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“Thanks,” Gwen huffed, then paused, eyes darting back and forth. “Fuck, I don’t feel anything!”
There were no weird sensations, no swelling of power that gave Gwen any confidence that something was different. She felt just as normal as she had after binding her soul to Ambrosius. Had she done something wrong?
“Why do you insist that you’ll feel something every time?” Ambrosius asked. “You didn’t feel anything when your hair changed, did you?”
“Because movies and shit told me so, okay?!” Gwen barked. “How the fuck am I supposed to know this worked?!”
“You’ll just know!” Ambrosius snapped. “Like you knew to feed when the time was right. You told me to trust you, you told me to make you ready. Consider this part of that andlistento me for once! My power isn’t something so easily defined, Gwen. It’s notlogical,it never has been. It’s fear and chaos, it’s not meant to make sense. Stop trying to rationalize it and trust your intuition. Trust yourself.”
Gwen bit her lip, the natural urge to resist lingered, but she pushed through it. Eventually, she relaxed her jaw and her rigid stance grew lax.
“Okay,” she sighed, then more assuredly. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
39
Guilt
Gwen
The door to her neighbor’s apartment was unlocked.
Gwen wasn’t sure if it was a good sign or not as she crept inside, but she’d worry about that later. As quietly as she could, Gwen shut the door behind her before turning on her phone’s flashlight. Turning on any of the lights could alert someone, and the last thing Gwen needed was one more fucking thing to go wrong.
The apartment looked the same way it did when she had last been there. At least, at first glance. Gwen noticed a trail of something where James’ body had been. Upon closer inspection, the substance looked mostly clear, but was viscous.
Drool?
Gwen filed away that information as she slipped from the kitchen and toward the bed. She had found the doll andscroll under the bed before. Perhaps there were other unsavory things there that could actually help?
Dropping to her knees, Gwen bent forward, aiming her phone beneath the bed. There was a collection of dust bunnies, hair, and the same porn magazines Gwen had accidentally found prior. A pang of disappointment went through her frame, but she supposed it would be silly to expect to find information about a demon under someone’s bed—
Wait a goddamn minute.
Gwen pulled the porn magazines out. The stack wasn’t massive, no more than seven volumes, but Gwen took her time to flip through them. Eyes darting over more breasts than she had ever seen before. She was starting to doubt her little weird hunch when a small receipt nearly fell from a centerfold. Catching it, Gwen’s eyebrow raised.
The receipt fromMaster Bastingwas dated over a year ago, and the cashier was none other than Zander, Gwen’s missing former coworker. It listed a single purchase of a pack of mints, an odd thing to keep in a porn magazine. Or so Gwen thought, until she flipped the receipt over. Someone had written a website address along with the wordsGhost Haunt Hub.It couldn’t have been Zander, as the handwriting didn’t match his messy scrawl. If Gwen had to bet on it, though, she’d guess it was someone who cared about their handwriting.
“Okay, okay, okay,” Gwen whispered under her breath.
She pocketed the receipt and shoved the magazines back under the bed. Maybe this website meant something or maybe it meant nothing. Whatever the case, Gwen was quick to turn her phone light toward the small desk nearthe bed. At the sight of the simple laptop, Gwen immediately opened it and booted it up. A generic screensaver appeared, along with a prompt for a password.
Shit.
Gwen bit her lip. She didn’t know shit about James Howard outside the fact that she was pretty sure he had eaten a part of her liver. Gwen tried to calm herself enough to think, but Ambrosius’ life was on the line, and here she was playing detective. But Ambrosius said to trust her intuition, didn’t he?
C’mon, Gwen, think! If you were a guy in your late thirties, what password would you use?
Her fingers hit the keyboard, quickly typing one word.
Boobs.
“Are you fucking serious?” Gwen whispered as the computer booted up the home screen. “Fucking men.”
James Howard was apparently messy on his computer, too. The home screen was littered with so many icons that it took her a moment to orient herself. However, one particular file caught her attention.
Scroll.01.