“Do you think he’s alright?” I whispered to Jack after Leif’d gone. “I mean, can vampires get sick?”
“I don’t know.” Jack shook his head and looked as dumbfounded as I felt. When he met my eyes, he’d softened.
“I don’t wanna fight about this anymore,” I said. “I love you. Can we just leave it at that for now?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry.” He stepped closer to me and looped his arm around my shoulders. “I don’t understand this, but… I said I’d always do whatever I could to make you happy, so if this makes you happy…”
“It does.” I leaned into him.
Leif had left by the time I got up the next day, but that was nothing new. He usually came and went without much notice.
The snow continued falling, blanketing the world. Jack went outside to clear it up, and even though we had a snow blower, it didn’t really work on the stone patio. He spent the majority of the afternoon shoveling it up, but Matilda was outside “helping” him, so I suspected a lot more time was spent roughhousing than actual shoveling.
Since Jack had the manual labor covered, I went to straighten up the living room. I found Bobby sitting on the couch, his laptop open on his lap.
“Where’s Milo?” I picked up the blanket balled up next to Bobby and began folding it.
“Um, school.” Bobby scrambled to click things on the computer, and when I peeked over to see what he was looking at, he slammed the screen shut. “Milo joined the debate team or something. You can call him if you wanna know for sure.”
“What were you just looking at?” I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Um, me? Nothing.” He flicked his black bangs from his eyes and refused to look at me. “Just browsing. You know, surfing the interweb.”
“You’re being a spaz,” I said. “What are you up to? Downloading porn?”
“Yeah, like I’d look at porn in the living room,” he scoffed. I kept staring at him, so he sighed and opened the laptop. “I just didn’t think you needed to see this.”
“What?” I reached for his computer, tilting the screen towards me, and then I saw it.
7
The giant photo on the screen was color, but the overcast day, gray concrete, and dirty snow almost made it look black and white. I would’ve thought it was, if it wasn’t for the dark reddish stains that spilled out in the center of the photo, and the black policeman’s shoes standing next to it.
The headline over it read, “Minneapolis Officials Deny Serial Killer,” and in smaller print below it, “After the third death in a string of similar murders, residents fear for their safety.”
But I barely even read the words. My eyes were focused on the blood splashed over the sidewalk. I could see just enough of the buildings to make out that it was Hennepin Avenue, where Jane had been found. This was her crime scene.
“That’s… this’s Jane’s blood?” I asked numbly and sat down on the couch next to Bobby.
“Sorry.” Bobby moved to close the box, but I stopped him and took the laptop from him. “Are you sure wanna look at that?”
“No,” I said but clicked on the link to read the full story.
The article didn’t say much more than Jack had already told me. Three girls, aged eighteen and nineteen, had been left discarded around downtown Minneapolis in the early morning hours. Since the crime scenes yielded no evidence, they assumed the girls had been killed elsewhere and were posed to be found.
The most surreal part of it was reading about Jane in such matter of fact way, like she wasn’t a flesh and blood person I’d known for ten years.
“Jane Kress, 18, is the latest suspected victim. Her body was discovered at 4:35 am on January 16. She suffered multiple stab wounds, like the other two victims.
Kress had been known to frequent the nightclubs in the area and had returned from a treatment center on January 14. It had been a planned 90-day stay, but Kress left after only 24 days. When asked for comment, both the center and her family declined to say what Kress had been treated for, or what led to her early departure.”
I read the article through three times, and Bobby sat on the couch next to me, saying nothing. I leaned back on the couch, staring at the screen as if I expected something new to happen. But nothing did. It didn’t tell me anything more about why Jane was dead.
“Why were you looking at this?” I asked.
“They were talking about it in class today.” Bobby sounded apologetic and pulled at the ends of his sleeves, making them swallow his hands. “I didn’t know very much about what happened, or her for that matter, so I just… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”
“No, it’s okay.” I shook my head. “I’m not mad.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Where did you find this?” I asked.
“I just Googled it,” Bobby shrugged. “Why?”