Page 97 of Death's Daughter
He’s right; that’s someone who’s pissed.
Fabulous.
Without waiting for me, Carter pivots, stalking out of the bedroom.
“Carter, wait.” I scramble after him, searching for my underwear and then throwing his shirt over myself, swearing when myfingers catch on the twisted, inside-out sleeves. “We still don’t know how Lennie was lured to Branwick.” But he doesn’t stop, striding down the hall toward the door, like he plans to rip it off the hinges.
Still fumbling with buttons, I manage to reach the door at the same time he yanks it open without even bothering to check the peephole first.Damnit, Carter!
Instinctively I brace myself for whoever’s on the other side.
But to my surprise, it’s a familiar face—Chessa, glasses freshly cleaned, her phone in one hand along with a stack of ragged notes that appear to be written and ripped from various sources of paper, including a menu.
“Chessa,” I say with relief. “What are you doing here? Is everything okay—”
She glares at me. “Did you kill someone in Chicago?”
I blink at her, startled. “What?”
She charges into the apartment, past a bewildered Carter, holding her phone up, like Exhibit A. “Answer the question, please.”
Chessa in lawyer mode… that’s not good.
Her whirlwind entry reveals Devon leaning against the doorframe. He waves a hand in Chessa’s direction. “She was pacing in the lobby. Insisted on following me up here.” His glance takes in my outfit, or lack thereof. “Nice shirt.”
I wince. “About that…”
But he doesn’t seem angry, at least not at me. He straightens up, glaring at Carter, his mouth flattened into a thin line. “Couldn’t give her a chance to heal?”
“It wasn’t like that,” I protest.
But Devon ignores me, strolling into the apartment, leaving Carter to shut the door after him.
I look to Carter and he exhales sharply, shoving the door toward the frame.
“You made it very clear that you feed without fatal side effects,” Chessa says, turning on me as soon as the door is closed.
I hold my hands up in surrender. “All right, counselor.” I take a deep breath. “Yes. I have killed.”
The whole room goes quiet.
“Before I understood what was happening, when I was eight. My father took me out and taught me to feed. I thought it was a game. I didn’t understand that the man on the Ferris wheel was dying because of what I was doing.” I pause. “And his wife died as well when she accidentally fell out of the carriage trying to signal for help.”
Chessa scowls at me. “That’s not—”
“I know. You’re talking about when I was fourteen,” I say calmly.
Her eyes widen in surprise, presumably at my forthrightness. She glances at whatever she has pulled up on her phone. My name was kept out of the official reporting because I was a minor. But that didn’t stop blogs and podcasts from speculating. And it wouldn’t be that hard to figure it out, if you know me, where I went to high school—and yeah, that I can drain the life out of people.
“I’m not proud of it, but it happened.” I shrug but my shoulders are too tight to pull it off as casual. “My class took a field trip into Chicago to the Lyric Opera House. I was feeding on the sips of emotion, just like I’ve done here, only I didn’t realize I was in someone else’s territory. He was Sanguine.” I pause. “That means he feeds off the water, blood, usually, in humans.”
Chessa’s jaw drops.
Devon makes a soft noise of surprise, no doubt thinking ofMaggie this morning. I nod at him. “That’s why I wasn’t sure about her,” I say to him. “I thought it might be a revenge tactic.”
I still vividly remember the cutting breeze off the river as I crossed the bridge, the shudder of the metal walkway beneath my battered Chucks as cabs and buses fought for space in the narrow lanes. And the sheer magnitude of the city and the pulse of life just beneath the surface.
Despair, rejection, and failure floated freely around me—a woman striding across the bridge in the opposite direction, carrying a box of her office belongings with a sad and wilty looking plant poking its head over the cardboard edge. A man on the phone, just ahead of me, arguing with someone, begging them, “Please, Angela. Just listen to me. It wasn’t like that!” A girl swiping tears off her face with her free hand, the other lugging an oversized art portfolio, carelessly zipped, pages flopping out the edges.
