The Creeping

“Uh-uh, Stella Cambren, I know you better than anyone does, and I have never seen that flushed gooey-eyed-bullshit-I-want-to-have-your-babies look on your face. Ever.” She presses her fingers to her temples, as if I’m giving her a migraine. “Okay, look, I love you. You love me. How about you avoid Sam for senior year, and then you can do whatever you want to him after?”


My smile fades. “Zo, I might not make it to senior year, let alone survive the whole thing. Jeanie’s killer is out there. Whoever it is might know that I’m trying to remember. There are cops watching my house twenty-four/seven. Do you understand?”

First she rolls her eyes and juts out her bottom lip. When I don’t cave, she exhales loudly. “Fine. Whatevs.” She crosses her arms and pops her hip. “I don’t approve of this kinky thing you’ve got going with the King of Loserdom. But I love you, and I’d go banshee on anyone to keep you safe.”

“Thanks, Zo.” I lock my arm with hers and have to give her a little tug toward the station wagon to get her feet moving. This momentary cease-fire is really the best reaction I could have dared to dream.

As she climbs into the backseat, she grumbles, “But I call dibs on selecting your senior prom date. I am not going to let you ruin the single most important night of our lives. And did you guys hear that the cops took Daniel Talcott in for questioning late last night?”

Sam and I both whirl around. “What?” we say in unison.

“You know I don’t believe in watching the news—too depressing,” she says, pointedly not looking at Sam. “But Cole texted me at the butt crack of dawn this morning. I guess Daniel just strolled right into the police station and announced who he was. No one squealed on him for being at Day of Bones, and now the cops are calling him a suspect because they had no idea he was here—which BTW, makes zero sense since he turned himself in.” She waves again, dismissing the topic. “So tell me one good reason why we’re wasting an awetastic day in the library.”

As we drive, Sam fills Zoey in on everything. She slouches low in the backseat so no one sees her riding in his station wagon. Her upper lip, shimmery with coral-colored lip gloss, curls in distaste at speaking to him directly. But for the most part, she listens to him. As they talk, I worry about Daniel. I guess he figured it was only a matter of time before someone who recognized him told the police he was here, and it’s better to talk with the cops voluntarily. With Savage’s residents in a tizzy over the crimes, maybe the safest place for Daniel is with the police? Maybe it’ll keep all the bible-thumping wannabe vigilantes, who probably have arsenals full of apocalypse-ready firearms in fortified basement bunkers, away from Daniel and his dad? Maybe Daniel will be able to convince the police his father had nothing to do with any of this?

The library parking lot is underground and deserted. We hurry up the stairs to the surface to escape the sulfur smell that Zoey worries will stick to her clothes. The library is empty too, except for the librarian. She looks up, penciled-in eyebrows scowling as we make the turnstiles shriek walking through them.

“I’ll check with the archivist if you guys want to get us a table,” Sam offers, angling toward the reference desk.

Zoey sashays forward, batting her eyelashes as she snickers over her shoulder, “Yeah, we better hurry, ’cause the place is so effing crowded.” I follow her through the stacks, trying to ignore how dark it is between the shelves. “What a dungeon. Anything could be lurking in here,” she adds, practically reading my mind. “Hell, Jeanie’s killer has probably been hiding out in children’s books diddling himself for the last decade.”

“Don’t say that,” I hiss-whisper, taking a seat across from her at a table. It’s against the farthest wall from the door. I watch her remove a tiny packet of wet wipes and swab the dust from the table before she leans her elbows on it.

“It’s weird,” she whispers, eyeing where Sam stands across the library at the reference desk before she continues, “I think I kind of remember that day we went hunting for monsters.” I frown. When Sam asked her in the car if she remembered the spring before Jeanie went missing, Zoey grimaced and massaged her temples like he was a trumpeting pygmy elephant. “The thing is”—she crumples the soiled wet wipe and tosses it over her shoulder—“it’s like I remember more than one day. I knew we played outside a lot at Jeanie’s, but the memories are fragments rather than whole.”