“No one else handy, huh?” I asked him.
I left his face uncovered so Steve would notice him, then hustled to the car. I didn’t see Well-Spoken, and I didn’t see another body under a tarp. I tried to speculate who Frail had been—servant? apprentice? both?—and what he’d done, if anything, to make the old man stab him.
I set Steve’s and Ford’s weapons on the hood of the Crown Vic but slipped Ursula’s gun into my pocket. Right now, Washaway wasn’t a place for anyone to go unarmed. Using my taillights to guide me, I backed down the road.
I couldn’t return to the Sunset—even if Yin was dead, Steve and Ford knew to look for me there, and they might bring friends. I’d end up in a cell while the sapphire dog ran loose, turning people into its pets.
But at least the cell would have a place to sleep. I blinked until my blurry vision cleared. The short naps I’d been getting weren’t enough. I was weary. I’d lost the support of everyone, even Steve and Catherine. I didn’t know what to do about the predator or the bidders, but there was one job I could still do.
I drove directly to Steve’s house and kicked the back door in. He would be out looking for me, of course, but I didn’t think he’d come here first. I pulled the patties out of the freezer, dropped them into a stainless steel mixing bowl, and rushed back to the car. Maybe I should have defrosted them first, but I couldn’t imagine myself standing in Steve’s kitchen, anxiously waiting for the microwave to ding.
I drove back to the cabin. Steve’s and Ford’s cars were gone. Good. I turned the Neon around so I wouldn’t have to back down the feeder road, then carried the bowl of patties into the woods.
If Pratt was anything like Annalise, he could be healed from injury by eating meat. The fresher the better, but these frozen burgers would have to do.
I knelt in the wet moss beside him and cut a thin sliver from the column of meat. It didn’t want to go down his throat, but I wiggled it in. Then I did it again and again. I had a hair-raising moment when I imagined Pratt clamping his teeth down on my fingers and swallowing them, but that was all imagination.
It didn’t do any good. He didn’t come alive. Damn. I’d seen other peers survive damage worse than this, but maybe there was some sort of magical
And while I didn’t like Pratt, I could have used his help.
I left the last three patties defrosting in his mouth and tossed the bowl away. No other cars had come up the road to block the Neon. I drove down the hill and back onto the road.
I was alone again, and now I had no idea what I should do.
The sign for the school appeared in my headlights. On impulse, I pulled in and drove past the tiny playground. I switched off my headlights and parked behind a Dumpster.
I closed my eyes, but as tired as I was, I couldn’t sleep. The smell of those dead bodies stuck with me, and my head was churning with thoughts of the sapphire dog. I leaned my head against the window and stared up at the blank night sky.
At first the sapphire dog seemed to want to get out of town, but something had changed. Esteban hadn’t tried to drive it away from Washaway; he’d been a distraction. And how many hours had it spent hiding out at the stables? If I was going to figure out where it had gone, I needed to know what had happened.
My biggest problem was that I knew so little about it. It came from another place. I couldn’t bring myself to use the word
Still, I’d seen that place—the Empty Spaces, as the society called it, although others called it the Deeps. It was a nothing, a void, but what did I know that could help me understand the sapphire dog?
Steve’s Crown Vic drove by and was gone. I assumed he was after me, and I wondered where he would start his search. I didn’t know a thing about Washaway except what I’d seen over the past couple of days, but if I’d been local, he would have known where to search for me. He would have gone to my home, my friends, my work, my hangouts. He would’ve had a place to start.
But I was a stranger. I didn’t have any place to go, so I could have gone anywhere.
This was the same problem I had with the sapphire dog. The big difference was that the predator had the pastor to guide him. If I knew what the predator wanted, I could figure out how the pastor would try to give it to him.
But of course I already knew what the sapphire dog wanted. It wanted what every living thing wanted: to eat. And somehow, it fed itself by making people crazy. My ghost knife cut away every part of a personality except compliance. The sapphire dog took everything but love for it.
Until the stroke hit, that is.
The darkness and the cold became too much. I closed my eyes. Just for a moment.
When I opened them again, there was light in the eastern sky. It was Christmas Eve morning.
I rubbed my face, hard, to get the sleep out. Time to move. I climbed from the car and emptied my bladder against the back of the Dumpster. The temperature had dropped below freezing overnight. I was hungry. My back and neck ached. I needed a toothbrush. Worse, the job I had come here to do was not over yet.
I rubbed my arms, trying to make myself feel warm and awake. I was alone here, an ex-con with a couple of spells, trying to find a predator before a full sorcerer did. I was completely outclassed, up to my ass in corpses, and I had no leads at all.
I couldn’t even talk to Catherine. Steve would be looking for me, and I had no way to contact her without running into Nadia and Nicholas.
Unless …
I climbed behind the wheel and started the engine. I had half a tank left, which was pretty good considering how much driving I’d done already. Then a motorcycle rumbled across the road ahead, headed toward the left. Toward the fairgrounds.
