Kelly Mendig - Three Days to Dead

His lips twitched, but he seemed incapable of speaking, so I helped him out. “I said I’d come back.”

He nodded, his attention dropping to my bandaged arm, and then lower to my blood-soaked shoe. He frowned. “You’re hurt, Chal.”

“It’s just a flesh wound,” I said, shrugging one shoulder. “Can I come in?”

“Of course.”

I stepped around him, pausing in the entry long enough to take off the dirty sneakers. No sense in tracking blood and gunk all over the carpet. He closed the door and walked across the living room, right into the bathroom. For the briefest moment, I thought of Wyatt, of sending him stalking into the bathroom that morning after a careless comment.

Alex returned a moment later with a white first aid kit. “Sit down and let me take a look at that.”

I perched on the very edge of the sofa. It wasn’t my home, not really. I didn’t know this place, even though evidence of Chalice was all over the room, in the dé-cor and the photographs and the titles of the romantic comedies that lined one shelf near the television.

Alex sat down on the coffee table, directly across from me, and opened up the kit. He removed several bottles, a package of gauze, and a roll of white medical tape—precise movements that betrayed practice. I presented my ankle to him. His hands were cool, almost cold, the fingertips gently callused. He turned my foot to get a better view.

Lips pursed, he stared at the wound. “Weird,” he muttered.

Don’t let him know it’s from a gunshot. “What’s weird?”

“The blood on your shoe is fresh, but the wound’s already healing.” He reached for a cotton ball and soaked it in alcohol. “What’s going on, Chalice?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?”

“You’re lucky it didn’t get infected.” He cleaned the dried blood from my skin. The alcohol was cold; my leg tingled. He tossed the cotton and took out a bottle of antibiotic ointment. With a second cotton ball, he spread some over the cleaned area. “Where have you been?”

“Taking care of things that needed attention.”

“When you didn’t come home last night, I thought I’d imagined you. So I called the morgue, and they said one of their lab techs was under sedation after she almost autopsied a living person.” He exhaled sharply and reached for a gauze pad. “How could I have missed that? Some med student I am.”

I felt an odd instinct to protect him from the truth, but to also give him the benefit of knowing he hadn’t missed anything. He was second-guessing his medical skills, but not because he’d missed anything; because of magic. “If it helps,” I said, pretty certain it wouldn’t, “a handful of E.R. doctors and a coroner all missed it, too.”

He paused in pressing a length of medical tape against the gauze pad. “Not that, Chal.” He met my gaze, and I almost fell into the depth of anguish I saw in them. “I meant your suicide attempt. How depressed you’d been about finals, and your stress at work. I was so busy with classes that I didn’t take the time to notice. You’re my best friend in the world, and half the time I couldn’t even see you.”

Oh great. Now I get to crush his spirit and tell him, “No, sorry, you did let your friend die.” I get to break him all over again.

He applied the tape, then reached for my left arm. I flinched and pulled away. More hurt flared in his eyes. I didn’t know how to explain why a healing dog bite resided where a knife gash should have been.

“Say something,” he demanded.

I blinked. “What would you like me to say, Alex?”

He stilled. Wrong answer, apparently. With careful, calculated movements, he stood up. Backed around the coffee table, toward an upholstered chair, unwilling to startle.

“Chalice, what was the last thing we did together the night before you cut your wrist?” His voice was hollow, almost afraid. He knew something was wrong. Instinct contradicted his senses, and he was smart enough to trust the former.

Now or never. I just hoped he took it well.

“I don’t know, Alex,” I said, still sitting, making no move to approach. “This is really hard to explain, but try to keep an open mind.” I took a deep breath. Exhaled. “I’m not Chalice.”

His lips puckered like he’d eaten a lemon. Hands braced on his hips, he said, “Sorry. What?”

“Look, you seem like a terrific guy and a very loyal friend, so I hate doing this to you. But Alex, Chalice did die. You found her and called an ambulance. She was pronounced dead and sent to the morgue. None of it was imagined, nothing was a mistake. Well, except the whole suicide thing, in my opinion, but who am I to judge her?”

He backed up a few more steps. The backs of his knees hit the chair. He sat down hard, never breaking eye contact. Something else began to cloud his expression. Something angry, almost sinister. “This isn’t funny,” he snapped.

“I know.”

“Look, I get that you were depressed, and I’m sorry for my part in what you did—”

“Christ, Alex, I didn’t kill myself, okay? My name isn’t Chalice Frost, and I am not your friend. I mean, I would like to be, but I’m not her.”

He nodded. “Near-death experiences change people….”

Okay, he was so not getting it. I dug under the tape binding my arm and ripped the old gauze away. The flesh was bumpy and angry red, but healing, with no signs of the suicide scar.

“Fine, doctor-in-training. Explain this.”

He gaped. “What did that?”

“Last night, an hour after I left here, I was attacked by a creature I hope you never meet in a dark alley. It was about seven feet tall when it stood upright, had sharp-ass teeth, and it took a chunk out of my arm. But since I’m just borrowing Chalice’s body for a limited time period, I started to heal. That’s why the other scar is gone, and why the wound on my ankle—a bullet graze I got less than an hour ago—is partially healed already.”

I leaned a little closer, still displaying my arm. “That’s what did that.”

Alex leaned back, deflated. His face went slack, pale. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Don’t do that.” I smiled, hoping to keep him calm. “If you get sick, then I’ll get sick, and pretty soon we’ll be barfing all over each other.”

The barest hint of a smile ghosted across his lips. “You don’t talk like her.”

“That’s because I’m not.”

“You’re wearing the necklace I gave her for Christmas last year.”

I touched the silver cross. “I can take it off.”

“No.” He leaned forward, scrubbed his hands across his face, up into his hair, and back down again. Rubbing the words in, getting them to stick. After a moment he stilled, with his chin resting in the palms of his hands.

“Okay, let’s pretend for a minute that you’re not really Chalice,” he said. “And that this isn’t some grief-induced hallucination. Who exactly are you?”

“The truth?”

“Yes.”

This would be interesting. “My name is Evangeline Stone. I have lived in the city my entire life, and for the last four years, I have been employed by a secret unit of the Metro Police Department as a Dreg Bounty Hunter.”

His eyebrows arched comically high. “A what hunter?”

“Dreg Hunter.”

“It that like slang for criminal?”

“It’s a derogatory catchall for the dozen or so species of creatures that secretly live here in the city. Mostly goblins, gremlins, trolls, gargoyles, vampires, and weres. My boss is called a Handler, and I work in a three-person Bounty Hunter squad called a Triad. We hunt rogue elements, carry out special warrants, try to keep some species from killing one another and wreaking havoc in the process, and dole out punishment when lines are crossed.