She stopped and looked at me. “What about them?”
I knew I was about to tread on a sensitive spot, but it had to be said. “What if you called for help? You-“
“I don’t need their help,” she said evenly. “I don’t need anything from anyone. I’ve been doing jobs like this since before you were born. Since before your father was born.”
“Okay. Okay. I get it. You’re a rock.” I noticed that she had set my ghost knife on the table. I picked it up and started cutting the meat.
It felt good to have my ghost knife again.
Annalise ate all the meat I cut for her. When she was finished, she held up her hands and flexed them.
“Better?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “But not healed. I’ve never had such a stubborn injury.”
“We’ve pretty much bought out the local market.”
“In the morning we’ll try to find a butcher.” She sighed. “The longer it’s been dead, the less potent it is for me.”
That kind of talk makes me nervous. Would she need to eat something alive soon? Maybe we should pick up a dozen oysters.
The door to my room slammed open. I threw myself to the floor. Someone shouted, “Police! Nobody move!”
Then I heard a gunshot.
“Luke! LUKE!” a man shouted. “Easy, now! Easy!”
I realized I was holding my ghost knife. I didn’t want the cops to have it, so I set it on its edge and pushed it through the carpet. It disappeared into the floor.
“Nobody move!” someone else shouted. This voice was young. I wanted to glance at them, but I held myself completely still. I didn’t need to see their faces. Not until they put away their weapons, anyway.
“Is anyone hurt?” the first voice asked. I recognized it as Emmett Dubois.
“I’m unhurt,” Annalise said. Her voice was cool and relaxed.
“Good, good, now don’t move.”
The fat cop knelt on my back and cuffed me. I was hauled to my feet. Annalise stood beside me, her hands also cuffed behind her back.
“I’m sorry, Emmett,” one of the cops said. He was the one with the seven-day beard. He’d apparently left his cigar in the car. I guessed this was Luke. “It’s that
“I know,” Emmett said. His voice was soothing, an older brother talking to a younger. “We’ll talk about it later.”
They made us stand by the window while they tossed the place. They found my clothes but not the ghost knife. Emmett Dubois seemed pretty interested in all the meat wrappers, but he didn’t ask us about it directly.
Then they took us to Annalise’s room and let us watch as they tossed it, too. She didn’t seem to have brought anything of her own into the room.
Finally, we all watched as Luke and the red-haired cop searched the van. They threw everything onto the asphalt, even rolling out Annalise’s dirt bike and searching under the seat, inside the exhaust pipes, gas tank, and handlebars.
A little man came out of the manager’s office and watched. He crossed his arms and stood well back in the shadow of the door as though he was afraid to be seen.
They didn’t find her vest of ribbons or her spell book. The only thing that seemed to interest Emmett was the satchel she’d brought to her meeting with Able Katz. He pulled the papers out, shuffled through them, and shoved them back.
If Annalise was bothered by the way they ransacked her stuff, she didn’t show it.
“All right,” Emmett finally said. “Let’s load them up.”
Luke came over to drag me into a waiting police car. The fat cop took Annalise. I saw him lean down and whisper something to her. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I knew he wasn’t offering her a private suite with cable TV. Not that Annalise seemed to be bothered by anything he said. They sat us in the back of the cars and drove us away.
I didn’t like being in the back of a cop car again. It smelled bad. I had to sit against my handcuffs, and they hadn’t even belted me in.
We drove north through the downtown, passing the parking lot where Wyatt had tried to ambush me. The police station was on a small side road at the edge of the water. Huge, irregular black rocks lay on all sides of the station and the tiny road leading to it.
We parked outside the station. Three Dodge Ram trucks were there, one gleaming black, one fire-engine red, and one painted gunmetal gray with flames on the sides. They were tricked out with fog lights, chrome wheels, ski racks, and who knows what else. Beside them was a vintage Bentley, black, although I couldn’t see enough of it to guess the year.
These were expensive cars, far above the level of the usual pickups and station wagons I’d seen around town or the dinged-up, rusted Celica parked at the far end of the lot.
They brought me inside but didn’t process me. No fingerprints, nothing. Luke just walked me into the back and stuck me in a cell. Alone. He made me back up and stick my hands through the bars so he could uncuff me. He took his time about it.
