EXTRA TRAUMA, HOLD THE ANCHOVIES
Our apartment door, with its battered paint and dent from the time Casey tried to move a couch through it, has never looked so much like a shield.
I fumble the keys—of course I do, my hands are shaking so badly I can barely feel my fingers—and jam the wrong one into the lock twice before finally getting it.
Casey is so close behind me, I’m practically wearing him as a backpack.
“Inside, Kallie,” he hisses, voice shredded.
We tumble through and slam the door, double lock it, then Casey flips the chain for good measure and braces both arms against the wood as if he’s holding back a SWAT team.
I press my forehead to the wall and inhale cheap eggshell paint, trying to slow my breathing. Not working. My pulse is stampeding in my throat.
Casey lets out a long, ragged exhale.
It’s a solid minute before either of us moves.
“Think that’s enough?” I manage. “Or do you want to nail some two-by-fours over it, classic zombie style?”
He doesn’t even crack a smile, which is how I know shit is capital-S serious.
“We should check the place,” he says, but it’s like he’s trying to convince himself, not me. “Make sure nobody’s, uh—” He doesn’t finish, but he doesn’t have to. We’re on the same freaking page.
He moves through the apartment in a stumbling rush. My room first, of course. Closet doors wrenched open, curtains torn back, a quick, useless glance under the bed. I trail him, not because I think he’ll find anything, but because the thought of being alone is worse.
He attacks his own closet next, yanking the door so hard it jumps its track and smacks the wall.
We both freeze, listening to the sound die.
He doesn’t say a word.
He flicks the bathroom light on, the shower curtain shrieks as he rips it aside, metal hooks popping free. Every shadow in the living room is a threat until it isn’t. We end in the kitchen, breathless, the two of us just staring at the refrigerator as if it holds any answers.
My hands won’t stop shaking as I reach for a glass, and fill it with water. Most of it sloshes onto the counter before I can even drink it.
Fuck.
Casey slides carefully onto a kitchen stool, his hand hovering near the darkening bruises on his throat.
“Mafia,” he says, testing the word. “Territorial dispute. We walked into a drug deal.”
“The guy turned to dust, Casey.”
“Trick lighting,” he says, a little too fast. “Smoke bomb. A distraction, so we’d run.”
I stare at him. His certainty is a cheap suit, and it’s not fitting him right. We’re both avoiding the crossbow bolt that came from nowhere, the impossible speed, the one-handed lift.
“Tell me you saw the teeth and the eyes,” I say, my voice flat.
He goes still. The silence stretches, thick with everything we’re not saying.
“I saw something,” he finally admits, not looking at me. “The light was weird. I was… in shock.”
He doesn’t say fangs. I note that he doesn’t say fangs.
And because he won’t, I can’t.
Fine. If we can’t make it make sense, someone else will have to. I pull out my phone. “I’m calling 911.”
