Was this actually possible? I knew life had revealed itself to be far more complex and unreal in the past year for me, but this? Speaking to someone who was dead? Even this crazy life had to have its limits.
"Prove to me this is really you," I demanded. A part of me was hoping they would prove the opposite.
There was a long pause, and for a moment, I thought whoever this was had hung up. But then quietly and weakly, they said, "Thank you for holding me as I went—"
And then the line went dead.
I had no words.
My hands shook as I set my house phone back down on the end table, my heart racing a mile a minute. No one outside of Max and his father knew that Melanie died in my arms. No one. My brain was telling me it had to be a joke, but my heart...oh God, my heart was telling me something else entirely.
I immediately opened my laptop and googled the number that had called my phone. After a minimal amount of digging, it displayed the zip code of the area, and it belonged to none other than Lunar City. The caller wasn't lying about that, and if they weren't lying, what else were they telling the truth about?
I jumped out of my seat and began pacing back and forth. This was insane. I had to be losing my mind.
But I had to know.
It didn't matter if this was a cruel prank by someone who had found the details of our relationship and her death. If there was even a sliver of a chance that Melanie had somehow survived her attack, and was alone and suffering, I had to go and find out the truth for myself. There was never going to be another option.
I wasn't even thinking straight when I ran out of my apartment and down the stairs toward the parking lot. It was around twenty degrees out and I didn't even have my arms in both sleeves of my coat, that's how little I was thinking. I started the engine to my Volkswagen and tore out of there as fast as I could. Because it was the middle of the night, there was minimal traffic, so I pushed way above the speed limit. I didn't have time to stand around and think this over a million times in my head. Lunar City wasn't close by any means, and the longer I waited, the higher the chance whoever this was wouldn't be there when I arrived.
For all I knew this could be some kind of demented trap set up by a mysterious assailant, and my death awaited me when I got there, but if I didn't get in that car and drive, I would live the rest of my life with regret. I had to know what this was. I had to know.
Time almost didn't feel real on that drive. I was caught somewhere between excitement and terror, staring at the empty roads covered in a sheet of snow and ice as the windshield wipers swayed back and forth like the ticking of a clock. Then dread hit me when I realized I had left my cell phone on the end table by my bed. If shit went down, I'd have no way of contacting someone. I was all in now. There was no going back.
A half-hour later, I was there.
The place, much like Rookridge, hadn't fully recovered from the madness with the werewolves. Because it had once been a thriving city, you could see from the row of lights in the windows of the apartment buildings that it hadn't lost all of its occupants, but the roads still had immense damage. A lot of the street signs were lying in the bushes, and one corner didn't even have working traffic lights. I had to wonder if the people left here weren't just werewolves.
I drove down every street, over and over, looking for a building that looked like a church. I had no memory of one from my stay here, but I also wasn't allowed a lot of travel time to explore the city. There was also the possibility that she was confused and it wasn't actually a church she had called from. So basically, I was functioning off of scattered, possibly incorrect, information. And I was doing it all by myself. Sometimes I blow myself away with how much of a dummy I can be.
Just as I was ready to give up on Gray street and search elsewhere, I spotted a large, brown crucifix statue in the bushes on the side of the street, its bottom jagged and broken, lying sideways in the leaves unattended to. It clearly belonged on the rooftop of the building behind it, but the disaster that hit the city must have blown it straight off, and no one had fixed it.
I had to admit, I was surprised that the church was a reality. That’s twice the woman on the phone was being truthful.
I parked my car out in the front and debated whether to lock it or not. I didn’t want to be robbed, but I also wanted to be able to get back in swiftly and quickly if something bad happened in that church. Considering my record when it came to this city, nothing good awaited me inside.
My hands shook as I tugged open the main doors. The church was so dusty and unkempt from months of negligence, that every step I took across the wood flooring creaked and screamed like it was going to collapse beneath me. Worse was that the building was freezing cold—the kind of cold that hit you in the bones—and the wind was whistling and howling through the broken windows.
What person, in their right mind, would stay in
