Page 23 of The Sin Eater (Carnival of Mysteries #27)

Ezra

H oly fuck .I don’t truly come to my senses until I’m standing in front of my apartment door with the echo of Damon’s kiss on my lips. It’s after two a.m. and I need some Tylenol before the Jack has its revenge. And oh, yeah, I have to work at seven a.m.

Excellent time management, asshole . At least I grabbed a shower between my visit to Damon’s apartment and the club.

On my way up the stairs, the evening rewinds through my mind. Snuggling with a bottle of Jack. Catching an Uber to Damon’s apartment for a come-to-Jesus with a cop. Dancing, which should have straightened out my head. It didn’t. Instead of calm, I’m stressed and horny.

A shiver runs from my chest to deep in my belly.

This here? This here is some serious penance.

I let myself into my apartment. Everything looks just the way I left it, bottle of Jack on the floor and everything.

I shower away the residue of the night and crawl into bed.

As long as I don’t think about the look in Damon’s eyes when I wouldn’t tell him the truth, I’m fine.

I don’t like how it makes me feel, but I can live with it.

I have to.

I’ve never come so close to telling someone the truth before.

God help me, but that weird dude from the Carnival crosses my mind.

Was he right? I mean, Damon cares; that much is obvious.

He makes me feel safe. And isn’t that just a fucked-up situation, because he’s going to get over his little infatuation as soon as he realizes what I’m really like.

Especially if he learns my truth.

It’s the devil talking through you .

Oh god, I did say that, didn’t I. Fuck .

I crash-land on my bed, still in my jeans, flooded with shame.

I’ve been a princess since the day I was born.

Used to raid my older sister Chastity’s Disney dress-up clothes, twirling and prancing around in her Cinderella plastic slippers.

Mom didn’t like it—she’s an excellent nonverbal communicator—but she didn’t usually say anything.

It was the stuff I said that got me in trouble.

From as far back as I can remember, I’ve known things, and it didn’t take me long to learn to keep my damn mouth shut. When I was about three, I told her Papa had died. Two hours later, she got a call saying her father had died.

I still remember that beating. It’s the devil talking through you .

Once I learned to eat sin, though, the devil shut up. At the time, I figured it was a fair trade. Now I don’t know what the fuck is going on. On that happy thought, I bury my head in pillows and force myself to sleep.

My alarm goes off way— way —too early. The whole party-till-three-get-up-at-six thing was a fuckton easier at twenty-one than it is at twenty-six. I drag myself out of my closet-bedroom and into the shower, appalled by how close I came to telling Damon everything.

Jesus fucking Christ .

I stand in the bathroom, rubbing product into my wet hair, and promise myself I’ll keep my damn mouth shut. No way. I liked dancing with him way too much to take that chance.

I’m setting down the bottle of product when I see her. The woman. The ghost. The murderer’s victim. She’s staring at me from the bathroom mirror, her eyes wide and pleading.

“Fuck,” I shout, my knees gone so weak I have to grab the edge of the sink to keep from falling. She wavers, but before she fades away, I make her a promise. “We’ll figure it out. I swear to you. The cops have your picture, and one way or the other, we will find out what happened to you.”

She’s gone before I finish. I close my eyes, willing my heart to slow down before I use a lifetime’s allotment of beats in one day.

Her image blooms against my eyelids and I notice something I hadn’t before.

She’s got a necklace on, a gold one, with a small medallion hanging from it. Before I can stop myself, I text Damon.

Tell yr sister to tell the cop that the corpse will have a gold necklace with some kind of Jesus thing hanging from it .

Grabbing a headband, I get the hair out of my face and put on my shoes. It’s about six forty-five, which gives me just enough time to get to work. Not enough time to get to the Brew first, however, which is a bummer. If ever there was a morning when I needed coffee, this one was it.

My phone buzzes when I’m almost to the hospital.

Jesus thing?

I don’t have time to text him back until I get into the morgue. Geneva’s off, so I’m working with Shanny and one of the on-call pathologists. We don’t have any new tenants, so unless something dramatic happens, me and Shanny should just have to coordinate funeral home pick-ups.

I take the opportunity to text Damon back.

Small medallion on a chain around her neck, prolly Jesus IDK

I watch the screen until his response appears.

How do you know?

Shrugging, I text back. Saw her in my bathroom mirror .

That’s creepy af .

He’s not wrong. I don’t really want to get into it by text so I send a shrug emoji and pocket my phone. Diving into the day, I try to let go of Damon and the dead woman, and if it weren’t for a tight ache across my forehead, I would have succeeded.

As it is, they’re both on my mind when I make a break for the Brew.

Shanny is punishing herself by drinking hospital coffee so I don’t offer to bring her anything.

In fact, I don’t even tell her where I’m going.

She’s busy checking out homes for sale on the Windermere Realty website and since we aren’t expecting a funeral home pickup until closer to noon, I leave her to it.

It’s fucking cold outside, like, cold enough to snow. I’ve got my puffy coat zipped up tight, but thin cotton scrub pants don’t do shit to protect against thirty-degree temperatures. I go from a walk to a shuffle to an all-out run in the space of a block.

Jett’s behind the counter—of course Jett’s behind the counter.

Today their hair is wrapped in a blue and silver scarf, one that exposes all the crags and valleys in their face.

There’s a few people in line; shivering, underdressed hospital workers and a few student-types.

Two women come in right after me and get in line, and behind them is a guy I recognize.

It’s the guy who wanted to talk to me about the carnival. I can’t imagine anything I’d like to talk about less, so of course I accidentally catch his eye. Worse, he smiles so I have to do the same.

Even worse, he tips his head and says, “Hi.”

“Wassup?”

He shrugs, smiling with his eyes if not his mouth. He’s cute enough to trigger my natural instincts to flirt, except Damon , so instead of flirting, I scramble for something to talk about in case he says anything else.

“Just finished a big job,” he says.

Damn it. The two women standing between us are looking at me funny, so I wave them ahead. “Oh, yeah?” I ask, struggling to place a name to his face. “What kind of work do you do?”

“Little of this, little of that. You know. This time I had to stake a rogue vampire, the stupid fucker.”

He says it like it’s no big deal, and I honest to fuck can’t tell if he’s joking or not. “A real vampire?”

“Not anymore.”

Well damn. I guess I staked a vampire is one of the very few reasons I’d be willing to have a conversation with a stranger in a coffee shop. “You do that a lot?”

“First time, actually. Last week it was ghouls.”

I turn to face him head-on. “Now you are fucking with me.”

“Nah, man, I’m totally not.” His hot little smile turns puzzled. “I know you’ve had experiences you can’t explain. I can see it.”

The frigid temperature outside is nothing compared to the chill that settles over me now, freezing me in place. I got nothing. My mind goes blank.

The line must have moved forward because he points over my shoulder and nods. I catch up, my back to Retro Dude, wondering if I should give up on coffee and find something harder. I mean, they sell liquor in the Safeway down the block.

“I’m sorry,” he says softly. “I don’t mean to freak you out. I really thought you were... “

His voice fades away before he finishes, which annoys me even more. I whirl around. “Thought I was what? Stupid?”

He raises his hands in the universal calm down sign. “Have you ever heard of SPAM? Special Processes and Management?”

“Nope.”

His heavy exhale turns into a laugh. “Sorry, dude. I fucked up. Forget I said anything.”

Giving him a glare that has wilted lesser men, I feel rather than see that the women in front of me have stepped away and it’s my turn. “Yeah, I’ll forget that, all right.”

I pivot in time to catch Jett’s smile, which is so wide and bright it almost hurts to look at. “Ezra, Micah, it’s good to see you two getting along so well,” Jett says.

“Hey, Jett,” Micah says, crowding closer to me. “I’m buying whatever he wants.”

I bite back an oh, hell no and order my drink, adding one of Jett’s big-ass cinnamon rolls for good measure.

While Jett does his thing, he and Micah debate the odds of it actually snowing.

It doesn’t take much snow to shut the city down, given that the only two directions are uphill and downhill.

They talk and I do some quick mental calculations.

I’ve never been psychic before, but maybe a guy who knows about vampires, ghouls, and weird-ass carnivals might have some insights I lack.

And dude at the carnival said I should tell my friend the truth. Yeah, that ain’t going to happen any time soon, if ever. That said, since Damon and the cop seemed to believe the psychic thing, what would it hurt to try it out on someone new? I might learn something useful.

If it doesn’t blow up in my face.

It’s the devil talking through you .

Jett sets the cinnamon roll in front of me, a big pile of sugar and starch on a ceramic plate. “I guess I’m eating here,” I say, reaching for my phone. I shoot Shanny a quick text, making sure nothing new has come in, then gather my metaphorical ’nads and turn to Micah.

“You got a minute?”

“Sure. Anders won’t be here till later today. Let’s grab a table.”

An ordinary person might ask who Anders is or offer some insight as to the possibility of snow.

My social skills aren’t equal to that task, so after Micah pays for our coffees, I thank Jett and head for a corner table with some distance between it and any of the other customers.

As soon as we sit, Micah starts apologizing again.

I shut him down with a quick, “It’s fine.

I might not know what your management thing is, but I guess I’m a little, uh, psychic. ”

He gives me an encouraging nod. “Figured it was something.”

I pick at the cinnamon roll. “It’s only been a couple of weeks.” I glance at him, and his expression has gone skeptical.

“Tell me what’s going on.”

I stuff a frosting-covered chunk in my mouth, which gives me an excuse to avoid his question, at least as long as it takes me to chew and swallow.

“I work in the hospital morgue, and one night at the end of my shift, I was taking care of a body and had a, a, vision, I guess you’d say.

” I pause, both so I can congratulate myself for very nearly telling the truth and to get ready for the punch line.

“I saw the guy murder a woman, and now she’s haunting me and someone left her picture at Damon’s apartment. ”

Okay, that was too many words. I sit with my jaw clenched, waiting for drama. For some reason Micah didn’t excuse himself and make a quick exit. Instead, he asks an unexpected question. “What prompted you to go to work in the morgue?”

Nope. Not touching that one . “The job appeals to my inner goth.”

He makes a show of examining one of my hands. “Maybe if you had black-painted fingernails, I’d believe you.”

“Would you believe I like offering people that last little bit of comfort?” I sound bitchy and I don’t even care.

“That’s closer,” he says, and he must be satisfied because he goes on to ask who Damon is. I tell him, which leads me to the picture that Damon and Dorinda found.

“The cops are working on it too.” I stifle a shudder at the memory of how Detective McGraw had grilled me the night before, which leads to a memory of how Damon’s body had moved against mine on the dance floor , which gets me way the hell off topic.

Micah doesn’t seem to notice. His phone chirps and he frowns at it. “Shit, gotta head for the office.”

“More vampires?”

He shakes his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Something.”

I get to my feet, too. “I should probably get back to work, too, but thanks for, uh, listening.”

He faux-punches my shoulder. “No probs, man. We should talk some more.” He holds his phone toward me. “Let’s swap contact info.”

We do the iPhone bump and he takes off. I’ve still got half a cup of coffee and most of a cinnamon roll, so I ask Jett for a box and head back to the hospital. I’m almost there when my phone chimes. It’s a text from Micah, whose avatar is a hawk.

If the cops can’t identify the woman, I know a guy who might be able to help .

I stare at the screen so long I come damned close to walking into the door, which would likely have made me spill my coffee and completely ruin my day. Instead, I head for the stairs, composing and re-composing my response. I finally settle on thanks, I’ll be in touch .