Slaughter Daughter by Eve Langlais

6

Cassidy showedup at the police station, once more apologizing for her lateness. I hadn’t realized how long I’d sat in the barren office, waiting. Before leaving, Garrett had given me a prepaid phone that I could hook up to Wi-Fi. I spent some time on the internet, catching up on what my lawyer and the cops weren’t telling me.

The number of articles, posts, and comments was staggering. I made the mistake of reading some of them before my churning stomach had me searching for cute kitten pics.

Too late. The words I’d read remained seared on my retinas.

Hope they catch those murderers and decapitate them.

Yeah. With a dull knife.

But first rape their ugly-ass daughter.

Why did they want to hurt me? I’d done nothing.

I sat in shock and silence on the drive to my temporary home. Cassidy didn’t seem to notice.

“I found you a place. Francine is technically retired from the foster care business, but when I told her about the challenge of placing you, she agreed to take you on.”

“So I’m a pity case. Great,” I grumbled under my breath.

The house was a bungalow, shabby but clean. The inside was old and worn, as well, the carpet rubbed shiny in spots.

Francine turned out to be a woman with a short, silvery haircut and a pear-shaped figure. She took one look at me and said, “Don’t give me any trouble and we’ll get along fine.”

How had my straight-A ass gone from teacher’s pet and honor roll to borderline criminal?

Francine wasn’t bad, though. She stayed out of my way, only calling me for food and to make sure I saw my daily list of chores. None took too long, so I spent a lot of time in my room, scouring the web, unable to stop myself from looking at the train crash that was now my life.

Why were people so horrible? I’d done nothing, but the things I read made me hate. Made me wonder if perhaps a kernel of evil existed in me. Because I did want to hurt. Scream. Rail at the world and the unfairness of it all.

While I’d been in the hospital, neighbors had come out to say they’d always known there was something wrong with my family. Coworkers said my parents seemed like such nice, normal people. A kid at my school called me the weird nerd girl—way to devalue my hard work and studying.

A supposed witness, who claimed to be the person filming, turned out to be a fake. People loved their tiny moments of fame, which might be why the press kept hounding me. I insisted it was all a mistake. My conviction fell on deaf ears. The longer my parents remained on the lam, the less I believed in their innocence. Surely, they would have stayed to fight, if only to be with me.

It didn’t help that I kept having dreams of my dad. A man with glowing eyes, telling me that he loved me and how he wished he could take me away but that this was for the best.

Best for whom? Because I certainly wasn’t doing very well.

Despite efforts to scrub the video, it went viral. And given that the pentagram crimes stretched over state lines, the FBI came in.

Which led to another round of questioning by Special Agent Lyle Brunealt, an intense man with a thin comb-over. He got right to business, his voice firm—not unkind but not friendly either. He didn’t care about me. He wanted information.

“Have you heard from your parents?”

“Nope.” The honest truth.

“What do you know about the pentagram murders?” he asked.

“Only what they say on the internet. Is it true you’ve never found any bodies?” According to the documentary, while many pentagrams had been found with blood pools indicating a massacre, nobody had located a single corpse. Testing on the blood confirmed it as human, but the ash in the center of the design? Inconclusive.

“Still no actual victims, I hear. Nor a single DNA match from any of the crime scenes,” Garrett offered on a low purr.

Brunealt scowled. “Doesn’t mean shit. Transients are hard to track and rarely reported missing.”

“Or could it be that no crime was committed?” Garrett said.

“The video says otherwise.” Brunealt cleared his throat. “Abigail, did you ever see your parents practice any type of witchcraft?”

“No.” Although they did own a lot of candles, which I never saw them burn. And yet, every few months, we got a box full.

“Pray to Satan?”

I snorted. “Seriously?”

“Just answer.”

“Why? Didn’t we already go through this?” How many times would I have to answer the same questions?

“Let’s do it again.”

On and on it went, the agent asking me dumb shit, me replying to his stupid questions. I knew nothing, but he assumed I lied. He kept waiting for me to trip up. When I didn’t, the FBI watched me like a hawk, hoping my parents would come for me or, at the very least, contact me in a way they could trace.

They weren’t the only ones who figured Mom and Dad would get in touch. The people who loved me wouldn’t have abandoned me—not without some kind of word.

Then again, how could they come near? With so many eyes on me, it would be dangerous for them to approach. And if they’d left me a note at home, I never got it.

The police didn’t allow me to return—not even for my stuff—since they considered it a crime scene. Even my bedroom. Although, at Garrett’s insistence, they allowed my social worker inside to pack me some things, clothes and toiletries, which they then pawed through before letting me have them.

Cassidy had kindly included a picture of my parents and me that I kept on my dresser. The three of us smiling like a happy, normal family. Was my childhood a lie? Because the circumstantial evidence was piling up. The states we’d lived in all had bloody pentagram crime scenes. The other places with similar crime scenes were all close enough to drive.

I already knew my parents had been planning to move again, using my college as an excuse. Would university even be possible now? I’d already had two of my offers rescinded, and I was waiting on the third.

What would happen to me once I graduated and turned eighteen? Where would I go? What would I do? I had no one to turn to because I was alone in the world.

The only saving grace in my life was Garrett, who, for some reason, kept me protected. Once everyone realized that I knew nothing, the meetings with law enforcement stopped. I could only say, “I don’t know,” so many times before they gave up.

The media, though? It took me shaming them to stop the harassment.

Frustrated at how they intruded on my life when all I wanted to do was wallow in misery, I created my own live video. I cried and claimed that a reporter was blackmailing me. True, actually. He’d said he would paint me as a killer if I didn’t send him nude pictures.

The focus shifted as people screamed at the media and railed at how they exploited tragedy and children. They soon moved on to the next scandal. And from that moment on, I remained quiet because I knew how easily the world online could turn into a mob.

Within a few weeks, my celebrity status waned. Cassidy, who’d been fired for selling my story—with embellishments—to a tabloid, was replaced by Mrs. Fitzpatrick, an older lady with gray hair and a formidable bosom. She decided that she didn’t like me living with Francine and shifted me to a group home for teens. I was a curiosity for a few days until they realized I wouldn’t torture any cats or kill any neighborhood kids.

Yet.

But I swore if the guy with the locker beside mine slapped me again with its door, I might make an exception.