CSI person might, ordering them and making note of them, to keep myself from thinking about what I noticed the moment the lights came on.

The wounds. There are wounds on both of them: bright, red, and still seeping. Large, ragged crescents of missing muscle and bone. I would know these wounds anywhere, even though I’ve only seen them in my imagination. They’re bite marks.

Something ate them.

Just like it ate my father.

“Cas!” Thomas shouts, and from the tone of his voice I know he’s said my name a few times already and gotten no response. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

My legs are rooted. I can’t seem to do anything, but then he’s got me around the chest, holding my arms down and dragging me out. It isn’t until he flicks the light off and the scene in the room goes black that I shake him off and start to run.