Page 36 of Vicious Hearts

“Take your DNA and send it to the lab!” He shrinks back at my tone as I tower over him. He’s been helpful over the years, but I know it helps that he’s terrified of me. “I’ll get her hairbrush to you within the hour.”

“I’ll do it.”

Caleph’s firm voice breaks into our confrontation.

“There is no way I’ll let you near that van.”

I’ll hit him over the head to avoid that happening if I have to.

“Not your call,” he snaps, turning toward the van.

There’s a ferociousness to him even as he does a slow march toward the van, lifting his chin in defiance. In preparation. He’s the strongest, most level-headed man I’ve ever met. But this woman has made him vulnerable. Which, in a way, is not all bad if it turns out to be Ariadne in that van, because it means he’s going to have to unleash his beast. I hate to say it, hate to think it even, but that’s exactly what it will take to put Caleph back on an even keel again.

I follow him, watch him as he straggles the last few steps toward the van, as though his brain has just caught up with him and is telling him to retreat. He pushes on, putting on a brave front, until the forensics team make way for him and he steps forward, looking at the corpse once again.

“There’s this,” one of the forensics officers hold up a baggie. There’s some sort of fabric in it. Caleph takes it in his hand and turns it over. I look over his shoulder down at the bag, notice how his hands shake, his fingers fluttering against the bag. It’s only a scrap, about the size of an apple, but it’s obviously denim, the edges so charred, I don’t know how the fire missed this section.

“What else?”

One of them produces a baggie with a gold chain covered in soot. There’s a pendant on the end; clearly visible even after it had been buried in fire residue. A little gold oyster with a pearl inside it. Caleph fingers the pendant, pressing it between his fingers, before he looks up and catches his breath, holding in his emotions. The reaction we’re getting out of him tells me they must be hers. I can’t ignore the way her belongings are affecting him. “Caleph?”

My friend’s pain is not something I’m used to. We do so well hiding behind our demons that pain is not in our vocabulary. If we need to feel, we do it behind closed doors. I’m surprised at how his pain is causing me confusion, riddling me with mixed feelings. I want to punch something, destroy something if it will help erase his anguish.

“They’re her things,” he whispers.

He shakes his head, and just as his shoulders start to quake, he straightens to his full height and lifts his head with a newfound sense of resolve.

He pushes past the forensics team and approaches the van, standing at the open door looking in at the charred body. I don’t know why they haven’t removed it yet. There must a process they’re following.

He fixates for a long time on the hair, then his eyes move down the body slowly. It’s literally a bag of bones. I don’t know what more there would be to see, and I don’t understand why he wants his last memory of Ariadne to be this one. How will he ever be able to get this image out of his mind?

When he tips his head to the side and travels down the length of her legs to her feet, he pauses thoughtfully for the longest time. I look toward the floor of the van where her feet would have been. In their place are the remnants of a pair of banged up, scorched sneakers that haven’t been bagged yet. A smile starts to curl at the edges of his lips, and I think my best friend has finally lost his sanity along with his humanity.

32

CALEPH

“It’s not her.”

“What?”

“It’s not her,” I repeat, as we climb into our car.

“I thought you said back there they were her things.”

“They were. They are. But that’s not her body.”

“I’d like to think so, too,” he says, shooting me a worried expression.

“She was wearing denim cut-offs,” I start. “And that was the necklace her grandmother left her.”

“That’s not proof enough?”

Attila looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. And maybe I have. But I know in my heart that it’s not Ariadne. If it were, the invisible string tethering our hearts together would have been severed. Instead, I still feel her presence as succinctly as though she were standing beside me. Someone wants us to think it’s her to slow us down, but it’s not her. DNA testing would take two days at the very least if it’s a rush job. That’s enough time for whoever took her to get her out of the country.

Attila starts to argue with me, trying to poke holes in my logic. He’s about to hit me in the hopes that I’ll regain my senses.

“Did you see the shoes?”

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