Page 61 of Follows with Intent

Jadon drove home on autopilot. His brain was dark except for the occasional misfire of neurons, and then fragments of the fight would glow in hypersaturated colors: Nico framed in the doorway, Nico flinching when Jadon slapped the door, Nico saying, You’re so scared of making the same mistake again that you’re killing yourself.

He let himself into the south city bungalow. The lights were off, the air stale. Over the last few days, he’d barely been here, but it was more than that. It had the empty, closed-up feel of an abandoned place. Somewhere nobody lived.

Turning on the lights—

You’re like a little kid who’s so afraid of the dark that you’ll burn the house down while you’re still in it just to have some light.

—seemed like too much work, so he made his way through the gloom. He kicked off his shoes in the bedroom. He lay on the bed. He caught a musty whiff; the sheets needed changing. Above him, the ceiling was faintly luminous, the glimmer of white plaster a long way off in the dark. From the neighbor’s house next door came the barely audible thump of a bass line.

He’d lost his temper; Jadon could admit that. He’d been trying to stay calm, trying to stay reasonable, trying to master his own mingling frustration and fear so that Nico, in turn, would also stay calm. Then, like the two most annoying fucking jack-in-the-boxes in the world, North and Shaw had popped up. Again. Like they always did. And then the professor had appeared, coming toward them like a homing missile, and the way he’d looked at Nico, the way he’d smiled.

Giving fuck-me eyes to a bunch of old men.

Jadon pressed his fists against his eyes. Yeah, that hadn’t been good. But he might have held it together, might have managed not to say what he was thinking—something along the lines of, Keep it in your pants, or I’ll cut it off—if he hadn’t gotten that text. The one from a patrol officer telling him that, the night before, another young man had been assaulted on campus.

He dug out his phone and called Cerise.

“No,” she said. In the background, Dhan’s familiar voice rumbled, and Cerise sounded like she was speaking away from the phone when she said, “I’ll take care of the pumpkins. Go change.” Then, her voice moving back to the phone, she said, “No. You are not allowed to cancel. You are not allowed to have an excuse. You are coming to this party. Dhan’s worked hard to make everything perfect.” Her voice cut away again, a kind of vexed love: “I said I’d do the pumpkins. Get into your costume!”

“What are you going to be?” Jadon asked.

“Alice and the Hatter.”

“Eh.”

“Thanks for the feedback. What are you going to be?”

“There was another attack.”

“Jesus Christ, Jadon. What is wrong with you?” Her silence vibrated for a second across the line, and then, in a slightly softer tone, she said, “I’m sorry. How bad?”

“Shaffer and Carney got it. He put the kid in the hospital. He’s getting bolder, Cerise. Escalating.” He managed not to say the rest, what he didn’t even want to think after he’d seen the pictures: He looks like Lang. Like Nico.

“He. You say that like you know who did it.”

Jadon didn’t say anything to that.

Cerise broke first. “Are we going over there?”

“No. I wanted you to know. I asked some of the patrol guys to call me if anything like this came in; that’s the only reason I heard about it.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice when he said, “Of course, the department will insist there’s no connection.”

“Are you going over there?”

“No.”

“Are you lying to me?”

Jadon laughed. “Not this time. They’ve got him sedated. I’ll see if I can get Shaffer and Carney to let me have a chat with him tomorrow.”

“And let me guess: you’re not coming to the party.”

You’re killing yourself.

“I’m worn out.”

“Jay, this is what we talked about.”

You’ll burn the house down just to have some light.

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