"Seriously, Max, just tell me what to do."
"Priscilla, if I had a goddamn clue of what to do, I wouldn't be standing at your door right now."
"I guess I deserve that."
"You know what I mean."
I could tell he was frustrated, and he looked exhausted like he had been running around town all night looking for her. I wasn't really the type to worry or give a shit, but neither was Max, and him being this way kind of weirded me out. Was she really missing? People like Cora don't go missing. Every crime show has the family talking about what a joyful, funny, happy, innocent person they are and...oh shit, she was that kind of person. Fuck.
"Did you try Wendy's?" I asked.
"That's my next stop. Can't exactly go over to her house at 7 a.m, though."
Shit, it was that early in the morning? No wonder I was exhausted. I usually wake up around noon.
"She's an old lady, she probably went to bed at 7:30. I'm sure she's awake by now," I told him.
"Her granddaughter was buried a few months ago, I don't think I need to be barging in there making her think her other one has been kidnapped. No, I'm just gonna go back to her apartment and wait for her there, see if I missed a note or something."
"I'll come with you."
"Why?"
I had no answer. "You gonna turn down my help?"
"Fine, put your coat on. But I'm not waiting for you to throw some makeup on."
"Like I would do that," I said with an eye roll, and then internally died at the idea I could be out in public without my eyeliner.
Lucky for me, I kept a stash on the kitchen table and swiped one as I grabbed my coat and followed Max out the door. He had a full-blown bitch fit in the car because I was doing my makeup while he was driving in the seat next to me. "Cora could be missing, and you're putting your fucking eye makeup on?" he bitched.
"Excuse me, but this is no fun for me either. You're driving like a maniac and hitting every pothole, I'm about to have eyeliner on my damn earlobe."
“First world problems, huh,” he said coldly.
“Christ, and here I thought I wasn’t a morning person…” I completed my daily look. This cranky fucker was not about to have me looking like a mess just because he was one.
We got to Cora’s apartment a couple of minutes later. Normally I’d be down for snooping through someone’s place and their belongings, but Cora was pretty boring, and all I expected to find was a stash of vegan porn and 10-ways-to-show-your-cat-you-love-them books. That’s if she was even really missing because, let’s be real, these people are dramatic as fuck. She probably went to buy some plants to eat or something and lost track of time. That was just like her.
I was wrong, though. The apartment was, in fact, empty.
Max tore through that place like a madman, ripping open cupboards, drawers, and closets. I don’t know what the hell he was looking for. “You missed the toaster,” I said, pointing. “She might be in there.”
“Shut up,” he snapped as he ran past me.
“I’m pretty sure it’s considered a red flag when your boyfriend breaks into your apartment just because you didn’t return his calls after a few hours.”
“Knock it off. You know this is different. You wouldn’t be here if you thought otherwise.”
“Max, if she’s missing, you call the cops. Simple as that.”
“I’m ruling a few things out first.”
I cackled. “What, ghosts? You think a poltergeist took her?” In between going through her things, he glanced up at me, no words. Ha, I wasn’t too far off.
Oh, wait, he probably meant werewolves.
“Why would something not human go after her?” I asked.
“A lot went down over the summer, we have no idea who has an axe to grind or if someone would want to take her. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before.”
True. Cora’s dipshit self was always getting in trouble.
We went into her room, and right away Max said, “Shit.”
“What?”
Beside her bed, he knelt down and picked up a cell phone. He raised and waved it back and forth. “Now what person takes off in the middle of the night without their phone?” he quizzed.
“A forgetful clutz like Cora.”
Max shook his head. “No. Something’s going on.”
From the bed, he found her sweater and quickly picked it up, shoving it into his face and inhaling deeply. I side-eyed him for acting like a pervert. "Yeah, that's not creepy or anything."
Max lowered the sweater and rolled his eyes. "I'm trying to track her scent."
"Oh, that's right, you can do that. Why didn't you try that hours ago?"
"I did. I'm trying again."
"Not a very good tracker, are you?"
There was a dumb, sad look on his face like he took my comment to heart. "Maybe not..." Why did he sound so goddamn miserable? “Unless…”
“Unless what?”
Max's eyes stayed on the sweater in his hands. He clutched it like it was a five-carat diamond. Very softly, he added, "You can't track the dead."
I waited for him to crack a joke or tell me this was all a prank, and when he didn’t, I instead nervously laughed. "Oh, come on, Max. You're not really going to stand here and act like she's dead, are you? If something happened to her, there'd be some kind of sign of struggle. Her shit would be knocked all over the place."
"Unless she was taken outside the apartment at gunpoint."
I refused to believe whatever was going on was as serious as this. “Use your little snout
