Time Will Tell (4 page)

As Anna drew back the curtain and slid into the booth that she had been assigned to, she stared at the white walls across from her. Something about this whole process seemed so . . .
detached
.  It was weird that someone would be drinking her blood in just a few moments, and she didn’t even know anything about him except for his first name. She didn’t even know what he looked like yet.

At that moment, someone stepped into the station and glanced down at her. His light brown eyes penetrated through hers, as a slow smile spread across his face. He extended his hand. “Hello, Anna. My name is Peter. I’ll be drinking from you today, as long as that’s okay.”

Chapter 11

Austin sat in the back of Dan’s car, staring out the window. If it had been up to him, he would have just stayed at home today, sulking like he wanted to. Lexi and Dan had insisted that he come with them to the cat shelter and then to visit Lexi’s
half-siblings at her father’s house.

Even though Austin had wanted to decline their invite, he understood why they had insisted that he come along. It probably wasn’t good for him to stay inside the house,
waiting for Anna to come home.

What if Anna never came home, though? Austin tried not to think about it that way. Anna had promised in her letter to him that she would be home within a few days’ time. She wouldn’t make a promise like that
if she wasn’t able to keep it.

As much as Austin tried to shake the thought away, though, he simply couldn’t. He had a bad feeling about Anna being gone, but he couldn’t s
eem to figure out what it was.

When they pulled into the parking lot at the cat shelter, Austin climbed out of the car and followed Dan and Lexi inside the building. Austin was never able to smell much, but once they stepped inside, the scent of kitty litter filled his nostrils. As much as he sometimes missed being able to have the same sense of smell he’d had as a human, he almost wished he
didn’t have it at that moment.

“Lexi!” the woman working the front desk said, glancing at her over the rim of her glasses. “And Dan!
What a nice surprise this is!”

Lexi turned to Austin. “This is my cousin, Austin. Austin, this is Mar
y. She runs this cat shelter.”

“It’s nice to me
et you,” Austin said politely.

“You, too,” Mary said before turning back to Lexi. “Are
you here to volunteer again?”

“Actually, we’re here to look at the cats,” Lexi replied, motioning to the glass window that the c
at cages were visible through.

Mary narrowed her eyes
at them. “Are you planning to adopt another cat?”

“We’re considering it,” Dan replied. “We’d like to take a look around. Of course, we’d need to bring Garth back here to meet whichever cat we might want to adopt
to make sure it’s a good fit.”

“I wouldn’t count on adopting one, then,” Mary said with a chuckle. “Garth doesn
’t take kindly to other cats.”

Lexi laughed. “That’s true, but I think we’ll still take a look, anyway.” She led Dan and Austin ba
ck to the cats. She pointed into one of the cages at a fluffy white cat that looked like it was part Persian. “What about that one?” she asked Dan.

Dan shook his head. “No, definitely not. I let you pick Garth. He’s more your cat than he is mine. Let’s choose a ca
t that’s a little less frilly.”

“But I think it’s cute,” Lexi said with a pout. Instead of protesting, though, she
moved onto the next cat cage. 

Austin wondered if Anna would ever want them to have pets together one day . . . assuming that she wanted to be with him at all. Austin didn’t even want to think about what would happen to him if Anna decided she didn’t want to be with him and become a vampire. Just thinking about it terrified him. Losing her would be the hardest thing he would ever face.

Even though it was hard, Austin tried not to think too negatively yet. It seemed like a longshot, but there was still a chance that Anna would be with him eventually . . . wasn’t there?

“Austin, what do you think of this one?” Lexi asked, pointing to a short-haired Calico cat that was lying on its
back with its paws in the air.

“It’s cute,” Austin mumbled. Deciding that it was too difficult to be around people, he moved away from them and began his way up an aisle. He pretended
he was browsing through the cat toys and catnip, even though the only thing he could do was think about Anna and how much he wanted her to be there with him.

*

Lexi watched as Austin distanced himself from them. Sighing, she did what she had promised herself she wasn’t going to do. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and opened a new text message to Anna.

Hey, when
are you coming home? Austin really misses you. I don’t think you’re being fair to him.

Once the green arrow showed that the text message had sent, Lexi waited a few seconds to see if Anna would send her a text message back right away, the same way she normally did. When there wasn’t an immediate response, she stuffed her cell phone back inside her pocket and turned to Dan. “There’s something I actually want to talk to Mary about in priv
ate, if that’s okay with you.”

“Sure, I’ll just hang out with Austin,” Dan replied, glancing over his shoulder at Lexi’s cousin. He, too, seemed to notice that Austin clearly wanted to be alone. “Or on second thought, maybe I’ll just play with the cats over here and see if
I can get any of them to like me.”

Lexi gave him a small smile before heading to the front of the shelter, where Mary was still sitting at the front desk. As Lexi approached her, Mary smiled. “Did you guys find a
cat you might want to adopt?”

“Dan’s still looking, but I didn’t really see any that I connected with,” Lexi admitted. She paused before saying, “Actually, Mary, there’s something you mentioned to me once that I so
rt of wanted to ask you about.”

“Oh, what’s that?” Mary asked offhandedly, as she typed something on the keyboard in front of her, no longe
r looking at Lexi. 

Lexi hesitated. “You mentioned once that your daughter used to live i
n Briar Creek. Until she died?”

Mary glanced back up at her, fully aware of the conversation they were having now. “Yes, she lived there. What is it that makes you
ask?”

“Well, I was just wondering . . . what happened to her?” Lexi questioned
, knowing that she shouldn’t be asking this woman what happened to her dead daughter. She didn’t want to open any old wounds, but she couldn’t stop herself. The truth was, she wanted to ask if her daughter had been killed by vampires, but she didn’t want to risk mentioning vampires in case Mary really didn’t know that they existed. Lexi liked Mary; she didn’t want her to think she was crazy. Even worse than that, though, Lexi didn’t want Mary to have to know that vampires existed if she didn’t already know about them. Life somehow seemed a lot scarier when you knew that paranormal beings, like vampires and witches and werewolves, were really out there.

“Well, she was killed,” Mary replied. Her voice wavered a little,
and Lexi got the sense that it was still difficult for her to talk about, even though it had been years since her daughter had died.

“Do you know who did it? I think you mentioned that you tried to convince her to get out, but she didn’t before it wa
s too late,” Lexi said softly.

“There was never any proof that Rosie was really murdered. They found her body in the bathtub, and it looked like she slit her wrists. There was blood everywhere and . . .” Mary trailed off, obviously still scarred from the memory. She met Lexi’s gaze. “The police didn’t take her case seriously. They tried to convince me that Rosie committed suicide, but I know that’s not really what happened. My daughter was always a happy go-lucky
girl. She was teaching at Briar Creek High, and she really loved that job. She said those kids made her feel real special. I know my daughter. There was no way she ever would have done something like that. My daughter was murdered, and I think I know who did it.”

“Who do you think did it?” Lexi asked, feeling a pang of sympathy for Mary because she knew just how she felt. It was the same way Lexi had felt when she knew that her mother had been murdered.
Aside from a shady autopsy report, there hadn’t been much for her to go on, but she’d had a gut feeling.

“My daughter was seeing this young man,” Mary explained. “It sounded like she was very happy with him at first. He did little things a nice guy would do, you know? He bought her flowers and took her out to nice dinners. Rosie really liked him, and he sounded great at first . . . but as time went on, she told me things that had me questioning what his motives were. Some of the things may not sound too strange to you. Maybe they’re just things that only a mother would have picked up on, but what she told me gave me
strange vibes about this guy.”

“What sorts of things did he do?” Lexi pressed. She wasn’t sure why she was even asking so many questions, but a part of her wanted to help Mary solve her daughter’s murder—partly because she had wished that someone had done the same thing
for her when her mom had died.

“First it was that he had gotten inside her house when she wasn’t home, without her permission. She’d said he found the spare key under the flower pot, and maybe he did, but . . . you don’t just go inside another person’s home without asking like that, you know? It just struck me as really odd,” Mary explained. She tapped her fingers against the desk nervously. “Then there was another time when Rosie came home to visit us on Thanksgiving, and he just wouldn’t stop calling her. I eavesdropped on her conversation a little, and from what I gathered, it sounded like
he was angry that she went away to visit us without inviting him to come along. It also sounded like he was upset that she’d had dinner with one of the teachers she worked with.”

Lexi nodded. The behavior that Mary was describing sounded characteristic of
any controlling boyfriend, but she knew, better than anyone, that vampires had a tendency to get jealous.

“The thing is,” Mary went on, “Ro
sie was killed a week later.” 

“So, you think that argument on Thanksgiving was what led him to ki
ll her,” Lexi pieced together.

Mary hesitated. “I think he was very angry at her, and I don’t think he was all there mentally, if you know what I mean. I told the cops all about the argument I’d overheard, but they just chalked it up to hearsay. It was like they didn’t even want to listen to me at all, and they most certainly didn’t want to investigate him. In fact, I mentioned his name to them, but they told me no one with th
at name lived in Briar Creek.”

“That’s very odd,” Lexi murmured, even though when she really thought about it, it wasn’t that strange. Chances were, the police were just trying to cov
er up for whoever had done it.

“It is odd,” Mary agreed. “You would think that with the high death rate in and near Briar Creek, they would have taken this a little more seriously, but I suppose they must think that random killings done by strangers are more significant.” She shook her head. “How could they think one person’s life is more important than another’s? Rosie was someone’s daughter, too, you know? The whole thing sti
ll blows my mind to this day.”

Lexi nodded. “I understand.” She shifted in her heels uncomfortably. “If you don’t mind me asking, what was the name of the guy Ros
ie was seeing at the time?”

“His name was Kevin,” M
ary replied. “Kevin Marshall.”

A lump form
ed in the back of Lexi’s throat, and she felt like she was going to puke. The police were right. It was true that no one named Kevin Marshall existed in Briar Creek.

Gabe was
the one who had killed Rosie.

Lexi realized that she had made a big mistake. She never sh
ould have told Caroline that she should move in with Gabe. Now her life was in danger, too.