Cassie's Corpse

Chapter 10

Entry 13
January 10, 9:13 a.m., after two days of painful waiting, Reese Ketcher was declared missing and a police report was filed. She told me she was going to play her violin on the porch. A half hour later I went to sit with her. She was gone, her violin resting on the porch like a broken promise. I stood there for longer than was necessary, waiting for life to resume from its momentary pause. But it did not. And so I told Rowand and he told Anna and we all panicked.
  The police asked questions, ruled out kidnapping, searched the forest. But I knew.
I knew and Rowland forbid me from going after her.
  "To protect you," he said, and I screamed at him that I was trying to save his family. He told me I was his family and I said something I shouldn't have.
  I told him that I was not human, that he needed to stop thinking of me as his family. I was dragging around the corpse of his granddaughter and I could leave at any time, and when I did there would be nothing left except the rotting body of a teenage girl.
  He turned away from me then, and I think he was trying to hide the fact that he was crying. I almost went to him and apologized, but something in me pulled me back. Maybe I'm more like Nicolai than I think.
  Anyway, it's only been a day since the report was filed. Rowland hasn't talked to me. It's past midnight, but I can hear old slasher films on the TV. I should talk to him. I don't want to talk to him.