Chapter Eight
CHAPTER EIGHT
Morgan’s front door is open. A gap just wide enough for someone to slip through.
I stare at the space, the glimpse of his entryway. The narrow table for keys and mail. Music pounds from the house, an old John Mayer song, all drums and guitar and growl.
“Hello?” I call.
My hands shake with what I have to do. A bead of sweat slides down my temple.
I step back onto the lawn, scan the floor-to-ceiling windows, but the sun is still setting, its waning light smeared on the glass, so it isn’t dark enough yet for the house’s interior to be revealed.
Still, for a moment, I see not only Morgan inside, but Daphne, too. They’re swaying to a slow beat with their bodies pressed close, Daphne’s hand in Morgan’s—until he squeezes so hard she buckles, her lips in the shape of a gasp. She tries to free herself, but he won’t let her go; there’s something hot and hungry in his eyes. Love, maybe. Or possession. Sometimes they look the same.
I blink the image away. See only smudges of sunset on the pane.
The street behind me is quiet, empty. No passing cars. No people with dogs who might stop on the curb.
I approach the door again, knock on its frame with an unsteady fist. The sound gets lost beneath the music’s drums, which thump inside me, mimicking a heartbeat.
“Hello?” I repeat, tossing another glance at the road. “Morgan?”
I’m about to ring the bell when something darts past my feet. I jump back, processing too late what I’m seeing—an orange streak, a blur of fur: Sickle!—and fail to catch him before he disappears into the shrubs lining the walkway.
I dive after him, arms sweeping through thickets of leaves, eyes raking every hollow, panicking that he might have already sprinted farther away.
When I finally find him—tucked within the final shrub I check, crouched low under the branches, almost flat against the grass—my breath spills into the air, coasting on a laugh.
“Hey, bud.” I reach for him, but he contracts deeper into the bush, wary of my touch. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be out here. Should we head inside? Go find your dad?”
He blinks at me and I try again, contorting myself into uncomfortable angles until my hands clamp around him. He squirms and swats, but I manage to pull him out, and when I cradle him against my chest, murmur into his neck, he wriggles a few more moments before relaxing into me, settling down.
“It’s okay,” I assure him, stroking his fur, dipping my forehead down to his. “I’m a friend.” He isn’t purring yet, but he nuzzles against me, whiskers tickling my skin.
It’s not until I’m back at the door that I notice scratches on my arms—from the shrubs or Sickle, I’m not sure—and two spots of red. At first, I think I’m bleeding, the scratches deeper than they seem, but Sickle’s front paws, normally white, are splotched with it, too.
“You poor thing! Did you cut yourself out here?”
I hurry across the threshold and nudge the door shut with my hip, careful to prevent another escape. “Hello?” I call. “Sorry—Morgan? It’s— Your cat got out and I think he hurt himself.”
Music crowds the entryway, my voice too small to compete. Sickle grows impatient, shifting in my arms before leaping out and landing on the floor.
“Oh— Sickle, no—” If there’s something sharp in his paw, he might embed it deeper by walking on it. But as I bend to grab him again, he’s already off, dashing into the living room and out of my eyeline.
I follow the faint tracks he’s left, whispers of red along the hardwood. Scanning the kitchen, where an electric guitar whines from speakers, I find a laptop on the island, a colander of vegetables, a cutting board streaked with the pulp of a tomato. But no Morgan. No Sickle. And without a cat to keep contained, without a wound to tend to, I have no reason to be here yet.
I turn to go, heel already pivoting, but it’s then that Sickle meows, a sound I barely hear beneath the music, a sound I might be imagining, looking for reasons to stay. Still, I step closer to the counter, slow enough not to scare him off, and when I reach the lane of hardwood between the island and oven, his name is perched on my tongue: “Sic—” But it crumbles between my teeth.
Because it isn’t Sickle on the floor.
It’s Morgan.
Flat on his back. Eyes on the ceiling. Staring but not seeing. Covered with something so dark and rich and red, I might think it was fabric—velvet—if not for the knife in his chest.