We drove through the day, stopping for snacks and fast food that made Dave grumble about the quality of the burgers. Apparently 100% beef didn’t mean 100% quality beef, and his explanation ruined perfectly good burgers for me for life. Sebastian happily devoured mine.
According to Wikipedia, Peach Tree had an aging population of around four hundred people, with one school which catered from kindergarten through twelfth grade. It had a library, a store, two diners, a police station, doctor’s office, and one church which the majority of the townsfolk flocked to every Sunday morning. Those not retired were employed by local farms or traveled to bigger towns.
As the name suggested, the streets were lined with peach trees and every garden had one. I bet they made a good cobbler here. Dave couldn’t ruin that for me. Our car rolled down the main street, and the sun was beginning to dip into the horizon, casting an array of pinks, lilacs, and oranges that backlit the fluffy clouds beginning to roll in with the dusk. I twisted to ask Caleb where we should go first. But he’d disappeared.
Harry shrugged like he had no clue where his spirit companion had gone.
“Where to?” Dave asked.
Great, now I had to admit that I had lost Caleb. “Police station?”
“Is your ghost not clear?”
“My ghost has disappeared.”
“That’s not suspicious at all,” Dave drawled as our car made a slow trek through the town. Scattered between the few businesses there were pretty three story townhouses.
I wound my window down and sniffed the air. “You feel that?” I asked.
Dave frowned and tilted his head. “I feel nothing.”
“Exactly,” I whispered. “Pull over.”
Dave angled the car to the side of the road and put the brake on. I unclipped my belt and jumped out of the car.
I glanced up and down the street, eyeballing the dark windows in the houses and the empty street.
Dave and Sebastian joined me on the sidewalk. “I don’t get it,” Sebastian said as he shoved his hands in his trouser pockets. Dave sniffed the air, his nostrils flaring like he could scent any nefarious creatures. If anyone could, it would be him.
“Where is everyone? There are no cars, no lights, no sounds, nothing.”
Sebastian frowned and Dave scanned the street. A cold hand of warning slid down my spine and settled like a lead weight in my gut.
Caleb reappeared before me. “Like I said, everyone is dead.” is dead.”
Chapter Seven
I am not broke.
Death not only had a smell, it had a feeling. Ask anyone who has ever visited a relative in the funeral home. There was an eerie sensation that prickled over your flesh and stirred an ancient instinct held deep within you. Death. Danger. Run.
Unless you were the literal daughter of death, then that awareness stalked your every waking moment and you learned to get comfortable with it. I knew death wasn’t an end destination but an inevitable stopping point on your journey to the next life, whatever that might hold. Nobody was infallible, but how you lived your life, your intentions, your actions—that is what colored your soul and determined whether you went up or down.
All living beings held magic. Some more than others. The supernatural factions held more than humans, and humans held more than the animal kingdom. That magic was left behind after death occurred, you didn’t need that currency in Heaven or Hell. It would eventually be returned to the Earth, but until the funeral rites had been performed and the body laid into the ground, whether that be as scattered ashes or full body burial, the magic clung to the air.
Magic saturated the air in Peach Tree. Unless a god had died here recently, a lot of death had occurred all at once and none of those victims were buried.
“Where is everyone?” I asked Caleb.
Caleb frowned and looked up and down the street. He was still confused. When death happened suddenly and unexpectedly, the soul struggled to catch up to what had happened to them. Caleb knew he was dead, so that was a step in the right direction and he remembered he had a mission to find me. Caleb looked up and down the empty street as Harry came to float next to him. Caleb shook his head. “There’s a river of blood and an ocean of pain, a mountain of torment and a world of suffering awaiting you.”
Then he disappeared, leaving me with that ominous statement. I sighed. Caleb clearly favored the dramatic but without specifics, I couldn’t find it in me to be worried.
“He’s a rather unhelpful fellow,” Harry commented.
I pointed toward a crossroads about two hundred feet in the distance. “Let’s head to the town center and then we can split up and try to find someone who knows what is happening here.”
Dave’s car beeped, engaging the locks. A little pointless given that I suspected when Caleb said they were all dead, he meant it in a literal sense. But what could kill an entire town? A gas leak? It seemed unlikely that everyone would be in the same place though. Rounding up an entire town’s population, even one as small as this, was impressive.
