Chapter 2 2

The rain had started again, light but steady. It drummed against my borrowed jacket as I stepped back onto the street. The city was waking up, sounds and smells bleeding into gray morning, car tires hissing over wet asphalt and exhaust tangled together.

I looked down at the photo again. The woman’s eyes seemed to follow me, even under the dull light. There was something familiar about her face, but I couldn’t place it. Maybe it was just the hunger twisting my stomach. Maybe not.

The address wasn’t far. A half-hour walk if my legs didn’t give out. I started moving, the jacket’s weight a strange comfort, the folder clutched tight against my chest.

The rain turned from drizzle to a steady wash as I walked, blurring streetlights and making the sidewalks shine like slick black mirrors. Cyne’s jacket kept me mostly dry, but my sneakers squelched with every step. The city smelled of wet asphalt, coffee, and something that made me wrinkle my nose. Perfect morning for hunting down a missing person, I thought sarcastically, as again, my stomach growled at me; a continuous burning sensation I tried ignoring.

The address on the folder was a tiny apartment block tucked between a laundromat and a shuttered convenience store in Pioneer Square. The kind of building that smelled of damp carpet and old cigarettes…the perfect kind of place for someone to vanish without a trace.

As I reached the door, I pulled out the key that had been taped to the folder, then hesitated, my fingers hovering over the knob, my gut screaming you are walking straight into someone else’s disaster. Taking a deep breath, I unlocked the knob, wincing as the door swung open with a loud creak.

Leaving the door open behind me, I stepped inside the apartment, looking around within the dim interior. Eyes sweeping the room, I noted overturned chairs and a coffee table smeared with fingerprints and condensation rings; Mara had obviously left the place in a hurry. But why would her place look like a struggle had gone down if she had gone missing from a bar?

Bending, I took a closer at the coffee table. A mug lay tipped over, a smear of dark liquid staining the wood. Beside it, sat an open notebook, pages soaked through from the liquid, but scrawled handwriting still visible…barely. Names, numbers, short phrases.

“Bingo,” I muttered as I peered closer at the writing, then, letting out a huff of breath, I grabbed the notebook and stuffed it into my jacket. As I was straightening, a sudden chill worked its way down my spine; a faint sound, a scrape from the kitchen. Not a footstep, not quite a cough, but a sound deliberate enough it caught my attention.

“Dumb, dumb, dumb,” I muttered incessantly as I crept toward the sound. What the hell was I even doing? I was no damn investigator, but here I was, creeping toward the kitchen like I was Sherlock Holmes himself.

With each step I took, I could hear my heartbeat pounding away in my ears. So loud in fact, it completely hid what I most needed to hear…whatever the hell was going on in the other room. But did I let that stop me? Of course not. Nope, not even a tiny dent of sanity invaded my brain as I tiptoed toward the kitchen.

When I finally reached the kitchen’s entryway, I glanced around at the items nearby for some type of weapon. A box of tissues? What the fuck would I do with them? Sneeze the intruder to death? A shoe? And what, teach the person to tie the laces? Finally, eyes landing on…nothing, I drew my shoulders back, I pushed my way into the kitchen.

I didn’t know whether I wanted to cry or collapse to the floor in relief, as glancing around mumbling, “Oh, thank God,” at seeing the kitchen was empty. As my eyes had drifted, they had fallen on a chair that appeared to have been knocked over against the counter, and I began picking up the lingering scent of something metallic…blood, probably, that clung to the air.

Stomach lurching, I turned to leave the room, and as my back brushed the edge of the counter, a sensation of a presence washed through me. It didn’t feel like a human presence, not exactly, but…something.

I whirled, but nothing was there, however, my heart didn’t get the memo.

“Relax,” I muttered to myself, taking a slow, deep breath. “It’s just a missing person case. Not… vampires or whatever horror stories your imagination is cooking up.”

~~

A short time later, when I arrived back at Nightfall Investigations, Cyne, his voice low, measured, murmured, “You’re back early.”

I nodded, forcing my gaze to his desk instead of his eyes. “So… what now?” I asked, trying to keep my voice level, professional.

He leaned back a little further, eyes still sharp and unreadable. “Now, you tell me everything you noticed. Start with the apartment.”

I set the folder on the desk, careful not to let my hand brush his. Careful not to let anything brush him. My pulse had decided it liked that nearness far too much for my comfort. “Overturned chairs, tipped mug, notebook left open… someone left in a hurry. I picked up a few details before I left…names, phone numbers. And there was something weird.”

“Something weird?” His voice was calm, almost curious, and I had to remind myself not to stumble over my words. “Yes,” I said, meeting his gaze for just a second. “I felt… like the apartment didn’t want me there. Not people, not…anything living, really. Just… wrong.”

Cyne’s lips twitched faintly again, and that tiny movement made me aware of the heat in my cheeks. I shifted my weight, rolled my shoulders, tried to act like a professional investigator and not a person who had a pulse that suddenly didn’t feel entirely hers.

“Noted,” he said simply. “You were careful?”

“I didn’t touch anything else.” My voice was steady, but my stomach hadn’t gotten the memo. Hunger for food had taken a backseat to the sudden, unplaceable awareness that he was watching me.

He studied me a moment longer, then nodded. “Good. Observation is key. Most people walk in and see nothing, or worse, take the wrong thing. You didn’t.”

Tilting my head slightly, I noticed how the rain outside streaked the window, turning the city into a blur of gray. Something about the way he sat there, calm, measured, a quietness in his posture, made me realize just how much of him I couldn’t read, and maybe didn’t want to.

A cold thought nudged the back of my mind: Why do I care so much about what he thinks? I caught myself staring a second too long before looking down at the folder.