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“Of course.”
We both stood, looking at each other awkwardly. The thought of leaving her here, with him, made my stomach lurch.
“Listen,” I said, breaking the uncomfortable silence as I reached for my phone. “I’d like to text you my number. You can contact me anytime, 24/7, if you need anything, no matter how small you think it is.”
The corners of Ainsley’s pretty pink lips turned up again, and my heart beat a little faster. She recited her number as I punched it into my contacts. “I’ll ping you now so that you’ve got my information on your end too,” I said.
“I appreciate everything you’re doing for me,” she said. “It’s nice to have a new friend.”
I smiled. “Likewise.”
At that moment, my phone buzzed, making us both jump.
The number of the station flashed across the screen. I clicked on the call and lifted the receiver to my ear.
“Grey.”
Deputy Barkley was speaking a mile a minute.
“What? You’ve got to be kidding me.” I passed a hand over my face, having a hard time comprehending what I was hearing. This couldn’t be happening.
“Coordinates?” I asked, grabbing my keys from the pocket of my coat. “On my way.”
Ainsely’s face was ashen. “What is it?”
I called back over my shoulder as I took the steps two at a time back to my cruiser. “Another body. Dead on arrival. And there’s a suspect right now at the scene.”
Chapter Five
Ainsley
Another body? A suspect? I was tempted to run after Logan and beg him to let me accompany him to the scene. If the suspect was indeed the person who had been committing the murders and there was rogue magic involved, he wouldn’t be able to stop them. What’s more, he could even get hurt, possibly even killed. Fear washed over me like an icy wave.
The front door opened behind me, and I felt a tap on my shoulder. Oh, Lord.
“Hey Ashley. You gonna eat your pancakes? I may be dead…or undead…or something…but I need more fuel. I burned a lot of calories today shagging Blondie.”
Edward gave me a lopsided grin and a line of drool escaped from the corner of his lips and slithered down his chin.
I pushed him back inside and glanced at the wall clock. By my estimation, I had twenty-two hours to fix this situation, so I needed to hoof it.
“Have at them,” I said to Edward, hurrying back to the kitchen with him in tow. I grabbed an apple from the fruit basket on the island and bit into it as I grabbed my textbook from the stand and read over the necromancy recipe again. Could my omission of the hair of a mole-rat really have caused this much damage?
“What do you remember?” I asked Edward, who appeared to be back in dog-form again, hovering on all fours on a chair at the table and wolfing down my pancakes and sausage sans utensils.
He glanced up at me with a face full of sticky maple syrup and licked his lips.
“Woof,” he barked. I took it as an acknowledgement of my question and waited for his answer, shifting my weight from foot to foot impatiently.
“Let’s see,” he said finally, scratching himself behind an ear. “I was doing the nasty when you barged in. Guess I lost track of the time and didn’t expect you home so soon. Then we had it out in the kitchen, and I got dead. Then you alived me again, except you don’t have a license to do that, you’re a Reaper not a Necromancer, so that was technically illegal.” He shrugged. “Whatevs. Your problem, not mine.” Turning back to the plate of food, he lowered his head and went back to devouring the rest of my dinner.
I felt my mouth drop open. He was aware of all of that? “You know I’m a Reaper?”
“Yeah,” he mumbled through a mouth full of mushed-up pancake. “Guess I found that out when you broke the rules and did whatever you did to bring me back from the Great Beyond. Which didn’t quite work if you haven’t realized that already. Not sure I really like being a zombie, but then again, it’s only been a couple of hours, so we’ll see.”
I groaned. “I’m going to fix you, I promise. Just, please don’t say anything about this to anyone, okay? Deal?”
Edward finished licking the last of the crumbs from the plate, calmly got down from the chair, and stood up to his full height. Then he walked to the window, opened it, and stuck his head outside. A gust of wind blew in and goosebumps prickled over my flesh.
