Breaking the connection between me and him.
Nothing happened. He remained where he was, ignoring the jeers and complaints of the other people in the cells. They seemed to be drunks, by their behavior and smell, which made them a bit more loud and complain-y than the typical sort.
I waited, wracking my brain for options. I needed a break.
The cop took a drink of his coffee, grimaced, and then stood, coffee in one hand, boots in the other.
Without even looking at me, he headed down towards the door at the end of the hall. The noise level rose as he passed, then fell as the door banged shut, well out of my view.
We had a moment.
“Trouble? Did-” Evan flickered, “-do something wrong?”
“Yes and no,” I murmured. “They think I killed you. I’m being set up on that front. Other stuff… well, it’s mostly to do with my family. My grandmother was a person of ill repute, and I’ve inherited that reputation. Kind of.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t have to be here,” I said, and my voice was nearly drowned out by the noise from other cells, “not with me. You helped me against the Hyena, against the so-called wolf, and this is only my own thing.”
“You don’t want my help?”
“I really want help,” I said. “But I don’t want to force you to help. I don’t want you to help because you think there’s no choice, or because… I dunno.”
“Okay,” Evan said. “I-I.”
I waited.
He seemed to come into himself. He spoke quietly. “My body. Tear-cut- things after I die…”
“What?” I asked.
“Right now.” Flicker. “Right here.”
“Oh,” I said. I leaned back. “Yeah. Checking you for evidence, and then the autopsy. Are- are you weaker?”
“No.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Mom and dad. I-” flicker, “-don’t-” flicker, “-want my mom and dad.”
“No?”
“Please. I- help come. Thank.”
“You helped against the Hyena. You, in absolutely no way, owe me anything, understand?”
He was silent for a moment. The room remained noisy. One guy was shouting out cuss words with a peculiar sort of rhythm. One of the homeless mentally ill. I felt a pang of sympathy.
When Evan spoke, it was with more focus and direction than he’d had a moment ago. He’d been summoning up strength. “You found me. I can’t go home.”
“Why not? I mean, I get that you can’t go home, conventionally, but… can’t you be with your mom and dad for a bit?”
Rather than give me a straight answer, he replayed a scene. “It’s- my fault.”
“You’re not to blame for what the Hyena did.”
“I got lost. I saw something… someone? I went to look, and I got turned around,” Evan whispered.
I wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him, to give my words more weight.
“You’re not at fault,” I said. “You have no reason to feel guilty, okay?”
He didn’t move a fraction. Not even the slight movement of breathing.
“When I was younger,” I said, “Not as young as you are… but younger… I ran away. Bad things happened to me too, after that. I blamed myself.”
He was still frozen.
“I can’t remember if I said, but… well, there’s two things I want to say to you, but I feel like each of them is the thing I say first. I’m not doing this well. Um. One of the rules, if you want to use magic like I do? It’s that you aren’t allowed to lie. Bad things happen. You understand?”
Evan nodded.
“The other thing? I don’t think I ever said this out loud. Even to myself. I’m kind of unsure… not sure if I should say it, even, because I might be breaking the rules, and making bad things happen.”
“Don’t- have to.”
“Evan… Neither of us should feel guilty. The bad things that happened to us are not our fault, understand? And if you tell yourself that it is your fault, then you’re kind of saying that what happened to me was definitely my fault. Because you were lured out, but I made the choice to run away.”
“No,” Evan said.
Not the answer I’d expected.
“Don’t do that,” he said. “I… listening- that- I’m so tired.”
Weaker? My reassurances were making him weaker.
“Evan, you could move on. I declare your debt to me paid.”
“I don’t… I can’t. I want- I want to…” he trailed off.
“Evan?”
He only shook his head, adamant.
He had nowhere else to be. He couldn’t be with his body, and he felt too guilty to be around his parents. He didn’t want to move on.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. I’m not sure I get it-”
“I don’t want to die,” he said. An echo of a memory. “I don’t want to die like this.”
But you’re already dead.
Or was moving on another kind of death?
He’d survived on raw tenacity. He’d struggled so he wouldn’t die, isolated and undiscovered, a riddle unsolved.
Now, it seemed, he carried that desire and tenacity forward. It applied, perhaps, to the great unknown that waited beyond.
Nevermind that. I had other pressing issues, and I wasn’t going to devote more time to figuring out how to turn down and get rid of the only help I did have.
“Okay, Evan,” I murmured. “You’ll help?”
He nodded.
“Thank you. Here’s the deal… I’m on something of a quest. The Hyena was the second out of three monsters I’m supposed to stop. I have until midnight to bind the third one and bring it somewhere. My enemies figured this out, and they’ve framed me for your murder.”
He nodded again.
“I can use magic. Not much, but I can use magic. My enemies can use better magic. They’ve stuck me in here, and they want to keep me here until my time is up.”
“-Need to get away,” Evan said.
“Ideally without the cops after me,” I said. “So I can go back to my friends when all is said and done.”
“-Want to go home,” Evan said. A statement echoing a memory.
“Yeah,” I said.
“What- can’t go home,” Evan said.
Was he telling me?
No. I was just having trouble reading his tone. He was asking me a question. What if I couldn’t go home?
“If I can’t go home, if the bridges are burned and there’s no way to get away, then… I guess I have to settle for getting away.”
He nodded.
“I don’t want to do that, though. I don’t want to be a fugitive.”
“Yeah,” Evan said.
“If I use a trick, my enemies are going to use better tricks. They manipulate time, and I don’t really know how that works when they don’t have big rituals going on.”
“Okay,” Evan said.
“Can you start by scouting the area?” I asked. “Stay out of sight of the… there’s a cop with black hair. He’s the guy who put handcuffs on me. Remember?”
“Yes.”
“Escape routes, places to stay away from, places the cops don’t look, and just where different things are, so I can find my way around.”