The paper dropped from my hand and my stomach lurched. I pulled out a chair and sat down. I couldn’t seem to stand on my legs anymore. They weren’t working properly. The air around me thickened instantly and I couldn’t get a proper breath. I leaned over and put my head between my knees like I’d seen in movies when people were hyperventilating. But it didn’t work, I still felt sick and lightheaded.
“Salem? Are you okay, dear?”
I glanced up to see old Mrs. Norman looking down at me. She was the manager of the store.
“I don’t feel so good.”
“You’re as pale as a ghost.” She put her hand on my forehead. “You’re like ice.” She snatched her hand away, obviously surprised I wasn’t running a fever or something of the like. “You should go home, dear. I’ll close up the store.”
I got to my feet and dragged my ass to the employee’s room. I slid on my jacket and then left the store. I stood outside and looked out at the darkness creeping in. We were usually friends, the darkness and me, but right now I feared what lay in wait inside the shadows.
As I didn’t for one minute believe, that the dumpster that girl had been found in, wasn’t the one Thane had dumped me in leaving me for dead after he thought he’d sucked out my soul.
Was he back from the dead?
I pulled out my phone and texted Trevor to pick me up. He usually did after I was done for the night. While I waited for him, I texted Chloe.
Are U OK?
Yes. Y wouldn’t I B?
Just checkin
Sale, is sumthin goin on?
I didn’t want to scare her. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it was just an unfortunate dead teenage girl. It happened. Even in a small city like Boise. But to be found in a dumpster. That was just too close to home. Too familiar. Some nights I dreamt about being back in that container covered in disgusting trash not knowing where I was or what had happened to me.
U there?
Can I come over?
YES
B there in 15
When Trevor pulled up, I jumped into the car and hugged him tight.
He pulled back and stroked my face. “What’s going on?”
“They found a dead girl in a dumpster.”
His face changed. “When?”
“I don’t know. I just saw the headline. I didn’t read the whole article. I couldn’t.” My whole body was shaking. I couldn’t stop it.
Trevor grabbed my hands in his and rubbed them until they were warm and not trembling anymore. “You’re safe, Sale. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“Do you think Thane’s back? Do you think it’s him?”
He shook his head. “Thane is dead, Sale. You killed him. There is no coming back from that. Not even for a cambion.”
“The other members. Seth and Quinn? Could they be back to get revenge or something?”
“I don’t know. But let’s get all the facts first, then we can figure it out.” He gave me a quick kiss then pulled away from the store.
“I told Chloe we’d come over. I want to make sure she stays safe.”
He nodded. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”
Chloe was in a panic when we got to her house. The second I knocked on the door, she opened it, pulled me inside and hugged me tight. Her mother hovered nearby, all smiles, and offers of drink and food, until Chloe shooed her away.
“Are you okay? I’m worried.”
“I’m fine, Chloe.”
She smiled at Trevor. “Are you coming in too?”
“If that’s cool?”
Chloe liked Trevor but I knew there was something about him that made her uncomfortable. It could’ve been that he was a cambion like me, but probably had more to do with the fact that we were together. I think she feared that I would leave again. Leave her. But I promised when I returned that I wouldn’t do that to her again. No matter what.
I just hoped my no matter what didn’t just turn up in a dumpster downtown.
Chapter Three
The three of us crammed into Chloe’s small bedroom. She had three siblings and a small house, and she was the middle child, so she got the tiniest room. I’d always like it though. It was homey. Like a hug.
Chloe and I sat on the bed together, while Trevor sat in her computer chair. Which I thought was adorable since the chair was covered in fuchsia faux fur. He didn’t seem to mind though. Which I also thought was adorable. Trevor didn’t care about those girl/boy social norms. He thought you were either cool or you weren’t, regardless of gender.
She handed me an open box of cookies. “Okay, spill it.”
I took a couple of cookies and handed the box to Trevor. He took one and gave it back to Chloe. I gave her my phone. I’d searched for the story on the internet while Trevor drove us here. “Look.”
She took it and scrolled through it. Then she tapped the screen to enlarge the picture. Her eyes bugged out. “Is it the same dumpster?”
“It’s at the same intersection.” The article confirmed the address for me.
She set the phone down on the bed, then chewed at her thumbnail. “What does it mean? Are they back?”
“It might not mean anything,” Trevor said, “But we wanted you to know so you can watch yourself.”
Her eyes bugged out again. “Do you think they’d come after me?” Her voice shook a little and I reached over and grabbed her hand.
“No one’s coming after you.”
“Are you sure? I mean look what happened to you.”
I knew she didn’t mean to hurt me, but the barb stung regardless of her intention. I pulled my hand away and dropped my gaze. “I know. But I was stupid, Chloe. I put myself in that position.”
She bit on her lower lip. “I’m sorry. That was a shit thing to say.” She shuffled closer to me and pulled me into a hug. “I’m a bitch. I didn’t mean it.”
“I know.” I hugged her back.
When she pulled back, she butt-shuffled back to her spot. “So what do we do?”
“Are you sure you want to be involved?” Trevor asked.
“I’m already involved. Salem’s my BFF.”
He nodded. “Fair enough.”
“So, what’s the plan?” she asked.
“We need to find out how this girl died. Where she was beforehand. To find out for sure if this is a cambion attack,” Trevor said.
Chloe smirked. “It’s not like the cops are going to tell us anything. It’s not like you can just go examine the body or anything.”
Except that was exactly what Trevor was thinking. I looked at him. “You mean to take a shadow-way into the morgue.”
His eyebrow shot up. “You got a better idea?”
I didn’t. I had no idea how to deal with this. I didn’t want to deal with it. But I knew I had to. This was either a tragic murder of some poor girl, or it was a warning to Trevor and me. We needed to find out which it was.
“I’m going with you.”
“No you’re not.”
“Trevor,” I said. “You know I’m just going to follow you or go on my own when you’re not looking, so you might as well take me with you.”
He gave me that look of his. The one that said he was mad at me, but still wanted to kiss me. I saw that look often enough to recognize it instantly.
“Besides, you haven’t been to the morgue before so you don’t know where you’re going.”
“And you have?”
I took another cookie. “Yup. Grade 10 science field trip.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot about that.” Chloe shook her head. “Thank god I was sick that day because I probably would’ve gotten sick there. Mr. S was whack for taking the class there.”
“Yeah, which is probably why he ain’t teaching anymore.”
Chloe’s eyes widened. “Should we phone Jamie and tell him? He’d want to know.”
I nodded. “Yeah, you call him. I still don’t think he likes talking to me.” I glanced at Trevor, he was watching me. I could see the concern in his face
. He tried to hide it but I knew him well enough to see right through his hard-assed persona. “So, we should go in tonight, don’t you think?”
I could tell he wanted to say no. And I knew it was because he wanted to protect me. But I’d been through and seen enough to know that he couldn’t protect me, not really. I had to learn to defend myself. Trevor couldn’t be with me, twenty-four-seven, no matter how much I wanted him to be.
“Yeah,” he finally said, “its best we find out for sure now, instead of running scared about it.”
I stood. “Let’s go then.”
“You’re going now?” Chloe jumped to her feet. “But, but, that’s like...I don’t know weird.”
“Why is it weird?”
“Because you’re going to like melt into my floor or something.” She shivered.
I laughed. “It’s not like there’s going to be pieces of us left in your rug, dude.”
“I know, it’s just, unsettling to watch you do it.” She wrapped her arms around herself.
I went to her and hugged her hard. “Then don’t watch.”
“Can you turn off that light and turn on your lamp?” Trevor stood in the middle of the room, or as middle as he could get considering the sparse floor space.
Chloe turned off the overhead light and switched on her bedside lamp. The shadows instantly bled across the room and I could feel them creep toward me. I shivered inside my jacket. It was still a strange sensation for me even after all these months. To sense the shadows. To feel them nearby. It sent a prickling over my skin. Like standing outside in a middle of a thunderstorm. The static electricity buzzed my body.
I stood beside Trevor inside the deepest and darkest shadow in the room. The moment I stepped into it, my body responded. I could already feel it slipping down into the floor. I imagined it was like what a snake felt shedding its skin. I was sloughing off my Salem Vale skin.
Trevor grabbed my hand and squeezed it reassuringly. He knew I hated traveling the shadow-ways. It wasn’t necessarily the way it felt to be drawn through the darkness like being sucked through a straw feet first, but what was waiting for me in the black passages of nowhere. Dreams of Merlin plagued me at night, but his image, his presences haunted me during the day as well.
I closed my eyes and thought about the morgue, pictured the room we had been in during our field trip. I let my shoulders relax and unlocked my knees. The pulling sensation started at my feet and I allowed it to take over. Within minutes I sunk into the shadow. Every molecule in my body melted into the black. I knew if I opened my eyes I would see half my body submerged into the floor. That was why I kept them closed. I’d seen it once and didn’t want to witness it again. Chloe’s intake of breath of what was happening was enough of a reminder.
Once I’d fully disintegrated into the nothingness, I couldn’t feel Trevor anymore. The physical sensation of his hand in mine vanished. In its place was the feeling of being pulled, tugged at, and lured into the darkness. I squeezed my eyes shut tighter although technically I didn’t have any eyes. But the notion of it allowed me to pass through the shadow-way without the temptation to wander through them overtaking me.
When I did finally open my eyes I was standing in an empty joyless room with Trevor beside me.
“Is this it?” he asked.
I looked around and nodded. “Yeah, this is the intake room.” I swung around and pointed to the big glass window, that showcased another room, bigger and even more joyless. “That’s where the bodies are.”
Trevor moved to look through the window. I joined him. I shivered surveying the three stainless steel tables with drain gutters all around them. Beyond the tables was a wall with twelve square steel doors stacked 4x3. The dead girl was in one of those drawers. Now that I was here, I wasn’t sure I could go through with it.
Trevor must’ve noticed because he grabbed my hand. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, afraid I would betray myself if I spoke.
“I can do this on my own. You got us here. You don’t have to look at the body.”
“No, I have to.”
“Okay.” He squeezed my hand once more, then walked to the swinging doors between rooms. “Let’s get it over with.”
We entered the room as silently as we could. Although everyone in the room was dead, it didn’t seem right to make a bunch of pointless noise. Respect, man.
“Which drawer do you think she’s in?” I asked.
Trevor grabbed the handle of the closest one, on the bottom. “Well her death was recent, so I’m going to assume the autopsy was just completed.”
He opened the door. The smell hit me instantly. I wasn’t expecting it and I stumbled backwards, colliding into one of the steel tables. Hip meet sharp edge.
“Ow! God damn it!”
“Do you want to be louder? I don’t think they heard you outside.”
“Sorry. It’s just the smell.”
“What did you expect? Roses?”
“Maybe.” I joined him back at the drawer. “Is it her?” I gestured to the toe tag on a small and feminine foot. The police hadn’t released a name, but I sensed I would know it when I heard it spoken out loud.
Trevor grabbed the toe tag and turned it so he could read the name on it. “Deanna Moser.”
He looked at me expectantly. I shrugged. I didn’t know if it was her or not. I was just guessing with the name thing. Although it did seem familiar to me.
“Step back,” he said, as he took hold of the sliding tray and pulled it out until we were looking down at a covered body of a dead girl.
“How do we tell?”
“She’ll be sunk in. Remember how Josh looked after you nearly sucked him dry?”
I smacked Trevor’s arm. “Yes, thanks for reminding me.”
“Sorry, but at least we know what a cambion death will look like.” He gripped the white sheet in his fingers.
I could see the horror in his eyes. He didn’t want to do this either. He was just as freaked out as I was. But he would go through with it, because that was the kind of guy he was. He did things that were hard so others didn’t have to suffer. Although he would never admit it or want to hear it, Trevor was a standup guy. He was a hero.
“You don’t have to look, Sale.”
“I know, but I will.” I swallowed down the bile rising in my throat and forced myself to continue to look down. I nodded to him.
He raised the sheet, just uncovering her face. That was all we needed to see to know that Deanna Moser died from a cambion attack.
I put a hand up to my mouth and turned away. I couldn’t look at her sunken shriveled face any longer. She looked like a thousand year old corpse and not a vibrant young teenage girl.
Trevor lowered the sheet, and then pushed the tray back into the drawer. He shut the door and leaned on it for a moment. “Damn it.”
“I can’t believe it.” I backed up and leaned against the table I’d run into earlier. “Do you think this is a warning to us? Did they do this to get back at us?”
The thought that this girl died to get back at Trevor and I made my gut roil. I didn’t know how I could live with myself knowing that. Squeezing my eyes shut to stem the angry tears that threatened to fall; I swung away from the body drawers and stormed out of the autopsy room.
Once out of the room, I bent over and took in some deep breaths. I felt sick. My head was spinning and I just wanted to curl up into a little Salem ball and cry my eyes out.
Trevor’s hand was on my back when I straightened. “Let’s get out of here.”
“What are we going to do?” I turned into him. He opened his arms and snuggled me in close. I could feel his heart beating against my own chest.
“We need to find out who we are dealing with and stop them.”
The tears came then, I couldn’t stop them any longer. I closed my eyes and breathed Trevor in. His smell always calmed me down. “I don’t want to fight anymore. I thought we were done with that. I just want to live. I just want to be a teena
ge girl again with barely passing grades, a shitty afterschool job and some hope for a decent future.”
“I know, baby.” He smoothed a hand over my head. “But if we don’t stop them, who will?”
Chloe was on me the second we materialized back in her bedroom.
“Did you see the body? Are they back? Are we in danger?”
“Yes, yes and yes.”
She paled. I guess she didn’t like my answers. I just didn’t want to lie to her and tell her everything was all right. Because it wasn’t. Not by a long shot.
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
I gripped her by her upper arms. “We aren’t going to do anything. Trevor and I will handle it.”
“I want to help.”
“I know you do, Chloe. But I don’t want you to get hurt.”
She looked crestfallen but also a little bit relieved. “What are you guys going to do then?”
“Check into this Deanna Moser’s background. Find out where she was before they took her,” Trevor said.
Chloe’s eyes popped. “Deanna Moser?”
“Yeah,” I said, “That was the name on the toe tag. Why?”
“She went to our school.”
“What?”
Chloe crouched near her bed and pulled out a stack of yearbooks. She grabbed last years and sat down with it on the bed. She flipped through it, then stopped. She turned it toward me, and pointed to a picture.
“Is that the dead girl?”
Trevor and I both looked at the yearbook picture. I glanced at him to confirm my suspicions. He nodded, then moved away to look out the window.
“Yeah, that’s her.”
Then right before I shut the book, my gaze landed on another photo. One of those candid ones of students in the hallway, doing what they do. In this image, Deanna leaned against a bank of lockers talking to a boy. It looked harmless, innocuous. An image like any image in high school. Except the boy in the photo was my brother Kyle.
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