Pushing her sunglasses up to the top of her head, Irene glanced over at her sister. She had a feeling that she knew where this conversation was about to head. Even still, she decided to play dumb.
“Tell you what?”
“Oh come off it. There are no teachers around, no Jordan, no Eva, no Arachne, not even any parents.” At Irene’s questioning look, Shelby shrugged. “They went out to dinner together. It’s just us. No one else is home. So spill. What was all that?”
Irene let out a long, exhausted sigh. Her dear sister could make herself quite the annoyance when she wanted to. It was bad enough that waving her away to Eva, someone who
“I told you,” Irene said, “I
The contract wouldn’t hold her tongue after that.
“That’s two and a half years away. Two whole years!”
“I know.”
“You have to give me something.”
“Look, if Eva won’t tell you, ask Catherine.”
“The substitute?”
“If she asks you to agree to anything, I would recommend against it.”
“What would she ask me?”
Irene just fell silent with a shake of her head. Saying anything more might be treading dangerous waters.
Shelby let out a sigh of her own. She walked around the porch to stand right in front of Irene. Without a word of warning, she pushed herself into the chair.
Irene had to scoot herself to the side to make room. Once Shelby
“You’re not going to disappear, are you?”
“What?” Irene said, blinking away her glare. “Of course not. What do you mean by that?”
“Well, Juliana disappeared. So did Shalise. Max as well.”
“Max has been hanging out with
“And Shalise?”
Irene didn’t have a good answer for that one. Eva had said that she was fine. Where and with who had been left out of the explanation. “She disappeared after Halloween, but she came back. I’m sure she’ll be around again.”
“As long as you don’t go anywhere,” Shelby said with a sigh. “I don’t know what I’d do. Or what I’d tell mom and dad.”
Irene flicked her sunglasses back over her eyes. “Me neither.”
— — —
Eva closed the door of the warehouse, again solidifying blood inside the locking mechanism and keyholes.
Not her blood. Eva had dutifully reclaimed every stray droplet of her own blood. She had used some of the thugs’ blood to reseal the doors and windows.
It wasn’t impervious. Anyone dedicated enough would break it with little effort. The solid blood was more to keep any passers-by from stumbling across something that would scar them for life.
Part of her was hoping that there were more members of that little gang and that they would be the ones to take a hammer to the door. Maybe it would scare them straight.
Eva frowned outside the building.
She glanced back to the door. There needed to be… something.
An idea popped into her head. A terrible, horrible, no good idea. But Eva decided to go with it anyway.
Looking over what she had just scrawled in blood on the door, Eva’s already deep frown deepened further.
“That’s terrible.”
It identified the assailant as a girl. Hopefully that would keep any gang wars from springing up. That was where the good points ended. The fourth line could be misinterpreted to make it seem lewd. Worst of all, the rhythm was off.
She had half a mind just to erase the entire thing.
But it wasn’t
Not to mention the time it took to come up with. If she got rid of it now, she’d have wasted a good half hour of retooling the words and figuring out just what to say.
It probably said something about her that the rhythm bothered her most.
That and the last line wasn’t entirely accurate.
They’d find a seventh body in there, but she hadn’t touched the mage after he broke his neck. Bloodstones couldn’t be made from the deceased after all. Whoever found him could come up with their own conclusions about the reasons for that.
