Tether ⌲ Stiles Stilinski [2]

twenty-eight

"Can you remember anything else?"

The crescents of my fingernails dug into the palm of my hand. But I couldn't feel them.

"I'm really sorry for your loss," Parrish's voice was a heavy-handed attempt at sympathy and pity. It funnelled into my ears from some place far away. "Any information about the attackers could help us bring justice to your sister."

I was existing somewhere outside of my skin, staring blankly into the air between me and the young deputy. None of my senses were real. I could still feel the chill of the pavement, the burn in my lungs, and the softness of my sister's limp hand. I could still smell the coppery stain of her blood. I could still hear myself crying.

"It all happened so fast," I mumbled flatly. I had provided the words I was supposed to. When I had told Parrish the story about my friends and I getting carjacked at knifepoint, a blur of an attacker with a shining blade, too quick for me to catch them, it had sounded like someone else's voice leaving my lips.

"Right, of course."

A beat of silence.

I heard my father.

"Look at me," he had urged. "Look at me, Eleanor."

When I gazed at him, I realized I was receiving orders from a man with a face like fractured stone, solid on the surface but one fatal hit away from breaking completely.

"You have to remember. Don't get too specific. Stick to plausible but vague details."

I hadn't registered his arrival to the scene until someone was wrapping their arms around me and gently rocking me back and forth. It was my father who had pried me off of my sister's body, even when I had felt it would be impossible to ever let go. It was my father who immediately launched into a plan that would cover for all of us and not provoke any further questions. A way to explain the body of an innocent girl.

His daughter.

And yet he hadn't shed a single tear so far.

"Is there anything else you can tell me about the build of the attacker perhaps? Were they wearing dark clothes?" Parrish was asking.

"How are you doing this?" Scott had cried to my father.

He had gone silent, before simply replying. "It's what we do. It's what we have to do."

Scott and Isaac had gotten the same exact script from my father. Everyone whose DNA evidence littered the scene had the same explanation of a tragic, unstoppable accident.

It was tragic. But it was no accident. The Nogitsune had made the Oni drive a sword right through my sister's body.

"Eleanor?" Parrish pushed gently. "I'm just trying to find out everything I can from anyone who was a witness so that we can help Allison."

I blinked.

Suddenly I was back at the Sheriff's department, and everything was alight again. The fabric of the chair scratched at my arms, the air was so stuffy it was claustrophobic, the young deputy's eyes were filled with so much misdirected sadness it was nauseating.

I looked down at my curled hands and was immediately washed over by a violent sickness.

No one could help Allison. Not anymore.

"It all happened so fast," I repeated.

Parrish's lips flattened into a thin line and his face scrunched in a way that seemed as though he was trying to recall his training from the academy about how he was meant to approach traumatized witnesses.