The holding cell is small, big enough for the two of us to stand up and move around a little, but not big enough for anything else. Cat took the top bunk almost as soon as we arrived and has been sitting motionless, meditating ever since. I’ve relegated myself to the bottom bunk, mostly because there isn’t enough room in the cell to pace around, but also because Cat hasn’t been very talkative. I’m not excited about being picked up by the police either, but I’m not sure why Cat has been so quiet. Maybe she’s mad at me for telling her not to fight the police SWAT team, or maybe it’s something else.
The silence is finally broken when the large sliding bolt lock, which secures the main door of the holding area, disengages with a thud. The door swings open with a metallic growl and a local deputy comes padding down the hall whistling an unfamiliar show tune.
I’m not sure what he could possibly want, since they’ve already booked us and taken all of our information. Not that there’s a lot of guessing at who we are, since my picture has been all over the news since the night I left my mom’s house. The deputy stops in front of our cell and jingles his keys a little.
“Well now,” he says casually. “I don’t mean to break up the fun, but the detective finally showed up and he has some questions for you two.” He unlocks the cell door and swings it open.
I swallow hard and stand up.
“Sorry, not your turn yet little lady,” the deputy says. “Anderson says he wants Catherine first.”
Cat hops down next to me and, without a glance, heads out the door with the deputy. He snaps the door shut behind her and latches her hands behind her back with a pair of handcuffs.
“All right, let’s go,” he says to Cat. “And don’t you go nowhere,” he adds with a little wink toward me.
Without a watch, it feels like hours pass while Cat is gone. I would guess it hasn’t really been that long or I would be falling asleep. Despite being completely exhausted, I still can’t seem to close my eyes.
Eventually the bolt lock unlatches and Cat is unceremoniously returned to our cell. She slides close as we pass and whispers, but I can’t understand her.
The deputy smiles at me. “Your turn hon.” I walk out of the cell where he repeats the process, handcuffing me and leading me out of the holding area. We head down another hallway to a small room. It is nearly empty, except two chairs and a small table with one wall covered by a large mirror, no doubt hiding witnesses to the interrogation. The deputy leads me in and helps me into one of chairs while the sound of another’s footsteps follow close behind.
A second man steps around the table and flops a rather hefty file folder in front of the chair opposite me. He looks thin and young, dressed in a light blue polo shirt and khakis. He sort of fumbles with the chair as he slides it out and awkwardly sits down.
“Hi, uhh.” He clears his throat. “I’m detective Anderson.” He puts out his hand to shake mine, but I’m unable to move with the handcuffs on.
“Oh yes, well you can take those off,” he says to the deputy while waving his hand toward me.
The deputy purses his lips and gives a sort of sideways glance at Anderson, who now has sweat beading on his forehead. The man flips open the file while the deputy takes off my handcuffs.
“Well now, it says here there’s a warrant out for your arrest. You’re charged with arson, assaulting an officer, evading police, and multiple counts of homicide.”
Homicide? “I didn’t do any of those things,” I say in a bit of shock. “I mean, I was there, but I didn’t do them.”
“Well, you and your friend out there are in a lot of trouble. Now if you come clean with us we might be able to help you out a bit.”
“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” I plead.
Anderson looks sort of relieved and sits up a little straighter. “Well, why don’t we start off at the beginning?”
He drops a couple pictures in front of me. I recognize them immediately from the night Alex and I were at my work party. “These pictures are of you and a Mr. Alex Palo.”
My stomach hurts as if someone punched me. My eyes begin to burn as I think of Alex. The last few days have been busy enough that I haven’t had to think about him much.
“Mr. Palo is missing. Do you have any idea where he is?”
That’s enough of a question that I can’t hold back. My vision blurs and a hot tear runs down my cheek. “He’s gone.”
“Yes, I already know that,” he says. “But where to.”
“No. I mean he’s dead. He was in my house when it blew up.”
“Oh, so was it you or him that blew up the house?”
“It wasn’t either of us,” I say angrily. “I don’t know why it blew up. It just did.”
“Well, there was an officer in there when it ‘just blew up.’”
“I’m sorry,” I say as I look away. “So was Alex.”
“Yes,” he says impatiently. “We found the bodies. We are waiting for the identification to come through, but this might speed up the process a bit.” He throws more pictures on the table. “How about these?”
The pictures are of Cat and from a security camera at the truck stop, right before we went into the forest. One shows Cat messing around behind the unsuspecting car she taped my phone to.
Anderson points at that picture. “We found the owner of this car dead a few days ago. His car was burned up on the side of the road. What did you put on his car?”
I drop my head and wipe my eyes. “It was just my phone,” I say quietly. “Who killed him?”
“I was hoping you could tell us that,” Anderson says. “There are a lot of dead people and a lot of things blowing up here, and you seem to be a common thread.”
He points to Cat in one of the photos. “You know your friend here… Is she your sister?”
“Who, Catherine? Oh, no. She’s my…” She’s my what, sökare? That answer isn’t going to mean anything. Suddenly it pops to my head. “We’re nieces.”
I don’t know why I just said that. Maybe it’s my nerves, or maybe I’m growing tired of this guy, or maybe I just can’t face all this right now. All these people I supposedly killed.
“You’re nieces? Whose nieces?”
“Gary,” I reply with as straight of a face as I can.
“Gary,” he says while scribbling. “Gary who?”
“Gary sent-nieces,” I say with a little chuckle.
Anderson scribbles on his pad, a little confused. “Okay. Well your… Catherine out there told us all about what you were doing in the forest. So why don’t you tell us your side.”
‘My Catherine’. That thought resonates. Somehow I doubt that Cat would tell him anything, and I’m starting to see how much Anderson has been poking at me for information. I certainly won’t let him use Cat against me.
I bite my cheek hard to shift my thoughts. “Yep, we went for a hike in the forest. It’s quite lovely out there.”
“Yes, I’m sure it was,” he says. “But what were you doing out there.”
I smile at him, as big and as cheesy of a smile as I can muster. No doubt my blood shot eyes add to the effect. “I told you, we went for a hike.”
He sits back in his chair and looks at me, sighing heavily. “I see. So you’ve changed your mind about helping?”
All I offer in response is my big cheesy grin.
“Miss Smith, maybe we need a break and we can try this again later.” He taps the tip of his pen against the notepad. “However, I do know that alley ways, houses, and cars don’t just blow up on their own.”
I say nothing as the deputy cuffs me and takes me back to the cell. Cat is still sitting cross-legged on the top bunk with her eyes closed. I slide into the bottom bunk and rub my wrists as the deputy leaves.
“I told them everything,” I say calmly and quietly.
Cat hops down off the top bunk and lands squarely in front of me with a thud. I sit up reflexively, captured by her golden hazel eyes glowing with frustration. “You told him what happened?” she asks, incredulously. Even though she’s whispering, her voice is strained.
“Yes I did!” I say, emphatically. It’s a lie, but I’m mad at her.
“Well, you shouldn’t have said anything. You could have told them you weren’t talking without a lawyer.”
“I didn’t know to say that,” I say defensively. “Besides, he said you already told him everything.”
“True, we didn’t do anything illegal, but they don’t know that. Do they?” Her voice is slowly growing louder as her frustration builds. “What did you tell them? That you’re a god? I’m sure that went over really well.”
I can tell by her reaction that I was right about Anderson. She didn’t tell the detective anything, but I’m still mad at her. “I just lied to you. I didn’t tell the detective much. I definitely didn’t tell him about… us. But I didn’t know what to say, or not say. Why didn’t you help me earlier, instead of sitting there silently? Shutting me out.”
“I did tell you not to say anything. When I came back to the cell and brushed against you.”
“When you whispered?” I ask, confused. “That was too late. I couldn’t hear you.”
She looks around for a moment and sighs. She paces around the room and stops in front of me momentarily before sliding into the bunk with me.
Her shoulders visibly drop. “I was… I still am upset,” she says, returning her voice to a low whisper.
“Upset about what?”
“Upset at myself, for screwing up. For screwing up with the mentor and at the diner. Then I couldn’t fix it when the police showed up.”
“You mean I wouldn’t let you fix. I wouldn’t let you take on the SWAT team.”
She shrugs. “That might be part of it.”
I close my eyes and breath slowly. We’ve had this conversation before and I’m not sure how we can get past this.
“We have to trust each other,” I say slowly. “Please don’t do this to me. We can’t always beat up everyone and run away. There were at least eight of them with guns, and you didn’t even have your sword.”
“True,” she admits. “But I shouldn’t have let us get into that position to begin with.”
“Fine, you can take all the blame on this if it makes you feel better, but at least we are still alive. I’m sure we’ll figure something out.”
“Since we’re talking about trust, why didn’t you tell me your real name?” she asks, pointedly.
I’m frozen, my gaze locked by her piercing eyes. It takes me a moment to realize what she’s talking about.
“The detective asked me if we were related,” she adds. “He said your last name was Smith.”
No longer able to stand her look of disappointment, I cast my eyes down to my hands. “Well, that’s sort of true,” I say while scratching at my nails. “Wait. He asked me the same thing. Why would that make him ask if we are related?”
“Because my given name is Catherine Smith,” she says coolly.
My heart skips a beat. “Seems we still have our secrets.”
“Indeed,” she adds.
“Well, I sort of lied to you but not really, in a manner of speaking.”
Cat laughs a little. “You need practice at speaking in riddles.”
I smile and start picking at my fingers again. “Smith is the name I go by, but Arcana is our family name. Actually, I didn’t know that until I was sixteen, after the kidnapping. I grew up as Winter Smith, but I had seen the word Arcana on some of my father’s things. I just thought it was an interesting word and didn’t know it was his name, so I used it as my name on the nets.
“After the kidnapping, it took a while but I finally told my mom about what I had done. She said Arcana was my father’s last name and that I can’t use it anymore.”
“Why not?” Cat asks.
“I don’t know, she never said why. Just that we had to leave that life behind. I assumed we took the name Smith so we could hide.”
“Then why did you tell me your father’s name? Instead of hiding.”
I scratch the edge of my fingernail hard enough that it starts to bleed a little. “I’m not sure I know the answer to that either. In fact, I’m not sure why I did any of it. We met on the nets, you magically happen to find me, and then I woke up in a strange place. It was so much like before.”
“I heard you in the bedroom the morning you woke up. I thought you were going to run away.”
I suck the blood from my fingernail, then start chewing on it in an attempt to stay focused. “I was about to. I was scared and felt trapped, but when I heard your voice it felt different than before. It felt like I was talking to myself. Like I was meeting a part of me that was missing. I was nervous, but I wasn’t scared. Maybe that’s why I told you my name was Arcana. Well, my name is Arcana.”
She puts her hand on mine. “And my name is Catherine of Arcana. I just didn’t know it yet. Sinesis said my parent’s name was Smith, but for some reason I have never really believed that. There’s something in the way he says it. I figured he did it to protect me, so I never asked. I guess we both had reasons to hide.”
Suddenly the metallic thud of the bolt lock echoes down the hallway. The main door to the holding area swings open and the deputy leads in a pair of men dressed in tailored, dark woolen suits.
The front man is quite tall and distinctly older than his colleague. His peppered gray and black hair compliments his charcoal gray suit, topped off with a pair of tight black gloves and black dress shoes. The man in trail, wearing a solid black suit, looks to be in his mid thirties. He seems vaguely familiar, but perhaps that’s because he is so nondescript with his dirty blonde hair and blank face. He looks like any other faceless business man on the street, but there’s something about his eyes.
The deputy stops in front of our cell and waves a hand vaguely in our direction. “Well, here you are gentlemen,” he says. “Glad you can take them off my hands. I don’t really care to deal with this mess.”
The older man clasps his hands behind his back and steps forward to the cell door, leaning in slightly. An imposing figure over six feet tall, his square jaw and deep set eyes reek of a man with a purpose.
“My name is agent Jones,” he says. “The gentleman behind me is agent West. You’ll be leaving with us.”
Agents? My heart starts thumping hard against my chest in an attempt to claw its way up my throat. I’m pretty sure I want nothing to do with Jones or West. I look over at Cat whose face betrays none of her thoughts. She keeps her eyes locked on the agents.
I jump up off the bunk and step to a better view of the deputy. “I’m happy to stay here tonight,” I plead.
“Out of my jurisdiction Ms. Smith,” the deputy says passively. “You belong to them now.”
Agent Jones turns slightly to face me, his dark eyes narrowing. “You’ve been placed in our custody, and I’d prefer to leave tonight.”
The muscles in his jaw flex. I blink and look away, unable to match his menacing stare.
Cat stands and walks forward. “It’s fine,” she says finally. “It’ll be easier this way.”
Agent Jones takes a step back and heads briskly to the exit. “West, take care of the ladies,” he calls over his shoulder. “I need to go crush Anderson.”
I’m not sure what Cat has in mind, but I know in my heart I must trust her. I know I do trust her. In short order, two other men dressed in suits appear and agent West is giving them orders. We soon find ourselves handcuffed and headed out the jail to a set of black sedans. A couple other agents are carrying our packs, including Cat’s sword, to the cars. The police must have gathered our things from the hotel.
I swallow hard and look to Cat for some clue what she is planning, but she makes no moves to escape. West’s two lackeys push us down into the back seat of one of the sedans and shut us in.
I seize our moment of solitude. “So what’s the plan?” I ask. “We can’t go with these agents.”
Cat says nothing.
I let out a sigh of frustration through my nose and flip my head back against the seat. My grouchiness is returning. “We barely escaped last time in our own car, and we weren’t handcuffed.”
“Quiet,” she snaps. “They are not hunters, they are FBI. Or at least they are pretending to be, and they are probably listening in.”
Just then the driver and front passenger doors open. West and Jones climb into the car with West sliding in behind the wheel.
“Too right you are,” Jones growls, not even turning around to face us. He slips off his gloves while continuing. “And Catherine is very astute. We aren’t hunters or FBI.” He loosens his tie and undoes the top button of his shirt, slowly rubbing a hand around his neck.
“Who are you then?” I ask.
He turns to face me, his dark eyes looking more sunk and pale than in the jail. “Soon enough Miss Arcana,” he answers before turning back to West. “Drive,” he commands.
“Yes sir,” West replies.
How the hell does he know my name?