But she’ll only insist on coming with me and I don’t want to drag her into this again—not when she still hasn’t recovered from last night. Waking up Declan is also out of the question. The healing may have begun, but he was shot tonight. Because of me. There’s no way I’m going to forget that any time soon.
Besides, this compulsion is stronger than any I’ve ever felt before. When I try to walk down the hall to my bedroom, it stops me flat-out—as surely as if I’d slammed into a brick wall. I barely have time to slip on my boots and jacket from near the couch in the living room before it’s propelling me out the door and down the front walk.
I’m mentally prepared to head back to the Capitol grounds, though I have no idea how I’m supposed to slip in—or out of them again, after this afternoon. But to my surprise, I turn left at the bottom of the driveway instead of right.
Those first steps are the beginning of a long and lonely hike through the freezing January night. I try to be grateful—at least it isn’t raining today and at least I’m dressed for it in flannel pajamas and a warm coat—but it’s hard to feel that way when every step is fraught with agony. And when I know what’s waiting for me at the end of this journey.
Funny, isn’t it, that I know what I’m going to find even though I don’t know anything else. Where the body’s going to be. Who it’s going to be. What I’m going to blindly be walking into. I don’t know any of that and maybe it’s selfish, but I hate it. I hate this power and I hate the pain that comes with it.
I started this week hoping for peace. For a chance to assimilate to all the changes that have so quickly happened in my life. Instead, I’m in the middle of another murder investigation, this one equally as deadly as the one I just lived through. I know it’s wrong to complain, to feel sorry for myself when someone is dead and I am still very much alive. But I’m tired and I’m hurt and I just don’t want to do this anymore.
And still I must continue. I turn corner after corner, walk street after street until I’m utterly lost. I have no idea where I am, only that I’m on the right track. I can feel it in the electricity zinging through me with each step that I take and the compulsion pressing against my back, urging me to go faster and faster.
This isn’t the way to the Capitol grounds or the way to anywhere famous downtown. And yet, when the compulsion jerks me to a stop in front of a plain little house, buried among hundreds of others in one of Austin’s oldest neighborhoods, I know immediately that it’s the right spot. Power throbs in the air all around me, brushes against my skin, works its way down my spine. And that’s when I know for sure. Though I’m off the beaten path, and though it makes absolutely no sense, I am positive that another Councilor lies right beyond the gray-painted front door.
Twenty-one
Though every part of me strains against it, I nevertheless begin the short walk up the flower-lined path to the front door. Within seconds, I’m up the stairs and on the porch, staring at a door that is just slightly ajar. Not enough for the average passerby to see from the street, but more than enough to indicate that there’s a problem. That someone has been here.
But I already know that, don’t I? Still, I pause a second, knock on the door. As expected, no one answers, so I take a deep breath and gingerly press the door open just wide enough that I can slip inside.
The second I set foot in the small foyer, I can smell it. Death has a particular scent, especially a violent death. Cold and metallic, with an underpinning of something smoky I have no idea how to identify, it’s smelled the same each and every time I’ve stumbled across it. Tonight is no different.
Dreading what I’m going to find, I step gingerly across the black-and-white patterned tile of the foyer and start down the narrow hallway that stretches the length of the house. On either side of me are the living and dining rooms, but both are in pristine condition. There’s no sign of a struggle at all, and a small light has even been left burning on one of the end tables.
I use the light to guide my way into the depths of the house, careful not to touch anything. Not that it really matters, I suppose, as it’s not like I’ll be sneaking away from this before someone comes to clean it up. Not when the compulsion refuses to release me until the body has been taken away.
As I walk the shadowed hallway, I think back to last night when Declan knocked me out in order to get me away. Is that why I’m in so much pain today, why the walk here seemed even worse than usual? Is it some kind of psychic payback?