Night Unbound [Claiming series, #1]

- 5 -

Something was watching her, following her. The awareness rode Julie constantly again, reminding her awfully of her childhood. Scaring her. Plaguing her. As much as she tried to ignore the feeling, she couldn't banish it. Apparently, she'd been mistaken that it had arisen from her sense of unfinished business with Asher.

Yes, it seemed to have begun right around the time Asher had saved her. Or just after. After she left his office for the last time. But evidently she'd mistaken its cause, because even though she had offered to repay him somehow, the feeling had returned. Stronger now.

God, she thought she'd left that sensation behind years ago, the night she stopped panicking and got mad, and hunted up the family Bible that nobody in her house ever looked at, and added the St. Michael prayer from the back of a holy card a friend had given her.

Her religious training had been minimal, something her family had treated as an identifier, not a practice. But her girlfriend, Emily, had come to her rescue with advice and the holy card.

And one night she had gotten fed up with the voice, with the watcher, with the whole damn thing. Anger had triumphed over terror, and she'd stood in her bedroom all alone with just a penlight, and she had read the Psalm, then chanted the St. Michael prayer repeatedly, and demanded that ghost get out of her house, out of her life.

To this day she remembers the shadow that had seemed to rise from one corner of her room, darker than the darkness of the unlighted room, as it in defiance. How her heart had tripped at the sight. How her anger had risen to her support, making her pray even more loudly.

The thing had vanished and never returned.

But now here she was again, sixteen years later, with that same creepy, awful feeling of being watched.

And now she had come to hate the way her shift often made her go home after dark, because she often stayed late to finish important details while they were fresh in her mind.

It was an odd schedule, designed to introduce her to everyone on the M.E.'s team regardless of their shifts, an opportunity for her to learn from everyone. But because it was a shift designed just for her, she was seriously beginning to think of asking Dr. Garrett to change it. Except how could she explain her request? She certainly couldn't say she felt as if something was following her, watching her.

She rode the bus home with a headache. Sometimes she wondered if she had made a bad career choice, choosing to work with the dead, rather than the living. With the living she might have saved lives. With the dead she could do nothing but bear witness to what had happened to them. Yes, she knew she was giving voice to those whom death had left voiceless. But sometimes she found it a grim way to live. Maybe it was getting to her.

Leaning her head against the window, she waited for the blocks to pass, grateful for the coolness of the glass. Hoping that she'd make it into the safety of her apartment before something caught her, much as she had felt as a child. Again and again she told herself that was ridiculous, and tried to focus on reality. The real moments and events in her life.

As the bus started and stopped, she watched happier faces pass by, or even climb abroad, like the smiling mother with two excited children, both of whom seemed to be eagerly anticipating getting home to play with new toys. Had her life ever been that simple?

Not since she was five and had first experienced the prickling feeling that something was watching her. The feeling over the past week had grown so strong that now, when she got home in the evening, she stayed home, refusing to follow ever her usual pursuits, like going to the gym.