“Kill the beast! Kill the beast!”
It was a living nightmare. New Haven had been whipped into a frenzy, with Dalton at the head. And the object of their misplaced fear and anger was the man I loved.
“Stop,” I muttered as people started to clap and raise their hands in solidarity.
This was like a tsunami—destructive and unstoppable. But I had to try. Because if I didn’t, then either Abram or a hell of a lot of the people demanding his murder were going to wind up dead.
“Stop!” I said louder. But my voice was lost in the sea of screams, in the fog of rage.
If I could just talk to them, if I could just get them to calm down for a second, I was sure I could make them see reason.
They would have to come to terms with magic, and witches, and monsters, and all of that, which hadn’t been the easiest thing in the world for me personally—but I had done it, and they could, too. Heck, if they believed in the beast, most of my hard work had already done for me.
Though I didn’t care for this town, the people in it were generally good. They looked out for each other. They protected their neighbors. This sort of mob mentality wasn’t like them. They had their backs against the wall, though, and the same desire to keep their community safe was pushing them toward this bloody agenda. I had to change the course of this conversation, and to do that, I needed to be up at that podium.
I inched forward, eyeing the two police officers on either side of me. Their focus was on the crowd, but I wasn’t going to sneak away undetected by walking right into their line of sight.
I chewed my lip and looked around. Okay, I could do this. Just had to channel my inner actress, the same way I had at the Fright Night Runway Show in New York City. Direct my attention at some unseen danger and get the police officers to notice my reaction.
As I looked over my shoulder, one of the officers shifted their gaze to me. Slowly, I shifted my focus past him, at the empty doorway, channeling a sense of sheer terror. I drew my eyebrows together and opened my mouth in a horrified “o” shape, leaning back, inching away. I let out a small gasp.
The officer looked over his shoulder now, too, then back to me.
“What is it?” he asked.
I shook my head as though too afraid to speak and pointed toward the door.
“Wait here,” he ordered. He tapped the other officer on the shoulder, put his hand on his gun, and nodded his head toward the door. “I think he’s here,” he whispered. “Cover me.”
As soon as they disappeared into the hall, I zipped myself into the crowd where they would not be able to easily retrieve me. Then I moved toward the front of the room, suddenly aware of how tired I was. It had been like this since almost my first day back in New Haven—one crazy turn after another. And for all my fighting, I ended up here, as desperate and alone as ever.
Abram was hurt. He might have already been dead—but I couldn’t entertain that. I wouldn’t entertain that. Abram was strong. But he wouldn’t be able to protect himself in the condition he was in now. The mob would find him, and they would kill him. If, of course, that other beast didn’t get to him first.
Suddenly, I realized that my own life had become very secondary. I would give it up easily if that meant I could keep Abram, Lulu, Jack, and Dalton safe. If turning myself over to this monster would be enough to spare New Haven all this tragedy, then I would happily put on my best pumps and march myself over to him.
But something told me we were past that now. No amount of sacrifice could get us out of this. I could only hope that my words somehow would.
A hand grabbed me and pulled me back. I spun, jumping back, fearing I had wasted my choice and the other officers had caught up to me.
“Char, it’s me,” Lulu said. Her face was pale and tired, and she wore loose-fitting black clothes. She threw her arms around me and pulled me closer. Her arms were so weak, though, that it felt as though she was using me to hold herself up. “Thank God you’re okay. I thought for sure that you …” She cleared her throat. “Thank God.”
“Lulu,” I choked out as tears streamed down my cheeks. “The baby …”
“Allison,” she answered through tears of her own. “She’s fine. She’s at the hospital with Jack and her dad.”
“You need to be there with her,” I said, and I looked her up and down, shaking my head in horror. “You just had a baby! You can’t be here, walking around. Lulu—”
She chuckled weakly. “Oh, Char,” she said, in that bemused way of hers. “You always worry too much. You do realize the prolonged maternity ward stays are a cultural thing. There are places where women have their baby and immediately go back to work in the field.”