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One thing. At. A time.
I grabbed my Ruger from the glove box. I patted the knife to make sure it was at my waist.
Then I stalled.
Why was I doing this? There might be no one about, but it wasn’t guaranteed. There might be looters, vagrants, and men with bad ideas. I was still a woman on her own, and it was dark. My stomach clenched as tight as my fists. My hands sweating—and I’d swear my fingers had gone pale and cold.
I let my head flop back into the headrest.
Decide.
Do or not do.
Run away home, and forever wonder if I missed an opportunity to...search a burned-out shop for some impossible clue?
I laughed at the absurdity—what else was there to do?
Okay, decision made. I turned the handle, pushed.
When I stepped out and shut the door, particles wafted skyward, glimmering from the distant streetlights.
Neme had left the backseat by some fancy means and stood beside me with her faery entourage flying above. Her fur was dull, the beautiful markings muddied. The faeries were minor beacons compared to their former brilliance. I exhaled shakily. The bastard was right.
As if avoiding looking at them avoided the problem, I looked around.
It was a small shopping area for daytime businesses—musical instruments and repairs, a dentist, plus some shops I only glanced at.Beastly Burgershad been situated in a separate, square building in the middle of the parking area.
How lucky was that...for the other businesses.
Beastly was a blackened shell on the ground floor. Paint still showed on the top floor, and a few windows were intact, as was the roof, indicating someone had put the fire out quickly and saved the rest from destruction. There was tape across the doors and a sign that warned of a safety hazard inside. From peering through a hole, I could see the concrete ceiling. Since the outer walls were also solid; the ceiling wasn’t likely to fall on me.
Fine, I could cope with this.
Breathing deliberately, slowly, I slipped under the tape and through the charred hole where a glass door had once existed. Fragments crunched underfoot, reminding me of the day of the bomb and Henry’s shop.
That seemed years ago.
Time flies when you’re having the crap scared out of you on a regular basis.
“What a mess.” Maybe I was talking about my life. Maybe I was talking about the fire.
Every surface was black with ash, melted plastic, or something else charred—I wasn’t a fire investigator and preferred not to know the details. There couldn’t be anything down here that would help me. In fact, I couldn’t see how anything in this building was going to do that. Still...
I found the stairs and crept up them, careful to test the weight as I went. Some of the lower risers were burned through. The stink was acrid enough to dry my throat.
At the top, though walls and ceiling were stained with leaking water and fire marks, most of what seemed a small apartment was intact.
I sneaked through, one hand shielding my mouth and nose, crushing the glass under boot as quietly as possible. The fingernail moon hardly bothered to throw her light through the windows...or rather, ex-windows.
So dark—the shadows had shadows, and the details of every item were smudged. I had to stare to make out what was a coffee pot, a chair fallen over onto the floor, and a pile of charred magazines on a shattered table.
Nothing.
Fuck. The burger wrapper was a dead end.
Only half-interested, I wandered through the rest of the remains.
Study, office, bathroom, balcony out past the shattered glass doors and, last of all, a bedroom. I glanced in and froze, heart thumping hard enough to fracture my rib cage.
