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  “Yes,” I said. “They are worth a lot of money.”

  Manny nodded, then looked around her room. After getting dressed, she packed a suitcase with her favorite clothes, and then took down the pictures I had drawn her. She put them into her bag with loving care. She went around the room, picking things to take with her. We had to dump out her backpack to fit everything, even though there wasn’t a lot. Her clothing took up a lot of space. When that was finished, we left her house to walk to mine.

  Sirens lit up the entire night but none of them were around us. All of them probably headed for the museum. The only life we saw on the entire walk was a cat. He sat on the corner, cleaning his paw. He took off before we reached him. By the time we got to my house, even the sirens had stopped. They had probably reached the museum at that point.

  Inside, the house was too quiet. It had been since Dad... died. We hid Manny’s stuff in the closet, and I dashed upstairs to pack my own bag. I stuffed four changes of clothing into the suitcase, along with all of the art supplies that Manny had bought me.

  “Is that all you’re taking?” she asked from the doorway.

  I looked over at her, and then back to the bag. “Yeah,” I said. “It’s all I really need.”

  She smiled at me, then came into the room. Her arms went around me from behind, and I felt her cheek rest against my back. I dragged the tips of my fingers over her hands, drinking in the feel of her skin against mine. It was all that mattered to me at that moment. I needed to feel her skin, and to know that she was real.

  I propped her up on my desk and started to kiss her. She moved her legs so that I could slide between them. She had chosen to wear a skirt, so only my pants and her panties kept us apart. I cupped her face in my hands and kissed her deeper, until she had filled up every one of my senses. She was the only thing that existed, and that was exactly how I wanted it. I wanted her to be the only thing.

  Her hands slid into my jacket. She tried to pull my shirt up but it had been firmly tucked into my pants. She huffed, pushing me away. “The suit’s gotta go,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Waiting for Our Friends

  Manny

  We’d stayed at Becket’s house for a full day, not daring to step outside. Neither of us knew what exactly was coming, and I thought staying indoors was somehow safer than leaving. Like not being seen would help.

  Because I was a dummy, I’d switched on the news to see what they were saying. Turned out, a fuck-ton of people died, and the museum had been robbed blind of millions of dollars’ worth of gems. At least the mercenaries would be taken care of financially for the next billion years.

  They said they were coming for us, so we had all of our things ready to go. I didn’t own anything I cared about, other than some drawings that Becket made for me. So, I had a bag of clothes, things from him, and that was it. My whole life amounted to one suitcase.

  It felt so fucking freeing.

  I laid on my stomach in Becket’s bed, letting him draw on my back. We had time to kill while we waited for the mercenaries to come for us, and Becket could tell I was getting antsy. Sooner or later, the police would come to talk to us, and I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t feel like I could fake being human anymore. They would see right through me, and try to take me from Becket. Then I would have to kill them all.

  I felt everything tethering me to this life as the cords snipped and I was set free. I had Becket but to say he tied me down wouldn’t have been fair. It wasn’t a trap, like it was with my parents. More like I was holding a hand, and that was what kept me grounded. Rather than being bound with ropes.

  “Almost finished,” Becket informed me as he drew something on my lower back.

  He’d been at it for a couple of hours, and the sun was down now. We’d had dinner, and in another few hours, we would probably go to bed. I assumed Dolan wasn’t here yet because he had things to sort out. Like swimming in jewels.

  “Take your time,” I said, smiling back at him. He returned the smile, and his hand skimmed my side and down my leg before he got back to work.

  While I knew my family was dead, I kept waiting for my father to call me, demanding I come home and start making up for all the things I’d done wrong. Some work for him, or letting him tell me how worthless I was. Something of the like. One of these days, it would kick in that he was really gone. I worried for when that happened.

  My parents were never good people but they had still been my parents. Like Becket’s father was his. They were still the people who raised me, fed me, and sort of took care of me. I didn’t mourn but it was an odd feeling to know that they were gone and would not return. Same as Lane, who’d spent most of my life finding new ways to hurt me. His death, I was happy about. A rotten soul was over with now, and it should have happened sooner. But I couldn’t change the past. All I could do was move on and try to make the best of what was to come.

  When Becket was finished, I went into the bathroom to see what he’d drawn on me. Two figures but they didn’t quite look like what I thought they were. Interpretations of something angelic and something demonic warred on my back in a spectacular display of colors I wanted to keep forever. But this would eventually fade, and then Becket would put something else on me. I liked it that way, forever changing into something new once in a while. We needed something new.

  “I love it,” I told Becket, turning to put my hands on his chest. I gave him a quick kiss before I changed back into my dress. Just in case Dolan came for us, I wanted to be ready to bolt.

  We were pretty much left to twiddle our thumbs until we were told otherwise, and Becket handled it very well. He sat with me, played with my hair, and acted as calmly as he always did. Normally, I was a pretty calm person too. I could sit and look at the sky for hours but things were about to change in a big bad way, and I wanted it to start already.

  “You’re tense,” Becket observed. “Would sex help?”

  I smiled, laughing a little. “Well, yeah, it would but I don’t want people busting into the house while we’re naked. If they saw you, then I would have to kill them.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Why’s that?”

  I smirked. “Because only I get to see you naked. You look lovely, and I’m greedy. No one else deserves to get a look.”

  I doubted he got it but he still pulled me onto his lap as we sat on the bedroom floor. Becket went back to messing with my hair while I pretended not to be annoyed that Dolan was taking so long. He probably stopped to get donuts or something like that. There was a chance that the man was insane.

  The bell rang, and I nearly shot up like a bullet. I dragged Becket along by the hand, filled with excitement as we made our way to the living room. I was the one to open up the door but I didn’t see the people I expected to.

  It was a man and a woman, the man maybe a decade older than the woman, and both in police uniforms. My heart pounded against my ribcage as I attempted to remain calm. It didn’t work but I at least managed to not freak out on the outside. Maybe I could hold onto that for a little while.

  “Becket Anders?” the woman asked, flashing a badge at my boyfriend.

  “Yes,” he responded.

  “I’m officer Black, and this is my partner, officer Song. We’re here to ask you a few questions. You as well, Miss Hodkin,” she said to me. Yeah, of course, she knew who I was.

  Becket let them in because he feared nothing at all. Rationally, we didn’t have to be afraid of them coming into the house. There wasn’t a trace of what we did to his father, and they’d need to find a body to even know he’d died. No, this wasn’t about the doctor.

  We stood awkwardly in the living room, and I stared at the woman with cropped brown hair and icy blue eyes while she surveyed the house. I didn’t know what she was looking for but I didn’t like that she was here. Part of me literally wanted to kill her and the man she brought because they were threats to Becket and me. I had this new animalistic sense
of protection, and I would have liked to use it right then.

  “What would you like to ask us about?” I said, when the wait got to be too long. It could have been one of those cop tricks to make us tense, so we would slip up. I didn’t like that, and she was lucky I didn’t kick her in the stomach.

  She smiled with false sweetness. “The two of you missed school today.”

  I held back a bitter smirk. “You’re the truancy officers?”

  She chuckled. “No, just an observation.”

  I nodded. “Well, my family was just murdered, so I didn’t really feel like math today. You understand.” I sneered.

  Black agreed. “Oh, of course. But that is what we’re here to discuss with the two of you. You were guests at the Lakewood Founders Ball. As you clearly know, there was a massacre.”

  I made myself wince. “Yeah... It was... it was the worst thing I’d ever seen in my whole life.” I ran my fingers through my hair twice. “These people... they came in, and...”

  My face went to Becket’s chest as I did my best to pretend like I cared. He patted my back, seeming to understand what I was going for. But Becket couldn’t really fake normal emotions on the outside, so the officers might not have bought it.

  “Can you tell us what happened?” the male officer said. “From start to finish, we need to get your side of it. You arrived together, right?”

  I nodded. “My parents and Lane went ahead of me because I was running late. I had to get my makeup finished, so I said it was fine to go without me. Then a car picked me up, I got Becket, and we went to the ball. Everything was perfectly fine, then these people came in and started screaming about money. The blood...” I swallowed. “There was so much blood. And I saw... I saw my family.” I let my eyes go wide with horror as I pretended like picturing their bodies didn’t make me happy. “I don’t understand,” I lied.

  Officer Song took a look at the notepad in his hand. “Your family’s store had been attacked a few times,” he said. “One person was killed, another assaulted, and you were there as well. Am I right?”

  I couldn’t lie, so I said, “Yes. A few of the people from the ball were the ones who hurt me and the other employee. They’re crazy people.” I doubted they would care if we threw them under the bus because we were leaving anyway. This was just to get the cops away long enough for us to escape. Dolan had probably done worse in his time.

  “And you don’t know why the store was targeted?” Black asked.

  “No. I wish I did. I keep thinking...” I gave myself a pause. “What if these people did this to get at my parents? My family? They wanted us dead, and they stole the only blood I have left on this earth.”

  The officers exchanged a look, and I worried that I had laid it on a little too thick. I could pull back but I was a teenager who’d lost her family. Wouldn’t most people be really sad about that? I thought so.

  “So, what did you do when the killing started?” Black asked Becket, instead of me. “How did the two of you make it out alive? Because no one else did.”

  “We were careful,” Becket said. “And we avoided the people with weapons.”

  The woman stared at him in astonishment. “Are you insinuating that the victims were less than smart, Mr. Anders?”

  His eyebrows knit. “No, that wasn’t what I was saying.”

  I put my hand on his chest. “It really wasn’t. We stood out of the way, and we didn’t get near the people doing the killing.”

  “Yes,” she said. “And you two were seen fleeing the scene in the middle of everything. Why would you leave?”

  Becket stared at her. “Would you have wanted to stay? There were dead bodies and people with weapons. I didn’t want them to harm Manny.”

  “I see,” Song said. “So, neither of you were harmed at all when it happened?”

  “No,” I answered. “We were both okay. After I saw my family... I grabbed Becket, and we did our best to avoid everyone. We thought that maybe they left us alone because we were only teenagers but I don’t know.”

  The man took some notes but said no more to us. I couldn’t tell how much of this they believed but it had to say something that we weren’t in handcuffs yet. They only sent two people to talk to us as well, so maybe that was a good thing.

  “Mr. Anders,” Black said. “Your father is currently under investigation by the state. He’s vanished, am I right?”

  “You are,” he said coldly. “I haven’t seen him since right after the incident at school. He said he would be back in a bit but he never showed up.”

  I added, “We thought he was going to be out a few hours. We tried calling him but his phone is disconnected.”

  She scrutinized me. “We spoke with your principal. Mr. Wilcox said that a girl put up pictures of you, and it led to beliefs of domestic violence. And now your father is missing. The girl who did it happened to run off with one of the people that helped her, another killed herself, one got into an accident, and two are missing. Does that sound suspicious to you?”

  I answered. “Yeah but what does that have to do with us?”

  She cocked an eyebrow at me. “Really? Don’t play dumb with us.”

  Oh, well fine then. “Becket and I don’t go anywhere. Every day after school, we come to his house or mine. We get very little interaction with the students at school, and none outside of school. I don’t know what the hell they get up to, so I wouldn’t have even known anyone vanished or died if I didn’t hear chatter about it in class. I couldn’t care less what they’re doing. My family is dead, my boyfriend’s dad disappeared, and I don’t really have time to care about stone cold bitches. If you don’t mind.”

  My little outburst at the very least sounded like something that a girl in mourning might do. Unstable, rude, and snippy with people who could shoot me any time they wanted. Yeah, sounded about right to me.

  I honestly didn’t even think about the kids at school until Black brought it up to us. How did it look when Becket’s father was gone, my family dead, and a bunch of people known to hate us had up and vanished or died? It couldn’t have been ideal, and it was a damn good thing that we were taking off soon. This was a mess I didn’t know how to clean up, and I wouldn’t have done well to have been taken to prison and away from Becket. Honestly, he probably would have killed anyone in his path to me, if it came down to that. And I wouldn’t have minded.

  The officer took a deep breath and tapped her hand on her side before looking back to me. “What did you do once you got home from the ball?”

  “Slept,” I lied. “We got here, and we passed out. Everything kind of hit us at once, and we couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “You didn’t call the police,” Song noted. “Why after watching dozens of people die, did you not call and tell someone?”

  Becket came up with something quick. “We saw several other people at the ball trying to contact the authorities, so it seemed pointless to be one more person clogging up the line.”

  “And you didn’t call today to see what was happening?” the officer asked. “Your girlfriend’s family was killed, and you didn’t think to check up on that?”

  I took over for that one, forcing my eyes to go wider. “They’re gone, and not coming back to me. But there were a lot of people that died, and I knew that they all had families too. Maybe people waiting for them to come back home. I wasn’t waiting for anyone, so I wanted them to be taken care of first. I knew that because of who I was, someone would push me to the front of the line, and that wasn’t fair.”

  It sounded reasonable enough to me, and I hoped the selfless act would work on these people. The moment I saw them on the porch, they had accusations in their eyes. Maybe that was a cop thing, or just with them. I didn’t know, and it didn’t change anything. I had a story set already, and I wanted to stick to it. I could play the sad, pathetic girl in mourning for now. Hopefully, it would be enough to keep me out of trouble. It really only had to last another few days.

  The man thought for
a few seconds before nodding. “I see. And what are your plans now that you’re an eighteen-year-old with no family to speak of, and a business in your name?”

  I didn’t see how that was relevant but I came up with something. “Probably sell it. I have school to think about, and I guess I have to figure out my life.”

  “You have a lot of money,” Black said. “More money than most people even know what to do with. People would do a lot for the kind of cash you have now.”

  I cocked my head, unable to help narrowing my eyes at her. “Maybe but I couldn’t care less about it. I have what I need,” I said as I took Becket’s hand. “Money doesn’t mean anything.”

  She didn’t look like she believed me.

  I wasn’t so much insulted that she seemed to think I helped kill my family but that she thought I might have done it for money. Of all the gross reasons to kill people... money. Why would I do that when I had access to all of our funds and was able to buy what I wanted? This would have left me with a lot of work to do, and the cost was very high. She had to have wanted to believe this.

  “We saw something odd in the security tapes,” she went on after I was finished. “The two of you leaving the room in which your parent's bodies were found, and a couple of those people were there, chatting with you.” My heart started racing again. “Not only that but we saw you killing people. Skin worker and blood worker, right?”

  “Yes,” was all Becket said.

  “Care to explain?” Song asked.

  What the hell did I say to something like that? They saw us killing, and saw us leaving the room with my family in it, though they only mentioned my parents. I couldn’t really deny what we did. I only needed to get them to leave, so that Becket and I could take off and hide away with the people who said they would come for us. Then all this stuff wouldn’t matter anymore, and we would be okay.