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Conner caught the top edge of a sheet, as though to pull it off.
“Wait!”
He froze, eyes wide.
“Sorry,” I offered. “I just don’t want or need to see all the damage.”
“What’s the point of seeing the bodies, then? I figured you’d need to, you know,seethem.”
The ground squeaked beneath my shoes, a sign that it had been recently disinfected. “I’m trying to talk to the spirit, so I just have to touch them. A foot is fine.”
His expression said he didn’t believe me, which was a bit insulting. The man let vampires—who were basically walking dead bodies—bite him and drink his blood for sustenance. Was he really in any position to question the existence of ghosts or if people could speak to them?
Still, him being okay with me doing it even if he thought it was crazy showed his feelings about Kase. Fear opened plenty of doors.
I went to one body and uncovered the foot. It was pale, but thankfully undamaged. I didn’t really want to touch anything that felt like a bag of blood and marbles after being pulverized.
Touching it was more difficult than I’d expected. After the last time, after that void, a fear had crept into me that hadn’t ever been there before. I’d always understood the afterworld—at least my tiny part of it—and suddenly it felt as though I were on the ocean and had glimpsed my first huge shark. Iknewthere were things below the surface, ones I hadn’t been prepared for, ones I wasn’t in a position to deal with.
Still, the memory of what Fredrick had said, of Rachel’s smiling face, of the reporter as she’d spoken of the dead forced me to move.
I placed my fingers on the foot and closed my eyes, trying to center myself. This time I was slow, careful. I didn’t want to fall face-first into that void, and I thought, if I approached it slowly, I could avoid it—maybe glimpse it before it sucked me in.
That electrical sensation over my skin clued me in, let me know it was working. I followed the chain that existed between body and spirit, but at the end of it…nothing.
A frayed edge as though ripped away, but no spirit.
They’d only died less than twelve hours before…
This was impossible.
I pulled my hand free. Conner’s eyes were wide, but my throat wasn’t sore.
Guess I hadn’t screamed.
“Your eyes,” he said softly. “They changed.”
“They do that,” I said as I moved to the next body.
Same thing. Each of the six were exactly the same, as though something had come by and ripped away the soul to leave that tether dangling.
But what could do that? How? Was it the work of that shadow that I’d seen in Rachel’s memory? Even if it could, why would it?
How did it all connect?
I pushed my fingers through my hair, realizing only too late I’d gotten dead-germs in it.
The fact I didn’t care was a testament to how fucked up the situation was already. Dead people in my hair just didn’t register on my list of shit to worry about.
I backed up, trying to think, to recall anything that might link the events together. Something appeared to be controlling supernaturals, forcing them to kill. What did that have to do with the spirits? It was like having all the puzzle pieces but having no idea what they were supposed to make.
I tripped over the leg of a small table, the clattering of tools loud in the room, echoing off the walls. Conner shouted to be careful, but like that helped.
I flung my arm out to catch myself and it landed on something solid and cool to the touch. As I went to stand, that same current went through me, which let me know before even looking what exactly I’d caught myself on.
Always a body.
Yet, when I followed that thread—I’d focused so much earlier it seemed autopilot now, I found…nothing.
