Page 7 of Marked By Shadows

“Sure,” I held out the food. We ate spread out on the futon, sharing half of each burger, one beef with a giant stack of toppings, and the other a spicy chicken thing, that was fantastic. We had fries and onion rings, plus a handful of fried random veggies. By the time I washed my hands after cleaning up the food remnants to get back to the crochet work, I realized Alex and I had barely talked the entire meal. He hadn’t pushed either. There was no taint of awkwardness in the air like with most people. It made me examine him to try to read his mood, but he focused on his own little slip of yarn, having made a giant tail of single crochets in practice. My silence didn’t bother him at all.

“What did you and Lukas fight about?”

Alex blinked and looked up. “His job. He wants to bother some of his co-workers for more details. What they might know about what happened to me, but I’d rather he didn’t lose his job over that.”

“Even if it got answers?”

“What would it change? It won’t erase the month I lost. I want to move forward,” he paused, gaze intense, “with you, hopefully.”

I smiled, feeling my anxiety ease a bit more. “Even if it’s getting to know me and my weird cosplay friends?”

“Even if,” he said, then glanced toward the door. “What if we hear something?”

Like a middle of the night monster. Years of being plagued by that odd squawking monkey thing, though it sometimes sounded like cats or other not quite benign things, left me more than a little raw. A month of brutal silence while praying for a sign of Alex’s return had worn at me. I slept hard when I finally slept, but never peacefully. The fact that Alex heard it too, experienced the same things, gave us one more thing to bond over. I hated that it would stalk him too, but finally felt like I wasn’t alone for the first time in years. I was not naïve enough to think it was gone forever. Even if I wasn’t hearing it right now.

I closed my eyes for a moment and sucked in a breath, steadying myself as the internal noise descended again. So much in my head. Alex’s lips touched mine in a soft kiss, and I opened my eyes to look at him. He pulled away with a little smile.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said.

“Not upset.” A thought occurred to me then. “Did you hear it last night?”

Alex glanced down as though considering for a half a second whether or not to lie. “Yes.”

I leaned forward and rewarded him with a small kiss. “Thank you for not lying. As for the noise… It follows wherever I go. Sometimes it will go quiet for a while, and I’ll think it’s finally over, then it returns.” I shrugged, refusing to focus on something I didn’t seem to have the power to change. “The place we are staying has six rooms in the main house and three small cottages a few feet from the back door. We are staying in one of the cottages.”

Better to not subject everyone to the weirdness of my reality. Noises in the night, shadows dogging my footsteps, and occasionally the feeling of fire beneath my skin did not need to be shared with anyone. Except maybe Alex, who never looked at me with pity or disbelief in his eyes. “The main house is supposed to be haunted, but I’ve been there twice and never experienced anything.”

“Like the thrift shop you sent me to?” Alex wanted to know, reminding me of the ghost who had helped him shop for clothing.

“I’ve been by there a half dozen times in the past month…”

“No seventies ghost girl hanging out?”

I shook my head. He appeared thoughtful. Was he wallowing in his own anxiety about whatever had been awakened inside of him? Perhaps he’d always seen things and written them off as normal until presented with something that couldn’t fit the narrative.

While I didn’t know all the details about what he’d seen in the deserts of Afghanistan, Alex compared it to the djinn of Islamic legend. Djinn were mortal creatures, though longer lived than humans. They were also made up of fire and tended to take over people a lot like a demonic possession might. Whatever it had been had killed his teammates and somehow spared Alex, leaving him with memories everyone denied were possible. When he’d vanished, I vaguely recalled a dream of him, fire glowing beneath his skin as he was sucked into a grave. Terrifying, and yet I’d only been an observing party to it. I suspected he remembered a lot more than I did of the event.

Of course remembering it made my heart race and my skin prickle with fear. I set aside the crochet work, wanting more to bask in him for a little while. He was home. We’d have to take that for what it was—a blessing.

“How about we get in the bath and you let me rub you down with some lotion?” Sex was easy, a good distraction. Most men took sex as intimacy, letting the physical relationship sustain a relationship. Alex never let me get away with it. He wanted more than just my body. Which while thrilling, was also terrifying. Were there enough interesting things about me to keep him around? Would that have changed in the short time he was away? Maybe he would let me take care of him for a while, and that was okay too.

“Bath sounds good. My skin still feels tight,” Alex agreed. “As long as you show me how to finish this later?” He held up the yarn string.

“Sure.” I promised and held out a hand. He took it, his grip warm in mine and we headed to the bathroom. There was time for worrying later.

Chapter 3

Afew days of normalcy went a long way in restoring my faith in life. Alex and I prepared for the trip, I made him eat at least three times a day, feeding him as many avocados and bananas as he could manage to eat since they were full of potassium. And we both worked the shop with an edge of lighthearted humor. While he was a horrible dancer, mostly because it kicked his hip out of place, he swayed with me on slow evenings. I enjoyed his laughter and smile, and the way he never hesitated to touch me in public. Alex seemed unchanged by the stolen time. Wary sometimes, but he’d had that before. His easy affection, and interest in learning everything there was to know about me, the shop, the tours, and even the city I called home, made my anxiety relax, and heart squeeze with happiness I hadn’t felt in a long time.

He had returned to his brother’s place once for a night, which ended up being a fitful night of sleep for me, and the first time I’d heard the noise outside in a long time. I’d ended up texting him in the middle of the night, when a rare panic attack had taken over my brain. While he hadn’t come running to my house because I insisted he stay home, he did text me back until sleep finally took over and shut my brain down.

I felt bad for using him to stave off the terror though he didn’t mind at all. Having him in my space helped quiet my mind even when it raged in insane circles of logic. He’d also become quite a master at crochet roses, completing dozens of the things while he practiced. My anxiety over the trip increased even though I’d planned it to death, although Alex’s childlike excitement renewed my own.

I rented a smaller SUV for the trip, mostly to fit my sewing stuff. Two machines, a couple of boxes of fabric, several zippered garment bags of current projects or completed works, a suitcase of regular clothes, and I was about as ready as I was going to get. Alex arrived with a duffle bag full of what little he owned—I’d have to remedy that—and eyed the contents of the car.

“I guess this explains why we’re driving?”

“It’s a bit of a sewing retreat. The convention doesn’t start until Thursday. Runs through Sunday, but we are there through the following Wednesday.” Since it was Sunday and the shop was closed, it gave me more time to think. We weren’t doing an early morning drive, my intent instead to arrive in time for dinner tonight. “It’s a little over five hours, six if we have a lot of stops on the way.”