I looked back at Enyo again. She was still facing my direction, but she was looking at the window. Her ears were flattened and she let out a low growl.Fuck.Thoughts of my recurring dreams filled my mind and I started to panic.Was this it?I crept to the kitchen and grabbed the sharpest knife I could find and a can of wasp spray. I was a decent aim. I could hit someone in the eye.
I headed back into the living room and grabbed my phone. I could call the police, have them come and take a look, but I wasn’t sure they would take me seriously, and it’d probably take them forever to get here if they even showed up at all. Half of them didn’t like me—some I was pretty sure for no reason other than that I was gay—and even more of them still looked at me like I’d murdered my ex.
Enyo hopped off the couch and went into my bedroom, growling at a window in there. Her ears were still flattened and her hair was all puffed up, so who orwhatever it was must be circling the house. The panic that had been brewing ignited completely. Whatever my dreams were warning me about washere, at my house. They’d come for me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out whether it was a human out there, but what Iwassure of was that I didn’t want to be alone. I was probably as far off the deep end as I had been when I was drunk, but I texted the one person I was pretty sure wouldn’t think I was crazy.
Mason, someone’s messing around outside my house and I’m freaking out a little bit.
I wasn’t really sure he’d reply, especially after I’d brushed him off at work. Plus, he surely had other things to do than sit around holding his phone. He had all kinds of friends from high school he needed to catch up with, and his parents probably had family dinners or something. I only had a few seconds to spiral, though, because my phone pinged.
I’ll be there in less than ten minutes. Lock everything. Don’t open your door until I get there.
I felt kind of like a scared child, but I’d also never feltmore relieved, just knowing he was coming. He was obviously planning on driving fast, but there was still very little chance of him making it from his parents’ house or anywhere in town in ten minutes. I sat down uneasily on the couch. Enyo was pacing around the house, meowing occasionally, but her ears were back to normal and her fur wasn’t bristling.
I held the knife in my left hand, the can of bug spray in my right, sitting there as my pizza got cold. I’d lost my appetite. I heard the crunch of tires on gravel in my driveway exactly nine minutes later. My hopes soared, but I waited until he knocked on the door. “Elijah! It’s Mason. Open up.” He’d just come to my house on a moment’s notice, made it in record time, then used thatdeep cop voice. I was ready to pounce on him at the door, but I composed myself because Rory was right about everything and I needed to prove her wrong for once. I stood and opened the door. He was standing on my porch with a heavy flashlight and a fucking shotgun.
“What the hell?” I asked, moving out of the way so he could get in the door.
“Listen, Elijah, I’m not messing around here. If someone’s out there, they’re up to no good, and they’re going to pay.” When the hell had he turned from my tormentor to my bodyguard? Maybe when his dick slipped inside me? “You’re sure someone was out there?”
“Yes, I’m sure. Someone knocked on the door. I looked out the peephole and no one was there. Enyo was growling at the door, then the window, then my bedroom window. That’s not like her. And she’s been anxious ever since. I don’t get unexpected visitors out here, and barely three cars might pass by in an entire night. People don’t knock on my door.”
Mason took in the knife and bug spray I’d sat on the coffee table when I heard his voice. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to go check it out. You stay here. Lock the door behind me.”
“Hell no!” I cried. “I’m not staying in here by myself.” I followed him out the door, having the presence of mind to grab my keys and lock it behind me. I could get in fast if needed, butI’d seen enough horror movies to know not to give whoever they were an opportunity to get inside.
Mason hesitated, narrowing his eyes. “Fine. Stay close to me.” He chambered a round in the shotgun and I just stared. He glanced at me and said, “It’s my dad’s gun. He used to hunt, you know. I don’t have mine right now. There was an investigation and I won’t get it back until I’m working again. But I’m a damn good aim with any gun.” So hewasplanning to go back to Chicago at some point. Not that I cared, I just hadn’t been completely sure why he’d come back. I only had bits and pieces. They never stuck around, and I hadn’t really expected him to be any different. I stuck to his back and we made our way around the house.
My garden seemed fine. Nothing was trampled, and the woods beyond my back yard seemed normal. All I heard were crickets and katydids. Everything seemed at peace. No weird noises, no unusual silence. There were no footprints where Mason was shining his flashlight, and there’d been no vehicles visible anywhere, other than mine and Mason’s. “I didn’t pass any cars on my way up here,” he commented.
His light shone around the yard, landing on my empty clothesline and circling back to my garden. I had no idea what he was looking for. I glanced at my bedroom window. Mason did too. “You said she was growling at your window?”He did listen.
“Yeah.”
Mason walked toward it slowly, his flashlight on the ground in front of him, intently focused and yet still holding the gun like he was ready to fire if needed. He stopped. “You see that?” I followed the beam of his flashlight to the bottom of my outside wall, but shook my head, because I saw nothing. He moved closer to the house. “That scuff, on the siding. Has that always been there?”
I just stared at him. He stared back like he was seriously waiting on a reply. I looked back at the scuff on my wall that could have been from a shoe or a deer, a racoon... from something blowing in a storm, or the previous owner. “Mason, I haveno clue. I didn’t redo the outside of the house, besides a little work on the front porch. It could have been there when I moved in, or could have been put there by anything. Or it could be new.”
His face twisted in concentration as he looked back at the scuff. “Hm.” He pulled out his phone and took a picture of it. I just watched, eyebrows raised. He turned back to me. “It kind of looks like someone was bracing to try to open your window.” I had no idea how he got that out of a scuff on the wall, but the thought still unnerved me. What if I’d forgotten to lock my window and he was right?
He backed up, shining his light on the ground nearby. “What the hell? Look at this.” He bent down and I leaned forward to look closely where he was looking. I didn’t see anything.
“What am I looking at?” I asked him.
He stood slowly, looking at me like I was dense. He pointed with his trigger finger. “Fucking ash from a cigarette. Right there.” I looked again to see a long ash in a small patch of dirt with no grass. “It’s like someone was smoking and let it go too long without flicking it. But it fell off right at your window, probably because they were trying to open it. Look for a cigarette butt. It’ll have DNA on it.” He paused and glanced at me. “Unless, of course, you’ve had a guest here really recently who smokes. I know it’s not you. I’d have tasted it if you smoked.” Fair enough, but he was pretty blunt.
I shook my head. “None of my friends smoke.” How the fuck he’d found a cigarette ash outside my house at night, not to mention deduced that whole story from it and a scuff mark was beyond me, but he took pictures of the ash too. From both close up and back far enough to see its proximity to the wall of my house.
He looked around a little more, probably for a cigarette butt, but found nothing. “The ash alone won’t have anything useful, but now we know someone was back here, at your window.” He turned and shone the light out into the woods, but despite the powerful beam, there was no sign of movement, nothing unusual. We made our way back to the front of thehouse, and he checked the bushes and flowers there, then he walked around the driveway and checked all over the porch, but apparently didn’t find anything else he thought was evidence. I unlocked my door but I was uneasy. I knew for certain that the knock hadn’t been a mistake, and it wasn’t a ghost. Ghosts don’t smoke.
Mason followed me inside and locked the door behind us, securing the deadbolt and chain lock too. He unchambered the round in the gun, and placed it against the wall by the couch. “Are all your windows locked? And the back door?”
I nodded. “Yes. All of them.”
He sighed. “Well, it took me nine minutes to get here from my parents’ house. It would take the police even longer because the call would have to go through dispatch. I don’t like that, Elijah. I don’t like that at all.”
I frowned. “Well, I’m sorry you don’t like the house I chose.”
He ignored my comment. “Can you stay with your mom in town until everything dies down? At least until they catch whoever killed your ex? That way you wouldn’t be alone, and you’d be much closer to the police, to my parents’ house, and your friends.”
