Chapter 188 188

Chapter 188 188
Emma's POV:
I needed to get the zip ties off. My fingers were slippery and shaking and the plastic was tight on her wrists, too tight for a five-year-old, and I pulled at them and they didn't budge. There was a piece of twisted metal on the floor from something the tail had hit, a bracket or a hinge, sharp enough. I sawed at the plastic while holding Evie with one arm and my hand slipped and the metal bit into my palm and I kept going until the tie snapped. Then the other one. Her wrists were red underneath. Raw.
"We need to go," Lucian said behind me.
I turned. He was standing in the wreckage with the canvas around his waist and blood on his arms and his chest and his face was empty. Not blank, but empty. Like someone had gone through him and taken everything out and left only the shell standing.
"Lucian—"
"We need to go, Emma."
He walked past me. Past Evie, who lifted her face from my neck and said "Lucian" in this small wrecked voice that should have stopped anyone. He didn't stop. He walked out through the broken window frame into the parking lot, barefoot on the gravel, and I watched his back get smaller and he didn't turn around.
I carried Evie out. Through the window, across the lot, to the car. There was an emergency blanket in the trunk, the silver crinkly kind, and I wrapped it around her and put her in the back seat and she curled up against the upholstery and closed her eyes. She was done. Whatever reserve she'd been running on was empty.
I stood outside the car. Leaned against the door. And I shook. Full body, violent, the kind of shaking that hurts your jaw and your shoulders, and I counted to thirty because that was all I could do and at thirty I stopped counting and got in the driver's seat.
Kaelen pulled up maybe ten minutes later. His car, then Marcus's truck behind it. Annabeth in the truck's passenger seat. Marlen in the back, hands in fists, face white.
Kaelen came through the fence and his eyes went to the building, the blown-out windows, the smoke, and then to me. He stopped three feet away.
"Where is he?"
"He walked." I pointed southeast, toward the lumber yard. "He's not... he transformed. The full thing. Everything ripped. He found a tarp."
Kaelen's face did the thing the Ellsworth family did, that flat blank that meant everything was happening underneath and nothing was showing on top. He walked to his trunk and opened it and pulled out a duffel bag.
He didn't ask about the clothes. He didn't ask why Lucian needed them. He just had them. Because of course he did. Because he was a dragon too and he knew what happened to fabric when your body turned into something the size of a room.
"They're dead," I said. "All three. Lucian killed them."
Kaelen looked at me. Two seconds. Then he nodded once and got in his car with the duffel bag and drove toward the lumber yard.
Marcus went into the building. I didn't watch.
Annabeth came to the car and looked at Evie asleep in the back seat. She put her hand on my arm and held it there.
"I need to get her home," I said. "Before my mom gets back from the conferences. She gets home around five-thirty. Nobody can know."
"I'll come with you," Annabeth said. "I'll stay with Evie. You go to the house after. Kaelen will find him."
Marlen was standing by the fence staring at the building. She was sixteen and her brother had just killed three people and she was standing very still with her hands in fists and her jaw so tight I could see the muscle working.
Marcus came out. Looked at me, then at Annabeth. Something passed between them, one of those wordless conversations that dragon families seemed to have every five minutes.
"Go," Marcus said. "I'll handle this."
I drove Evie home. Through town, past the industrial park where the road got better, past the sandwich place on Cedar, back into the world that still looked the same even though it wasn't. Evie was asleep. The emergency blanket crinkling every time she breathed.
At the house I carried her inside. Annabeth held the door. I ran a warm bath and took off the purple dinosaur shirt and the jeans and put her in the tub and the water turned gray with concrete dust. I washed her knees and her elbows and her face. I washed her hair. I was careful with her wrists, where the zip ties had been, red and starting to swell, and I put her in long-sleeved pajamas after. The pink ones with the cats. Long sleeves. I hoped Mom would think that she was wearing those because she wanted it, like with the dragon’s shirt she used all the time.
"Emma?" Evie was half asleep, swaying on her feet while I pulled the shirt over her head.
"Yeah, bug."
"Is Lucian coming back?"
"Yeah. He just needs a minute."
"A long minute?"
"A long minute."
I put her on the couch with a blanket and turned on the TV, something bright with singing animals, and Annabeth sat next to her and Evie leaned against her shoulder without questioning why this woman she'd never met before was on her couch. She was asleep in two minutes. Annabeth looked at me over Evie's head and nodded.
"Go. I'll be here," she whispered. "If your parents arrive early, I'll say I’m your friend from college and tell them you went to the store and be back in a minute."
I drove to the Ellsworth house. Kalessi opened the door. Her face told me she already knew. Erik was pacing the kitchen. Nobody said anything useful. There was nothing useful to say.
Kalessi made tea for us all and I drank it and tried not to think and convince myself that the worst was over... It didn’t work that much.
Kaelen found Lucian and came back with him like an hour later. Lucian went straight upstairs. I heard his door close. Not slam. Close, quiet. The quiet was worse.
I went up and knocked. I needed to talk to him, there were so many things I needed to say. Thank you, and I’m sorry, and I love you, and let me hug you.
"Lucian."
Nothing.
"Lucian, please."
"Go home, Emma." His voice was flat. Dead. Like someone had taken the Lucian out of it and left only the words.
"Let me in."
"I can't."
"Why?"
Silence. Long. Then: "Because if you see me right now you're going to try to tell me it's okay. And it's not okay. I killed three people with my hands, Emma. I can still feel what their bodies felt like when I hit them. And if you come in here and touch me I don't know what I'll do because I don't trust my hands right now. I don't trust anything."
I put my hand flat against the door. Pressed my forehead against the wood. The house was quiet downstairs, the kind of quiet where people are sitting and waiting and pretending to be okay.
"I'm not going anywhere," I said.
"I know," he said. "That's the problem."
I sat outside his door for a while. Then Kaelen came upstairs and crouched next to me and said: "Go home, I'll watch him, there's nothing you can do now."
I knew, that was the worst part, and I had to go home and see my parents and pretend that nothing had happened.
I drove back to Maple Street. Mom was home. She was at the kitchen table with Annabeth, drinking coffee.
"Oh, there you are," Annabeth said with a smile when she saw me come in, like nothing was happening and the world wasn’t ending inside me. "Did you find the book you needed?"
"I... I mean, no," I managed to say and tried to smile back at her. Tried. "They didn’t have it. I guess I’ll have to go to another bookstore tomorrow."
"Hey, honey," Mom said. "Your friend's been telling me about the publishing world. Did you know her boyfriend’s a writer too?"
"Yeah, I knew, and... I’m not technically a writer yet, Mom."
"Oh, don’t be modest, someday you’ll publish books too."
"Yeah... I hope so. Where’s Evie?"
"Evie passed out about twenty minutes ago, right before your mom arrived. She must have played hard," Annabeth said.
"Yeah. She played really hard at Lucian's house."
Mom looked at me. At my face. At my jacket with the rip in the sleeve from the broken glass, which I hadn't thought to take off. I saw her eyes catch the tear. But she didn't ask.
"Well, it's getting late. I'll go home. We'll finish the project tomorrow at the library, Emma."
"Okay," I said. "Thank you for taking care of Evie while I went to get the book."
Annabeth stood up, thanked Mom for the coffee, and hugged me at the door. "She ate a grilled cheese and watched a movie," she whispered. "She's okay. I explained to her a bit of what happened and she didn't say anything. She knows we have to protect Lucian."
Then she was gone. I went upstairs. Checked Evie. Asleep, rabbit next to her, ears up, face out. I stood in her doorway and looked at the dragon wall and the glow-in-the-dark stars with the corner peeling and the crayons on the windowsill and I held the doorframe because my legs decided now was the time to stop working.
Then I went to my room. Lay on my bed. Stared at the ceiling. And didn't sleep, how could I?