Ghosts of July (Shamans of the Divide, Book 1)

Chapter Nine

Foul didn't begin to describe my mood. Rotten? Maybe. Abysmal? More likely. I can't say that I hadn't seen it coming, either, and that was the worst part. Taylor had been acting so strange the past month or so and I just convinced myself that he'd been tired or stressed or busy. I was pretty certain there was more to the story than "just growing apart," too, but for right now I was too busy feeling sorry for myself to dig into what he'd been up to in Colorado. The gossip would find a way to cover the 200 miles to me eventually.

I really didn't want to know at this point.

I let a few tears fall for a good twenty minutes. My life felt much lonelier than it did this morning and I wondered what life would be like going to a college a few miles down the road from Taylor. Was my plan even to still go to school in Colorado now that we weren't together? He'd mentioned something about this being "a break" but I'm pretty sure that's guy-speak for I'm hooking up as quickly as possible while you wait around.

No thanks.

It was a little after three in the afternoon when I'd finally had enough of myself. Pushing my sad body down the hall one more time to stand in front of the bathroom mirror, I fixed my makeup for the third time that day.

Really, it was the super-volumizer mascara that was making me look like a drowned raccoon, so I washed my face and did a quick reapply. Walking back to my bedroom in search of my sandals, I let out a yelp when I saw Ernie perched on my bed, looking comfortable but not leaving any sort of indent in the covers.

"Dang it," I said when I could breathe. "You're killing me with this sneaky thing."

"You done crying?" He didn't sound very sympathetic.

"Why are you here so soon? Boring day at the diner?"

He shook his head.

"Quite a tizzy around there. Seems there's a certified highway serial killer. Some old guy came through with a newspaper from Cheyenne and there's a dead girl in a dumpster behind a Denny's."

The news was disturbing to say the least, remembering the two bodies Dot had mentioned the day before.

I didn't know the chain of events in the killings so I couldn't tell in what order the girls were killed, but Shades sat on the same highway as all three deaths.

"You're pretty up to date on gossip. How do you even know what a Denny's is?"

Ernie stood up and looked around my room, almost as if he was bored by the question.

"I pay attention," he said. "I have nothing else to do, so I pay attention."

He looked around my room with a little more earnest interest. His head darted from side to side and he peered quickly along the bookshelf to the window. Something was wrong.

"What?" I asked and moved to look outside. The smell hit hard and I recognized it immediately. In my mind, I'd taken to calling it the "evil" smell, even though I had no idea what was really causing it. I had no idea what was out there that made that stench and I was too terrified to go out and look.

"Do you see something?" I asked Ernie. Coming to stand near him, I was careful not to invade his space. I wasn't sure what would happen if I tried to touch him, but I wasn't ready to find out.

Ernie had two fingers pressed to his lips as he peered outside.

"No," he finally said. "You?"

I shook my head. "I don't see it. But I can smell it whenever it comes around."

"This isn't the first time I've sensed it."

He said it without taking his eyes off the group of trees in the Tillman yard about a half mile away.