Page 91 of Made to Be

“Well,” I choked out then sucked in a ragged breath, “that was anticlimactic.”

***

“How would one go about disposing of a body so that no evidence was left behind?”

Alice full-on choked on the coffee she’d been drinking as I asked her the very serious, very straightforward question. Coughing and spluttering, she roughly set her mug down on my kitchen table and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Cam kindly leaned over and patted her back as she caught her breath.

“Thefuck?” she wheezed after a few moments, glaring daggers at me.

I adjusted my glasses, blinking gormlessly at her. “I said how would one go abou-”

“I heard you the first time,” she huffed as she pulled her own glasses from her face and rubbed her forehead. “I’d just hoped I’d heard wrong.”

I’d called Alice over the next morning after “the incident,” as we’d chosen to refer to it. My head still ached like a bitch, even after the small healing spell I’d cast on myself and Cam, so I got up to grab a fresh icepack from the freezer. Pressing the coolness to my temple, I sat back down as Cam scooted closer to hold my free hand. Concern was pinching his dark brows tight, but he kept quiet.

“Is this one of those ‘What would you do?’ best friend tests or something?” she asked warily. “Like, you’d go, ‘We need to leave now!’ and I’d say, ‘Who’s car are we taking?’ That kind of thing?”

She returned her glasses to her face and glanced between me and Cam. I opened my mouth to answer, but she cut me off,

“You didn’t actually kill anyone, Victor. Did you?”

Cam and I shared a look.

“Did you?” she asked again, tone more urgent.

“Technically, I didn’t kill anyone,” I answered.

She sighed with relief, “Oh thank fuck, because-” She stopped, going still. “What do you meantechnically? There is notechnically. It’s a yes or no answer.”

Cam looked at me nervously, so I gave him a reassuring smile. Afterall, he’d done nothing wrong.He’d protected me. He’d saved me from that psycho. If it weren't for Cam, I’d be fuck-knew-where with no memory of him or my life here, chained to that bastard again. I turned back to Alice,

“Let’s just say-”

“I killed him,” Cam burst out, tone steady and surprisingly calm.

Alice’s face visibly blanched. She looked at Cam with wide eyes, then at me, then her half-empty mug of coffee. She rubbed her fingers over the “Best Boo Jobs” text on the cup, drumming the tattooed fingers of her other hand on the table in a thoughtful pattern. I saw the moment the resolve settled over her, as if she came to a decision she knew she’d regret, but she was choosing it anyway.

“I’m ‘gonna be cliche and say I think we need something a little stronger than coffee to discuss this.”

As succinctly as possible, I told Alice everything. About my past and my history with Byron. How he’d managed to stalk me here after years of hiding from him. And how he broke in, attacked us, and nearly got away with it.

She eyed Cam with a renewed sense of respect. Without warning, she stood and strode to the sink to deposit the empty mug. She turned and crossed her arms imperiously, which was a feat with how short she was, and gave us a hard stare.

“Well, where’s the body?” she asked. “I don’t have all day.”

So, in classic horror-movie fashion, Cam and I led Alice down to the basement. The cool, dank air enveloped us and, once we’d reached the bottom, Cam reached up to pull the string for the light with a click. To Alice’s credit, she didn’t overreact or freak out when she spotted the black lump of the body bag along the wall. The body bag with its new inhabitant. But I supposed she was a mortician and dead bodies in bags were nothing shocking to her. But a fresh one in a creepy basement... Well, I would bet that this was a first for her.

Hah, what are friends for?I thought sardonically.

“I managed to cast a short-duration preservation spell on him,” I told her. “But I only had enough ingredients for twenty-four hours. And those are hard to come by. So, it’d be best if we could, ya know, deal with him soon.”

“Before he ripens, you mean?” she quipped then coughed awkwardly. “Sorry, too soon.”

I shrugged. “Essentially. So, you think we can get him to the morgue without anyone noticing?”

She gave me a blank look, shoving her hands on her hips. “I helped you smuggle that he-man,” she gestured to Cam, “out of my morgue. What makes you think I can’t get a body in?”

I snickered, sidling closer to my he-man. Cam wrapped his arm around my waist, holding me protectively close as he glared at the body bag.