Cyn tried to take in what Thirteen was saying, but she couldn’t wrap her head around it. “Okay, so wait, tell me again how this would work?”
He leaned forward. “I could force him out. Make him give up his space and move on to the afterlife.”
“Have you ever done that before?”
“No.”
“So, what if it doesn’t work?”
“You end up right back where you are now.”
Except I could piss off this Vincent soul inside me. If he’s angry and wants out now, what happens when this doesn’t work and we’re stuck with each other? What will he try to do then?
“I need to think about it,” Cyn heard herself saying. Her head was starting to hurt, and she just wanted someplace quiet to think. “I’m going to take a shower.”
Heading upstairs, she grabbed some clean clothes from her suitcase. But she couldn’t find a pair of socks. “I know I have, like, eight pairs in here,” Cyn muttered, searching through the suitcase. She dug all the way to the bottom but stopped when her hand hit something hard.
It was the knife she’d hidden in the back of the toilet, wrapped up in an old towel.
I forgot all about this.
As soon as she touched it, a flashback hit her.
Bloody handle. Bloody blade. There’s so much blood everywhere. Where did it come from? Crying, moaning, pleading. No, it’s a whisper. A prayer. Have to hide the knife. Don’t let anyone know you have it—
Cyn jerked back and dropped the blade. Not again. Please, not again.
The blood. The prayer. The tears . . .
It was Father Montgomery.
She was the one who’d killed Father Montgomery.
~ ~ ~
The whole time she was showering, Cyn tried to rationalize herself through the situation. Did she really kill him? Was the knife the murder weapon? And if so, why? Why?
It just didn’t make any sense.
After the shower, Cyn hid the knife back in her suitcase and then quickly got dressed. When she went downstairs, Thirteen was standing in front of her plants by the window. He had a small cup in one hand and was watering the ficus tree. Her stomach somersaulted.
She had to tell him.
Cyn stepped forward, but he shifted to the side and she could see a phone next to his ear.
“Yeah, thanks,” she heard him say. “Get back to me if anything comes up.”
After he gets Vincent out. I’ll tell him after he gets Vincent out of me. I can’t afford any distractions right now, and telling him that I was the one who killed his surrogate father is a big fucking distraction.
He snapped the phone shut and glanced back at her. Cyn awkwardly crossed and uncrossed her arms. Trying to affect a casual stance. “Who was that?”
“The police investigating Father Montgomery’s murder.” He said it with a slight change in his tone, and Cyn got the feeling that he wasn’t being completely truthful with her.
“Do they, uh, have any leads?” She had to fight to keep her own voice steady. “Any ideas who did it?”
“Nothing that they’re willing to talk about with me.” He moved over to the stove, and Cyn realized then that something was cooking. “I think they’re under the impression that I’d take matters into my own hands if I knew who did it. They’re not wrong.”
“Oh.” Cyn twisted her ring nervously.
The tantalizing smell of cheddar cheese, apples, and bacon filled the room, and Thirteen flipped something up out of a frying pan and caught it in midair.
“How did he die?” she said suddenly. “I mean, I was there right afterward, and it looked like his face was bruised. Was he beaten? Strangled?”
Thirteen cast her a quick glance. “Stabbed.”
Oh, God. Her stomach completely sank to the floor.
She reached up to tug on the back of her wig, and he saw her.
“No need for that. Your wig came off when you were sleeping on the couch. Secret’s out: You’re a ginger.”
“I don’t want to advertise that fact, so let’s keep it under wraps, okay?”
She glanced at the table, and it took her a second to realize an empty plate was sitting there. He brought the pan over and slid a golden brown grilled cheese onto it. Tender apple wedges peeked out of its crispy edges, melted cheddar oozed from the sides, and the bacon was the exact shade of burnt she liked.
“Eat,” he said, holding the plate up to her. She almost wavered.
But then everything came crashing back to her. “What are you doing?” Cyn asked.
“Making you food. I thought you might be hungry. Something wrong with that?”
“Yes, there’s something wrong with that.”
She didn’t deserve this. She didn’t deserve him doing something nice when she was purposely hiding something terrible from him just so she could use him. “I didn’t ask you to make me food. I didn’t ask you to—”
“Calm down. It’s just a damn sandwich.”
“I can’t have you making me grilled cheese!” Cyn exploded. Turning her back on the sandwich, she went over to the kitchen door. “I want to go back to Sleepy Hollow. Now. I want this thing done and over with.”
~ ~ ~
Before they could go, Cyn had to say good-bye to her plants. Avian waited as she whispered something to each one of them.
“Where did you learn that?” he asked when they were finally on their way out of the house.
“Learn what?”
“What you just said. It was a Gaelic blessing of growth and peace.”
Cyn shrugged. “I don’t know. Ever since I was young, I’ve had this special bond with plants. The words are just things that I see in my head.”
“It probably came from one of your souls. Maybe someone was a botanist. Or a witch.”
She climbed on the motorcycle behind him but sat too far back.
“I know you don’t want to touch my wings, but you’re going to have to sit closer than that,” Avian said. “I don’t want to have to stop to pick you up if you fall off.”
“Me not want to touch your wings? I thought you didn’t want me to touch your wings. I thought it was an etiquette thing. I was just trying to be nice.”
“Stop trying to be nice and just move closer, okay?”
She scooted forward a couple of inches and wrapped her arms around him as he made a quick call to a guy named Joe. Joe owed him one. Avian had helped his sister and her boyfriend find a safe place to live. Which wasn’t easy to do since they were both Orthos demons who needed dank water and lots of moss.
They made good time on the road to New York, and four hours later Avian pulled into the driveway of the address Joe had given him and turned off his bike. Cyn stayed quiet.
Joe came out of the house a couple of minutes later, wearing a scowl and an oversize coat. “I can’t believe you’re going to make me do this,” he said. “This is definitely illegal.”
“Yeah, well, we’re also going to need to find a car,” Avian replied. “Can’t fit all of us on my bike.” He tapped the headlight.
“A car?” Cyn perked up. “I can get us a car.”
Avian turned around to glance at her, and the excited look in her eyes was the same one Shelley always had when she used to talk about stealing cars. It was like seeing a ghost. And while that usually didn’t do anything for him, this time it made him feel like his head was screwed on wrong.
“We can use his,” Avian said with a harsher tone than he intended. He jerked his head at Joe. “Right?”
“Uh, yeah. Yeah. It’s in the carport. I’ll get the keys.”
He returned a minute later with the keys and an orange toolbox. They followed him around the side of the house, and Avian didn’t miss Cyn’s snort of disgust when a battered brown sedan came into view.
“Where do we go now?” Joe asked as they crammed into the front bench seat alongside him.
“The cemetery,” Avian replied.