Page 19 of Heartsong
“I didn’t want to say too much out there.”
Anna stared at June in one of the mirrors. The other woman had wrapped her arms around herself, and her shoulders hunched as if to make herself smaller.
“There was something…” June’s jaw worked, and it took her another moment to say, “I saw something last night. You got me into the next hallway, and I ran out the emergency exit. I turned around in the alley but you weren’t there. And then there was this huge crash and I looked up and…”
June met her gaze in the mirror, those big gray eyes wide and beseeching.
“There must have been something in the gas,” Anna forced herself to say through her dry throat.
“Of course there was. It was some sort of sedative, to knock us out. But I…I got out. I wasn’t breathing it anymore. And I saw…” June took a sharp breath. “I thought I saw something fly away. Carrying somebody else.”
Anna swallowed hard. “Like a helicopter?”
“Like a statue come to life.”
The blood drained from her face. “One of the statues…?”
June nodded gravely, those eyes trained on her.
Careful careful careful.
Anna’s guts clenched and knotted with a sick sort of anxiety. She’d already done so much lying today. She wasn’t a righteous person, knew the world was a complex tapestry of grays, and had lied her way out of plenty of situations growing up. But she’d made a promise to herself when she was finally on her own that things would be different. She would try not to lie or obfuscate to get out of things.
That was the plan before the world threw so many fucking curveballs my way.
Should it worry her that she lied to the police and her bosses with such ease? What did it say about her that she was going to lie to June, who looked so vulnerable, like what she needed the most in this world was a friend and ally?
Anna wished it could be different. She was all for female solidarity, and it would be amazing to just spill her guts to the one person who maybe would understand.
But she had a guy in her apartment who needed her help—one who was currently a statue that the Gwyneths and police considered stolen property. The universe was a bitch sometimes, and Anna knew better than most that she had to protect herself first.
Wishes don’t do shit.
So Anna did what she had to do. She gaslit. She lied.
“I don’t remember much. It was mostly shapes. Whatever was in that gas, it had me seeing things. I barely remember getting home last night.”
June stood silently with her answer for a long, horrible moment.
“I remember getting out,” said June slowly.
Anna shook her head. “I don’t.”
She broke their contact by running a faucet and going through the motions of washing her hands. A skitter went up her spine when June came alongside her, the other woman’s coiled nerves and suspicions pressing against her like a physical touch.
“What happened last night wasn’t normal, even for art theft. This place…it isn’t a normal museum.”
Anna bit back her humorless laugh.Oh, what an understatement.
6
Anna didn’t get back to her apartment until late that afternoon, two grocery bags and a heaping dollop of anxiety weighing her down.
The rest of the day had been painfully slow, going over her story again and again, answering the same question just phrased differently over and over. They interviewed Anna with June, separately from everyone else, in front of Carrie, in front of Gavin. Every combination. Her jaw and throat ached from all the talking, and she couldn’t wait to crack open the new jar of honey and stir it into some hot lemon water.
She heard Captain hit the floor and pad into the kitchen to inspect what she’d brought. He chirped and meowed in greeting, weaving between her legs.
“Yes, I got you stuff,” she assured him. Leaning down, she picked him up to hold like a baby and bury her face in his soft tummy. “How’s our guest?”
