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Lyra gave her head a hard shake. “No way. If my parents find out the chief of police wants to speak to me, that’s a big red flag. Huge.”
I sighed. I couldn’t force her to share personal information with me, as much as I wanted to. She was alive, for one thing; I had no control over the living.
“Promise me you’ll not try to meet any more strangers over the Internet, and that you’ll take care of those cuts.”
“I swear!” She practically jumped out of the chair. “I’m such an idiot. He was so nice though.” Biting her lip, she looked at me. “I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“I told you about the animal attacks.”
“No, I feel like you might know something about this guy. Have there been other girls like me?”
I debated whether to share information about Ashley. In the end, I figured it couldn’t hurt. “There’s a missing young woman named Ashley Pratt.”
“My grandbaby,” Nana Pratt chimed in.
Lyra’s face was solemn. “Do you think she might’ve been meeting the same guy?”
“I didn’t know about him until now, but it seems like a thread worth tugging.”
“What did you think happened to her before now?”
“The police think she ran away. Had a fight with her brother and took off. They think she’ll come back once she’s calmed down or runs out of money.”
“But you don’t think that,” she said, more of a statement than a question.
“No. I don’t.” I swiped her empty glass off the table and placed it in the sink. “I traced her to a clearing in Wild Acres.” I drew the line at sharing the wolf pack’s involvement. It was doubtful this girl knew anything about the supernatural world. She seemed to be in denial about the creature that attacked her. I’d bet good money those weren’t marks from a bear.
“And then what?” Lyra prompted.
“It’s like she vanished into thin air.”
“Maybe the police are right and she ran away. I had a friend who did that. I think about it, too, sometimes.”
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“One more year then. You can do it.”
Lyra placed a hand on the top of the chair to steady herself. “Thanks for the help. I’m so glad I found this place. I ran and ran. I had no clue where I was going; I was just so desperate to get away.”
“Adrenaline is our friend in those situations.”
“Tell her you’ll drive her to the town line, so no one sees you,” Ray suggested.
I scowled at Ray. I didn’t want to drive anybody anywhere. I wanted to clean up the mess that the intruders had made in the cemetery and get on with my day.
Ray noticed my expression because he said, “What? She’s hurt. You can’t make her walk, even to the bus stop. It’s uncivilized.”
I counted to five in my head. “Lyra, how about I drive you close to Port Jervis and then you can hobble the rest of the way.”
Lyra considered the offer. “Okay.”
The drive took twenty minutes. Lyra was silent most of the way, only speaking to offer directions and to ask me the occasional question about myself, to which I gave my usual vague answers.
“You seem different,” Lyra said, scrutinizing me from the passenger seat.
“I lived abroad for a few years. It changes a person.”
