Page 115 of Death's Daughter
Relief makes my held breath whoosh out in a loud exhale.Oh, Chessa. I owe you.
I can practically hear her in my head:You bet your ass you do.
Bending down, I scoop the keys off the ground. When I press the button to unlock the doors, the vehicle gives a welcoming chirp and flash of the lights.
Thank God.
I guide Devon through the rest of the cemetery, out of the gate, and over to the van’s passenger side. Carter follows us, a looming silent presence at my back that I’m determined to ignore.
“Almost there,” I say to Devon, panting, my eyes burning again from our stupid clothes.
He nods, his head sagging. I help him into the seat and shut the door, locking him safely away. Even if that is more gesture than practical defense.
I’m worried about him. But also? If I have a shit list, he’s the second name from the top. What did he know and when did he know it, those are my questions, and I bet I’m not going to like the answers when I get them.
I turn away from the van, marching determinedly around the hood to the driver’s side.
“Jocasta,” Carter says. “Please. It’s important.”
Why? Why does that “please,” grating and desperate, still work on me? Because some pathetic part of me is still desperately hoping there’s an explanation that doesn’t make him an asshole and me a fool?
Yeah.
I steel myself, folding the most vulnerable parts of myself away, and then turn to face Carter. “All right, you want to talk? Fine. How long?” The question bursts out of my throat, like a bomb with a smoldering fuse that’s finally reached the powder.
He hesitates, a rare moment of uncertainty. “I don’t know what you’re—”
“How long have you been lying to me?” I ask, biting off each word. “When did you find out who I am? What I am?”
Understanding dawns on his face simultaneously with regret and guilt, a blended sunrise of emotion in shades of blood red.
And with it, I have my answer. It takes my breath away, and I rock back on my heels, as if the revelation came with a physical blow.
“Oh,” I say in a too-small voice. “Oh shit. You knew the whole time. You… you came to Beecher knowing?” I can’t help myself from ending with an uplift, a question. Because it just sounds so impossible.
His jaw works. “I was sent here, yes. But Jocasta, I—”
“So it was all a lie. From the moment I met you at that party all the way until…” The lump in my throat, humiliation and hurt, makes it hard to speak, but I force myself to continue. “… until today.” My face is aflame with the memory of being naked under his touch, only now my imagination supplies him with an expression of either utter boredom or calculated triumph. Nausea rolls over me.
“No, no!” Carter steps closer to me, hand out as if to grasp my arm in reassurance. But wisely, he stops before he touches me.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” He draws in a deep breath. “I was sent here to keep tabs on Death’s daughter. Jocasta. But you have no social media accounts and the picture I was given was… outdated.”
In spite of myself, I grimace, wondering exactly how bad that photo must have been. I went through a pixie cut phase in high school that did me no favors.
Tires screech somewhere nearby, and we both turn toward campus, bracing ourselves for Nova to come screaming out of the darkness or something. But everything remains quiet.
“I had no idea that you, Jo, who I met that night was the same person,” he continues.
“Not until class, when you took attendance,” I say slowly, pieces clicking. That was the shock on his face. Not just that we had hooked up the night before and I was a student in his class, but that I was the enemy. The target.
He nods with relief. “Exactly.”
“So, what, then you just decided to carry on?” I demand. “Seeing what information you could get out of me by creating a forbidden romance?” I hate that something so stupid, so basic college girl, actuallyworked. It’s humiliating.
“I wastryingto stay away from you,” he says in a tight voice on the verge of a shout.
I raise my eyebrows.
