“Sorry about that,” Griffin says, pushing a button on the side of the scanner, then shaking it. “These things are finicky.”
He waves me over with a tilt of his head. I cross to him, shoving my hands in my pockets to look casual.
Griffin leans in. I can smell the burrito he just ate, and his voice drops to a whisper that I can barely hear over the earplugs. “Scanner crapped out on me.”
“What?” I glance at Mathis. He’s watching us, but from this distance, he shouldn’t be able to hear. “It’s out of battery?”
Griffin shakes his head. “Dead dead.”
“Do you have another?”
“I only brought the one. I’ve never had one crap out on me before, and I just changed the batteries.”
I feel like an extra scanner would be an important thing to bring, but now’s not the time to point out the obvious gaps in our preparation. I swallow the criticism and focus on what we can actually do. “So, what happens now?”
“Mark it as inconclusive.” He hooks the dead scanner onto his belt, his movements brisk and professional. “Tell Nico or Donny, and they’ll swing by on their way home.”
My entire body rebels against that idea. I don’t understand why, but I know we can’t just leave. Not when we’re already here, and Mathis is right there. Something feels wrong in a way I can’t explain, but that I know in my bones is real. If Morrow is possessing Mathis and he thinks we’re onto him, he could bolt before Nico or Donny even gets here.
My fingers find the earplugs and pull them out.
Griffin’s hand lands on my back. “What are you doing?”
“I want to see if I can feel anything,” I whisper.
His eyes search mine. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Nico will kill me if anything happens.”
“Just let me try,” I whisper. “Please. I can put them back in quickly if I need to.”
He studies my face for another couple of seconds before giving me a tight nod and dropping his hand from my back. I immediately miss the warmth of it, which is annoying because now’s not the time to get distracted by how good it felt to have someone touch me like they actually cared whether I was okay.
I close my eyes and try to remember what I did at the crime scene. Except I have no idea what I did at the crime scene. I just heard it. Like my brain knew what to listen for even if I didn’t.
I try to quiet my thoughts, focusing on the apartment around me. On Judge Judy’s muffled voice from the TV… the hum of the refrigerator… the musty odor hanging in the air that meansMathis probably does have real mold in here… old garbage… is that pizza?
I walk slowly around the kitchen, keeping my movements casual. My fingers trail along the side of the refrigerator, then across the wall near the window.
“What’s she doing?” Mathis asks.
“Checking for moisture damage,” I hear Griffin say.
My palms are sweating inside the latex gloves as I turn my back to Mathis, pretending to examine the door frame when really I’m just trying to calm the hammering in my chest. I let my shoulders drop, releasing tension I didn’t know I was carrying. The TV becomes a distant hum.
Then I hear it.
Scratching. As quiet as the whispering I heard at the crime scene, only smaller, like tiny fingernails scraping against glass or insects crawling inside the walls.
My eyes open and I turn slowly, following the sound all the way to the sink. I stand directly over it. The sound gets louder, the scratching building until it feels like it’s vibrating inside my skull.
I run my eyes over the plates crusted with food. Bowls with fuzzy mold growing inside them. On a plate near the bottom of the pile, something glistens.
A glob of clear substance the size of a golf ball sits on the dirty plate, catching the light from the window in oily rainbow streaks. I lean closer. The sound gets louder.
When I turn around, Mathis is still standing there, but his entire posture has changed. His shoulders are squared now instead of hunched. His chin is lifted, and he’s grinning at me with a smile that makes my skin crawl because it’s too wide and there’s nothing human behind his eyes.
Mathis bolts into the living room.
I run after him, Griffin right behind me, but by the time we round the corner, Mathis has reached the end of the narrow entry hallway and has his back pressed against the front door.
