I Don't Want To Kill You Read Free Page B

stared at my own hands, looking for clues. Maybe she could absorb their fingerprints, or their identity, or something like that. It was hard enough to profile a regular killer who followed human rules; for a demon who broke those rules at will, I needed more information before I could say anything solid. I needed to see the demon in action.
     
    Both of the demons I had met so far were completely different. They did different things, in different ways, for different reasons – but they had one similarity. Forman had said that the demons, or whatever they were, were defined by what they lacked: a face, a life, an emotion, an identity. Just like serial killers, the way they acted and reacted could be traced back to the holes in their lives that made them who they were. So, what did Nobody lack?
     
    The phone rang, loud and strident in the silence. I grabbed it off the counter and glanced at the caller ID: Jensen. I carried it down the hall and handed it to Mom, who was washing off her make-up in the bathroom. It rang again.
     
    ‘Officer Jensen,’ I said, setting it on the sink. ‘Probably something about the case.’ I walked back to the living room while Mom answered.
     
    ‘Hello? Oh!’ She sounded surprised. ‘Why, hello Marci, I thought it was your father.’
     
    Marci Jensen was calling? Marci was one of the hottest girls in school. Even my friend Max, who’d go out with a chair leg if it asked him, harboured an impossible love for her. I’d probably talked to her three times in my entire life. Why was she calling my house at ten thirty at night?
     
    ‘Don’t worry,’ said Mom, ‘we’re both still awake. He’s right here, I’ll get him.’ She came out of the bathroom with one of those infuriating motherly smiles and handed me the phone. ‘It’s for you.’
     
    I held it to my ear. ‘Hello?’
     
    ‘Hey John, it’s Marci Jensen.’ She sounded . . . I had no idea how she sounded. I could read a face like an expert, but voices always threw me off.
     
    ‘Yeah, I saw.’ Pause. What should I say?
     
    ‘I’m sorry to call you so late,’ she went on. ‘I’ve kinda been . . . well, I’ve been meaning to call all day and I just haven’t.’
     
    ‘Oh.’ Why was she meaning to call?
     
    ‘So anyway, I don’t know if I’m supposed to say this or not, but my dad told me about you. About what you did, I mean. Saving all those people.’
     
    Thanks to the ‘protective silence’ that kept my name out of the news, her dad was one of the only people who knew the real story. Well, the parts that didn’t have demons in them. He’d been the first officer on the scene when we escaped from Forman’s torture house in the forest.
     
    ‘It’s not really anything,’ I said. ‘I mean, it is, because they’re all saved, but I didn’t really do anything. I mean, I didn’t do it alone. Brooke was there too; she helped get some of the women outside.’
     
    ‘Yeaaaah,’ said Marci, holding the vowel and dragging out the word for a few extra seconds. She paused, just slightly, and then said: ‘I heard that you guys aren’t really going out any more?’
     
    ‘No,’ I said, a little surprised. Is this what I think it is? ‘We haven’t really done anything for a couple of months, actually.’
     
    ‘Yeah, I wish I’d known that sooner,’ she said. ‘So anyway, I thought if you’re not dating anyone else, maybe we could go out sometime.’
     
    Was that an observation or an invitation? Had she just asked me out, or was I supposed to ask her? I had no idea what to do. After a pause I said, ‘Sure. That sounds fun.’
     
    ‘Sweet,’ she said. ‘I’m all tied up for the rest of this week, but how about one week from today? Monday afternoon?’
     
    I had a brief mental image of Marci tied up, but I shoved it away. Don’t think like that. ‘Yeah, I should be free.’
     
    ‘Sweet,’ she said again. ‘We can go to the lake. You have a bike?’
     
    ‘Yeah.’
     
    ‘Cool. You