24. Janie
Chapter 24
Janie
T ana never showed up at work. And she never texted me back on Sunday. I knew we weren’t close. She had no reason to text me back, but . . . I had a terrible feeling about things. She didn’t have close family from our conversations, which meant that there was a limited pool of people to care. I cared; I needed my work friend. Worst of all, everyone disparaged her and her age. No one cared.
I cared.
Maybe it was because of what happened with Rick that I was more sensitive to it. Instead of going home, I drove to the apartment building I thought she lived in. I parked in the visitors’ parking spot and stepped out. Should I have told Meical what I was doing? Unease settled through my system as I wasn’t sure what Meical was to me. Roommate, I guess, officially, since he’s paying rent. He wanted more. He wanted to devour me, but not in the end-of-life way. The lack of consent bothered me, but he was promising me forever. Holy dedication and reverence for me. I couldn’t imagine anything better. The metal stairs creaked and groaned under my weight as I made my way up. I slowly walked down the hallway. I tried to remember the random snaps she sent me while she did laundry. Turning to the left, the bright lights of the laundry room shined and shadows crept along the corners of the light. I walked a few more apartments down till the vantage point from that spot matched an old photo. Everything was right. She had to live at apartment twenty-three. I turned to knock on the door.
“What are you doing, my light?”
In a mix of fear and shock, I twisted and jumped. The door slammed open from my body, falling, but shadows caught me a few inches from the ground. It was like I was floating.
It was human Meical standing above me. “You can’t be here!” I hissed.
His human brows furrowed. “Why are you here?” he asked.
Meical’s shadows wrapped around me and pushed me up. I tumbled into his arms and another tendril wrapped around our waists. This felt like a moment. Like weak knees, passionate kisses, and whatever. Would we kiss? I sucked in a breath as I waited. This entire relationship was weird and fucked. He took my emotions to feed himself for weeks. I wanted to fight my attraction to him, but maybe there was something to fate. He's the only person who has ignited such a powerful attraction within me. I whispered, “People will see.”
He looked around with a grin. “I can see in the shadows. I know where everyone is. Humans don’t want to see the shadows move.”
Before I let go of my senses, I pursed my lips. “Let me go.”
The tendril unwrapped from me, and I stepped back into the apartment. I turned as I looked at it. Was the door not locked? That sinking feeling filled me again. My eyes looked around and it was her apartment. I recognized the art on the wall from her social media pictures. “I’m looking for my co-worker. She had a date. She didn’t come to work and I don’t think anyone cares. They kept calling her flighty, young, and she didn’t text me back.”
“What are you saying?” He slipped past me and walked around the small apartment.
“What if he hurt her? What if . . .” I looked away as tears filled my eyes. “Something happened to her and she didn’t have someone to fight for her? Like you did for me.”
He paused and looked at me. “Like what happened to you?”
“Yeah. I hope not. I hoped maybe she was here . . . hungover. But there are worse?—”
“I get rid of the worst. I know what you were thinking of. Every single crime they committed, I know them all like the back of my hand. You don’t have to lay it out for me.”
“Oh.” I stepped further into the apartment. “Tana?” I waited and bit my bottom lip. Please answer, please answer.
“She’s not here,” he whispered. My heart fell before he kept talking. “The thing is, I’ve left the world for so long that I don’t know modern crimes. But evil doesn’t change.”
I walked to the desk and opened the laptop. It wasn’t password locked. A tendril snaked around my legs as I sat in her chair. I wish my body didn’t respond to his every touch. I was a normal girl—or I thought I was. If I was attracted to the monster, what did that make me? He stepped around the kitchen.
“That’s depressing. You hope that one day things will change. People will be better. ”
“It keeps me fed. And you, of all people, know that they don’t.”
My shoulders fell as I sighed, and then I made a gagging noise. He sent a look of pity my way. Indifferent, I shrugged my shoulders. “I can’t help it. I need hope.”
“Aren’t my people on the Earth to ensure a wonderful world?” he asked.
“What you’re saying is that nothing changes. Evil is evil. Evil is always there. You’re—ancient, right?” I clicked different messaging sites and browsers to find any clue where she could be. Or who she could be with. “Is that what you were meant to do all your life?”
“Yes. Or that’s what I believe.”
“So where’s the hope? If you and your . . . people have been getting rid of evil, what does that really mean? We will always be on this ride. Fighting evil. Suffering through the bad things.”
“There is always hope. And you won’t be hurt again.”
“Evil—at least the evil you’re talking about—isn’t hereditary. It’s not contagious like that. Killing won’t wipe it out.”
“Sometimes it’s the seed that can start more. I have heard of the cycles of abuse. Didn’t you listen to that true crime last month where they hypothesized that his abuse created the monster? I eliminate one aggressor in the problem and potentially fix things,” he said.
“That’s—”
Meical smirked. “Hopeful?”
I rolled my eyes as I clicked a bookmark that read DartDating . Weird name. It opened up to her homepage. The brand tagline read: Bullseye to Love! A few unread messages appeared on the screen, but I clicked to the read ones.
I really want to see you this weekend. Can we go on a date? I want to treat you like the princess you are .
Reply: I don’t know. I’m not a princess.
Please. You are so beautiful. I want to worship you.
What else do you want to do to me?
I paused my reading and gagged. Meical smirked. “What is wrong?”
“I don’t want to read about her personal sexcapades and her fantasies. Or, like, them sexting.”
“Are you a detective or not?”
I shook my head, the sound of my hair rustling against my ears. “I’m not. I’m nothing in reality. I’m just a girl. The thought of her getting hurt, just like I almost did, fills me with a deep sense of ‘oh fuck.’ She doesn’t have someone in the shadows like you are for me.”
Meical stepped closer to me. His eyes turned black again as a tendril slipped under my cheek and our eyes locked, compassion filling his face. Because of his nature, how much of humanity had he seen? It’s probably like breathing—humans and sex. “You want me to go through the rest of the messages? You could always look around the rest of the apartment. Maybe you’ll find tickets for her going to her family’s house?”
I nodded. Maybe, just maybe, she went out of town. As I stood up and walked to the hallway, the distant sound of voices echoing through the corridor filled my senses.
“I really hope so. I don’t think so unless it was such an emergency that she didn’t tell anyone where she was going.”
Stepping into her bedroom, I noticed the soft glow of fairy lights illuminating the room. It made me smile because that was totally Tana’s aesthetic. This was a small apartment in the bad side of town and she brightened it with small touches. I figured we made around the same pay. My apartment was a lucky find that was rare these days. Even with good luck, it was getting harder and harder with the price of food and rent. My eyes slid over every surface: an unkempt bed, clothes and shoes on a pile at the end, an upturned purse.
“Anything?” I asked. Nothing to note here.
“No. I have a number, but I’m going through the others. That’s the problem. It all ends at ‘text me off the app.’”
I made my way back to Meical. “That’s the thing. Most of those apps charge for messages for one party. It always ends that way.”
“Are you on any apps?”
“No. Not like you are talking about. I’ve . . . dating Rick was a weird thing for me. Not normal. You pushed my hand. I thought I was crazy and horny.”
A tentacle wrapped around my ankle. I took another step, but shadows followed. That was the weirdest thing about it. Shadows are everywhere and he could touch me all the time. Meical stood up and touched the back of my waist comfortingly. He knew my emotions. Meical knew my scent. He knew that every touch lit my body on fire. It wasn’t fair, but here I was. Stuck. Stuck with a monster.
He stood up from the desk. “Let’s go.”
“What about fingerprints?”
“It’s not going to get that far, Janie.”
“What do you mean?”
“You came over here to find her? My shadows can creep everywhere. We can find her.”
“What does that mean?”
He shrugged as he stood up. “I can’t look everywhere. We just need to find a sliver of an answer and we can retrieve her.” He reached out and grabbed my hand. “Let’s go.”