Delusion in Death (In Death 35)

Eve leaned in. “CiCi, look at me. Look at me now. What are you afraid of?”

“I don’t know. I’m hurt.”

“Who hurt you?”

“I don’t know! Did we go for dinner?” Her fingers tried to pluck at the sheets, twist them. “We were going for dinner. Macie wanted Nino’s, but … Did we go for dinner?”

“No. You were in the bar.”

“I don’t want to be in the bar. I want to be home.”

“What happened in the bar?”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“It doesn’t have to.” Peabody again, soothing, soothing, even taking CiCi’s good hand in hers. “Tell us what you think happened, and that’ll help. We’re here to help you.”

“She’s a monster. There’s blood running out of her eyes, and her teeth are sharp.”

“Who’s a monster?”

“It looks like Macie, but she’s not a monster. It’s all mixed up.”

“What did the monster do?”

“She stabbed Travis in the face. She picked up Macie’s fork and stabbed him in the eye—oh God, oh God. And she screamed, and everything was crazy. I had glass in my hand, sharp, sharp, and I stabbed and stabbed, and she screamed and beat at me. It hurts! I have to hurt her, and the other one, all the other ones, but I’m on the floor and my arm! And everyone’s screaming and there’s blood everywhere. Then I woke up, and somebody was taking me somewhere. Here. An ambulance. I don’t know.”

Tears streamed out of her eyes. “I don’t know. I think I killed somebody, but it doesn’t make sense. Please find Macie. She’s really smart. She’ll know what happened.”

“Let’s try this. What were you doing right before you saw the monster?”

“There aren’t any monsters, not really. Right?”

Oh, Eve thought, more than you can count. More than you can name.

“Don’t worry. Just try to remember before. You and Macie and Travis and Bren. You had a table at the bar?”

“A table. Yeah. We got a table. It was close to the bar. I mean the bar in the bar.”

“Okay, that’s good. You all had drinks? It’s happy hour. What did you order to drink?”

“Ah, I had a house white. It’s pretty good. Macie got a Pink Passion. The guys got beers. And we got jumbo nachos to share. But I was afraid to eat them—much—because they’re messy. I didn’t want to spill because of the blind date.”

“That’s good. You were having fun, relaxing after work. You had a drink together. Then what?”

“Um. Oh. Okay. We were talking, and we were going to get another round of drinks. Ah, we—me and Macie, we went to the girls’ room. There wasn’t a big line, so that was good. And we talked about going for dinner, and how I could ask Bren up to my place if he walked me home.”

The fingers on the sheet moved faster, faster, keeping time with her accelerating breaths. “I wasn’t sure about doing that, but Macie was, and she got, well, a little bit bitchy about it. It’s not like her to get bitchy. But she said she was getting a headache. And went back up. Her head must’ve hurt because she kind of shoved this guy out of her way. I think it was a guy. He’d bumped into her on the way down to the girls’ room.”

“The same guy?” Eve prompted.

“I think. I don’t know. I got scared when she shoved him, really shoved him. Everything was too loud, too bright, and she was being so mean. And then we sat back down, and I thought I would see if I had a blocker, but she and Travis started yelling at each other. They hardly ever fight, and they never yell, and my head hurt, too. They were yelling, and my head hurt, and Bren looked mad. Mean. I don’t know. Then it all went crazy.”

Eve tried a few more questions, walking her back. Had anyone come into or gone out of the bar just before “the monster”?

But CiCi’s memory circled around monsters and blood. They turned her, weeping again, over to the nurse.

The next survivor Eve interviewed stayed calm, almost eerily so. James L. Brewster, an accountant, suffered multiple stab wounds, cracked ribs. A vicious gash ran down the left side of his face from under his eye in a jagged route to his chin, and a violent contusion knotted up in a small volcano on his wide forehead.