SubChapter 23
The news broke at 6:47 AM.
I woke to chaos, guards running, radios crackling, inmates pressing against cell bars trying to see what was happening.
"Lockdown!" someone shouted. "Everyone stay in your cells!"
Rita jumped down from her bunk. "The hell?"
Through the narrow window in our cell door, I could see guards rushing past. Their faces were pale. One of them was on a phone, his voice shaking.
"...never seen anything like it..."
"...all three of them..."
"...Jesus Christ, the photos..."
The morning dragged by with no information. Breakfast was delivered to cells instead of the common area. The guards wouldn't answer questions.
Finally, around 10 AM, Patricia arrived. She looked like she hadn't slept.
"Ileh," she said when we were alone in the interview room. Her hands were shaking. "Something's happened."
"What?"
"Detective James, Detective Reeves, and DA Patterson." She paused, swallowing hard. "They're dead. All three of them. Last night."
The world tilted.
"What?"
"They found James first. In his car in his driveway. Then Reeves in her apartment. Then Patterson at his office, he'd been working late." Patricia's voice was barely steady. "Ileh, they... the condition they were found in..."
She pulled out her phone, then thought better of it. "The police aren't releasing details. But I have contacts. And what I heard..." She looked at me with something close to fear. "It wasn't natural. It couldn't have been natural."
"What do you mean?"
"James was..." She closed her eyes. "They think his heart exploded. From the inside. Like something reached into his chest and just... crushed it. The ME said there were marks, like fingerprints, on the inside of his ribcage."
I felt cold.
"Reeves drowned. In her apartment. On the third floor. In her living room. There was water everywhere, gallons of it, but no source. And her lungs..." Patricia swallowed. "They were full of salt water. Like ocean water. But we're 200 miles from the coast."
"And Patterson?" My voice sounded distant.
"They found him at his desk. His body was..." She struggled for words. "Twisted. Like someone had wrung him out like a towel. Every bone broken. Organs ruptured. But there was no sign of force. No trauma to the skin. Just... internal devastation."
Silence.
"The FBI is taking over the investigation into their deaths," Patricia continued. "But Ileh... without the primary detectives and without the DA, your case is falling apart. The assistant DA doesn't want to touch it. The evidence is all there, but without the people who built the case..."
"What does that mean?"
"It means you'll probably be released. The charges might be dropped entirely, or at least reduced to something that won't hold up in court." She looked at me with something I couldn't quite read. "You're going to walk free, Ileh."
But she didn't sound happy about it.
She sounded terrified.
SubChapter 24
They released me three days later.
The charges were dropped "pending further investigation into procedural irregularities." No one wanted to say it out loud, but everyone knew: without the detectives and the DA, the case was impossible to prosecute.
My mother picked me up at the jail entrance. She'd aged years in the two months I'd been inside. Gray streaks in her hair. Deep lines around her eyes. But when she saw me, she cried with relief.
"You're coming home," she sobbed. "Thank God. Thank God."
I sat in the passenger seat as she drove, watching the familiar streets pass by. It should have felt like freedom. Like salvation.
Instead, I felt nothing but cold dread.
Please make them stop. Make Detective James and Detective Reeves and the DA... just make them stop.
I'd prayed that. The night before they died.
But it was coincidence. It had to be. People died unexpectedly all the time. Three people dying the same night was tragic, but not impossible.
Except…
Like someone reached into his chest and crushed his heart.
Drowned in salt water on the third floor.
Twisted like someone wrung him out.
Those weren't normal deaths. Those weren't even possible deaths.
"Ileh?" My mother's voice broke through my thoughts. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah. Just tired."
"I know, sweetheart. But it's over now. It's finally over."
But it wasn't over.
I could feel it, something had changed. Something fundamental had shifted in the world, or in me, or in the space between what was real and what was possible.
That night, I dreamed of Chance. She stood in her bedroom, by her marble floor, but this time she wasn't alone. Behind her were shadows, dark shapes that moved like water, like smoke, like nothing I'd ever seen.
"You called them," dream-Chance said. Her voice echoed. "The spirits. The old ones. The things that live in the spaces between."
"I don't understand."
"You will. They're coming for you now. To collect what you offered."
"I didn't offer anything."
"You offered anything. You said you'd give anything, become anything." She smiled, sad and knowing. "Be careful what you pray for, Ileh. Especially when something is listening."
I woke up gasping.