A part of me was waiting. She had to be here still. There was no way that I could escape her, even in death. I looked over my shoulder every time I saw Addie because I was waiting for the medium to see her. It would happen, and Addie would hate me for what I’d done.
I hated myself for how things had ended with her. We’d been awful together. I refused to try with anyone else, convinced that I’d been the problem in the equation. No one else needed to deal with me the way she had.
“I think…I think it’s safe now,” Addie said, pulling me back to the moment.
I stood and held out a hand to help Addie back onto her feet. She didn’t take my offered help and instead put her hands on her thighs as she pushed herself up. I noted that she made a point to keep her hands to herself.
The hike back to the field where Addie had left her camp reminded me to pick up a pair of more comfortable shoes later. If we were going to be in the middle of nowhere every time she needed me, then I would have to invest in shoes that wouldn’t gnaw at my heels.
Addie’s camp remained untouched save for the…
“What the fuck happened here?” I blurted out.
The field was dead. What should have been sprouting with brushes and new grass was a gray wasteland devoid of life. Spotted here and there in the dead growth were bodies in various states of decay.
This was what Addie had run from. I suddenly understood the state that I’d found her in. She had every right to fall apart when this was what’d chased her down. Everywhere I looked there were more corpses. They ranged from massive bucks to skunks and beavers. The only reason I exhaled was because there were no human bodies among them.
This time.
I shuddered to think about the other night when Addie had nearly been thrown out that warehouse apartment window. The zombies that’d attacked her that night had almost all been human. I had no idea where the killer had gotten that many corpses.
Addie had mentioned a ghost’s frustration with his missing body, though.
I turned to her. “That man—well, thatghostback at the precinct had complained about his missing body. Do you think our killer is harvesting corpses from the morgues? Could we catch them trying to steal more?”
Addie let out a nervous laugh. She scratched the back of her head. That’s when I noticed that her usual braid had slipped free of its constraints. Her long, black hair fluttered in the winter wind. I wondered what it would feel like to run my hand through it, to let the silken strands glide between my fingers.
Then, Addie answered. “You’re not finding Mr. Murphy’s body. It was taken by a demon, one that was Vi’s close friend until he sacrificed himself to save her and her mate. The body didn’t make it out.”
I blinked. “Demon? A…friendly demon?”
“There’s not many. Trust me. He happened to be one of a kind. I’m thinking about getting Vi a pet rat to name after him, but I think her weird fire-cat might try to eat it.”
With corpses all around me, I tried to wrap my head around the idea of demons and fire-cats. None of this could permeate my thick skull. It hit me and bounced right off, much to my relief. I shook myself free of the strange thoughts and turned back to the task at hand.
I would process this later, when I had a bottle of whiskey at hand.
“So, we’re not going to find this killer poaching morgues. How did they get so many bodies then?”
“These ones came from the earth,” Addie pointed out.
“Ah, but the human ones didn’t.”
She tilted her head. Her gaze slid back towards her tent. That white film washed over her eyes, only for the barest of moments. The air between us chilled.
Something in the grass rustled. My hand went to the weapon at my hip. Addie yelped, but it wasn’t a sound of fear. It was one of shame. I tucked the information away while keeping my attention on the rustling grass. It stopped moving.
I wanted to ask Addie why she felt responsible for the sound in the grass, but she spoke before I could.
“I had a dream that I was in an open grave. Is it possible that the killer raised those zombies from a cemetery?”
I wrinkled my nose. “We would have heard about it by now. There’s no way that they could have done this,” I gestured to the field, “without being noticed.”
“There’s a lot of private family lots outside of the city. You work for a rural precinct. You should know that the locals have been here for many generations. Old estates have private family lots from before zoning laws were put into place. This killer could have raised them from hidden graveyards.” She looked me in the eye.
I cocked my head to the side. “You’ve called some peopleshiftersand othersdemi-angels. What do you call those that can see ghosts or raise the dead? I’m assuming those are two different things.”
Her face drained of color. Gaze sweeping over the wasteland around us, Addie swallowed. That told me that she was hiding something, but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was that she hid.