AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“We'll be safe here,” he said as truck engine cooled. “We’ll meet the rest outside the zoo.”
“I'd prefer daylight.”
“Afraid you're in the minority." He propped open the door and ushered me through. “The CPA won't compromise for a human’s comfort.”
A balding man in a Knicks jersey looked up from his computer. “Dates?”
Caelan frowned at a hanging clock in the shape of a black cat. Glancing at me with a worried expression, he moved as if to block it from my sightline, wrapping an arm around my shoulder and turning me slightly away. “Reckon a checkout of eight pm tonight would do just fine for us.”
I hoped my exhaustion wasn't showing as I mustered a perky, “Separate rooms, please. He snores.”
Caelan paid cash up front. The man handed us a pair of keys, and we headed out to find the rooms. Numbered eight and eleven, we were separated by a couple doors. Wasn’t a concern of mine as I wished him good morning and picked the far room.
He bid me the same in a doubtful tone. I felt his gaze on my back as I unlocked the door and stepped inside.
The room may have been last renovated in the seventies. A musty basement odor lingered near the dresser where I’d dumped my bag. Boxy television. Bright, faded wallpaper decorated with dusty brown geese.
Sticky light switches. Ugh.
I locked the door, sat on the creaky bed, like I’d sat on the motel bed waiting for Gram so many years ago, and let the weight of the past twenty-four hours sink in.
I was so glad to have left Lisa and Wyatt out of this, but with Igor and Samson's deaths, the life of Marcy Davins was over. Or it would be, in a few hours, when we confronted this thing. Not a thing. A southern wendigo and its necromancer.
It'd taken everything from me. Everything, down to my dreams real and imagined.
Rhetta, I comforted myself with the fact that I had gone this long without her, and all I had wanted was my sister alive, and she was, and I should count that for the blessing it was. As long as she was alive, there was hope.
Igor, they hadn’t found, but Samson had showed up with a note; what if she was being kept as the next message?
Samson: the last tie to my true self, to the frightened girl beneath the bed. He'd protected me when I couldn't and he'd stayed with me through every trial after. I had failed him so terribly, and now he was gone, or worse.
There was a knock on the door.
I wiped my face on my shirt and forced myself to greet Caelan. He stood with a bottled water from the vending machine and two bags of pretzels. His dark hair was wet and stuck up at odd angles. Showered, as I should've done.
“Didn't want to get you anything caffeinated," he said. “Sleeping in the daylight’s tough.”
Accepting his offerings, I waved him in, but held the water near the bedside lamp and gave it a swirl. “Didn't add any sleep aids, did you?”
“Cross my black, little heart.” He pointed at the bed. “May I?”
I nodded and took a sip. There wasn't any other furniture in the room for him to sit, unless he wanted to take the TV off the dresser, and I wasn't mean enough make him sit on stained carpeting.
“You’re living in the Ritz here; mice are playing marbles above my bed,” he said, kicking off his shoes. “And I only snore when I'm sick, so you know.”
“Werewolves get colds?”
“We aren't immune, but we run through it quicker.” Laying back on my pillows, arms behind his head, he watched me. “Point is, I would've been fine with one room, and under other circumstances, you would've been fine with such an arrangement, too.”
I popped the bag and fished for a pretzel even though I wasn't hungry; I didn't want to see the concern in his eyes and relive the past hours. I was done, absolutely done, with today.
“I'm not here to comfort you, Marcy.”
Weary curiosity turned my head. “So why are you in my room?”
“I've spent enough of my life alone to know I don't want it to end that way.” He stood, opening his arms. “C'mere.”
I hugged him. His hair carried a faint metallic scent of blood, but he was warm and a friend and I needed one of those more than I'd realized.
