second time with no success that I thought to check the front door—and found it unlocked. While I’d been out finding the horror in the back courtyard, Piper had up and walked out the front door.
She had been adamant that I not open the courtyard door, but then she’d just strolled out the front door herself? With no warning? With no car? Where could she possibly have thought she was going? You couldn’t pay me to leave the house in anything but a dire emergency at a time like this.
I tried her cell phone, of course, but it would take luck and hours of trying before I had a hope of getting a real live connection. I gathered up every last scrap of courage I could find and stepped out the front door to call her name, but I wasn’t surprised she didn’t answer. It had taken me too long to realize she was gone, and I’d spent so much time searching the house for her that she could easily be a mile away by now. Assuming she was all right. I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what she’d been thinking. The part of me that was terrified for her battled with the part of me that was furious with her, leaving my emotions tangled and confused.
Struggling to keep all of the pieces of myself together, I sat down once more on the kitchen floor—I feared I would leave blood stains if I sat anywhere else—and started repeatedly calling my dad’s cell, hoping that somehow, miraculously, I would get through.
* * *
The cops showed up before I managed to get through to my dad on the phone. Apparently, most of the people who lived around the courtyard had seen what happened to Mrs. Pinter—or at least the aftermath of it—and had been frantically trying to get through to the police. One of them got lucky at phone line roulette before I did, and soon there were red and blue flashing lights everywhere.
Even though I hadn’t reached my dad on the phone, he showed up about five minutes after the first police car arrived, having been notified about a grisly murder happening right behind his house. When he came through the door, I practically threw myself into his arms, hugging him with all my strength and unable to suppress my sobs. He held me and murmured assurances that everything was going to be okay, and for a brief moment I felt like daddy’s little girl again.
Eventually I got hold of myself and managed to stop crying, though it was much harder to stop shaking. I had blood on my clothes from having slipped and fallen in the courtyard, but I assured my dad I was unhurt except for my skinned palms. He was on the verge of insisting I let an EMT look at me anyway, but he relented.
His entire focus since he’d walked in the house had been on me, and when his officers tried to talk to him he was abrupt and dismissive with them in a way I knew wasn’t like him. But despite his focus on my safety, he wasn’t blind. He had to have seen all the damage Bob had done during his protective frenzy.
“What happened here?” he asked gently, like he was talking to a wounded animal.
“It’s a long story,” I told him between sniffles.
“Then let’s sit down.” He guided me toward the couch, but I balked.
“I don’t want to get blood on it,” I explained.
“I don’t care about the damn couch,” he said, his tight voice betraying his fear and protective anger. “We can get a new one or get it cleaned. Now sit down.”
I knew the anger in his voice wasn’t directed at me, so his tone for once didn’t get my back up. I collapsed onto the couch and wondered if I could face the ordeal of recounting tonight’s nightmare to my dad. Not that I had much of a choice.
“Promise you’ll believe me,” I begged him before I started, and he promised without hesitation.
And so I told him. Everything. Including Piper’s attempt to set me up with Aleric, the attack of the living pothole, and the unknown, unseen creature that had tormented us so badly before it had finally killed Mrs. Pinter. I ended with Piper’s baffling decision to leave the house while I was finding Mrs. Pinter.
Dad asked me a dizzying number of questions, and I belatedly realized I was making my formal statement. I suspected having my