AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Most of the interior space is divided between a living room and kitchen—all one large open area with a small island counter serving as the only demarcation between them. Across the room from the door, a tiny hallway leads to two doors. My guess is a bedroom and bathroom.
No one replies.
A modestly large flat-panel television faces a beige couch, the screen stuck on a paused video game. Dirty dishes sit in the sink. Two red plastic cups on the table still contain… iced tea (guessing based on smell). My gaze settles on a handbag resting on the kitchen counter. A handbag I recognized from the surveillance video.
Definitely proves the police haven’t found this place. That’s likely Gemma’s handbag. If the cops located the property of a missing person, this whole area would be teeming with a search and rescue effort.
“Hello? Is anyone here?” I call again, just to be sure.
My ears are pretty sensitive. If I startled someone in the bedroom, I’d definitely have heard them move. I’m ninety-nine percent confident there’s no one else in this cabin but me, enough to lower my guard.
I head to the right, slip past the island counter into the ‘kitchen’, and open the handbag, going right for the wallet to check ID. Yep. The driver’s license confirms this is Gemma’s bag. She’s got a bit over $100 in cash still untouched in her wallet. I leave it there, close the wallet, and drop it back in the bag. No sign of a cell phone in the bag or anywhere in sight, so she must have it on her. I’m sure the cops tried to track her phone already. But out here with no coverage, that wouldn’t work too well.
Okay, if Carson did kill—or try to kill—her, he hasn’t come back to the cabin yet. It’s been over a week now. Maybe he chased her off into the forest like a scene from aStephen Kingmovie, and they ended up killing each other. Maybe this is far more innocent than I assume and they went for a hike and simply got lost?
Nah, this mountain top isn’tthatbig. Someone would’ve run into them by now... or they would have found a road or another cabin. Then again, woods are woods. If people are going in constant circles, a forest can seem far larger than it really is.
The dishes in the sink are unwashed. Smells like steak, French fries, and string beans—all of which have clearly been sitting there for a week, the gunk and grime on them long since hardened. Again, I glance at the video game paused on the screen. Could this guy be so psycho he has a nice romantic dinner with Gemma, then kills her, then sits there playing video games?
I head into the small corridor leading out from the living room. As expected, the door on the right contains a tiny bathroom with a toilet and shower stall. No tub. Smells faintly of soap. Stored soap, not a recent shower. No signs of violence in here, either. Nothing knocked to the floor, no damage to the walls. No stains.
The only other door here is to a bedroom. Bed’s still made, doesn’t look used. Oddly, a rolled-up sleeping bag sits on the floor. Okay, maybe not so odd. They only met the same day they decided to come out here. He probably brought the sleeping bag along so he could pretend to be a gentleman and give her the bed to herself. Not likely they would sleep together on night one. Not saying it’s impossible, only that Gemma doesn’t seem the type to be open to sex with a man she’d known for less than twenty-four hours.
Unless, of course, my incubus theory has more weight than a passing smartass thought.
Carson can’t be a vampire. He’d shown up on several cameras not to mention didn’t appear bothered by sunlight. In all of the—admittedly very few—pictures of me post-vampire when I had six pounds of foundation on my face so I’d appear on camera, I always looked off during the day, cringing as if someone nearby admitted to liking Justin Bieber’s music. I couldn’t help it. Undead vampires don’t like sunlight.
Hmm. I understand why the cops are so baffled. It’s as if Carson and Gemma simply ceased existing.
Then again, I’m pretty sure I’m the first up here. Call it in? Or continue investigating without a bunch of control freaks telling me what to do?
Suppose I should try to take advantage of this psychometry thing. It led me here to this cabin, after all. Touching Vincent Stafford’s laptop gave me a front-row seat to watch someone murder him. If anything as emotionally charged as a killing went down in this cabin, the imprint is going to be on something. I just have to find the right object.
And hey, they’ve been missing for eight days. What’s a few more hours of me poking around on my own? I happen to be an excellent poker.
I crack my knuckles, looking around for something that might carry emotional significance. The place is pretty spartan, like he cleaned it out after Erica died and hadn’t been back here in years.
Still, there has to be something...
Chapter Twelve
Somewhat More Complex
Tammy cried out in pain involuntarily, but couldn’t move.
Vines pinned her arms to her sides, crushed her legs together, and tightened around her throat. Rather than panic, her need to escape manifested in a subconscious release of magic. She twisted over to her left side, rapidly shapeshifting into a panther. The big cat had been her first transformation, ending up as her default animal form.
She liked cats, after all, despite not being able to have one.
The sudden change in her size and dimension appeared to catch the root fiend off guard. Thick fur and thicker skin muted the biting pain of thorns. Her animal shape possessed significantly more physical strength than her human form, allowing her to somewhat easily tear her way out of the root cocoon.
Allison shouted, “Holy shit! Tammy!”
Tammy was admittedly unclear what shocked Allison more: the root monster attacking or witnessing the shapeshift.
Not caring to debate the exact meaning at the moment, Tammy leapt down from the enormous creeper vine, slipping away from the last of the thin grabbing tendrils of the dark faerie once impersonating her father. As she did so, a ball of black thorns erupted out of the slime pit, rushing over the massive root with a noise like a hundred small sticks whacking against a stone.
Like any self-respecting cat with an unwanted presence bearing down on its hind bits, Tammy spun around, and swatted at the ball of ouch, knocking the entire tumbleweed-of-death away from her and sending it rolling. Thin tendrils of thorny vines shot from the spherical mass, embedding like spears in the ground in an effort to cling in place and stop. She leapt backward, shapeshifting once more to her human form.
