Hmm? What is that? Am I dreaming? Did I fall asleep?
I slide my fingers over the rounded surface. It feels like a shoe. Not any kind of shoe I would wear. A man’s shoe? Too fancy to be something Emmerick would wear.
I drag my arm back to my side and force one eye to focus on the darkness around me.
A thick shadow of a man grabs my wrist and hauls me to my feet.
“We don’t have time for this shit.” Darnell moves his icy hand to my mouth before I can scream and drags me from the room by my hair.
Shepard waits by the front door, tapping a shiny boot impatiently against the welcome mat. They wrap cold hands around my arms and haul me over the threshold and towards a dark green pickup truck parked sideways in the grass.
I twist in their grip and try to dig my shoes into the damp grass and dirt, but the pace doesn’t slow. A desperate scream rips from my lips, and the moment the screeching sound reaches his ears, Shepard yanks me upright and smacks me hard across the face. Black spots explode before my eyes.
Darnell laughs and loosens his grip on my arm as he opens the passenger door of the truck.
I brace myself to be shoved, but instead, Darnell is ripped away, and a sickening crunch fills the air, like someone turned the truck over on his head.
Shepard’s grip falls away as well. I brush the hair out of my face and find him staring at something behind me, his mouth frozen open.
I follow his gaze, and bile immediately bites the back of my throat.
Underneath a shadowy cloud, Darnell’s skinless body is decomposing into a watery nothing before my eyes, bit by bit, like the cloud is ripping him in half again and again and again.
Shepard’s jaw snaps shut, and he shoots around the front of the cab, jerking me along behind him.
The shadow passes by me, so close it scrapes against my skin like nails, though it leaves no marks.
Shepard drops my arm and runs full speed across the lawn. “No, no, no, no, no!”
The shadow descends upon him in a breath and rips the skin clean from his body. Then Shepard starts to break apart as well, until he’s just a shimmering pile of muddy water on the grass.
The shadow hovers in the air above the mess for a while, facing me. At least it feels like it’s facing me. Watching me. Breathing.
Then it drops down to the grass, pouring into itself like liquid. Two legs. A torso. Two arms. And…
All the air leaves my body.
Chapter Seventeen
Emmerick holds his hands up and drops his darkened eyes to the ground.
I open my mouth to speak, though I have no idea what to say. Nothing comes out but air. I shake my head and try to take a step back. My legs are too weak to carry me, and I plummet into the wet pile of muddy water that used to be Darnell.
A shriek escapes my mouth. I scramble out of the spot and rake the remnants from my skirt.
Emmerick lifts his eyes timidly, as if he’s afraid to look at me. “Tatum—”
“No, no. Don’t…don’t say anything.” I take in a few deep breaths. The air burns my lungs. My heart beats haphazardly behind my ribs. The arm the shadow brushed against stings and throbs. I run my hand up and down my skin, but there isn’t a mark to be seen or felt.
I drop my hands to my sides and dig my nails into my palms until my system starts to calm. I take another deep breath, and the ground stops titling beneath my feet.
“What the fuck?”
“I’m sorry,” he says in a rush before I can cut him off again.
I shake my head, but I finally squint across the yard and look him in the face.
His features are drawn tight with remorse, though what exactly he’s contrite about I don’t know.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, more slowly. “I didn’t know how to explain.”
“I see. You didn’t know how to tell me that you’re not real?”
My words seem to wound him. He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment and tries speaking again. “This isn’t—I’m sorry.”
I relax my hands and run them over my face. “You said you were twenty-six. I knew you were making that up!”
“I wasn’t. I mean…that’s how old I look, I think.”
Hysterical laughter bubbles out of my mouth. “Oh my god. I’m crazy.”
“No. You’re not.” He takes a step towards me, and I flinch. The laughter dies away. He stops. “Tatum…”
“Were you there…that night…”
He doesn’t respond. I can tell from the distress on his face that he was.
“You killed my father.”
“I didn’t…specifically. But, yes.”
“Why?”
He holds his hands up again and takes a slow, cautious step in my direction. “You have no idea how sorry we are. He just got caught in the crossfire. It was chaos in there. We told him to stay down, but he didn’t listen. We really are very sorry.”
Tears well up and lodge themselves in my throat.
“I looked for you earlier,” I say. “Where were you? Were you here? Creeping in the shadows?”
“I sensed them nearby. I was scouting the neighborhood for them.”
“You sensed them…” I drop my eyes to the grass. I can’t believe those puddles are all that’s left of them.
“I should have tried to tell you,” Emmerick says. “I thought you would be mad at me.”
“I am mad at you.” All this time, I thought he was a regular guy. I think about that night at the club. How he just materialized from the back. He wasn’t working on anything. He was looking for…creatures.
A train rattles off in the distance, breaking the silence between us.
“Where are the rest?” I ask. “Where are the others like you? I haven’t seen anything in years.”
“I know.” Grief clouds his words. “I haven’t seen anyone in years either. I don’t know where they are. They’re trapped. Somewhere.”
“Hmm...”
“I’m probably the only one left.”
“Huh.” I cross my arms in front of my chest. “So, uh, you were where the last several years?”
“Looking for you.”
“I’ve been here.”
“We didn’t know that. We couldn’t…sense you.” He looks to the sky for the moment, as if seeking some kind of help. “But now I know why.”
“Right.”
He stares at me, his eyes pleading.
“So, that’s why you’re here? Living here? You’re some kind of…demon angel?”
“I don’t know what I am. I feel like I’ve always been this way.”
My mother knew about them. I was old enough to understand. Why didn’t she tell me anything?
“I came back because I knew you had family here,” he says. “I thought they could help me find you, and here you were. Doing well.”
“I always had family here though.”
He takes a few more small steps towards me, and I force my feet to hold their ground. “It’s not safe for us here. We were on the run. Every few months or so we would send someone back to look for you and scout around. They wouldn’t come back. Then we would send more out, and they wouldn’t come back either. And now there’s just me, as far as I know. And I’m doing the best I can, but it’s not good enough.”
I gaze off down the street, at the spots of light dotting the darkness. “I wish I never remembered.”
“No, it’s good that you remember. You’ll be better at everything now. You’ll be stronger.”
“I don’t want to be stronger. I want to be left alone.” I turn back to face him. “Why can’t everyone just leave me alone?”
“I know this is the last thing you want to hear, but Tatum, I really do need your help.”
“Of course. Everyone always wants something from me.”
His shoulders sag, and for a moment, I feel guilty.
“Look, Emmerick…I owe you—”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“Well, thank you, at least,
for…” My stomach turns.
“You don’t have to thank me. That’s literally my job. And I should have done it sooner. I was too busy worrying about myself and trying to keep a low profile.”
“Because someone is after you?”
“Some thing.”
A shudder rolls down my back. “The same something that’s after me?”
“Yes.”
A fresh wave of tears burns behind my eyes.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Emmerick says. “You could have been living in a cave. They would have found you eventually.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t have to help them.”
“You didn’t help them,” he says, so earnest I find myself believing him for a moment. “Going into the underground didn’t bring you to them. They followed you down there. They had a target on you already. I heard them talking about it.”
“A target?” If that’s true, it probably wouldn’t be my fault they found me. My guilt refuses to leave me though. I’m halfway to the house before I realize my feet are moving. “Can we talk about this later? I need…” I need what? For this to be a dream? To wake up in my padded room because I hallucinated the last three years?
“Sure.” Emmerick backs away. “I’ll, um, get rid of this truck.”
I stop in front of the door. I feel like I should say something more. He just saved someone’s life, probably multiple lives, and kept me from being responsible. And I’m treating him like a monster. And he kind of is. But this isn’t how he wanted me to find out, I know. Maybe he was hoping I didn’t have to find out. Just like I was hoping I could get myself out of this mess without anyone else finding out.
I turn around to face him, an apology of some kind on my lips. He’s already in their truck, watching me through the tinted glass.
I wave to him, and I can almost see the relief in his eyes. He nods and starts the engine. I stare after him until he disappears from sight. Then I sludge up to my room and throw myself face down on my bed.
Does Tessandra know? I have to wonder. She never seems surprised by anything.
Wolfangel.
Laughter tumbles from my throat. A totally made-up last name. Wolfangel. And so fitting, too.
I roll over to my back and stare up at the ceiling. The laughter fades as a disturbing thought presses into my brain.
The shadows were afraid. Shadows that can kill people in an instant were running for their lives.
“Shit…”
I shouldn’t have dismissed him so fast.
What is it that they’re afraid of? I can’t imagine anything worse than soul suckers. Unless the soul suckers can suck them up, too.
I sit up. My brain was so jumbled in the aftermath of what happened outside, but shouldn’t common sense have kicked in at least? I can’t be in this house alone. Shepard and that other guy aren’t the only ones. There have to be more. And they probably all know where I live.
Panic seizes my nerves. I shoot off the bed and down the hall to Kalin’s room. Her cat frowns at me from the foot of her bed when I switch the light on, but I bundle the heavy ball of fur in my arms and carry it to my room.
I fold myself down in the center of my bed and drop the cat in front of me. The cat can’t protect me, but at least it can warn me. They’re not catching me unaware again.
The urge to call Renali rolls over me.
I don’t know why, but I feel like she has answers. It’s after midnight though. She’s with Tessandra. And my phone is downstairs.
I scoop the cat up and carry her downstairs with me, moving at a snail’s pace as I strain my ears for sound.
After retrieving my phone from the living room floor, I remember that I left the front door unlocked. I shuffle down the hall, lock the door, unlock it, and lock it again.
This cat is really heavy. My arms are starting to ache. I shift my hold on the cat to my other shoulder and stare down at my phone. I have Emmerick’s number in here, right? No. I know I don’t. Damn it.
But what would I do with it? I’m not going to call him and ask him to hurry back because I’m a kind-of-grown woman afraid to be by myself. No. I’m not doing that.
I pass by the kitchen and freeze.
Wait…how many times have I seen Emmerick shoveling food down his throat?
The cat tries to wiggle free, so I shift my grip on it again.
He eats. But he’s…he’s not human. Is he eating just for show? Does he need to eat?
But there’s something else…that night he stayed in my room while I slept. The playing cards he produced out of thin air.
He shouldn’t have had to tell me or surprise me with it, I should have seen it. Tessandra is right. I need to pay more attention. And if I hadn’t been so scared to face the past, maybe I could have seen Shepard coming from a mile away. It’s so obvious now. But hindsight always is.
What kind of psychic am I anyway?
The cat wraps a fat paw around my neck and purrs against my chest. A small smile momentarily displaces my frown. I can almost see why people like cats now.
“You’re not as useless as you look, are you?” I whisper. I travel back down the hall and stop again in front of the basement door.
Without giving it a second thought, I pull the door open and step into the cold air wafting from below. A single lamp is on in the back left corner, illuminating the simple living space. I haven’t been down here since Emmerick moved in. It looks the same. Same faux suede couch in non-exciting gray. Small television. Kitchenette.
I move into that area and open the refrigerator. There’s a pizza box and a gallon of water inside. I drift away and stick my head into the bedroom, since the door is already wide open and all. The bed is made, and a crumpled T-shirt lays across the surface. A pair of boots sits on the tiled floor by the antique ivory dresser.
I poke my head into the bathroom. Very simple. Sink with the usual suspects on the small counter around it: shaving cream, electric razor, brush with golden hair in it. All very human things. I wonder if he sleeps though. I do remember him telling me that night that he didn’t need much sleep. Probably code for not needing to at all.
Before I get caught down here, I force myself to head for the stairs, but I hesitate on the bottom step. I like it here. For some reason I feel safer.
I drop the cat off on the couch and head up the stairs to close myself in. I know I’m going to look crazy if anyone catches me down here, but I don’t care. I curl on the soft, worn cushions beside the cat and drape an arm over it’s warm body. I tuck my phone under my hip and close my eyes.
It’s more important to be safe than sane right now.
Chapter Eighteen
The boy sitting across from me couldn’t fit more piercings in his ear if he tried. I wait impatiently, drumming my nails along the surface of the table, as he searches through his messenger bag for ten crumbled-up one-dollar bills.
The longer he takes, the harder it is to keep the disturbing thoughts at bay.
“Sorry,” says the kid, probably sixteen. He drops the last nasty-ass dollar on the table. “There. Ten.” He grins. “So, how does this psychic stuff work? Do I need to ask you a question or something?”
Irritation lights through my veins. Maybe it’s the whole Emmerick-being-a-shadow-thing. Maybe I just hate my job today. But between Emmerick’s truck not being in the parking lot when we got here and having a dozen people packed into the waiting area already, something has put me in a bad mood.
“Whatever.” I straighten the bills the best I can, fold them, and shove the money in my bag. “I can just poke around in your greasy head some. Or you can ask me a question.”
“Okay. So. Can you tell me when I’m going to die?” He’s still grinning. He must think this is funny.
Fine. You want to know when you’re going to die, boy? I smile. “Sure.”
I’m in his head in an instant, without hardly even trying. I barrel through the timeline of his life.
His liver fails at sixty. He’s in gre
at shape, but he’s an overworked bowling-alley owner and he drinks too much. Work hard, play hard, that’s his motto.
Of course it is.
“Do you need to see my hand or something,” he asks, pulling me out of his head.
“No.” Like I’m going to touch that hand. It hasn’t been washed since last night. Now, I’m kind of wishing I hadn’t touched his money so much. My hands curl into fists.
“You like to play with firecrackers, Johnny?”
The dopey smile falls from his face like I slapped him. “How did you know my name? I didn’t tell you!”
“Right. So I see a firecracker blowing up in your face next year. It doesn’t kill you, but you’re not pretty afterwards.”
His jaw goes slack. “No way…”
“As to your death, around sixty, you, scarred of course, after years of being an alcoholic, will die of liver disease. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
He grows pale. “Liver disease? Is it painful?”
“For you? Very. Get out.”
He stands up slowly, his eyes round and wide. “You’re joking, right?”
“Do I look like I joke?”
I storm over to the curtain and yank it back. “Have a nice life.”
The boy hightails it out.
Gretchen hurries over to me from across the room. “That was fast.”
“Who’s next?”
She opens and closes her mouth a couple of times, taken aback by my tone. “Uh, there’s a couple over there that wants some relationship advice?”
“Fine. Send them over.”
She hesitates for a few seconds. Then she nods and moves over to direct them towards my tent.
“There’s only one seat,” the woman says as Gretchen draws the curtain shut behind them.
“I guess one of you is standing.” I take my stool. “It’s twenty dollars.”
The man hands me a twenty and motions for the woman to take the opposite seat.
How chivalrous. I resist the urge to roll my eyes and instead clasp my hands together on top of the table. “What do you want?”
The woman gives me a tight smile. “It’s busy out there, isn’t it?”
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