“I’ll be fine,” Lulu said, sweat forming on her brow. “Just try to calm Jack down until the paramedics arrive.”
Trying to calm Jack down sounded much easier than it actually was. I was bitten, I was scratched, I was punched, and I was called the only word he knew how to say—which wasn’t really a word at all, but more like a sound I could not replicate. But the kid was scared, and since I was basically peeing my pants myself, I couldn’t blame him.
When the paramedics finally arrived, they were quick, guiding Lulu onto a stretcher and assuring her (and Jack and I) that everything would be just fine. For Lulu, that might be true, but for me it was anything but.
After his mother left, Jack went from simmering to full-blown nuclear. It took every rabbit I could pull from my hat to keep him quiet for even a minute. I did my best baby voice. I tried pirate cartoons. I attempted to feed him cookies (which were thrown back at me). I even tried to pay the stupid kid, but it turned out twenty bucks wasn’t as big an incentive to a toddler as I imagined it might be.
It may have been for the best, though. The more Jack screamed (and there was a lot of screaming) the longer my mind stayed occupied. It was when he was actually quiet, in those moments of silence, when my own internal monologue got noisy.
I started to worry about Lulu, and not just for the obvious reasons. Sure, she was in labor, and yes the hospital in New Haven was about as big as a Quizno’s (with all the technical advancement). But what was really pulling at my mind was what Abram had told me.
The dead girls … they all looked like me. And, according to Abram, that was the reason they were all dead. Someone was looking for me, because my blood was magic and they could use it to take over the world or make some supermodel fall in love with them or something.
You know, that old chestnut.
But as crazy as all of that sounded, I was actually beginning to believe it. And that was what was upsetting me so much.
Because as much as all those dead girls resembled me, none of them looked as much like me as Lulu did. For our entire lives, people confused us for sisters. We had the same dark hair, the same light eyes. Of course, Lulu was missing my father’s eye freckle, but that distinction hadn’t saved any of the other girls.
A horrible howling echoed from the woods behind us. Jack erupted back into screams, and though my entire body shook, I rushed to grab him. The monster was out there, but which one?
God, I was actually taking all of this seriously.
How could I not, with all I had seen tonight?
Another howl. From the same monster or another one? Maybe it was from an ordinary run-of-the-mill non-monstrous wolf. Hey, a girl can hope.
My mind raced to the worst possible scenario. What if Lulu was attacked on her way to the hospital? What if the monster who chased after me—the one Abram saved me from—had ripped into that ambulance in an effort to get a hold of her?
She would be running through these woods right now, scared and in labor. Or would she not even be able to run, same as she hadn’t been able to get to her phone. Did the Discovery Channel say fear can stall labor? Or was that with animals?
No, if something was after Lulu, labor or not, she would be trying to get back to her child. But what chance would she stand against a beast? She would be ripped apart, just like the rest. And it would be all my fault.
I reached for my cell before I realized who I was intending to call.
My mind shouldn’t have gone to him. I had just told him how awful he was and how I never wanted to see him again. But if Abram was here, he would fix this. He would run those meaty wonderful hands through my hair and tell me everything would be all right. And I would believe him. Just like, God help me, I believed him now.
I set the phone back down and curled up in a ball on the couch with Jack, squeezing my eyes shut to try to keep the tears from falling.
How had my life gotten to this point?
Chapter 16
It was halfway through a symphony of Jack’s screams that a knock sounded at the door.
My body tensed, causing all my other thoughts to screech to a halt like Saturday night traffic in Queens.
As if he sensed it, too, Jack’s high-pitched hijinks stopped as well, allowing the next knock to echo through an otherwise silent house.
I inched toward the door, looking out of the corner of my eye for something that might be used as a weapon. As the third knock banged along the door, I settled for the first thing in the kitchen I could find—a cheese grater.
Never one to put off the inevitable, I pulled the door open, holding the grater out in front of me like a magic talisman.
“I appreciate it, but if I was going to present someone with a kitchen utensil, I think it would be the blender. Just feels more personal.”
Dalton stood in the doorway, a sly smirk plastered across his otherwise adorable face.