Page 38 of Stalked By Shadows
“No. I close my eyes and see it all over again. And there are reporters stalking around my hotel. My family is on their way down. I’m looking for Sarah. I mean, who would take her? I know I talk about paranormal shit being real, but I never thought… Fuck, this can’t be happening!”
“Hey, it’s okay. When does your family arrive?”
He glanced at his phone. “An hour or so. I tried waiting in the hotel, but I couldn’t stop pacing and worrying.”
Micah’s silence beside me, worried me a little. “Let me walk you to your hotel room. I think you should wait till your family arrives. Maybe then you can get some rest? You look really tired. You can’t help Sarah if you’re too tired to think straight,” I told Jared. “She needs you rested and alert, ready to take care of her when we find her.”
He blinked at me for a few seconds like my words were slow to make sense. “Someone has to look for Sarah.”
“The police are looking for Sarah,” I said. “My brother is one of those detectives looking for her. He’s a good guy. He’s going to do everything he can to find her.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I promised because I knew Lukas was doing his best to find her. It was how Lukas operated. “You told them everything, right?”
Jared nodded, his exhaustion making him look like a bobblehead with overexaggerated movements. “I don’t think they believed me. That the darkness took her.”
“You told them about Mary being there?” Micah asked.
“Yes,” Jared agreed. “I told them everything. I want Sarah back. She’s everything to me. I don’t care if I never see a real ghost or even get my medical license, as long as I get her back.”
Micah gripped my hand but didn’t look at me. I wondered at the thoughts in his head at that moment, and how reminiscent they were of when he’d been found, but didn’t push for answers in that moment.
“Let us walk you to your hotel. Are you staying in the Quarter?” I asked Jared.
“Yes. The Bourbon. We thought we’d see the ghost of the dancing girl…” Jared sighed and began to cry. I reached out and put a hand on his shoulder, steering him toward the hotel and giving him support all at once. It was less than a two-block walk. Micah led us silently, even deftly guiding us around a handful of press vans and reporters into the hotel. We got Jared to his room, instructing him not to let anyone other than his family or the police in. He agreed and sat down on the bed like the steam had simply been taken out of him.
“They will find her,” I assured Jared. “Get some rest, okay? You can’t help her if you’re too tired to stand up.”
He nodded again, laid down, and put his head on the pillow closing his eyes. Micah and I left, ignoring the handful of annoying reporters who asked questions we had no idea how to answer about a missing girl and a dead tour guide. I could feel Micah’s tension as he gripped my hand and dragged me toward his place. He practically vibrated with the need to escape, yet didn’t let me go.
Instead I followed and hoped that time would ease what he refused to share.
* * *
When we arrived at his place, I was surprised at how quickly we got from the hotel to Micah’s, and realized how close Lukas’s place really was to everything. I must have gone in circles earlier in the day because it was less than a ten-minute walk. Micah let me in and we both greeted Jet who rubbed his cheek on my leg. I knelt down to give him the scratches that he seemed to crave. He purred happily.
Micah vanished into the mystery closet rather than taking his crafts upstairs like I thought he would. I got up and followed, wondering how big a closet it was. Over all, he had a minimalist style to his apartment. Everything was clean lines, necessary, and put away. With the exception of the mermaid cat sheets which were still on the futon, though the bed had been pushed back into a couch position.
I knew the upstairs was a craft space because I’d seen it, so I wasn’t expecting the explosion of crafts central in his closet when I followed him in. Like I imagined entering the wardrobe and stepping into Narnia might have been, it felt a bit like a different world. A treasure trove of well-crafted goodies, like a dragon’s hoard of miscellaneous shiny things, clothing, and texture.
The room was easily twice the size of the bathroom, with built-in rods for hangers and drawers. There was a section of shoes, everything from a spread of bright sneakers to sparkling stiletto boots. The back wall appeared to be a mess of compartments filled with fabric, organized by color and perhaps type as several rows of rainbows arched through the shelves. The entire right wall a canvas of costumes and completed crafts. Including a section of quilts hanging from clips, purses and bags of all types both sewn and crocheted, and costumes that ranged from cute Japanese school girl to a section of full-length coats that made me think of all those old video games I’d played as a kid. The ones in which the badass MC had a stack of guns in his coat, and the coat would billow out around him as he fired, ringing him in badass glory. That sort of thing never happened in real life, logistics and the science of gravity, but in the gaming cosplay world, anything was possible.
Micah pulled out a drawer and added the bag of his crochet project to it. A coat, which appeared to be made out of dragon scales, caught my eye. Gray in color, I thought at first, only as I got closer and pulled the hanger free from the rod, the coat had an iridescent shimmer, like metallic threads woven through the fibers, changing when the light hit it in different ways. It was surprisingly light for how big and detailed the design looked.
“This is amazing,” I slipped the coat off the hanger, expecting it to be Micah’s size, only it was far too big for Micah’s petite and lean frame. I pulled it on and was surprised that it was only a tiny bit too large through the shoulders for me. When I buttoned the front, I felt like I should be headed off to battle some supernatural war, flaunting my badass-ery as I went.
“Okay, I feel amazing,” I confessed. “Like some game superhero. Do I look like I feel or like a nerd?” I struck a pose that I hoped would look superhero-ish.
Micah smiled, and his expression said nerd, though he responded with, “Superhero.”
“Liar,” I accused.
He held up his hands. “It fits you.”
“Almost. If I hadn’t lost weight it would fit perfectly. How come it’s not in your size?”
“Because dragon scales don’t really fit my personality,” Micah said. “I’m more lace and ruffles.”