Renegade (22 page)

My heart skipped a beat.

“If your death didn’t do this to me, then his shouldn’t either.”

“But I came back.”

“It isn’t Logan, Hev.” He said it with absolute certainty. “I’ve been feeling better about him. I talked to Gemma.”

“You did?” I asked, trying to keep my eyes on the road, but it was hard when he kept saying things that made me want to look at him.

“She saw me one night. I’d shifted again and was running through the woods behind Gran’s. She called out and I guess I woke up or whatever. We talked about Logan. She told me about heaven.”

“She told you about heaven?” I asked, shocked. Gemma barely ever talked about herself at all and her talking about heaven seemed even less likely.

He nodded. “She said she knew Logan was happy, that I shouldn’t grieve so hard for someone who’s at peace.”

“Is that why we haven’t been to see him every day lately?”

He nodded. “I thought it was helping… It
is
helping, but I keep doing this.” He held up his hand, staring down at the red stains.

“You’ve never seen a body?”

“Never and I’ve looked. I’ve searched.” He stared out his window with a tight jaw, and I sipped my coffee, trying to think.

After a few minutes I said, “You weren’t responsible for those people, Sam.”

“You heard Kimber. Their bodies were damaged. Scratched, bloody, and bruised.”

I would say we should consider the source, that Kimber might be making it up, but I had seen the reports too. “Just because some people turn up dead, looking like an animal has attacked them, doesn’t mean you’re the one who did it.”

“Doesn’t mean I didn’t, either.”

I reached across the seat and grabbed his hand. “It wasn’t you.”

“How can you be so sure?”

And that’s when I knew what it was I saw in him: doubt. He doubted himself.

I stopped the car.

Right there in the middle of the street.

“Heven, what are you doing?”

“Don’t do that,” I said softly.

He just looked at me.

“Ever since we’ve met, you’ve always known exactly who you are. You’ve never doubted yourself, or who you were, even when it seemed the universe was trying to make you something else.”

“Okay, let’s say I’m not the one killing those people. How do we explain this?” He held up his bloody hand.

“I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation.”

He snorted.

A driver behind us blared their horn, then sped past shouting something at me as they drove.

We both laughed.

“We’re going to be late for school,” Sam said when I started driving again.

“What a shame.”

He picked up the paper bag containing his bagel and went to reach inside. “Wait!” I said and used one hand to pull some hand sanitizer out of the center console. “Here.” I thrust it at him and he took it with a grim expression on his face. “This stuff isn’t going to wash away whatever happened.”

“I know that. But at least you won’t be
eating
whatever happened.”

“I probably already did,” he muttered as he squirted a bunch of the clear liquid onto his hand.

I pretended not to hear him. That was a gross thought. I really hoped it wasn’t true.

Sam

School already started by the time we got home and I decided I didn’t really feel like going anyway. I had a shift at the gym after school and I was so tired I just wanted a shower and some sleep before I went.

Heven turned off the engine and just sat in the car, looking at the steering wheel for long moments. “Heven?”

“I know this is really bad timing, but there’s something I need to show you.” She got out of the car and instead of going up the steps to the door, she went around toward the front of the house.

I followed, not saying anything, just waiting.

“That is if it’s still there,” she said from ahead, looking over her shoulder through her blond hair.

“If what’s still there?”

She came to a halt and looked ahead as I came to a stop next to her. “What the hell is that?”

There was a large blackened lump lying in the grass. The grass around it was burned and charred as well. I looked at Heven for an explanation.

“I heard this sound the other day when I was in my room. I thought a bird had just flown into the window and I didn’t think any more about it. But then I heard it again this morning when I was sleeping.”

“That is not a bird.”

She shrugged. “I came downstairs to find you, but you weren’t there, so I went out in the yard and it sort of attacked me.”

“Heven why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?” I felt like crap knowing while I was out running around doing who knew what, she was here alone, being attacked by… by… well,
that
. I walked a little closer to it to see if I could tell what it was.

“We were busy. And besides, I killed it.”

“I see that.” I nudged it with a stick I found nearby. It didn’t move, but some blackened ash fell off in a big chunk.

Heven came to my side and stared down at it. “Look at its feet,” she said with a shudder. “They look like chicken feet, all sharp and spindly. I have no idea how it supported its big body on such thin feet.”

Its feet did look like chicken feet. I used the stick to flip out one of its wings and it fell across the grass. “It looks like a bat,” I said, noting the black wings with thin veins running through them. They were paper thin but appeared strong in the places that weren’t damaged by fire.

“It’s too big to be a bat,” Heven said, “and it made weird sounds.”

“What kind of sounds?”

“It’s hard to explain. I heard something howling out here too.”

I looked up at her, forgetting the charred chicken-bat at my feet. “You heard howling and you came outside?”

“I was worried about you.”

“Don’t go outside in the middle of the night looking for me again.” Her chin got that stubborn tilt to it, and I shook my head. “Promise me, Heven.”

She relented and nodded her head, but I knew if she thought I was out here and in trouble, she wouldn’t keep the promise. I wouldn’t have either. That just meant I had to stop this shifting and running away thing. I needed to be at home where I could watch out for her.

The door to the house opened and Kimber came out onto the porch. “Where have you been?” she demanded. “I’m now late for school!” We both turned to face her and I guess the dead thing in the yard came into her line of sight because she said, “Ew. What is that?”

“It attacked me last night.”

She sighed dramatically. “I swear, Heven, you are a magnet for weird crap.”

Heven smiled. “Why aren’t you at school?”

“Ummm, hell-O? Someone toasted my car.” She looked at Heven expectantly.

“Oh! I forgot. Sorry. Let me get dressed and we can drive in together.” Heven smiled at me before rushing into the house.

“Hurry up!” Kimber called after her. Then she looked back at me. “Are you ready for my party?” She had this look in her eyes like she was up to something.

“Sure,” I replied warily, while I wondered how I could get out of it.

“I decided to make it a combined Halloween and birthday party for Heven.”

Guess that meant I wasn’t getting out of it. “Does Heven know that?”

“I just thought of it,” she replied, like that explained everything.

I wasn’t about to argue with her. She might turn me into a frog. “I’m sure it’ll be awesome,” I said, going past her up the stairs.

“What happened to you?” she said, wrinkling her nose, like she just now noticed my appearance.

“Don’t ask,” I replied.

“Is it always like this here?” she wondered out loud, staring at the blackened lump in the yard.

“Yeah.” I grinned.

She went off into the kitchen and started talking to Gran and I went upstairs. Heven was in her room, pulling on a pair of jeans with rips in them and a long-sleeve pink sweater. I watched as she released her braid and combed through the blond strands, which were now hanging around her face in waves.

She turned and saw me and smiled. “I would stay, but Kimber might have a cow.”

I laughed. “I’m just going to shower.”

“Get some sleep,” she said, grabbing her bag and stopping in front of me. “Use my bed, not the couch. I don’t like you sleeping down there.”

“I miss sleeping in here with you,” I said, pulling at a strand of her hair.

“Me too.” She leaned into me. She smelled good.

“Heven!” Kimber yelled from somewhere downstairs.

Heven sighed. “I’ll see you later?”

I nodded.

When she was gone, I went into Logan’s room—
my
room—to get some clothes before I showered. I stood there for a long time just staring at the bed and the candy wrapper still sticking out of the drawer in the night stand.

Gran walked by the room and saw me. She stopped and I saw her take in my appearance. “Is everything okay, Sam?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She smiled and came into the room. “Sam, don’t you think it’s time you stopped calling me ma’am? You can call me Gran like everyone else.”

I nodded.

“I know it’s unusual to allow my granddaughter’s boyfriend to live here with us, but we live an unusual life.”

“You could say that.” I replied and smiled.