Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 90630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 453(@200wpm)___ 363(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 453(@200wpm)___ 363(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
We both step over it and move deeper into the house. The smell gets worse.
“Breathe through your mouth,” I tell Delphi, getting a flashlight from my bag. “I don’t want to taste it! How can anyone live this way?”
“I have no idea.” I shine the light around the kitchen. There’s a cluster of candles on the table, all melted down to almost nothing. The cabinets are missing the doors, and are full of mouse-eaten boxes of cereal. There are several takeout containers and McDonalds wrappers in the sink that can’t be more than a week or two old.
There’s a bathroom in the hall off the kitchen and the tub has some sort of thick crust around it.
“That was definitely used to make drugs,” I say, grimacing.
“This is really sad,” Delphi presses. “I knew the drug problem was bad in Charlotte, but I didn’t know it was this sad. I have patients who come from really poor families. What if they live like this?”
“You’re a good person,” I tell her.
“Both my parents were physicians,” she explains, using her foot to overturn a pizza box, sending several mice scattering. “And my grandma was before that. They always mainly served the pack, and I grew up feeling marginalized as a werewolf, but we didn’t live anywhere close to this.”
“It can put things in perspective, that’s for sure.”
We pick our way down the hall, stepping back over the dirty mattress. The smell of a rotting body intensifies, and Delphi gasps when I use magic to push open one of the two bedroom doors. A man—long dead—is slumped over in the corner. There’s a needle on the floor in front of him. The level of decomposition of the body is going to make him hard to identify.
“Oh my god.” Delphi turns away, face paling.
“Is that a tattoo on his arm?” I ask, shining my light on his forearm. Maggots have already started eating away at him, and it looks like bugs or rats—probably both—have started gnawing on his face.
“It looks like it, but I can’t tell what it is. This could have been used to identify him.”
“It still can,” I say and pull the bag from my shoulder. “Hold my light.” Delphi gets the light, shining it on this guy’s arm. I put on gloves and get a bottle of peroxide from my first aid kit and pour it on his arm, rubbing it into the area that’s tattooed. Only a few seconds later, the chemical reaction makes it easier to see the ink.
“A skull with a snake around it,” I say out loud as a bad feeling creeps over me like a tight wool sweater.
“You say that like you know the guy.”
“I didn’t, but I know someone who was looking for him” I take off the gloves, turning them inside out so the contaminated part stays on the inside and shove them into an outer pocket of my bag. “His first name is Abbot.” I take a photo of the tattoo so I can show Antonio later. “I don’t think he was a dealer, so we still need to find Razor Mike.”
“What are you going to do about him?”
“You have a member of your pack in the police department, right?”
“Yeah, we have a couple, actually.”
“We can tip them off. Or even call 911 anonymously. Say we walked by and noticed the smell.”
I straighten up and take the flashlight back from her, looking around the room. I almost don’t notice it, but when I do, my heart skips a beat in my chest. “Oh shit,” I whisper.
“What is it?”
“Look.” I shine the light on words that are written on the wall in blood. “Ratunku,” I say slowly. I don’t know what that means, but I’ve heard it before.”
“It means help in Polish.”
“It does?”
“Yeah. My ex mother-in-law is Polish. I learned a bit of it so she couldn’t shit-talk me without me knowing.”
“That’s a boss move,” I say and take a picture of the words written on the wall. The man who ran out into the street, had he been here too? The smell of the dead body is starting to make my eyes water. We get out to the bedroom and I use magic to shut the door, which only helps a tiny bit with the smell. There’s one more room in this house to look through, and thankfully—but also disappointingly, there are no more dead bodies to find. Someone was definitely staying in this room. The garbage has been pushed into one corner and the blankets on the bed aren’t as disgusting as the ones in the living room.
The energy starts to feel different, but it’s more like I’m feeling the last memories of the people in this house. Whatever was here was dark. Old. Powerful. We step outside, both gasping in fresh air. Standing on the porch, I get out my phone to call in a tip to the cops so they can come find the body. If Abbot had people, they should know where he is.