After we had found the energy and the will to stand and leave, I stumbled to my daughter. I held her and apologized to her. Xander had touched my shoulder, shocking me back to the present.
I had refused to leave Melanie in the darkness of that chamber, lying on the same cold, stone floor as her killer. Xander tried to convince me that leaving her was for the best. What would we do with her body? Store it in a freezer? He said the cops would take care of it legally. I told him to fuck off as I lifted her from the ground. My injuries screamed with her added weight, but I ignored the pain.
When we’d left Medea’s house and were sitting in the car—which he had parked on the other block and a street up—I used Xander’s cell phone and called Dakota. He had sent Medea’s address to her when I still had her phone earlier that night, so he had her number in his recent messages. I told Dakota the basics of what had happened in Medea’s chamber, though I had left out the parts about my blood offering and the unexplainable access to a new power.
Dakota had promised to take care of the crime scene for us, eliminating any evidence of our involvement there. And I promised her that if she did, I would help her find her father. She advised me to stay low—the Sheriff’s Department was pretty baffled about how I’d managed to escape their interrogation room by just blinking out of existence. “They’re blaming their camera,” she said, referring to Hephaestus teleporting me out of there. “With the bodies found at your house, Detective Gross isn’t too enamored with you for managing to get away. The force will be looking for you.” As an afterthought, she also mentioned that she had collected her credit card from my belongings that Aarseth had booked. “Thankfully they hadn’t processed the evidence, otherwise I would have been attached to you.” Unfortunately, she left my phone at the precinct.
She had also mentioned that she knew a retired coroner who owned a cemetery and would take care of Melanie’s body for us. After giving us his address, Xander and I had changed direction and headed to his house. Dr. Mortimer Tacet was the man’s name—he was tall with long limbs and a short torso and liver-spotted hands. He welcomed us in the driveway, and then he led us into his shop. A casual observer would have noted that Dr. Tacet wasn’t too retired in the coroner business. He had five bodies lying on gurneys, and thirty freezer-coffins that filled an entire wall.
After taking Mel from me, Dr. Tacet had set her on a metal table and covered her with a sheet. “You’re welcome to stay with her as long as you need to,” he had said, before shuffling to the other end of the shop and sitting at his desk—where he still was.
“Joseph,” Xander said, his voice low and harsh.
I blinked a few times, glancing away from the shop window and over to him. He stood before me, extending a mug of steaming coffee. Tacet must have made a pot for us as my thoughts and regrets had swept me away. “Thanks,” I muttered, accepting his gift. My hands were frozen, so I just cupped the mug between my palms and let the warmth take over.
“You need to say goodbye,” he said.
I turned away from the window and faced the sheet that covered my daughter’s body. What was I supposed to say? I hadn’t known her, and she hadn’t known me.
Knowing I had to leave her with something, though, I stepped forward and pulled back the sheet to expose her pale face which was still splattered with blood. The drawing I had stolen from her journal earlier remained in my pants pocket back in Xander’s condo, along with her teddy bear that I had snatched off her bed—otherwise, I would have left them for her. But all I had to give in that moment were my words. “You were wrong,” I said, swallowing a thick lump. “Cheerios suck big time.” I cleared my throat. “And I wasn’t too late. Hecate has your spirit—your life essence. I’m still going to save you. I promise.” I kissed her cold forehead and then covered her face again, and I moved away from her and toward Xander.
“We have to talk,” he said.
“No we don’t,” I said, turning my head and staring back out the window to hide my tears. The last thing I wanted to do was talk.
Xander remained silent for a time—the rain tittering on the glass the only sound—then he said, “I collected the silver coins.” He licked his lips and stared at his coffee. “And I put them in the chalice.” He grimaced as he said that last part, most likely pained that he had intermixed something so evil with something so holy.
I vaguely recalled him carrying the goblet to the car as I carried Mel’s’ body, but at the time it didn’t register. I wondered if he had removed the items to erase our involvement at the scene, or if he believed they actually possessed a deeper, more sinister purpose. The sheriff’s department probably wouldn’t entertain the idea that vampires had not only attacked me in my home—and that’s why dead bodies were burned to a crisp—but they had also attacked me in a strange woman’s ritualistic chamber as she murdered my daughter, the daughter of the now-deceased Derek and Marie. Last night had been the bookend to a long, sloppy string of events, and I
