All Eyes on Me

Chloe supposed she did make Ana sound petty. At least Ana realized that. "You said it."

But now Jackal was being a potential problem. Chloe took a sharp, agitated breath. With Jackal's whole... vigilante thing? Or whatever it was - she had expected him to go along with something like this.

"Look..." she said, taking a moment to gather her thoughts. "I don't think there's anything we can say to the cops to keep Ana out of jail. Because of how the curse affects our minds, we can't just say we're 'not pressing charges.' So if the cops get their hands on her, she's prison bound. And if she goes to prison, that puts a lot of red tape between us and a cure for that curse." She took a break from dragging Ana towards the portal, to make absolutely sure Jackal was on board with this.

"By the time we get the chance to cut through that tape, we might not care enough to fix this. So let's get Ana over there, and the cops off our back. Okay?"

This was a matter of self-worth for her now. Chloe could not stand the idea of causing another huge fuck-up and destroying her family. She didn't know if she could survive something like that. She had the eyes of a cornered animal. She was desperate.

If Jackal wasn't going to help, he was the enemy.

Chloe gritted her teeth. Jackal was being difficult, and Ana was still hurling obscenities at them. This was all going to hell in too much of a figurative sense, and not enough of a literal one.

A lot of her anger came from Jackal's idea that he would still care even if she didn't. She snarled at that a little, but she let him finish before taking her turn.

"Alright. First of all, we don't know how this curse works or what it's capable of. There's nothing making you better at keeping this up than I am, as far as either of us could know for sure." She let out some of her frustration with an aggressive jab of her finger in Jackal's direction.

"Secondly, just because I want to handle this without earthly legal authorities doesn't mean it can't be reasonable. I am shocked that I have to tell you this. I'm not going to torture her or kill her just because of all this shit she put us through, because she's still family. Even if I did think she was about to eat me and Amber a few minutes ago."

"Lastly. If the cops come, and Ana talks to them, she can absolutely fuck us. All she'd have to do was tell the right lies. She could toss us into a legal maze that no expensive team of lawyers could pull us out of. And like I just said, we could be on the clock. So."

Chloe picked Ana up and carried her through the portal. She wasn't going to have any more arguments about it. The police were on their way, and she needed to start getting her story straight.

Chloe would carry Ana over to a couch and lay her down on it. Something about this beach house would seem off, in ways that Ana just wouldn't be able to put her finger on. And the pain of her bullet wound would subside. Ana would find her eyelids getting heavy, even losing the energy to hurl insults.

"Jackal was right," Chloe told her. "You're a victim here too." Her voice was surprisingly tender considering what had been said and done up to now. "We'll find a way to make this right. But for now, maybe you should take a nap. It'll help you clear your head."

Chloe would brush a hand against Ana's cheek, and she would go out like a light, asleep on the couch.

Once Ana was dead to the world, Chloe would leave the portal again, closing it behind her, and taking a deep breath before collapsing against the wall.

"Alright... that's taken care of. Let's get our story straight."

She stared at the floor for a second, deep in thought. "Ana and I actually got drinks together a couple of times. Before I knew..." She sighed. "No, first things first. She's an acquaintance of mine. She breaks in, acts really crazy, and starts a fight with me. The stuff I told Amber was a false alarm. It was all a big misunderstanding, and... after you got here, Ana ran out through this hell portal."

She tapped the large canvas hanging from the wall a few times. It was covered with demon-blood-infused ink bearing all kinds of patterns and symbols. A few seconds ago, it looked like a portal to a beach house.

"We can tell the cops that we're going to go find her and try to calm her down later. We're very worried about her. And we aren't pressing charges, and... fuck, right, she threw a table out of our window." Chloe pointed to it. There was a hole in the big window on that end of the former sunroom. "But I'll cover whatever damage that caused. You don't need to remember that part. You weren't here yet. Think you can keep that all straight?"

Chloe would repeat anything she needed to. Or, she could offer to send him through the portal to wait, and Chloe could just say he was out there looking for Ana.

It wasn't her first time lying to police, and as far as she knew they'd believed her well enough all the other times she'd done it. But it was still nerve-wracking, especially after everything else that had just happened today. And thank hell that table didn't land on anyone or destroy anyone's car. Some good samaritan even stopped it from hitting the ground with their telekinesis, so Chloe could go bring it back up the elevator when she had a moment.

A small comfort, but hey, she would take any good news she could get right now.

As the door closed, and the cops left them, Chloe took a deep breath and sighed.

"Right. Next steps... so, first off, just so we're on the same page. The beach house isn't real. It's just this fake place I set up in my hell. I had this whole elaborate scheme in mind for that, but, it's probably not a useful idea at this point, so... I'm gonna go check up on Amber. Then, I guess, we can go have some fake mojitos with Anastasia and talk this out. Does that work for you?"