Me too, but I didn’t admit it out loud.
We pulled up the dirt driveway of the old farmhouse. I parked next to a mangled thing of metal, and Simon gave me a dull look. “Your car?”
“Looks like it.” I threw the Hummer into park and looked at the house.
The wrap around porch looked in even worse shape than the last time I was here. There was still caution tape around the hole that led into the hidden basement where we had found the bodies. I watched the window to wait and see if I saw the woman. She’d been Ira’s lover, and he fed her to his experiments without a second thought. Her spirit had never been put to rest.
Nothing moved in the windows. Simon got out and sniffed the air. “I smell something.”
I readied my gun and stepped out of the Hummer.
“Abby,” Simon growled.
“Not approaching the house,” I promised. I waited for my uncle to appear, but he didn’t. Footsteps behind me had me aiming my gun.
Merick stood there with his hands held up. “Just me.”
I let out a breath. “Okay.”
Simon sniffed the air again. “Scent is gone.”
That was a good sign. It meant that we could move around.
‘Abigail…” Samuel’s voice entered my head, and I tried to ignore it. “Abigail…the cabin.’ He cooed, and his voice seemed to promise me the world. If this was what it was like to have a vampire maker, I was going to need someone to swear to stake me if I became a vampire.
But… the voice did have a point.
I started walking to the cabin I knew was hidden on the property. Ira had used the cabin to hide his blood-starved. It was like my feet had a mind of their own as I walked to the cabin. Neither of the men near me said anything as I walked away from the house.
They should have. They should have followed or stopped me, but all I knew was that there was something at the cabin. Something that I wanted to find.
The cabin came into view, and I paused. This was stupid.
“Abigail…”
This time it was a woman’s voice. During the case, I hadn’t seen the ghost out this far. I tightened my hand on the gun. Maybe it wasn’t a ghost.
The woman from the street came into my mind. Maybe this was a setup. But Samuel wanted me alive. Not dead.
‘Run, you stupid witch.’ He hissed in my head, and that got my feet moving. I ran and jumped into the cabin’s entrance, the door long gone. I hoped my memory served me right on where the broken boards had been.
As my feet landed on solid ground, and I thanked my lucky stars that I hadn’t fallen through. Samuel wanted me alive, which meant that he was trying to protect me. Was he around?
Samuel was a daywalker, I knew that much, so it was a possibility that he was here watching me.
I heard footsteps outside the cabin, a snap of a twig here, a kick of a rock there. I took a deep breath and swung around the doorframe, aiming.
Nick had his gun leveled with mine, and we both took a moment to stare at each other.
Neither of us were expecting the other.
“What the hell are you doing here,” I hissed as my brain went into overdrive.
I saw his hand twitch before it moved, and he fired. I expected pain, but nothing came except the ringing in my ears from being next to a gun that discharged. I looked over my shoulder when the ground vibrated with a thud.
The woman from the street the day of the shooting laid face first in a pool of her blood. I glanced at Nick then back to the body. “Holy shit.”
“Still don’t trust me at your back. You would have been dead.”
“Why can’t you get past my circle at the house?”
Nick shook his head. “It’s not yours keeping me from it.”
“Merick. You can’t get past his magic,” I muttered. I looked back at the body again and then looked up when I heard more footsteps. This time both Nick and I aimed at the same place.
Simon and Merick came out of the woods, but with their hands in the air. I sighed and lowered my gun. “I have had enough scares for one day. Let’s get home.”
Everyone muttered in agreement, and we walked back to the house. I noticed that Merick and Nick stayed away from each other, and I wondered what I was missing there.
We got back to the Hummer, and I paused at my mangled car and looked at Nick. “Why?”
He smirked. “The first one I did as a warning. This one…I thought it was an ugly car, and you needed something that wasn’t a death trap. I had someone steal it and compact it.” He went and sat on the porch of the house. “Stay safe, Abby. I’ll see you back at the office later. I need to have a chat with a ghost.”
I wasn’t even going to ask. I knew he had the sixth sense, and I left it at that.
I climbed into the Hummer and started the car as Merick and Simon got in. I leaned back in my seat. “Told you I wasn’t going to get killed.”
“Only because Nick was there.” Simon dialed his phone and put it up to his ear. “Yeah, tell Levi the chick from the video is dead.” He paused for a moment. “Yeah, I’ll send you the location.” He hung up and sent a text message.
I didn’t bother asking who it was. Levi would get the message, and I would either need to explain, or he’d leave it be, just like he’d been doing with the Adrianna situation.
At the thought of that,
