Wisdom (My Blood Approves book #4)

chapter 4

  We got the first flight out of Australia, and the twenty hours of flying didn't help anything. I felt like some kind of stiff zombie the whole way.

Even Milo had shed a few tears when he found out, but I couldn't muster any.I couldn't seem to feel anything.

The flight had given me plenty of time to try to sort through my feelings of denial. Milo tried to talk about it. When that failed, he tried to talk about anything at all, but I couldn't make myself talk. I felt blank inside.

It just didn't seem possible that Jane could be dead. With all the stuff she had been into lately, I always half-expected her death, but I never really believed it would be real. I talked to her last week, and she was doing so much better.She was finally getting her life on track.

Jack waited for us at the airport. He stood at the bottom of the escalator,looking uncertain.

When he saw me, his whole face lit up, but there was still an unusual sadness in his blue eyes. I jogged down the escalator, pushing past people that swore at me, and I dove into his arms. I wrapped my arms and legs around him and let him lift me off the ground.

"I'm so glad you're home," he said into my hair, holding me to him. It wasn't until that moment that I was able to cry.

Milo drove the car back to the house so I could curl up in the backseat with Jack. Jack and I had made plans to move out a few months ago, but once everyone took off, we didn't have any reason. We decided to stay in the house for as long as we lived in Minneapolis, but it was looking like it wouldn't before that much longer. Probably just until Milo finished the school year.

It was unbelievable how much I had missed home. I would've cried out of relief if I wasn't already crying. Jack helped me carry my things up to our room. I curled up in his arms on the bed, and he stroked my hair.

"What happened?" I asked when I had myself under control. I'd talked to him once on the phone before we left, but the connection was sketchy, so he hadn't been able to say much about Jane.

"I don't know all the details," Jack said. I had my head on his chest, so his voice rumbled in my ear. "I only read about it in the paper."

"It was in the paper?" I tilted my head up at him.

"Yeah." He hesitated, and his worried eyes met mine. "I heard about it on the news, but I didn't know it was Jane until Olivia called to tell me about it.Then I read about it in the paper."

"Oh my god!" I sat up, and he kept his hand on my back. "What the hell happened where it was in the paper and the news and Olivia called?""You remember that girl they found in December?" Jack sat up a little more,but he did his best to remain as calm possible. This bothered him more than he'd openly admit, but I could feel what he felt, so I knew.

"That wasn't Jane. I've talked to her since then," I said quickly. Hope surfaced, but he shook his head.

"No, that wasn't Jane," he said. "But since that girl died, they've found two more just like that. I guess it'd been on the news, but I hadn't been paying that much attention."

"What does that have to do with Jane?" I asked.

"These girls were killed in a certain way, left in a certain way." He rubbed my back, preemptively comforting me. "The police won't give out specific details, but they've all been teenage girls, around your age. And they've all been left out in the open in downtown Minneapolis.""What do you mean?""Usually, killers hide their victims, I guess, but these ones have been laid out on the sidewalks," Jack explained. "Jane was left on the sidewalk on Hennepin Avenue. Olivia saw the police when they found her." V, the vampire club that Olivia owned, was right off of Hennepin.