Page 71 of Possessed By Shadows

Chapter 23

Isent Jason a text asking about recent encounters Lukas might have had with people who passed. I mentioned the route and the girl, as well as the man under the bridge. There had been more, but we were headed toward Lukas’s apartment in the Quarter. Would the guy he shot, a cop it seemed, still be there?

“I never felt anything there,” I muttered. Would I have noticed before now? This whole seeing dead people thing wasn’t new as much as I hadn’t really realized they were dead. Though someone showing up in Lukas’s apartment would have made me think ‘intruder’ first. “I don’t remember seeing shadows or anything.”

“I stayed with him a time or two when the night noises got bad,” Micah said.

“Ever felt ants or spider webs?”

Micah shook his head. “I usually slept okay. As long as it was only a night or two. No noises most of the time. Though it did happen a few times.” He frowned. “Twice, Lukas was already up when the noise woke me. But he claimed he didn’t hear it.”

“We all seem to experience this stuff differently, maybe he didn’t hear it.”

“Or maybe he needed the recorder to hear it?”

Since he had caught a few on audio, that could be true. The fact that he’d actually been trying to hear it meant he believed Micah. Perhaps because he was encountering his own weird shit. I really hoped we found him alive so I could kick his ass for not being more straightforward.

Sky was sitting outside on the stairs leading up to his place when we arrived. She gave us a tired and watery smile. “No word?”

“Not on our end. You?” I asked.

“No.”

I looked up the stairs and to the door. Nothing appeared out of place. No lingering shadows or people, up the stairs or anywhere near the alley. “Have you ever experienced anything weird here?”

“Define weird,” Sky said. “Most people call me weird.”

“You are weird,” Micah said. “Never met anyone who suddenly has eighteen limbs when they sleep and needs to put avocado on slices of bacon.”

“Those are healthy fats I’ll have you know.”

“Yum. I’d eat that,” I offered. “But I mean weird like of the supernatural kind. Shadows, voices, stuff Lukas would be searching for while looking for ghosts, since that seems to be what he’s been doing for a while.”

Sky sighed heavily. “I don’t really see that stuff. I can communicate in other ways. Cards and boards, but that’s all.”

“Did Lukas ever ask you to do a reading here?”

“No. We didn’t talk about any of that. I actually thoughthethought my readings were bullshit. Maybe he did and that’s why he didn’t ask?”

“I doubt that,” I said. “He didn’t want you to read for me.” I still wasn’t certain why that was a bad idea. But Micah hadn’t liked it either.

“Sky’s powers seem to latch onto bad news,” Micah said.

“Not always,” she protested. “Just most of the time.”

“We won the crappy power lottery, eh?” I asked. “I get to seeDeath. Micah gets fire ants under his skin, and you get to predict bad events? Wonder what shitty supernatural bullshit Lukas was stuck with.” I headed past Sky, up the stairs and opened the door to the apartment. The space the same as always. Boring and empty. The only thing I remembered about his place was that I’d had a lot of nightmares there. More so than I did now living with Micah. I had attributed that to actually being with Micah, his presence soothing me somehow even in my sleep. But maybe it was more than that? “Do you get a lot of wild dreams while staying here? Nightmares even?”

She frowned. “Well sure. Everyone has nightmares sometimes.”

“But more often here? Or are they the same when you stay with us?”

“More here, I think.”

“What are you thinking?” Micah asked.

“Did you have nightmares here?”

“Not really? I mean some vivid dreams, but the night noise sort of creates nightmares when it happens. When I do sleep, it’s usually deep. When I stayed here, I had often gone days without more than an hour or two. And I would sleep pretty hard.”