Page 5 of Grave Danger

“I thought I smelled something familiar.”

Cody gave him a tired smirk. “Wasn’t the same without you there.”

“No offense, but I’m glad I missed out on this one.”

“You should be.”

“So what happened? Did anyone else see him? Did Lucia come out?”

Cody sighed. “No, she must have had the night off to sharpen her claws and fangs. I was treated, instead, to the next worst person.”

Demetrius’s belly tightened as guilt went through him like a flash fire. “Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes. Deputy Ryan Zellmer, in all his grudge-holding glory. He didn’t see any sign of the good and dead mayor, and he really put me through the paces with every field sobriety test he learned in sheriff deputy college.”

“Ugh. You really have had a shitty night.”

“It wasn’t shitty until I left the bar. Jugs and I got those three jobs done, and then we had a good dinner at the Hollow Leg. After that, all hell broke loose. And I mean that literally.”

“I’m not doubting you or trying to change your mind or anything, but…”

Cody looked at him, his expression tight. “I’m sure it was the mayor.”

Demetrius groaned. “But how could that be?”

“I don’t want to fucking know.”

“You know what this means, right?”

“We’re going to move to California and forget about this cursed town?”

Demetrius laughed and linked his arm through Cody’s as he scooted in close. “Not even a little bit. I love Parson’s Hollow. And you do too, deep down.”

“It goes down deeper with every weird monster we stumble across.”

“But it’s there, I know it is.” Demetrius gave his arm a squeeze. “What this means is we need to go by the cemetery tomorrow and check out the mayor’s grave.”

“Why?”

Demetrius released his hold on Cody and leaned back. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, why does it have to be us? Why can’t the sheriff’s department step up and take it on?”

“The sheriff’s department helped a lot when Nicolae was running rampant turning people into werewolves.”

Cody grunted.

“And you said Ryan didn’t see the mayor, right?”

“Right, of course not.” Cody waved a hand toward the dark street. “Our recently deceased mayor is roaming around the woods somewhere, waiting to lurch out in front of another unsuspecting driver, and I’m the only one who’s seen him.”

“Which is why you and I need to go to the cemetery tomorrow,” Demetrius said. “No one else is going to take this seriously, you know that. We’ve been through stuff like this before. We know what to look for and what kind of evidence we’ll need to prove it to other people.”

“We do? I don’t recall us going up against zombies in the last few years.”

“Well, true, this is definitely a first.”

“I don’t want it to be a first,” Cody said. “I don’t want to get involved at all. Zombies are gross and smell bad. They’re dangerous as fuck and completely gross.”