Chapter 15

I went to Avery's house after I left Nancy's. I didn't expect her to be awake so late, but when I saw the light coming from her bedroom window as I climbed into her backyard, I was relieved. Her curtains were draped over the window, but I could see her sitting on her bed with her guitar through the part in the middle. Avery looked up when I tapped on the window then slowly pulled her curtains open. She smiled when she saw me and pulled her window open. "Hey." She moved out of the way and laid her guitar on the floor next to her bed.

"Hey." I took off my shoes and climbed into her room, sitting next to her on her bed.

As I closed the window, she leaned forward, sweeping my bangs out of my face, and kissed me on the forehead. "You smell like blood," she said quietly.

"Just water won't clean it all. You need soap 'n stuff too."

I sighed. "Yeah, that's right." I took off my coat and set it on the floor with my shoes. "Sorry if it smells bad."

"It's not all that noticeable. Just something to think about."

I laid down on my back, resting my head on one of her pillows. Avery leaned over and turned off her lamp. The room fell into darkness, with the pale light shining in through the window. She rested her head on my chest and wrapped her arms around me.

"Who did you eat?" Avery murmured, so quietly that I almost didn't hear her.

"Nancy Allen," I replied, running my hand through her long soft hair.

She sighed quietly. "Why her?"

"I was putting her out of her misery. When I got there, she was preparing to kill herself." I replayed the events in my mind. "She prayed for forgiveness, and then she was going to slit her wrists open and bleed out. I killed her since she was going to kill herself anyway."

"And she was killing herself because her friends are dead? Right?"

"That's right."

"I feel bad for her," Avery said. "No one deserves that."

"You're right."

She looked up at me. "Did you say anything to her?"

I went silent for a moment, biting my lip. "Yes, I did. But nothing you should want to hear. At the very least, I just confirmed she wanted to die before I killed her."

"Nothing that I would want to hear?" She laughed slightly before settling her head back down. "I'm guessing you were an asshole."

"Yeah, you could say that."

Avery closed her eyes. "I'll miss it here when we leave. Do you hear how quiet it is outside?" She paused, taking a deep breath. "And everyone knows each other here. It feels like I can actually belong somewhere. I didn't get that in Manhattan."

I looked out the window at the trees swaying in the wind. "Maybe we can go to another small town. Somewhere new and...different."

She laughed slightly. "We should think practically. There's no good colleges in small towns. Not very many jobs either. And if you're going to keep killing people, it would be easier to get away with that in a big city where murders are harder to track."

I considered what she said for a moment. "You really are set in stone on this, aren't you?"

She opened her eyes slightly. "What do you mean?"

"You've just wholeheartedly accepted that I kill and eat people."

Avery sat up. "Well it isn't as simple as that. I'm still thinking about it a lot. Like, do you really do that? Should I really be okay with it? I still care about you, Jay. And it's not like you're a horrible person or anything." She played with her hair. "I just want to be okay with it, and it's easier to act like I don't care."

I slowly sat up. "Do you want to see it for yourself?"

"See what?"

"Nancy's dead body."

Silence settled over us. Wordlessly, Avery nodded and climbed out of bed. We got on our shoes and coats and headed out into the night, strolling the quiet streets while the air breathed around us. I simply held Avery's hand and led her through the neighborhood, the silence only occasionally being broken by the sound of a dog barking in the distance. I noticed that Krieth was watching us silently amongst the other crows. Lately, he'd been telling me what to do less and less, and while I was grateful for that, there were times I had started to feel a bit lonely without his presence. I led Avery in through the window which I entered and guided her through the house. I glanced at her briefly and uttered a quick, "Don't touch anything," before leading her into the room where the remnants of Nancy's body lay. She stopped in her tracks the moment her eyes landed on the body, covered in feathers. We didn't talk. We sat in the room watching flies start to gather around a mutilated body of a girl our own age, as it started decaying. I could tell that Avery could smell it, judging by the way she covered her nose. And I was momentarily grateful for my loss of that sense.

While Avery saw Nancy, her body twisted and ripped open in a disturbingly alien way, I saw nothing but the remnants of my meal. I'd stopped thinking about this in an emotional way, which Krieth appreciated. Though some part of me wondered whether or not that was a good thing. Part of me wondered what that was doing to my mind. Part of me wondered if I would eventually get lost in the bloodlust, and I wouldn't even be able to pretend to be human anymore. That was what I was worried about. And I'm sure Avery was worried about it too, even though she never said it. All of her excuses went back to how I'm not so bad, but I started to question if that was even true before Krieth came along and changed my life. The way I viewed the world, the way I viewed other people, it always seemed to come from an outsider's perspective, like I was never meant to be human in the first place.

We went back to Avery's house soon after, still without speaking. I laid with her until she fell asleep and left just before sunrise. When dawn finally broke over the horizon, I realized I hadn't gotten a single wink of sleep that entire night. Not that it mattered, anyway. I didn't feel tired in the slightest.

"I don't understand why you continue to masquerade around as a human," Krieth said.

"Oh, we're back to this, are we?"

"I'm being serious, Jay. You may believe you love that human girl as much as you'd like, but you don't belong here. You're better off leaving here, and I won't stop saying it."

"Yeah, I get it." I paused near a street corner, watching as a solitary car drove by. "I've been thinking about it too."

I'd been having nightmares over the past month then. Most often, they'd consist of me completely losing my mind and being hunted by people who sought to kill me. Though it wasn't as quick as a gunshot to the head. It was like they despised me enough to torture me to death, all while my mind was collapsing. But those weren't even the worst nightmares. The worst ones were when I dreamt of eating Avery, all while she screamed and begged for me to stop. Those were the ones that made me wake up hyperventilating. Those were the ones that made me want to destroy everything in my room and hang myself. I never did, though. Distress made my skin unravel, and I could already tell it wouldn't last much longer. I'd wake up with rips around my hands and mouth and my eyes. I would have to steal Dahlia's sewing kit in order to patch it up, since it was struggling to do that on its own. Some days it felt too tight around my throat and I'd have to keep ripping it open so I could breathe more easily. These were the things I'd been thinking about.

I went back to Darren's house as the neighborhood began to wake up. Sneaking around during the day had gotten a lot easier. As I climbed in through his old bedroom window, looking around at the room that had not been touched---even the blood-stained sheets remained on the bed---I smiled a bit to myself.

"Why exactly are you here again? Don't tell me you---"

"Yes, I found his weed stash and I'm going to smoke it."

Darren's room much reflected his personality, or at the very least, the one he used to have. His obsession with sports and being the best was very well reflected through the collection of trophies that faced his bed. He was into metal bands like Metallica and Iron Maiden, their posters hung over his bed and their records sitting in his collection. His wardrobe was not very diverse, and you didn't have to dig around in his closet to know that. Even outside of school, he wore his gym shoes and varsity jacket like it mattered. I pulled a shoe box out of the back of his closet and sat down next to his closed bedroom door. I'd been watching the house for a while, and it seemed that everyone in Darren's family avoided his bedroom like the plague. His dad was up all night pouring over case files and drinking whiskey like it was water. I couldn't help but wonder if I would ever be caught, or if anyone would be arrested for the murders. With the lack of success that the police had been having in finding new evidence, I assumed not.

As I started smoking the blunt, I could hear conversation coming from the living room. I slowly turned the doorknob and opened the door slightly, the blunt sitting in between my lips. "...can't help but feel like that Anderson kid is involved somehow," Evan was saying.

My heart dropped. Where could he have gotten that idea from?

A female voice, likely another detective, replied, "Why do you think so?"

"You know the psychologist that was murdered in the city? The same way the kids have been killed?"

"Right, Dr. Morgan Kelley?"

"He was Jayden's therapist. And he died right after another appointment with him."

The woman sighed. "The witnesses at the scene confirmed he was alive after Jayden and his mother left the building. He couldn't have been involved, and besides, he's just a kid. How could a seventeen year old kid be involved?"

"That's not the only thing. You know all the feathers at the crime scenes?"

"Yes, what about them? Forensics already confirmed that they are crow feathers."

Evan reached into his pocket and pulled out a feather, holding it up to the woman I couldn't see. "When we were at the school last month, talking to the students, this fell out of his hair."

Another sigh from the unseen woman. "And you're just bringing this up now? 'Sides, it could just be a coincidence."

"I wasn't sure about it, that's why I didn't mention it before. But I just can't stop thinking about it." He handed the feather to the woman. "Can you run this down to forensics? Get a DNA test run against Jayden?"

"Against the kid? With a bird feather?"

"Yes."

"I'll see what I can do, Evan. Just keep your feet on the ground, alright?" She patted him on the shoulder and turned to leave. "I recommend drinking water instead of whiskey. I heard your wife complaining about it the other day."

"Yeah, I get it. I'll see you at the station." After the woman left, Evan stood there for a moment, staring at the ground. Then he looked up and around, his eyes landing on Darren's bedroom door. I pulled away from the crack in the open door and quickly put out the blunt. "What is that smell...?" I heard him mutter.

I quickly shoved the shoe box underneath Darren's bed as I heard the sound of his footsteps approaching the door. Wasting no time, I dove out the window and ran before he could see me.