Anna Dressed in Blood - Kendare Blake [17]
Tonight is about breaking in. I want to hear Anna’s story. I want to know the people who can lead me to her. For all that Daisy could tell me—her last name, her age—he couldn’t tell me where she haunted. All he knew was that it was her family home. I could, of course, go to the local library and trace the Korlovs’ residence. Something like Anna’s murder had to make the papers. But what fun would that be? This is my favorite part of the hunt. Getting to know them. Hearing their legends. I want them to be as large in my mind as they can possibly be, and when I see them I don’t want to be disappointed.
“How was your day, Mom?”
“Fine,” she says, bent over her chopping block. “I’ve got to call an exterminator. I was storing a box of Tupperware in the attic and saw a rat tail disappear behind one of the wall boards.” She shudders and makes yuck noises with her tongue.
“Why don’t you just let Tybalt up there? That’s what cats are for, you know. Catching mice and rats.”
Her face becomes a horrified squint. “Yish. I don’t want him to get worms chewing on some nasty rat. I’ll just call an exterminator. Or you can go up and set some traps.”
“Sure thing,” I say. “But not tonight. Tonight I’ve got a date.”
“A date? With who?”
“Carmel Jones.” I smile and shake my head. “It’s for the job. There’s a party at some kind of waterfall park tonight and I should be able to get some decent information.”
My mom sighs and goes back to chopping. “Is she a nice girl?”
As usual, she’s fixating on the wrong part of the news.
“I don’t like the idea of you using these girls all the time.”
I laugh and jump up on the countertop to sit beside her. I steal a strawberry. “You make it sound so dirty.”
“Using for a noble purpose is still using.”
“I’ve never broken any hearts, Mom.”
She clucks her tongue. “You’ve never been in love, either, Cas.”
A conversation about love with my mother is worse than the talk that involves birds and bees, so I mumble something around my sandwich and duck out of the kitchen. I don’t appreciate the implication that I’m going to hurt someone. Doesn’t she think I’m careful? Doesn’t she know the trouble I go to in order to keep people at arm’s length?
I chew harder and try not to get myself worked up. She’s just being a mom, after all. Still, all these years of me not bringing friends home should give her a clue.
But now’s not the time to be thinking of this. These are complications I don’t need. It’ll happen, sometime, I’m sure. Or maybe not. Because no one should get caught up in this, and I can’t imagine ever being finished. There will always be more dead, and the dead will always kill.
* * *
Carmel picks me up a little after nine. She looks great, in some kind of strappy pink top and a short khaki skirt. Her blond hair hangs loose between her shoulders. I should smile. I should say something nice, but I find myself holding back. My mother’s words are interfering with my job.
Carmel drives a silver Audi that’s a couple of years old, and it hugs the curves as we flash past strange street signs that look like Charlie Brown’s t-shirt, and others proclaiming that apparently a moose is going to attack the car. It’s getting close to dusk and the light is turning orange; the humidity in the air is breaking and the wind is strong as a hand against my face. I want to hang my entire head out of the window like a dog. As we leave the city behind my ears prick backward, listening for her—for Anna—wondering if she can feel me moving away.
I can feel her there, mingled into the mud of a hundred other ghosts, some shuffling and harmless, others full of rage. I can’t imagine what it is to be dead; it’s a strange idea to me, having known so many ghosts. It’s still a mystery. I don’t quite understand why some people stay and others don’t. I wonder where those who leave have gone. I wonder if the ones that I kill go to the same place.
Carmel’s asking me about my classes and about my old