Black Feathers (27 page)

Cassie shuffled over and nestled into the couch next to Ali. “I’m okay, I guess. Strange dreams. I’m sorry I slept so long.” Though she had no idea how long she had been asleep.

Ali smiled. “You should sleep as much as you can. Get your strength back.”

“Oh.” Cassie wondered what she had missed. “I thought I’d slept too much. I thought you said you were going to wake me up.”

“Oh, no,” Ali said, smiling and shaking her head. “No, I was going to get you up to see this.” She pointed at the TV.

“What is it?”

Ali picked up the remote control and turned up the volume. “Breaking news. They think they’ve caught the guy.”

On the television, a heavy-set man was talking to a crowd of reporters. “What guy?”

“The killer,” Ali said, nodding toward the television. “That’s the police spokesman there.”

Cassie’s throat closed and she struggled to breathe.

Between the news and Ali’s answers to what she had missed, Cassie was able to piece together a very sketchy sense of what was going on. There weren’t many details: the police had apprehended a suspect (but they weren’t releasing a name), there was compelling physical evidence (but they weren’t saying what), and they felt confident (but there would be more information later in the afternoon). It wasn’t much, but when Ali was finished, Cassie could only sag into the couch, shaking her head.

“Wow,” was all she could say.

“I know, right?” Ali said, not skeptically, but somehow incredulous.

“When did this happen?”

Ali pointed at the screen. “Right now,” she said, and Cassie noticed for the first time the word “Live” in the upper corner of the picture.

They watched the rest of the press conference in silence, then Ali reached up with the remote control and turned off the TV. They both sat there, staring at the dark screen.

“Well, that’s good news,” Ali said finally, looking at Cassie for a reaction.

“Yeah,” Cassie said absently, wondering who the police had picked up, thinking back to her dreams. She knew what was real now, and what wasn’t; Dr. Livingston had taught her that.

And she remembered the way the knife had felt, slipping into Sarah’s throat, the way her blood had hissed as it hit the cold ground, the way Skylark’s eyes had gone wide, the look of shock and betrayal there before they went dark.

“I wonder who they arrested?” she thought aloud.

“Well, he was probably the nicest guy. Polite to the neighbours
but kept to himself. Spent a lot of time in the basement.” There was a strange half smile on Ali’s face, and it took Cassie a moment to realize that she was making a joke. “Sorry,” Ali said, her face reddening. “Sometimes I make jokes when I’m—”

Cassie shook her head. “You’re probably right.”

Ali frowned. “Yeah,” she said. “Hey!” She reached toward Cassie’s hands, then stopped herself. “Can I—”

“Sure.”

“How do they feel?” she asked as she lifted Cassie’s right hand gently from her lap, looking at it in the light.

“Good,” Cassie said, nodding, and Ali repeated the examination with her left hand. “A little achy, like a muscle cramp, but that’s it.”

“Oh good,” Ali said, setting Cassie’s hand back down and turning herself slightly on the couch so she was facing Cassie. “I’m glad. I was worried.”

There was that word again: “worried.” She still didn’t know how to respond to it.

“How long was I asleep for?” she asked, trying to change the subject without being too obvious about it.

Ali glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. “A few hours,” she said. “I’m surprised you’re up so soon.”

“I don’t sleep very much.”

Ali looked at her like she had a question, but she didn’t ask it. “I was going to leave you a note when I went to work,” she said. “And just let you sleep. You know, ‘food in fridge, help yourself. The shower faucets are backward, so don’t scald yourself.’ That sort of thing.”

Cassie straightened up, found herself looking at the clock as well. “Oh. You have to go to work.”

Ali nodded, started to rise. “And I’d better get a move on.
I got distracted by the news.” She smiled and stepped around the coffee table.

Cassie struggled to her feet. “I’ll just—” She gestured toward the bedroom. “I think my shoes are—”

“You don’t—”

“Is it okay if—”

“Cassie, you don’t have to—”

“—brush my teeth real quick before—”

“Cassie.”

The flat force of her name on Ali’s lips stopped her short. Ali smiled at her. “You can stay here when I go to work.”

“But I—”

Ali shook her head. “It’s ugly outside—there’s no reason for you to be out there if you don’t have to be.” She leaned her head forward, waiting for a response.

“Okay?” she prompted. “Okay,” Cassie said, nodding slowly.

Ali smiled widely, all the way to her eyes. “Good.” She sounded almost excited by the idea. “Now,” she said, looking at the clock again, “I’m going to be late if I don’t haul ass. But you make yourself at home, okay? There’s food in the fridge, fruit on the table. There’s stuff for you on the bathroom counter. It’s a great tub if you want to have a long bath.” Her words were speeding up as she bustled around the apartment, pulling on her jacket and boots, picking up her purse, tucking her keys into her pocket.

She paused. “Are you all right?” she asked. “I could—”

Cassie shook her head, struggled to find words. “No, I’m okay. It’s just … It’s all a bit …”

Ali nodded, frowning sympathetically. “Yeah,” she said. “I can’t even imagine.” She wrinkled her face into a smile that couldn’t quite hide her concern. “You just take it easy, all right?
Have some breakfast, have a bath, maybe sleep a bit more?” She pulled open the door and a wave of cold broke over the kitchen, stole Cassie’s breath.

Cassie nodded and Ali stepped into the winter bright, pulling the door closed behind her. A few seconds later there was a faint jangling of keys and a solid thunk as the lock turned.

In the warm, enveloping silence, Cassie released a breath she hadn’t known she had been holding. It was all too much to process, almost too much to bear.

She had no idea what to do. She felt frozen to the spot.

She looked around the room. Pictures hung on every wall. Paintings. A small row of cookbooks ran along a ledge on the kitchen wall; a larger bookshelf and a desk, cluttered with books, were at the end of the room, past the point where the kitchen gave way to the living room area with the couch and TV. There were small sculptures on every surface and mixed in with the books on the shelves.

Taking a deep breath, she padded over to the kitchen table and sat down in the same chair she had sat in earlier that morning. Pulling the newspaper toward her, she started to read the story about Skylark on the front page.

What she hadn’t known before was buried deep in the article, almost at the end. Two paragraphs about how Laura Ensley had grown up in Campbell River, how she had been a good student, popular with other students and liked by her teachers. How her parents—who were coming to Victoria to “claim their daughter’s remains”—had no insight into why she had run away, but an unidentified police source had suggested
there had been an open Ministry investigation into possible abuse at the time she left.

She dropped the paper back onto the table, wondering if Harrison might be the unidentified source. She thought he might be: it was the sort of thing she could see him doing.

But what was she going to do? She considered taking a bath, like Ali had suggested, but the thought of having to get back into her grungy clothes was too much. There was a washer and dryer in the corner by the door; she could wash her clothes, but what would she wear while they were drying? She could eat, but it felt wrong to be going through someone’s cupboards while they weren’t home, even if she had been told to. She was still bone-tired: she could lie back down again, but that didn’t seem right either.

And she didn’t want to risk going back to sleep.

The more she thought about it, the smaller the room seemed. It felt like it was shrinking around her, the walls tightening in, the ceiling lowering, pressing down on her. She could feel it in her chest, a tightness in her ribs that was making it hard to breathe, and she realized she was bouncing one leg, the vibrations travelling all the way up through her, a hum in her teeth, in the clenched muscles of her jaw.

She stood up, turned in a full circle trying to catch her breath. Ali had put her shoes neatly by the door; she hopped as she pulled them on. Then her coat, doing it up tight to her throat. Her backpack was there, her scarf crumpled on top of it. Without thinking, she grabbed a pair of the stretchy gloves out of the basket by the door as she looped the scarf around her neck. Hefting her backpack onto her shoulder, she pulled open the door, taking one last warm breath before the cold rolled in.

It took Cassie a while to find her way back downtown; the streets of James Bay were a maze of blind corners and tiny alleys, narrow lanes and sharp turns. The weight and sense of confinement she had been feeling in Ali’s apartment followed her. The whole world was closing in. She walked faster and faster, then started running, her breath ragged, rough silver clouds that broke against her face. The dampness steamed and froze in the cold, the bitter wind coming off the water cutting through her clothes, chilling her again.

She let herself stop when she got to the Legislature, collapsing onto the bench inside a bus shelter, panting, out of the wind.

The feeling of imprisonment slowly dissipated: through the glass shelter wall, she could see the world opening up, the Harbour on one side of the road, the silvered lawns of the Empress Hotel on the other.

Her breathing slowed.

She never would have guessed that she would ever find downtown Victoria—this miserable place, these sidewalks and street corners—comforting, but she did. It was home, these hidden corners, these doorways. These streets.

Home.

It was almost a full minute before the truth of the previous days collapsed on her: Skylark was gone.

She couldn’t go back to the camp.

She couldn’t stay at Ali’s.

She couldn’t put anyone else at risk.

But she had nowhere to go.

She was completely alone.

Glancing from side to side, Cassie pulled her knees to her chest, hid her face.

You could call home. You could go home.

The thought came in Harrison’s voice, like a punch to the stomach.

She cursed the cop: she had been doing so well, pushing down any thought of home, and now it was all she could think about: her mother’s face, Heather’s beseeching, uncomprehending look.

She shook her head. Going home just wasn’t an option. It never had been.

Tears stung at the corners of her eyes.

“No,” she whispered firmly. “No, no, no.”

She thought of how worried they would be, how scared for her.

“No.”

She could call. She could go home.

“No.”

They would know what she had done to her father. And what she might do next.

“No.”

She struggled with a sob as the force of that single thought crushed all of the other memories, destroyed any doubt.

She couldn’t go home.

She stood up, stepped back into the wind.