The urge to shove him into a ravine hit me, but I wasn’t like Ness. While she was blunt and ferocious in the face of adversity, I let the world push me down. The weight of everything made me feel like jelly most of the time. I didn’t have the strength nor the conviction to shove this man into a ditch.
Even if he did deserve it.
When we finally reached the parking lot, he followed me all the way to my car and took note of my license plate. I was tempted to ask him if he wanted me to drive him to the precinct, too.
But I didn’t want all of his attention on me. I needed him to find out who killed that woman. There was something off about this murder, and I had a bad feeling that things would only get worse if we didn’t get to the bottom of this.
Hand on the handle of my car door, I balked.
We?
What was this we that I was thinking of? I wasn’t this man’s partner. We weren’t going to solve crimes together. I was nothing more than a barista with one foot in the world of the dead. That cold river of death wasn’t going to magically give me a detective’s badge.
“I have to go back,” he said, keeping his distance.
Panic lurched wildly in the pit of my gut. My body turned to ice. This wasn’t the chill of death, but a frigid wave of fear. I realized now that I was invested in this because the woman looked like me. Add in the fact that her soul was nowhere to be found.
I felt like someone was watching me. They were waiting for me to be alone.
I was just being paranoid, though. It was likely all coincidence. There was a chance that the woman had been a peaceful sort of soul who wanted nothing more than to leave behind the horrors of her own life. She’d moved on to the afterlife to escape her killer.
That had to be it. My own imagination had simply gotten away from me.
* * *
The local policestation should have been quiet. This wasn’t a Syracuse station. We were outside the city, in a small town nestled in the Adirondacks. Yet, ghosts screamed in every corner of the building.
Their voices were so loud that I had to fight the urge to clutch the sides of my head. The ghosts screamed at everyone and at no one. Their voices were cacophonous. My eardrums were about to rupture.
The worst part was how they made me wait. I knew it was because the lead detective, that asshole who accused me of murder, was still at the crime scene. I couldn’t handle another minute here, though.
I’d taken my hat off at the door, as was customary, but it was so loud in here that I had to put it back on. My mother had died when I was young, but she’d taught me a few things before she’d passed. When the world was too loud, veiling would help me tune some of it out. Mom veiled with silk scarves, but my Adirondacks baseball cap worked just the same.
I yanked it back over my head and sank within myself. The world outside quieted a bit, but not completely.
“Please be quiet,” I muttered under my breath over and over.
I bit my lip to silence myself. It wouldn’t help me if anyone, living or dead, noticed my mumbling. I would only attract ghosts and odd stares. Still, my patience was wearing thin. About to snap, I tried to suck down deep breaths, but the droning refused to let up.
I needed to escape, but I couldn’t. At least, not without my headphones. If I could blast my ears with something other than this screaming, then maybe I could handle this.
My headphones were in the center console in my car. I’d left them there because I never needed them in the wilderness. They were for when I was in the city—for moments like this.
Wobbling like I was drunk, I made my way to the door. I made the mistake of scanning the room first. My eyes connected with a ghost across the room. His head lifted. He had a rotund form that was oddly familiar, like I’d met him somewhere before.
I forced my gaze to the ground as I stumbled towards the exit. Before I could reach fresh air, I ran into a muscled wall. Strong hands grabbed my shoulders before I rocked back and fell on my ass.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
God damn it.
The detective had caught up. My hackles rose almost immediately. I ducked out from under his hands. My cheeks warmed as all eyes turned towards us.
Out of the corner of my vision, I noticed the ghost making a beeline towards me. His attention was firmly on me, which was not good.
I was relieved when the detective took me by my upper arm and dragged me to an interrogation room. He was oddly gentle when he released me. Either that or I was just happy to be in a blissfully silent room, and that made everything seem gentler.
When I straightened, I said, “For your information, I was headed to the car to get my headphones. I wasn’t going to run.”