Page 62 of Stalked By Shadows
“Is it? Or are you just now realizing what you’ve always experienced and brushed off might be something more unexplainable?” he asked, his expression curious.
“Fuck…” Now I was going to question everything I ever remembered. “I’m not sure you’re good for my sanity.”
He put his hand on my arm, his fingers cold as ice on my overheated skin. “I’d like to think I help bring clarity to chaos, but it might be the other way around.” Micah took a step up the stairs.
I set the bags of our stuff at my feet and tried to pull him back. “Let’s wait for the police.”
“What if she’s hurt? She’s not young. Maybe she fell and hit her head or something.”
“And doesn’t own a cellphone?” I sighed and moved past him up the stairs. “Wait here.”
“Right,” he agreed, following me.
I groaned. “You realize it’s a soldier’s instinct to keep you safe, right? I’m not trying to be an asshole caveman. But you really should stay down here.”
“And you realize I’m not five, right?” He threw back obviously not willing to stay behind.
“Don’t touch anything,” I told him, as I turned on the light on my phone and squeezed through the narrow opening in the doorway. The apartment upstairs was as chaotic and cluttered as the shop downstairs, filled with dolls and statues of things I’d never want anywhere near my home. The walls were brown or red, and windows so tightly closed against daylight that it made the apartment look more like a dungeon than a home. The few pieces of furniture were ancient, like something pulled out of a museum or an antique shop for people who loved creepy old things.
The entire place was maybe twice the size of Micah’s, but felt smaller due to the clutter. I glanced carefully in each room as we passed, pausing when I saw a blond head that made me jump back two feet and shriek like a newborn baby.
“Fuck,” I said, my hand over my chest. “Mary?” I called, easing back around the corner, Micah close behind. If my shriek hadn’t woken her, I wasn’t sure anything would. My heart thudded in my chest, racing like we’d just survived a head on collision. “Not good for my heart either,” I muttered.
“Or my eardrums,” Micah added.
Throwing my snark back at me. The little shit… If we weren’t standing in the house of the creepy lady, I’d have kissed him stupid.
Mary, if it was Mary, appeared to be sitting at a small desk, half slumped over it like she’d fallen asleep there. But the light made her look eerily still in the dark room. Her long flowing dress splayed around her feet more in display than careless sleep, and the sweet smell, I finally noticed, was coming from her, or at least the desk. Something with nutmeg, cinnamon, and a bit of sugar.
Her blond hair was spread out around her head like a halo and since she was face down, I couldn’t tell much about it. I reached out carefully to touch her shoulder, hoping she’d wake up and rage at us for being in her space, but had to step forward a half foot to make contact.
Two things happened at once. First the sticky sensation of something thick and viscous under my shoe made me wince, and second my hand on her shoulder made her fall away from the desk like a rag doll, flopping to the ground beside it with a thud.
Micah gasped, fingers digging into my shirt and side as he clung to me while I tried to make sense of what I was seeing. Blood coated her face like she’d been crying the stuff. It soaked the hair at the side of her head by her ears and even trickled down her upper lip. While she appeared lifeless, I feared she might actually still be alive and carefully leaned over to check for a pulse from the nearest wrist.
I counted, waiting, straining to feel anything or hear beyond my own trembling breath. There was nothing. She was gone. Her skin had already begun to cool, though she was still pretty pliable. Not long dead then. I stepped back, pushing Micah out of the room with me and dialed Lukas instead of waiting for his text reply. Two bodies found in a few days didn’t look good for us, and I wasn’t taking chances.
Chapter 19
The police descended again like locusts, swooping in and dragging us outside for questioning, scouring the place of everything, even hauling things out in boxes. At least we didn’t have to go to the station this time, instead we sat on the sidewalk and answered questions with all the neighbors.
“She was taking her mail upstairs,” one of the neighbors said. “Saw her not an hour ago.” The nearby shop sold T-shirts and other mass market stuff. The Cajun man had told the police that he was keeping an eye on the shop while Mary had gone upstairs, though there were never many customers in Mary’s shop before dark.
I watched as they carried Mary out in a body bag and wondered a thousand things. Some of the cops murmured that she might have poisoned herself, or mixed up the wrong concoction. A few implied she’d been a witch of sorts and her potion to keep her alive and full of power had accidentally killed her. It was stupid and made me mad enough that Micah had to grip my hand to keep me from screaming at them.
One of my biggest pet peeves is disrespect of the dead. I’d seen it a dozen times at military funerals. People were either severe in their respect or completely disdainful, and commenting things about how he or she must have gotten himself blown up. Often followed by the comment “When I served we never…” and then some bullshit about the handful of much easier weapons they’d had. Now it was all bombs made from spare parts and sprays of bullets from one hundred plus round capacity magazines. Nothing was simple about modern war, but death.
“Would they say the same stuff if it was you or me?” I asked him. “No, because they’d be saying stupid shit about how we got what we deserved because we’re queer.” We sat close enough together that no one would mistake our relationship as simple co-workers. Especially not since Micah had his arm wrapped around mine, his cheek resting on my shoulder, and his hand firm within my grip.
“Give me some shit about how my pansy ass could never have served our country properly…”
Micah lifted my hand and kissed the back of it. “Hey,” he called.
I looked at him feeling like I wanted to kick some cop ass.
“Dead bodies make you cranky, yeah?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Most people don’t see dead bodies in everyday life. I’d think it would make anyone cranky.”