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17

Invited

“I think that went pretty well,” I said. I was lying on my back where I’d dropped to the ground in the dark, in the woods, at the Bend. Dana and Benny were standing over me, shining flashlights down on me in such a fashion that there was no way I could see either of them.

“You’re an idiot,” Dana told me, and it made me smile.

“Thanks. ”

“You really don’t get it, do you? You turned him loose, Eden. You told him

to do his own thing, and his own thing may well involve killing people. How do you feel about that?”

I winced against the light she now directed straight into my eyes. “If by ‘people’ you mean ‘that guy who shot your husband’ what, forty-eight hours ago now? Then I’ve got to say I feel pretty good about it. Why don’t you?”

“Because there’s a bigger picture at stake here, dumbass. Say he decides—and we still don’t know what he’s decided, by the way—that he’s going to go back to the battlefield and keep watch. But now he’s not bound by any of his prior restrictions. Now he’s a homicidal maniac the size of an oak tree, and it’s not like he’s a vampire and we can just chuck a vial of holy water at him. ”

“I bet that wouldn’t work,” Benny said.

“I’m going to write this off to hyperbole,” I grumbled, pulling myself back up to a sitting position.

“You’re crazy. You are fucking crazy!”

“He’s not an animal!” I yelled back at her. “He’s not an animal, and he’s not a homicidal maniac! He’s…he’s lost. And he’s looking for meaning. People in a philosophical crisis do not go on killing sprees, Dana. ”

“He’s not people, honey. You were sitting pretty close to him; I would’ve thought you’d figured that out. He isn’t ‘people,’ and he’s operating right now with no moral compass. He’s angry, he’s scared, and he wants revenge. ”

“What about you?” Benny asked her before I could. “Aren’t you angry? Aren’t you scared? Don’t you want—”

“I want justice! It’s not the same thing. ”

“Since when?”

“I am not having this conversation. ” She cut us both off. She threw her hands to her face and squeezed, massaging her temples and rubbing her eyes. “Fine. I’m angry. Is that what you want to hear?”

“It’s a start,” I said, prying my flashlight out of my back pocket and turning it on.

“Okay, I’m angry, and I’m scared. I’m so angry, and I’m so scared, that I can hardly stand to stand here right now without killing the pair of you with my bare hands from pure rage and horror and grief and a thousand other things that neither of you can relate to!”

Contrite, we both held our tongues.

“You can’t! I know you can’t!”

I thought she was about to cry, but she held it together enough to continue screaming at us—and she was screaming. I knew we were far away from the hospital yet, but I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone heard her.

“Tripp is dead—he’s dead, and he’s not coming back—and that means that my life is going to change a lot, and I’m horrified by it. I can’t imagine where it’s going to go from here—I can’t imagine doing our work, or living in our house, or feeding our cats, because everything is ours. Not mine, ours. Only now it’s not anymore. It’s mine. ”

She must have heard herself, and what an explosion the outburst had sounded like, because she lowered her voice—even though it meant she had a harder time controlling it. “I don’t want everything to be mine. I liked it when everything was ours. And that’s my problem—not anyone else’s. But this? What you’re pulling here? You could be making a very big problem for a lot of other people. You are turning something loose that you can’t control—that no one can control. And you think that’s not a problem?”

“It has the potential to be a problem,” I admitted, using my best calm-the-hell-down voice. “But right now, it also has the potential to be a very good thing—don’t you see?”

“He can fix this,” Benny said.

“So you think. ”

“So I think, too. ” I put an arm out to her, and at first I think she was afraid I was going to hug her, because she recoiled out of reach. I was only trying to steer her out of the woods, but I withdrew the gesture anyway.

“Think of it. He can flush out your husband’s murderer. He can put all the ghosts back to bed. You’re a scientist, aren’t you? You could study him. Interview him. This thing—this creature—he could answer questions that could make your career, or enrich your philosophy. ”