Lyssa woke up quickly when she heard the sirens wailing. The police were always quick to arrest even innocent street kids, and she disliked the idea of being put in one of the overcrowded juvie halls. Her truth-sensing cross necklace shimmered gently in the moonlight, as did the knife lying a few feet away. There was no sense in leaving a knife with her blood on it, not when she was as difficult to find as she was. The police might think she was dead or something. She grabbed the knife, stuffed it into the pocket of her tattered jeans, and disappeared into the shadowy network of alleys.

Several blocks away, a figure unseen by anyone stepped back from a body. A wine-dark flood of liquid-blood-had poured from cuts at its wrists, stomach, and throat. The figure chuckled. “Beautiful…” it murmured, and laughed a little louder. A white paper fell from its open hand onto the body. Turning, it walked away as the siren’s wails continued.

The next morning, Lyssa was in what passed for a home for her: a small alcove in the river cliff. It was cozy, filled with her various possessions: a pillow and blanket snatched from a trashcan (washed, of course), a small wooden box filled with her memories from before the crash, and a small basin full of water. She usually slept here, but sometimes stayed in the alleys of the city, watching over the younger sister of her best friend. Katherine had died a year ago, and while Lyssa watched her succumb to the disease, weeping, she had begged Lyssa to protect her little sister, Emma. Lyssa took that last wish seriously, and had protected Emma every day since Katherine’s death. Emma was now eleven, and tough, so Lyssa didn’t need to watch her as much.

Leaving the cave to scrounge up something to eat, she saw a group of police detectives putting up yellow tape around a small patch of land in the middle of the meadow above the riverbank. Lyssa swore-there was no way to sneak away. She’d be found in their investigation, and she was too hungry to wait, so she brazenly walked into their midst, startling them.
“Hello, officers,” she said, acting a little frightened. It wasn’t hard; they were all pale and seemed shocked by whatever was in the patch of land they were standing around.

“Hey, pal, were you here last night? Did you see anything strange?” one in a green coat that was too wide for his starved-looking frame.

Lyssa blinked in surprise. “No, I was with a friend in the city last night, sir.” She gestured with her head to the buildings clustered like sentinels around the park. “She can verify that, if you’d like. Anyway, what happened?” They had intrigued her-not hard to do; she had once dreamed of being an investigator herself, solving crimes and ensuring that the guilty party paid for their folly. After her family’s death, that had changed. Now, she just tried to survive.

The hungry-looking detective scratched his head and looked away. “Well, pal, don’t be telling anyone this, but…” He was cut off by another detective. “Gumshoe. Don’t tell her! You want a pay cut again?” The thin detective’s-no, his name was Gumshoe- expression looked like a kicked puppy at this idea. “No…” he murmured.

Lyssa sighed. “Fine, I’ll guess, then. You’ve got a murder here, and no evidence was left, nor any witnesses. Am I right?” She had seen blood on the grass, and the tip of a finger; the very fact that they were just standing around betrayed their lack of information.

Gumshoe stared at her. “How’d ya guess, pal?!” he demanded. Lyssa simply pointed at the little she could see of the crime scene. “Please stop calling me ‘pal’, Detective. It’s a bit familiar-sounding for someone you just met.”

She walked around Gumshoe, and gasped at the sight. There was a woman’s body on the grass, with dried blood encrusting her wrists and throat, and a long bloody cut down her belly.

“What…what happened here…?” she whispered, losing her composure. “This is horrible!” Worse, she knew this woman-she was a volunteer at the local shelter, a good, decent woman whose only sin was overcooking vegetables.

The other detectives sighed. “If only we knew,” said the one who had shushed Gumshoe. “We’d love to get our hands on the guy who did this.”

Lyssa looked back at the woman’s face, and then to the detective. “I know this woman,” she said, and filled them in on who she was. “Can…can I help you? I know this city’s back streets and alleys like the back of my hand, and she was kind to me…I’m not going to let a psycho like this roam free.” She didn’t mention that she could sense lies with her necklace; that would almost guarantee that she would get sent to juvie-or worse, to an asylum.

Gumshoe scratched his head again. “Sure, why not, pa-I mean…what was your name?”

“Alyssa, sir, no last name. You mean it?”

“It can’t hurt. There’s nothing to be found on this scene anyway.”

Lyssa thought for a moment. “I know people who hang around this park at night. I’ll go talk to them,” she said. Whoever had done this, she wasn’t going to let him walk free in the same city as Emma. Emma was tough in a fistfight, but fighting against a guy with a knife was a whole different ballgame.