“No doubt,” she mimicked, voice remote.
She stared past the emergency vehicles’ swirling red and blue lights, a cold sense of dread enveloping her. She rubbed her arms and wished she had a whiskey or a scotch. Even a beer would do. Something—anything—to drown the knowledge that death stood out there, watching and waiting.
“Do you have anyplace to go, Miss Brown?”
Her gaze jumped back to the police officer. “Go?”
He nodded. “You can’t stay here. It’s a crime scene.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t thought of that. Hadn’t thought of anything, really, once she’d stepped through that door.
“Have you got parents nearby?”
She shook her head. No use explaining that she didn’t have parents at all. None that she remembered, anyway, and certainly none she wanted to find. As near as she knew, she’d been a ward of the state since birth, and had spent her formative years being bounced from one foster home to another. Helen had been the one permanent fixture in her life. They shared everything, even down to a birthday. They’d met in a government facility at the age of eleven, and had run away after it had burned down and they’d been faced with separation again. Now Helen was gone, and she was alone. Again.
She raised her face and let the rain wash the heat from her eyes. Don’t cry for me, Helen would have said. Just find the answers.
“No friends you can bunk with for the night?” the officer continued.
Again she shook her head. They’d only moved into the Essendon area a few weeks ago. She’d barely had time to unpack, let alone make new friends. And she’d always been slower than Helen in that department anyway.
“Perhaps we can book you a hotel room for the next couple of nights.”
She nodded, though she didn’t really care one way or another. The young officer studied her for a moment longer, then walked away. Her gaze fell on the door. A symbol had been carved deep into the wood—a star point sitting at the top of a circle. If there were meant to be other star points, then they were missing. She wondered if this was deliberate, or if perhaps the intruder had been interrupted before he’d finished his design. Instinct said it was the former, though she had no idea why she was so certain of this.
The police had asked her several times about it. She had a feeling they were as perplexed by its presence as she was.
She crossed her arms again and turned her back on the house. The chill night wind picked up the wet strands of her hair, flinging them across her face. Absently, she tucked them back behind her ear and listened to the wind sigh through the old birches lining the front yard. It was a mournful sound, as if the wind cried for the dead.
Helen would have called it the wind of change. Normally, she would have sat under the old trees, letting the cold fingers of air wrap around her, communing with forces Kirby could feel but never see. She would have read their futures in the nuances of the breeze, and planned a path around it.
If she had talked to the wind tonight, she might still be alive.
Tears tracked heat down Kirby’s cheeks. She raised her face to the sky again, letting the rain chill her skin. Don’t cry for Helen, she thought. Find the answers. Make sense of her death.
But where to start?
Footsteps sounded behind her. She turned slightly, watching the young police officer approach. Just for an instant, her vision blurred, and instead of the policeman, it was a gnarled, twisted being with red hair and malevolent yellow eyes. It reached out to grasp her soul—to kill, as it had killed Helen and Ross. Fear squeezed her throat tight, making it suddenly difficult to breathe. She stepped back, half-turning, ready to run, but then the being became the young officer again. He dropped his hand, a surprised look on his face.
“I didn’t mean to startle you, Miss Brown.”
“You didn’t. I just …” She hesitated, then shrugged.
He nodded, as if understanding. “Arrangements have been made for you to spend the night at the motel down the road—if that’s okay with you.”
“Yeah, sure.” Where she was didn’t really matter right now. It wasn’t as if she’d be able to sleep.
He frowned slightly, as if her attitude bothered him in some way. “Would you like to collect some clothes or toiletries before you go?”
“I’m allowed inside?” she asked, surprised.
He nodded. “Only upstairs. The kitchen and living rooms are still out of bounds, I’m afraid.”
And would be for some time—for her, at least. It was doubtful whether she’d ever be able to enter the hous
e without remembering. She rubbed her arms again, suddenly chilled. Though she was wet through to the skin, she knew it wasn’t that. It was more the sense that death was out there—and that it wasn’t finished yet.
“Ready when you are, Miss Brown,” the young officer prompted when she didn’t move.