Not mine. So sad

She was stunning, and I was stunned.

At myself, really. Where'd this come from? When did this sudden wash of admiration overtake the protectiveness, anyway? What the hell am I even thinking?

I'm embarrassed to admit that my hands are shaking as I try to get the key into the damned ignition.

She almost remembered you. Smooth, St. John. "I have one of those faces." Right. A face that pales and cracks until a corpse is staring at you through bone-china eyes.

Finally the little metal tab goes into the slot. Oh, don't you even... The Mercedes rumbles to life and I hit the accelerator out of there.

The car heads home, as if it knew the way without me. Always running, away from the same thing, back to the same place, for twenty fucking years. The tires squeal and smoke as I yank the wheel around. No. Not this time. Do something else. Get off the damned hamster wheel you've been on since you put Coraline down, and pick a direction.

I sit there, in the middle of the street, the stink of burnt rubber in my nose and panic choking my brain. Every night I got up, shot up, checked on her. This wasn't the first time I ran to her. Just the first time she'd caught me. That's different.

Different enough? Would that satisfy my sudden irrational need to shake up my outsides to match the crazy gyrations of my insides?

I tentatively decide to go home. The insides flip a little harder. Guess not. Then what?

I try my options:

Josef. My gut twists.

Guierrmo. You need blood, anyway. Stomach offers me a backflip. This keeps up, I wouldn't want anything he had for sale, anyway.

Logan. You could have him track down the dead girl's apartment. Right, and owe him a hundred bucks for a quick search through the college database. I don't care what my innards say, that one isn't happening.

Beth. My sluggish heart stops, then resumes double-time.

And what do you think going back there would get you? She's a reporter. Sure, she's new, but it doesn't take much experience to notice the strange man sniffing persistently around the edges of a murder scene and come to some inconvenient conclusions. I don't need her siccing the cops on me.

Headlights approach my rearview. I hit the gas to avoid triggering a case of Los Angeles road rage behind me, still not sure of my decision.

I'll just work the case. I'll track down the dead girl's killer. It'll probably make Josef happy. If Beth actually says anything about vampires in her story, he'll be all over me to get her to shut up, anyway.

Yeah. I'll just work the case. Get the bad guy, keep the secret, make sure she's safe on her first big story. It's not a big deal, better than sitting around your apartment like a statue. And maybe, since she's all grown up now, you can finally let go and get on with your life.

Maybe that's what I'm feeling all tied up about. Not embarrassed by my reaction to her in that fountain...

I'm just ready to see her as a big girl now, and let her go.

I ignore the fact that my heart stops with that thought, and it's silence in my chest feels eerily familiar. Exactly the way I felt as I walked away from that burning cabin with her warm little arms latched tightly around my neck and Coraline's dying shadow in the window.

Like I just turned my back on God. Walked away from Him and into the waiting arms of Satan.

He's finally returning my embrace. His cold arms beckon me, away from my last illusion of humanity, my desperate attempt to connect to some small glimmer of redemption.

My hands clench convulsively on the steering wheel, my heart begins beating, hammering in my chest. For once I see a clear path, unsullied by the stains on my soul.

I've picked a direction.