Fed By Fear (Darkly Depraved Monsters #9)

1. Githany

Githany

Getting screamed at by dead people is a real buzzkill on a first date.

Fancy-pants across from me can’t see the barrage of angry and tormented spirits currently vying for my attention.

It’s my fault. I let my roommate Amber feed me a drink before getting ready.

Then a topper, to give me courage to wear a dress that fit a few months ago but now exposes a part of my lower belly that won’t be sucked in no matter how hard I try.

A third pour was born out of pure boredom when my rideshare drivers changed three times. I should have canceled.

Alcohol and ghosts don’t mix.

The more my inhibitions drop, the easier it is for them to find their way in.

Suit-boy over here is droning on about bitcoin as pieces of well-cooked steak fall from his mouth.

Well-cooked. What a pussy. Might as well eat a hockey puck.

Give it to me rare enough that it brings with it the faint belief that an exceptional vet could have it mooing again with an IV and a good night’s rest.

I used to eat meat in the same unforgivable shade of charcoal black.

Over the years, my taste for blood has evolved.

Alarmingly so. Sometimes I wonder if it’s a direct result of the life-altering, supernatural trauma I experienced as a child, which occurred just days before my desire for rarer meats took hold of me. How can they not be connected?

Well, that’s beside the point right now. I’m not looking to explain myself—or my ghostly gifts—to bitcoin-boy. Which is precisely why I didn’t order meat tonight. I’ve been told that ordering food that’s “as close to rare as your restaurant will allow” is spooky.

Probably not as spooky as the ghastly figure hovering over my date’s right shoulder. The furious specter is also donning a suit. I wonder if they shopped at the same store.

If I had to guess a cause of death? Car crash and drowning.

There are visible seatbelt markings on the man’s fat neck.

It locked him up good. So good that he couldn’t get out of the car when it filled with water.

A quick flash of his final few moments speeds through my mind.

Sometimes the ghosts share things intentionally.

Especially when they’re seeking a specific kind of help.

Other times, their pain sends the memories out without thought.

A constant seeking of sources to take in their agony, knowing nothing can be done to change it, but refusing to move on nonetheless.

Ghosts don’t always bear the marks of their death-related injuries. Some look pristine and serenely peaceful as spirits. It’s usually just the bitter ones that float about with oozing wounds and fatal marks upon their skin.

The steakhouse we’re eating at is a waterfront establishment. Lakefront property is hardly in the same caliber of romantic as oceanfront.

Maybe that’s what I should have requested. Far fewer bridges over the ocean. Less people driving off and into the sea.

This lake stinks of death.

In the way information passes into my thoughts without my permission when I’ve had too much to drink and cannot shield my mind, I learn that the man’s body was never found. He’s sitting at the bottom of that lake right there, lost. That would explain the frustration and heartbreak.

Turning back to my food gives me a moment of visual reprieve from the hagridden looks the dead man keeps tossing my way.

I settled for a Mediterranean salad with an ungodly amount of extra olives.

I went to Greece for a tattoo a few years back.

It was all olive trees, tan skin, honeyed-feta, and stray cats.

That’s probably how I’d get away with murder. Commit it in Greece. Feed the body to the cats. Those furry little cuties will eat anything.

“Githany?”

I pull my gaze from my tempting green olives to my gawking date. Suit-boy just asked me a question. Something about work?

“I’m in affiliate marketing,” I say.

His features sag with disappointment. Everyone has some sort of social-media job these days.

It’s not as cringe as it sounds. Landing a suitable career when you’ve got tattoos and gauged ears is challenging.

I’m used to being judged. The anonymity of the internet helps level the workforce playing field.

I market products that are already selling.

All I have to do is edit new videos with pre-existing footage and add a few flashy effects.

No face, no voice-over. It’s a stupidly easy job for anyone, like me, with an unused graphic design background.

No Zoom meetings, no sterile office cubicle.

I never have to leave the house if I don’t want to.

It’s a popular occupation among hermits.

Or I assume it is. We hermits don’t really interact with one another.

So I get to stay in the comfort of my home and set my own hours with zero judgment and absolutely guilt-free. Working in my pajamas with Charmed reruns in the background while eating ramen at four in the morning is my flow state. Affiliate marketing is the perfect job for me.

Hiding away also minimizes my encounters with the dearly departed. Out here, they have unfettered access.

The more the dead notice you noticing them, the more dead will come.

Sort of like an “oh, she can see that guy, maybe she can see me too” chain reaction.

Grumpy drowned man draws additional attention with his insistent hovering.

A middle-aged woman holding an empty baby blanket moves in from my right.

I’m thankful I can’t hear her sobs. From the way her body is shaking and face twisting with despair, the sound would be gut-wrenching and full of loss.

Suit-boy is utterly oblivious. He takes an excessive swig from his overpriced red wine.

“Yeah, wash down that hockey puck.”

He lowers the glass, bushy eyebrows knitting. “Hockey puck?”

Shit on a stick. Did I say that out loud?

“I was asking if you like hockey?” I smile, hoping my teeth may distract him enough he’ll think that’s what I actually said.

A drop of wine slips from the corner of his lips, instantly giving me the ick. Learn how to use your mouth, dude.

“I have a friend who does tattoo removal. I bet he’d give you a great deal if you mentioned my name.” Bitcoin-boy’s eyes are adhered to my neck.

My coffin-shaped black nails reach up instinctively to touch the tattoo he’s fixated on. The two-headed bat is one of my favorite pieces. I was on a waitlist for three years before I got the chance to fly to London to get in the chair of this artist. “I love all my tattoos.”

“Yeah, but what about when you’re older? You’re not going to want your kids to see them.”

A snort-laugh slips out of me. Dude, if you knew how messed up I really am you would realize that kids are not in my future. Instead of trampling down the childless-by-choice path, I hit him with a perfunctory, “I prefer to live in the now.”

“Your face… I can tell you’re beautiful underneath all of that. The tattoos are distracting.”

Now he’s referring to the tiny bat tattoos that dot my nose and across my face. They’re my cheeky take on freckle tattoos. From far away, they look like simple natural markings. Up close, they’re a colony of my own personal teeny-tiny vampire bats.

“I’m very happy with the way I look.” My mouth turns up into a toothless grin. It’s the kind that says, quit while you’re ahead you pretentious shit.

His nostrils twitch slightly. But then he recovers, and his gaze flicks between my hair and my ears. Which will he comment on next? The large gauges in my multi-pierced ears or the green tips of my dyed-black bob? What a boring idiot. To think, I left my house tonight for this.

I haven’t commented on his appearance. Preppy chinos that are so tight he can’t possibly have any equipment bigger than a tube of ChapStick down there.

A too-bright blazer that, although probably expensive, looks cheap and itchy.

If this were a movie and he offered to throw that shit over my shoulders to keep me warm on the walk home, I’d stomp it into the dirt.

The ’stache he’s taken the time to meticulously shape is patchy at best. And he’s commenting on my appearance?

Who even does that?

A thick fuzziness fills my ears at the same time a shadow pushes through the restaurant entrance.

We’ve moved on from “people who can’t accept they’re dead” to “people who turn into something truly terrible after death.” I don’t know the proper word.

I’ve always called them shadow-people. Usually content with showing up out of the corner of your eye.

It’s when they’re fully unafraid to show themselves that the shit hits the fan.

Ding. An alert on my phone gives me the perfect opportunity to look away from my dreadful dinner partner and our ghostly date-crashers. Maybe it’s Amber telling me the ceiling caved in at our apartment and I need to come home immediately.

To my great dismay, it’s not a get home ASAP text. It’s an email for an auto-renewal of a streaming subscription.

I feign its importance and abruptly end the dinner. “I’ll take this to go.”

Baffled, shocked, humiliated. Suit-boy’s face flipped through all three emotions when I left without warning.

It doesn’t bother me. His feelings are his and I’ve got my own to deal with.

Away from the lakefront I go. Away from the waterlogged corpses and graveyard of sunken cars.

The closer I get to town, the clearer my head feels.