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“Wait—” Mel stepped forward to see him better. Even in the shadows, Anastacia could see Sammy’s face had the soft, round edges of youth. She would bet good money that if she stepped closer he would barely have fuzz on his cheeks. He was barely a man, in any sense of the word.
“What are you doing with that gun, Sammy? Is it even yours? Where did you get it?” Knight tried to talk down the unsure boy. “Sammy, I know you. We don’t need to bring more bullets into the mix between us, do we?”
“You know why I gotta carry this.”
“I know why you think you do, and that you don’t need it. Why do you have the gun?”
Mel moved to stand inches in front of the boy, Sammy’s eyes going right through him. Mel circled, assessing every inch of the young man.
“It’s not him! Nothing about him is right. That’s not the voice I heard. He’s too scared. He couldn’t do it.” Mel’s attention changed from the scared kid to Anastacia. “He’s not my killer. He’s just a kid.”
“Knight, wait!” Anastacia moved toward Knight.
In an instant, Sammy went from scared to white-hot panic. He turned his weapon to the moving body and screamed, “You know it ain’t me!”
A shot fired through the muggy air and echoed off the buildings flanking the small alleyway.
Anastacia froze and was face-to-face with Mel. He stared directly into her eyes; his arms outstretched on either side of him as if he would have been able to stop the bullet in his spiritual state. With a nod that she was alive, he dropped his arms and searched every inch of her torso for a wound, letting out a breath of relief when he found nothing. She scrutinized him before she stepped away. No one she ever knew would jump in front of a bullet for a relative stranger, despite being dead. Did he protect her because he thought he actually could, or was it instinct? Was it to keep her alive so she could solve his murder, or to protect her? It was something she would ruminate over another time.
The gasps and labored breathing of the boy drew her back into the moment. His body sprawled out on the ground.
“Dammit, kid,” Knight cursed and pointed over at Anastacia. “Are you okay?”
“Y-yeah, yeah.” She nodded and felt a cold spot where she knew Mel was tight at her side. He may not touch her, but his icy presence was ironically reassuring.
“Stay there! Do not move!” Knight ran over to Sammy, kicked the gun from his hand, pulled his jacket off trying to slow the bleeding, and yelled into the phone he dropped on the ground beside him, “This is Knight, 10-52 behind Deblous Manor. Shots fired. Single gunshot to the stomach, male, nineteen. Subject down.”
“10-4, Knight. EMS is on their way. ETA five minutes.”
“Come on, kid. Just a little longer. Why didn’t you just put the gun down?”
Anastacia stood quiet, knowing the EMS would be too late despite any effort by Knight. The heaviness of eyes on her pulled Anastacia to a spot behind Knight, where Sammy’s face stared back at her. He looked at her for a moment and then down at Knight hunched over his body, trying to get back a pulse. Shaking his head, he told Knight one more time.
“It ain’t me.”
Anastacia opened her mouth to speak, but what could she say? The boy was dead. She wished he would pass over quickly to the light.
Sammy regarded her once his death sunk in as if he recognized that she could still see him. His mouth opened to say something when a blinding light lit up behind him. She put a hand up to block the light and when she lowered her arm, the boy and the light were gone.
“What was it?” Mel wondered.
“Acceptance of his death. I don’t think he lived long enough to have unfinished business. He moved on. He’s lucky he didn’t have to be earthbound.”
“I still don’t know if I would call it lucky.”
They both heard the sirens a street away mixed with Knight’s struggle to revive the boy.
Itwasastrainedfew days at the station.
Mel studied Anastacia from his chair tucked in front of Knight’s desk. Hazel eyes raked over the board, pushing to see something she didn’t before, he guessed. He’d caught her clenching her jaw five times now.
Make it six.
With her stubbornness set on another goal, she was able to forget the emotional fallout from the shooting. At least temporarily. At this rate, she was going to burn out. It worried him.
No one openly blamed Anastacia for Sammy’s death, but Knight shot him when Sammy turned the gun toward her. Knight killed Sammy to protect her.
Since her hyper-focusing left her non-responsive to the world around her, he kept plenty busy playing interference on the spiritual side. Dark souls flocked to her as soon as she and Mel stepped out of her building. Not to mention the more frequent sightings of the entity across the street. Mel would rather he saw it, because when he didn’t something unknown paced up and down the hall outside Anastacia’s door. It was still unclear if one kept the other way or if it was one and the same.
