"You're acting like a first-time killer," I said, trying to puzzle through it. "You've gotten better with each one, and you've started hiding the bodies, which makes sense if you've never done this before, but you have. Is it all an act? But why would you pretend to be inexperienced if you could just keep it completely quiet instead?"
"Hang on," he said, and coughed. He muffled the phone, but I could still hear loud coughs. Fake coughs, it sounded like, and something else behind them. A rumble. He unmuffled the phone, but it was harder to hear than before—there was static on the line, or white noise.
What was he doing?
"I acted inexperienced because I was," he said. "I've taken more lives than you can guess, but Jeb was the first one I . . . didn't keep."
"You didn't keep? But—" Could he keep souls? Could he absorb lives as well as body parts?
Or could he take lives instead of body parts?
"You took Emmett's whole body," I said, "and his shape. And you took someone else's body before that, and someone else's before that. It makes sense. You never had to hide the bodies before because you took everything, and left your old body behind. That's why there was so much sludge in Emmett's house—you discarded an entire body there, not just a part, and you—"
Ding . . . ding . . . ding. . . .
"What's that?" I asked.
"What's what?" he said.
"That noise. It sounded like a . . . " I slammed down the phone and grabbed my bike, looking wildly down the road.
It was a turn signal. Crowley was in his car, and he was looking for me.
There was no one on Main Street. I jumped on my bike and shot down to the corner, swerving around it too quickly and sliding on the ice. He wasn't on this street either. I righted myself and pedaled as hard as I could to the next corner and spun around that as well, in the other direction, away from his house and the route he was probably following.
That's why he said so much. Mr. Crowley was on a cell phone, and he had caller ID—he must have figured out I was on a pay phone, so he kept me talking while he went outside, started his car, and went to look for me. There were only two or three pay phones in town, and he was probably checking them all—the Flying J, the gas station by the wood plant, and the gas station where I'd been on Main. It had been closed for Christmas, thank goodness—there would be no clerks to describe me when kindly old Mr. Crowley showed up asking questions. But Christmas was also a problem—every building downtown was closed, every door locked, and every store empty. There was nowhere for me to hide.
What would be open on Christmas in a tiny town like Clayton? The hospital—but no, there was probably a pay phone there as well, and Crowley might drop by to check it. I heard a car and turned straight off the sidewalk onto a snow-covered lawn, forcing my way along the side of an apartment building.
There was a gap between two buildings, and halfway down a gas meter; I squeezed around it and crouched down on the other side, eyeing the street at the end of a long, brick canyon.
The car I heard didn't pass by—I didn't know who it had been, or where it had been going, only that I needed to hide.
I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening there, shivering in the snow. I could feel my body reacting, shutting down from cold, but I didn't dare move. I imagined a fire-eyed Mr. Crowley driving back and forth across the town, weaving a net tighter and tighter around me. When it had been dark nearly an hour,
I dragged my bike back out, my limbs stiff and my hands and Feet burning with cold. I made my'way home, saw that Crowley's car was parked neatly in his driveway, and went upstairs.
The house was empty and quiet; everyone had left.
14