“I don’t think I want you in my RV.”
I couldn’t blame her for that. I stood.
She pushed me back onto the futon.
“I didn’t tell you to leave,” she said. I stared up at her blearily, trying to understand. “We’re miles out of town. There’s nowhere for you to go anyway. So don’t even think about bailing on me.”
That was a lot of sympathy for a murderer.
I leaned back against the wall, stared up at the ceiling. “I should have turned myself in to the OPA.”
She sat next to me. The mattress sagged under our combined weight. She touched my leg and I pulled away.
Erin wasn’t going to smile again, never serve drinks again, and I’d ended that. It was me.
“I should really go,” I said. I could barely hear my own voice over the roar of shock in my ears. High blood pressure, probably. My adrenaline was still insane. I felt cold all over.
“Go where?”
“Just…go.” To the desert. Find that ditch where we’d abandoned Joey and Eduardo. Climb in, pull the dirt over me, never climb out again. It would still be better than I deserved.
Isobel slid her arm around my back. “You’re not going anywhere like this, Cèsar.”
How could she touch me, knowing what we knew now?
“I killed her,” I said.
A shadow flashed through Isobel’s eyes. She brushed the hair off of my forehead. “She didn’t come back right. The cremains were harder to work with than I thought. She didn’t really know what she was saying.” She looked thoughtful. “I really thought that it should have worked with her remnants like that. I’m not sure why it didn’t. If it wasn’t so dangerous to go back to Helltown, I’d ask Ann what she thinks, but…”
But the incubi there were watching for us now.
Maybe I should have let the Silver Needles have me.
“I’m not a real witch,” Isobel said. She was changing the subject to something easier to stomach than murder. Fine.
Dully, I said, “I just watched you raise Erin.”
“Yeah, but that’s all I can do. I told you that I didn’t enchant my RV’s engine—that was something my friend did for me as a favor because I can’t. I’ve never cast a spell in here because I don’t have whatever it takes. I can’t do wards. I can’t even light a candle.”
“The blister powder,” I said.
“Another present from my friend.”
“The cure?”
“Those are just herbs that counter the effects. It’s not magic.” Isobel shrugged. “I am a fraud—just not the way you thought. I have to fake my rituals because I can’t cast spells for anything.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I’m coming clean with you,” she said gently. “As clean as I get with anyone. I want you to know…I trust you. No matter what happened with Erin, I trust that you’re a good guy.”
“Don’t,” I said.
Isobel touched my wrist. “I’ve met a lot of bad people before, Cèsar. I’ve known career criminals. Not people who hurt by accident, but people who hurt by design, and those who enjoy it. You’re not one of those people.”
But I was. I had killed Erin.
Lord, the fear in her eyes when she looked at me…
“You’re right. You killed Erin Karwell. But that doesn’t make you a bad man,” Isobel said. “I know you’re not with the Needles. And come on, you were more worried about the safety of a teenager hiding out at the Temple of the Hand of Death than you were about being held captive. That’s not something bad men worry about. I’ve seen the goodness in you.”
“That another one of your witch powers?”
She smiled faintly. “I don’t need magic to know goodness when I see it, Cèsar.”
“You shouldn’t even be sitting next to me.”
She rubbed her thumb over my knuckles. “You won’t hurt me.”
I wanted to believe that was true. I wanted it to be true so badly that it hurt deep down on the inside. “I always thought that…” It was too hard to get the words out. It felt like I was choking on Erin’s name, like she had become permanently lodged in my chest. “You know why those incubi wanted me dead?” Dumb question. Of course she didn’t. But she was polite enough to shake her head. “It was because I saved my sister, Ofelia. That’s what made me an OPA agent, too. Saving Ofelia.” Like that could change what I’d done to Erin.
“What happened to her?” Isobel asked.
It was a question I’d gotten a few times before, from a few different people. I’d never answered it before. It wasn’t anyone’s business.