Page 34 of Dark Obsession

“Uh huh.”

Cody rolled his chair over to the stress ball and picked it up. Then he pushed himself around to Demmy’s side and stopped. With his legs spread wide, he slowly swung back and forth, watching him.

The blush in Demmy’s cheeks darkened, and he looked right at Cody’s crotch before meeting his eyes. “Are you trying to do some kind of cobra dance here or what?”

Cody moved his chair close enough to be able to lean an elbow on the corner of Demmy’s desk. In a low voice he said, “My cobra doesn’t spit venom.”

“Oh my God,” Demmy said in a choked whisper, putting his face in his hands. “Why are you trying to kill me?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Cody inched closer, his elbow sliding along the desk until his left foot was tapping against Demmy’s. “What’s going on over here?”

Demmy went back to staring at the monitor. “I told you. Business expenses.”

“Yeah, I know what you told me, but what’s really going on? What happened? Did Tracey chew you out?”

“No. Nothing like that, I…” Demmy blew out a breath. “Well, yes, she kind of did. But that’s not….” His fingers whitened as he gripped his knees. “Fine. Okay. I went back to that house, the one where the zombie came at me.”

Cody straightened up. Warning alarms were buzzing inside his head, but he told himself to keep it together, to not overreact and just listen. For now.

“By yourself?” He heard the edge in his voice and hated himself for it.

“I was over in that neighborhood, so I stopped by. It was the middle of the afternoon, the sun was up.”

“Zombies don’t mind the sun.” He pressed his lips tight and glanced away then back. “What’d you find?”

“I poked around in that clump of trees behind the house and found a footprint.”

“From the zombie?”

“No, from someone else.” Demmy tapped and swiped at his phone then showed him a photo of the print.

“Huh. Could you tell how fresh it was?”

“No, but if I had to guess, I’d say a couple of days ago.”

“Think they were watching us that night?”

Demmy shrugged. “Maybe.” He looked away again, realigning items on his desk and returning a couple of loose pens to the holder.

“What else did you do?” Cody’s muscles all seemed to freeze at once as he understood in a flash exactly what Demmy was feeling guilty about. He forced himself to stop grinding his teeth and said as evenly and calmly as possible, “You went inside.”

Cody saying it aloud seemed to deflate Demmy. He sagged into his chair and turned slightly to face him. His eyes were wide, the blue almost shimmering.

“I went inside.”

“Demmy…” Cody pushed himself away, shaking his head as he moved around to his own desk. “We’ve talked about this how many times?”

“Nothing happened.” Demmy clasped his hands on his desk. “Nothing really.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I checked all through the house, and it was vacant. But I did find a mattress with dirt on it⁠—”

“For fuck’s sake.” Cody put his hands on the desk, gripping the edge as if trying to keep from flying off the face of the Earth.

“But it was clotted and clumped together with what I’m pretty sure was dried vampire blood.”

“So there are vamps in town. And, what, you think someone staked a vamp in its bed?” Cody said without shouting.