Only the Moon Watching

Chapter 58: I've Been Betrayed

A sleep paralysis demon looms over me, reaching for me with a long stiletto claw...

"You're free to go," it says, and a wisp of long, black hair touches my face.

I jerk awake.

"You're free to go," Garda Girdle says again. Her hair is loose and her hands are busy, hurrying to slick it back into her usual flawless bun.

"What?"
"We figured out how the drugs came in. You can return to your cell."
Hands still in her hair, she gestures with her elbow towards the door and gives me a look of pure annoyance.

Still tired, blinking, I stumble into the hall. I wish I'd thought to rub my eyes before confining my hands to the waistband of my pants. My vision's so blurry I wonder if I'm still dreaming. I'm really getting our of Ad-Seg? After they thought I brought drugs into – I did bring drugs into –

I seem to time-jump, just like I did during my arraignment. One moment I'm leaving my segregated cell and the next I'm standing in the doorway of mine and Shiv's room.

I still feel like I'm dreaming. Something about the scene is eerily familiar, a call back to my first day in jail, in the room with the telephone and the bail bondsmen's numbers: Shiv, splayed out on her back, her legs crossed – bouncing in slow, lazy agitation like a cat's tail. I've seen her twinkling eyes and devilish grin – lived with them for weeks, now – but something is suddenly unfamiliar about them again. She'd explained jail to me, back on my first day, had been brimming over with excitement to share every secret and codename and trick she knew...

"You look like you have a secret," I say. "Can it wait? My head's all fucked from being in Ad-Seg so long. Girdle just broke me out – says she believes it wasn't me who– What?"

At the mention of Girdle's name, Shiv twitched, looking more hostile than I've ever seen her.

"Don't give her any credit."

"Girdle?"

Shiv sits up. Her hair's loose too, falling in red waves around her shoulders. For a half-thought, I'm reminded of the sleep paralysis demon and I get a tingle up my spine, then the memory fades.

"I got you out, babe! It's the second to last chapter, now!"

"The what?"

Shiv pats the bed beside her and I sit. She offers me a piece of her hair to play with but I'm too slow to take it, so she starts braiding it herself instead.

"You know: in any mystery, the second to last chapter is just a big monologue. Either the villain reveals her plan or the detective explains how she pieced it all together. Every clue's revisited, every little seed is shown to payoff to be something. This is that chapter! You following?"

"Honestly, no, I'm so tired– my head's not right, I haven't quite woken up–"
"I'm going to tell you how I framed them!"
"Framed–?"
Shiv tosses her hair over her shoulder and points under our desk. For the first time, I notice it's empty. There aren't any trash bags, no paper scraps, no hidden Prunos...

"Kristina and Grifta didn't put a Pruno-bomb in our room..." I say, slowly piecing it together... "it was you?"

"Aren't I brilliant? No –" she holds up a finger to stop me speaking. "You can't interrupt in the second to last chapter, just listen: Grifta and Kristina Kelly did plant a Pruno bomb on us. They wanted you to get caught with the pills so you'd get moved and they could have the cell. Or at least, they'd make our room smell and ruin all our stuff and make Garda Girdle really, really mad at us. But they messed up.