Page 30 of Marked By Shadows

“Hmm,” Alex hummed against my face, where he pressed his beard to help ground me. “We’ll talk about it later.”

Ihadseen something. That was what Alex was saying without saying it. His sight, vision, ability, whatever it was, was so much more in tune than mine. If I only saw a shadow what had he seen?

“Alex?” I had to know. Even standing there in the forest, heart pounding, ears filled with the sound of my own terror, I had to know. “What did you see?”

“Byrony’s ghost,” he told me quietly, whispering the words into my ear so no one else would hear. “She went right through you.”

I sucked in a breath so fast and hard that I choked. Alex continued to rock me, rub my back, and hold me tight. How could he be so calm? Byrony was dead? Was her body nearby? I had a million questions but couldn’t clarify a single one.

“Her body?” I asked after a few minutes of contemplating.

“No idea,” he answered. “I don’t smell blood. I don’t see anything nearby. But I’m keeping the group together. No one needs to find that.”

“What about Joe?” I wondered.

This time Alex paused. I could tell he was thinking, debating on something, but he didn’t answer.

“Alex?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “There was another… shadow? I don’t know. Not as defined. Maybe Joe? Maybe something else.”

“Did it feel like your demons?” Like the djinn or whatever it had been who had already claimed Alex and seemed to stalk us wherever we went.

“No.”

I leaned into his embrace, resting my face in the groove of his neck. “This was supposed to be a holiday.”

“Still can be,” Alex acknowledged. “As soon as the police arrive, we’re handing it over to them.”

“What will you tell them?”

He shrugged and I understood. There wasn’t much he could tell them. They wouldn’t believe him if he said he saw a ghost. And if he did, they might even point fingers at him for doing something, though he’d been with the rest of the group the whole time. In fact, the entire group had been together all day. Perhaps Joe had done something and then killed himself? Of course my brain suddenly reminded me of dozens of news stories over the years of exactly that.

Alex kissed me on the cheek, and I turned my face to look up at him. “Stop thinking so hard,” he told me.

“Can’t help it. And you can’t say you aren’t doing the same.”

He nodded, lips pulled tight into a mild grimace. “True. But this is not our doing, okay?”

“If we had stayed home?”

“This probably would have happened anyway. Blaming yourself only brings you unnecessary pain.”

“Fucking truth bomb,” I grumbled at him.

“There’s a reason they say the truth hurts,” Alex agreed.

Chapter 11

By the time the police finally arrived we were all sitting on the trail, exhausted, adrenaline gone, and I really wished we could go home, like back to New Orleans home. At least the dead there I knew of only in historical references. Byrony and I may not have been friends exactly, but I’d known her for years. Had my misfortune cast trouble on her? If so, what about the rest of the group?

Alex released me long enough to show them where they had found the stuff. The police questioned everyone. Sad how I predicted what they would ask. Too many times having experienced the whole missing person thing. They didn’t recognize my name, for which I was grateful. I instantly blamed myself, as though somehow my disappearance made it easier for those around me to vanish.

“So you haven’t known them long?” The detective asked me.

“I’ve known Byrony for a few years, but never all that well. More online friends than real life friends,” I said. We hadn’t really been friends at all. Byrony had a way of pushing people’s buttons, and she had always disliked me. “I never met Joe until late last night. Saw him for only a few minutes before heading back to bed.”

“They didn’t indicate they were going anywhere?”