Page 42 of Marked By Shadows

He stared down at the piece. “I can sort of see what some of the different patterns would look like before I sew them. Even feel the direction I need to move my hands to get there.”

“Okay. How do you feel about that?”

He frowned at me. “You sound like my therapist.”

I laughed and leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek. “Does your therapist do that?”

“No, thank God. She’s in her sixties.”

“Does she promise to finger press you later?” I whispered into his ear.

He gasped, and I knew that tiny suggestion would make him hard. “Stop, your friends are here.”

“Do you want to keep working on that, or take a break?” I prompted him, like I was offering more private things than getting him food.

He eyed me, then the quilt. “I think I can finish it pretty fast. I see it all in my head. Then we can head out for an early dinner?”

“Sure. I’ll work on the binding while you do the quilting.”

“Binding?” Again, he had no idea. It was interesting how specific the knowledge given to him by the ghost was.

I waved my hand at him and the machine. “Get to work with you.”

“Wow, slave driver much?” Alex said, going back to his stitching. He kept most of the sashing to simple edge to edge swirls, made little flowers in the cornerstones, and full feathers in the larger squares. His seamless transitions made me stare in awe for another few minutes.

I had to shake my head to snap out of it. “You denied me sex. Therefore, I will make you work.”

“Boy…” Jonah teased from somewhere behind me.

Alex’s cheeks began to pink. “Didn’t deny. Just want to finish… I can feel it. See it.” He continued his stitching, flying through squares while I cut the binding.

Chapter 14

Melissa reappeared a handful of times and I worked hard to ignore her small interactions. Mostly she approached Freya. Very little ruffled Freya, but I could tell she was getting annoyed.

“They won’t tell me anything,” Melissa complained.

“Maybe they don’t know anything,” Julie replied.

“Let them work,” Jonah said. “It’s their job.”

“Shouldn’t they have a ton of people searching? Call for volunteers? Have hundreds of people combing the woods?”

“Real life is not like TV,” Chad pointed out. “I watch a lot of true crime stuff, and rarely do they spend a lot of man hours and people searching for an adult. Kids, yes. Because kids get lost. Adults go missing and it’s usually them escaping something, or them murdered and hidden somewhere.”

“Micah vanished but wasn’t murdered. People looked for him.”

I sucked in air and sat down on my knees beside Alex. He was completely lost in the art now. Halfway through the piece, flowing over stitches flawlessly, a bit like the magic he claimed I had. I glanced around, wondering if the cat was still there.

“His was sort of a special circumstance. Vanished in a state park while surrounded by the people he came with. Even then I think it was Tim who began the search, and called for backup. The park rangers are used to people going missing, so they began to search too. That’s normal for state parks, I think.” Chad seemed a fountain of knowledge.

“We should push for them to search then,” Melissa said.

“Those woods are less than ten acres. It is not a state park,” Freya pointed out. “If anyone goes missing there, the police will find them if they are still there.”

“But they haven’t come back yet,” Melissa said. “How do we even know they are searching?”

“Because we expect the police to do their job?” MaryAnn asked.