“Like stitches,” I tell him. “So. Fantastic.”
“If we hear anything else, we will be in touch,” the officer says.
He and the officer who stood silent beside him the entire time they were in the room nod and make their way out. Dean rolls his eyes and paces back to the window.
"You look like you're feeling a bit better," the doctor says.
I nod. "I am. Thank you, doctor."
"Good. Getting some fluids and blood back in you is usually pretty effective. It's a good thing you stayed calm. If you had panicked and the blood was pumping out of you faster, it could have been much worse. The cut is deep and caused some significant damage. Nothing that's going to stop you from using your arm or anything but expect it to hurt for a good while."
"Can she go home now?" Dean asks.
"No," the doctor tells him. "I want to keep her for observation and to make sure those stitches are doing alright. She'll be more comfortable here. We'll keep the IV going and be able to give her something for the pain when she needs it. Right now, she needs some rest so her body can start healing."
I shake my head adamantly. "I can't stay in here. I have investigations I have to do.”
“Then you're going to have to do them from here,” he says. “That's not a minor cut, Emma. You lost a lot of blood, and who knows what could have been on that blade when it cut you. You just stay here and let us make sure you're healing.”
“Can they at least bring me my computer? My case files?” I ask.
“They can,” he says. “But it would be better if you just tried to relax.”
“She doesn't know how to relax,” Dean says. “I feel lucky she didn’t try to sew herself up with the remnants of the scarecrow and just go back to work.”
“As long as you stay in bed and your IV stays in place, you can do whatever you want,” the doctor says. “But for right now, get some rest.”
He walks out of the room, and Dean comes to the side of the bed.
“What do you want to do?”
“I don't think smuggling me out is an option,” I comment.
“It is,” Xavier says from where he's sitting on the couch at the side of the room. “I've seen it done. I can be complicated, though. I don't think your IV stand would go along with you very easily.”
Dean stares at him for a few seconds, then slowly turns back to me. “We'll consider that plan B. We'll just keep it right there in our back pocket. Other than that? What do you want to do?”
“Well, it seems that I'm going to be stuck here at least for a little while. So, I'm going to use my time wisely, piecing together what happened. Start with Lilith Duprey. I want you to find out absolutely everything you can about her. Everything. Who she is, who she was before she moved to Salt Valley, why she was so concerned about emphasizing that she is a widow.”
"You're sure she has something to do with this?" Dean asks.
"She mentioned the shed," I say.
"What?" Dean asks.
"The shed. The one that's by the cornfield. When we were talking about the field and everything that's happened in it, she insisted she doesn't know anything about it. That she never goes near that field because when she first moved there, they told her that the field wasn't part of the property, and she doesn't even know who owns it. She said everything past those trees is off-limits to her, so she never goes over there."
"Alright," Dean says. "That would make sense. If I happened to live on property near a field where they found a bunch of bodies, I probably wouldn't want to get anywhere near it, either."
"But she mentioned the shed. She said she never goes past the shed. You can't see that shed from her house. It's hidden by the trees. She would have had to have gone to that field at some point to even know it's there. It's not a smoking gun, but it's something. It's an inconsistency. And when we have this little to go on, I'm willing to latch onto an inconsistency."
"I'll go by the hotel and grab you some clothes and your toothbrush and stuff," Dean says.
"Thank you." They start out of the room, and I lean forward slightly. "Xavier?"
"Hmm?" he asks, coming back in and standing next to the bed.
"Thank you. For what you did out there."
"You're welcome. I love amusement parks. They make me happy."
"Really?" I ask. "You don't strike me as the amusement park type."
"There are always surprises in this world," he says with a smile. "Rest well, Emma."
I don't want to sleep. There's too much to do, too many questions to answer. Every time I close my eyes, the looming black figure with a scythe appears behind them. He could have killed me easily, but he didn't. Just like I told Dean, the attacks were a warning. Somebody was trying to scare me away from the investigation. The fact that he went after Xavier, too, means we're close.
Which means I'm not stopping.
Chapter Nineteen
I must have fallen asleep at some point during the night because the next thing I know, I'm waking up to the feeling of somebody stroking the back of my hand. I open my eyes and see my father sitting on the chair next to my bed. Worry is etched across his face, and his eyes are rimmed with red.
“Dad?”
“Hey, honey,” he says.
“What are you doing here?”
“Dean called me,” he says. “They told me you were hurt. I came as soon as I could.”
“I'm okay,” I tell him, adjusting myself to sit upright. “Really. It's just a cut.”
But even as I protest, a wince of pain in my shoulder slows my movement. He looks at the bandage wrapped around my arm and the IV still dripping fluids into my vein.
“That
