Dead to the World

about it except watch it happen.
    “He asked me if I’d spend New Year’s Eve with him. I had the feeling the woman he’d had a date with had changed her mind, ’cause he’s not the kind of guy to go without lining up a date for something big like that.”
    I shrugged. Jason could have made and broken dates with five women for New Year’s Eve, for all I knew. And it wasn’t infrequent for women to get so exasperated by his earnest pursuit of anything with a vagina that they broke off plans with him.
    “He’s a cute guy, and I like to get out of Hotshot, so I said yeah. He asked me if he could come pick me up, but I knew some of my neighbors wouldn’t like that, so I said I’d just meet him at the Fina station, and then we’d go in his truck. So that’s what we did. And I had a real good time with him, went home with him, had a good night.” Her eyes gleamed at me. “You want to know how he is in bed?”
    There was a blur of movement, and then there was blood at the corner of her mouth. Calvin’s hand was back dangling between his legs before I even realized he’d moved. “You be polite. Don’t show your worst face to this woman,” he said, and his voice was so serious I made up my mind I’d be extra polite, too, just to be safe.
    “Okay. That wasn’t nice, I guess,” she admitted, in a softer and chastened voice. “Well, I wanted to see him the night after, too, and he wanted to see me again. So I snuck out and went over to his place. He had to leave to see his sister—you? You’re the only sister he’s got?”
    I nodded.
    “And he said to stay there, he’d be back in a bit. I wanted to go with him, and he said if his sister didn’t have company, that woulda been fine, but she had vamp company, and he didn’t want me to mix with them.”
    I think Jason knew what my opinion of Crystal Norris would be, and he wanted to dodge hearing it, so he left her at his house.
    “Did he come back home?” Calvin said, nudging her out of her reverie.
    “Yes,” she said, and I tensed.
    “What happened then?” Calvin asked, when she stopped again.
    “I’m not real sure,” she said. “I was in the house, waiting for him, and I heard his truck pull up, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, good, he’s here, we can party,’ and then I didn’t hear him come up the front steps, and I’m wondering what’s happening, you know? Of course all the outside lights are on, but I didn’t go to the window, ’cause I knew it was him.” Of course a Were would know his step, maybe catch his smell. “I’m listening real good,” she went on, “and I hear him going around the outside of the house, so I’m thinking he’s going to come in the back door, for some reason—muddy boots, or something.”
    I took a deep breath. She’d get to the point in just a minute. I just knew she would.
    “And then, to the back of the house, and farther ’way, yards away from the porch, I hear a lot of noise, and some shouting and stuff, and then nothing.”
    If she hadn’t been a shifter, she wouldn’t have heard so much. There, I knew I’d think of a bright side if I searched hard enough.
    “Did you go out and look?” Calvin asked Crystal. His worn hand stroked her black curls, as if he were petting a favorite dog.
    “No sir, I didn’t look.”
    “Smell?”
    “I didn’t get close enough,” she admitted, just on the good side of sullen. “The wind was blowing the other way. I caught a little of Jason, and blood. Maybe a couple of other things.”
    “Like what?”
    Crystal looked at her own hands. “Shifter, maybe. Some of us can change when it’s not the full moon, but I can’t. Otherwise, I’d have had a better chance at the scent,” she said to me in near-apology.
    “Vampire?” Calvin asked.
    “I never smelled a vampire before,” she said simply. “I don’t know.”
    “Witch?” I asked.
    “Do they smell any different from regular people?” she asked doubtfully.
    I shrugged. I didn’t know.
    Calvin said, “What did you do after that?”
    “I knew something had carried Jason off into the woods. I just . . . I lost it. I’m not brave.” She shrugged. “I came home after that. Nothing more I could do.”
    I was trying not to cry, but tears just rolled down my cheeks. For the first time, I admitted to myself that I wasn’t sure I’d ever see my brother again. But if the attacker’s intention was to kill Jason, why not just leave his body in the backyard? As Crystal had pointed out, the night