Honking and shouting ensued behind her, but she didn’t turn around and prayed no one would give chase and hold her until the cops arrived. What would she say? She’d woken up in the middle of the Belt Parkway? They’d either think she was crazy or suicidal. They would lock her up in a padded cell somewhere…and apart from her stepmother, there was no one to vouch for her sanity.
In other words, no one. Larissa had too much to gain from her being gone. She’d never considered her stepmother a malevolent person. They’d even formed an awkward yet comfortable bond since her father passed. But in her stark moment of crisis, suspicion reared its head.
For a brief moment while turning at the end of the off ramp and running down the avenue, she considered the possibility she did need mental help. Maybe she required medication? Therapy? Perhaps being around death so frequently and for so long had affected her, the way people assumed it had.
The sound of sirens plowed into her thoughts and she detoured hard to the right, cutting between two high-rise apartment buildings, dodging startled passersby in the barren courtyard.
“Where am I? Where am I?” She’d been born and raised in this neighborhood, but she stuck to her routines and followed the same routes. “Go toward the water…”
She hooked a right and landed on another, less congested avenue, smelling the salt air up ahead. Darkness had fallen and headlights trundled past, televisions flickered in the living rooms of houses. She was out of her skin, existing in some disturbing nightmare, ruled by adrenaline. But she kept going and finally, finally, she recognized the bagel shop a few blocks from P. Lynn. Sirens continued to blare back toward the Belt, urging her legs to pump faster, even though her heart was definitely about to beat out of her chest.
Lord, she’d never been more grateful to see the funeral home. Beautiful, beautiful place. She almost collapsed at the sight of it beneath the El. Knowing she’d never be able to explain herself to Larissa, she snuck in through the backdoor and jogged toward the stairs—
Shouts coming from Ginny’s room halted her progress.
Jonas.
Roksana.
They were arguing loud enough to wake the dead…and now that she knowingly lived in a world where the undead had their own government, she really needed to come up with a better phrase to describe something unlikely.
Ginny had only stepped foot on the first, creaky stair when her bedroom door flew open to reveal Jonas in extensive distress. She was only afforded the briefest of glances at his wayward hair and fraught expression before he moved in a whirlwind of color down the stairs, collected her and shut them back inside her bedroom a second later.
“Where…” he rasped, trapping her against the door, “were you?”
She couldn’t answer. For one, her equilibrium had been compromised by their atom-splitting ascent of the stairs. Two, she had no idea if Jonas would believe her story. And three, if she told him the truth about what took place tonight, she’d have to confess what happened before and their acquaintance would be that much closer to being over. Wouldn’t it? Once he found out wherein the danger lay, it would be sayonara, Ginny.
“I…I…” Casting about for a lifeline, Ginny spotted Roksana over Jonas’s shoulder and noticed for the first time that the wise-cracking slayer had a towel pressed to her temple, trying to stem the flow of blood gushing from an apparent wound. “What happened to Roksana?” Ginny gasped.
“Don’t worry about her right now. Look at me,” Jonas ordered, and Ginny’s chin jerked a precise two inches to the left to obey him.
A fire lit in her belly. “Don’t command me like that. And keep your voice down. Larissa will hear you.”
“She’s sleeping. Soundly.” While Ginny processed the fact that her stepmother had either been conked again or compelled to sleep by Jonas, he visibly reined himself in. When he spoke again, however, his tone remained brittle, ready to snap. “When I arrived, Roks was unconscious on the floor and you were gone. What happened, Ginny? Are you hurt?”
“No.”
Jonas tilted her face up, scrutinizing every feature. “You’re only half lying.”
“How can you tell?”
“Your pulse. It changes when you’re not truthful or if you get excited. That’s how I knew your favorite line in The Quiet Man.” His chest rose and fell rapidly. “An explanation. Now. Or I’ll have no choice but to make the command.”
“Don’t you dare. Last night, you talked about about the importance of choices. Well you can’t talk out of both sides of your mouth, Jonas. Preaching about choices while stealing my free will.”
He flinched. “This is different. Your silence prevents me from protecting you.”
“Promise to never compel me again and I’ll talk.”
A short standoff ensued. “Done.”
Heat rushed to the backs of her eyelids, panic springing up in her middle like a geyser. This was it. Once she gave up the information she’d been hiding from Jonas, she gave up the only bargaining chip she had to maintain her memories. But if tonight had proven one thing, it was that she couldn’t protect herself against an unseen force that could pick her up in one location and drop her in another. She couldn’t defend against something she couldn’t see, but Jonas might. Her options had run out.