The girls sucked in a collective breath and looked furtively into the thick shrubbery beyond the clearing.
“So she really did see one, even though she wasn’t initiated?” one of the girls who hadn’t spoken before said.
“No, she didn’t see a vampire, she saw a person.” I pushed Tyler shoulder distance from me so I could look into her eyes. “Was it the man on the tomb up there?”
“I don’t know why I said what I did, about seeing a vampire, I mean. I didn’t see anyone,” Tyler whispered.
“What about the rest of you? Did any of you see someone in the shrubbery when you got here?”
They all stared at me dumbly. Finally, Nia said, “Tyler was really excited about the ceremony, so maybe she thought she saw something.”
Lightning flashed in the eastern sky and clouds began to thicken across the moon again, a warning that Mother Nature hadn’t finished with us for the night. I didn’t want to stand arguing with these kids in a rainstorm, and I needed to call the cops to report the murder. I told the girls I would take them to the apartment where they’d met up, and leave them in my cousin Petra’s charge while I talked to the police.
“You can call your folks from there, but none of you is to go home unless Petra sees who’s escorting you.”
Arielle started to object, but I overrode her. “You are not in charge of this expedition; I am. If you try to leave the Dudek apartment with anyone besides your parents or guardian, Petra will sit on you until I get back.”
“They can’t sleep there.” A girl with long, pale hair spoke for the first time. “We only have three beds.”
“You’re Kira Dudek, right? Lucy’s big sister? I don’t care if your friends stand on their heads all night, as long as they don’t leave without an adult. Let’s get going.”
“But my mother—” Kira started to say.
“This is known as education,” I said. “You are learning, all seven of you, that actions have consequences.”
I corralled them into an ungainly bundle and started pushing them toward Leavitt Street. As we got closer, blue lights flashed beyond the fence. Someone must have heard Tyler’s screams and called the police.
“Cops on Leavitt,” I said. “I want you girls to be with your parents before you have to deal with the police. We’re going to turn around and try to find a way out on the street at the back of the cemetery. It’s going to be rough going because I don’t want to show a light, so stay close together, and close behind me.”
I turned around, made sure my team—if that’s what they were—was with me, and started picking my way back toward the clearing, the temple, the thicket of briars.
Tyler insisted on holding my hand. This made it harder for me to stay on a path, but I didn’t have the heart to detach her. Behind us we heard the bullhorns: This is the Chicago police; stay where you are; we know you’re in there. We could see the glow from their searchlights as the cops began to work their way into the cemetery. Tyler grabbed me more tightly and one of the girls whimpered in fear. The lightning intensified and thunder began to rumble among the clouds like a moody drummer.
“It’s okay,” I said softly, under the cover of the thunder. “They’re just guessing; they don’t really know we’re here. The important thing is to keep as quiet as possible.”
More than once the girls or I stumbled against a piece of broken marble as we threaded our way east. Rain began to fall again, fat, greasy drops that slipped through the tree branches and down our necks. The storm broke in earnest as we reached a wall that marked the cemetery’s eastern edge.
As the rain swept down, I turned to Arielle, the sprite. “I’m going to give you a leg up to the top. Look over, and if there’re no cops or prowlers on the street, you climb over and jump down. And all of you: go to Kira Dudek’s apartment and stay there. I will join you as fast as I can, but I have to talk to the cops. And please don’t imagine you can just run away: Petra will be able to give me all your names, and I will talk to all of your parents tomorrow.”
Nia started to protest, but Arielle cut her short. “My mom will handle it; don’t try arguing with her.”
I decided to pretend I hadn’t heard that and made a cup of my hands for Arielle. She sprang up lightly to grab the top of the wall, where she bent over and looked around before giving me an “all clear.” I hoisted the others over as fast as I could, even Tyler, who said she’d rather stay with me.
“Right now, it doesn’t matter what happened to you in the middle of that circle back there,” I said. “Being with Arielle and the others is going to be way better than a police interrogation. Why were you out after curfew? Did you know the dead man? Did you and your friends put a spike through his chest?”