softly, rustling in the girl’s copper curls. It carried a hint of something unpleasant in its cool blanket, some sickeningly sweet, putrid smell that swirled around my face. I froze.
“Hello, Carson,” the woman said, pushing herself away from where she leaned up against the house. Her ruby-red lips turned up at the corners. “You’re looking particularly fetching today.” Though her voice was distinctly feminine, it had the sultry, husky sound of a smoker. And something about it made my skin crawl in recognition.
“What are you looking at?” The child’s question startled me. When I dropped my eyes to her, she was looking toward the woman blankly. Then she raised her confused blue eyes to me.
She wasn’t the only one that was confused. I stood, rooted to my spot, with no idea what to do, looking back and forth between the woman and the girl.
Just then Leah returned with some money. “All I could find was ten bucks,” she said, stepping out onto the stoop in front of the girl. “Are they still five dollars a box?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the girl said with a sweet grin.
Then the woman spoke, “Such a sweet and pretty girl, isn’t she? Leah, I mean.”
Leah and the child exchanged money and information, the little girl writing it on her order sheet. They both acted as if they hadn’t heard the woman speak.
“It would be a shame for her to fall into harm’s way, wouldn’t it?”
My heart lurched. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Huh?” Both Leah and the girl were looking at me in confusion.
“Just that as long as you don’t do anything reckless, Leah will be enjoying her cookies by Christmas,” the woman said, her chilling smile widening to reveal perfectly straight, glaringly white teeth.
Leah was still looking at me strangely. “Carson?”
“Sorry, what?”
“Would you like some cookies, too?”
“I, um,” I said, looking back and forth between Leah and the woman who’d moved to stand right behind Leah. “I, uh, I don’t think so. I- I changed my mind, but thank you.”
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. Sorry,” I said, shaking my head, trying to ignore the woman as she raised her hand to pinch one of Leah’s dark curls between her scarlet-tipped fingers. “I was just thinking about something else. I’ll just see you tomorrow, k?”
“Are you sure you’re alright?”
“Yep,” I said as lightly as I could manage. That seemed to have helped. Leah’s wrinkled brow smoothed somewhat at my response.
I turned and made my way down the driveway. As I turned onto the sidewalk, I looked back up at Leah. The woman was gone; only Leah and the little girl remained on the stoop.
Hurrying home, I quelled the urge to run, knowing Leah could see me if she stepped out into her yard. When I reached my mailbox, I got the mail and continued up my driveway as was my habit. The garage door was closed, but I silently prayed that Derek’s bike was hiding behind it.
And it must have been because when I turned the front door knob, it was already unlocked and Derek sat in the living room floor cleaning my father’s Glock. Relief flooded me.
I closed the front door and leaned back against it, closing my eyes.
“What’s wrong?” The question was innocuous enough, but I could hear the sharpness of anxiety in his voice.
“Fahl was at Leah’s.”
Derek was on his feet in an instant. “What? What happened?”
I described the encounter to him, leaving nothing out. The furrow in his brow grew deeper and deeper as I spoke.
“What could that possibly mean?”
His only response was a humph.
“Why am I seeing him? And now in the light?”
“He can travel outside the shadows. He’s dead, but he’s also… something else.”
“What do you think it means? Why is he stalking me?”
Derek watched me carefully, his expression unfathomable. “Your time might be coming.”
“What?” My heart sank. “So soon?”
“It’s impossible to know when, but…”
“How long do I have?”
Derek shrugged in that way that I loved. “Hard to say.”
I fought against that claustrophobic feeling that the world was closing in on me. I reminded myself that I was a survivor and that I wasn’t going down without a fight. My confidence was wavering, though, with the idea that my time might be imminent.
We ate dinner that night in silence, both of us lost in thought. Later, in the wee hours of the morning, I stirred at the sound of my bedside lamp switch clicking off. Fear rose inside me at the darkness that surrounded my bed until I felt Derek’s weight as he