Angela Campbell - Something Wicked

He shifted in his seat. “What?”

“She was killed near water.”

Dylan shook his head and then laughed. “This is Charleston. Water is all around us.”

A-hole.

Alexandra felt a little nauseous—that sometimes happened after such visions—so she placed a hand on her stomach and willed it away. “I can’t begin to explain to you how this works, but when it happens, like it happened this morning when I saw the newspaper, it doesn’t matter what else I have on my plate. I feel such a strong sense of urgency about this case right now. I had to offer my help.”

Because Alexandra knew, deep in her soul, that whoever killed the woman found in the cemetery would kill again.

Soon.

The sterile, gray-walled hallway was empty except for a handful of people dressed in scrubs, some carrying books or backpacks, as Dylan led Alexandra through a door marked MEDICAL AND FORENSIC AUTOPSY SECTION. She’d remained quiet as he’d pulled into the Medical University of South Carolina’s parking lot, but her curiosity finally got the better of her.

“Is this a school or a hospital?” Alexandra asked.

“Both. It’s a teaching hospital.”

Her throat tightened. “Is this where the coroner’s office is?”

“No.”

An anxious feeling nestled in her chest and refused to leave. “But this is where he performs autopsies?”

Dylan didn’t answer, which told her all she needed to know.

The bastard was bringing her to see the girl’s dead body. Some warning would have been nice. She slowed her steps to a stop, and with a heaving sigh, he finally turned and acknowledged her.

“The staff here handles them and sends their report to our coroner. I don’t have time to wait for it.” He motioned her toward another door. “After you.”

Great. He actually was taking her to the autopsy room. Goosebumps lifted the hairs on her arms at that realization. Alexandra had assisted other police, sure, but none had ever taken her to a morgue before. She wasn’t sure she could handle it, quite frankly.

Dead people, no problem. Dead bodies, hell no.

Her feet wouldn’t move, and she reached out a hand to grab the wall beside her. “I know what you’re doing.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re being mean and cruel, and trying to scare me away.”

His eyebrows shot up, even as his shoulders relaxed. “What? You mean you’ve never seen a dead body before?” A smirk played at the edges of his mouth. “In your line of work? Come on. I thought psychics got their information from things like this. You know, touching stuff.”

Touching a dead person in the autopsy room? Was he out of his ever-lovin’ mind?

Oh, she’d seen plenty of dead people in ghost form, and a few times at funerals. She didn’t particularly care to ever see one up close and personal after a medical examiner had cut it open.

The scent of some harsh cleaning chemical nearby assaulted her nostrils and sent her stomach on a gymnastics routine.

“Since what I do is new to you, I’ll cut you some slack. I don’t need to see a body in order to—” Ugh, she still felt nauseous from earlier. This wasn’t helping. She waved a hand. “—to be able to communicate with the person. Spirits, at least young spirits, tend to linger near the person, place or object they valued most in life. Eight times out of ten, it wasn’t their body.”

Dylan’s mouth pulled into a tight line as his eyes seemed to trace her features. Was she turning green? Man, she felt like she might be. “Fine. There’s a chair in the office around the corner. Wait there. I’ll try to make this quick.”

Nodding, she hurried to find that chair before her mind and body conspired to faceplant her right there in the hallway. She found one in a small, empty room and dove for it. Her face grew hot as her vision blurred and the room spun around her.

Oh, man. Not good.

Forcing deep breaths in and out of her lungs, she squeezed her eyes shut and lowered her head between her knees. Breathe. Breathe. Okay. Everything’s okay now. She repeated the mantra over and over until the kaleidoscope of color behind her eyelids stopped. She slowly opened her eyes and sat up. This had happened before, most memorably when she’d been visiting a cousin after foot surgery, glanced down at the freshly stitched wound on the swollen limb propped on a pillow, and abruptly lost consciousness.

Given the assortment of strange and unnatural injuries she’d seen among the dead over the years, one might expect her to be blasé about the real ones, too, but nope, she was a first-class wimp when it came to blood and gore. Her mind had always been able to disconnect when a ghost manifested a slit throat or bloody gash, much the way many people did when watching horror films, but put her near a hypodermic needle or flesh wound, and she was horizontal in seconds.

She reached for the lightswitch on the wall above her shoulder and flicked it on. She yelped when she spotted the elderly woman sitting in the chair behind the desk across from her.

“Geez!” She held a hand to cover her racing heart. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see you before.”

The woman said nothing.

With cold, void eyes, the grandmotherly type just sat there, staring at Alexandra with absolutely no emotion on her weathered face.

Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump.

The sound of blood rushing through Alexandra’s ears intensified.

Oh no. Please, no.

Swallowing hard, Alexandra grabbed the arms of her chair. She’d met a lot of ghosts in her time and could easily distinguish between the living and the dead. Ghosts emitted sparkly auras, but living people had no auras at all that Alexandra could see.

Neither did this old lady. Alexandra’s heart raced and her stomach did continuous somersaults beneath the ominous, intense stare aimed in her direction. Those eyes were…unnatural.

Ghost?

No, she didn’t think so.

“What are you?” she whispered.

The old woman tilted her head and examined Alexandra even more closely. In a deep, gravelly voice, the woman countered with “What are you ?”

Alexandra fingered the gold cross at her throat as she slowly rose from the chair, her gaze unwilling to leave the old woman. She said the silent prayer her grandmother had once taught her—By the power of Saint Michael and all the angels and saints, please keep me safe from harm — as she felt for the doorway behind her.

Hurrying out of the room, she glanced down both directions of the hallway, searching for the entrance she and Dylan had come through. Screw this. She’d wait outside by the car.

She spotted the familiar door and hurried toward it, but her feet came to another abrupt halt as figures down the hall turned toward her.

Nervous laughter bubbled through her chest when she saw not one, not two, but three more dead people standing in front of the door marked EXIT. They were all staring back at her.

Crap. Crap. Crap.

This wasn’t right. Dead people shouldn’t be hanging around the hospital-slash-morgue. They should be following their loved ones around or something. Not this.

They all advanced at once, chattering over one another so that Alexandra couldn’t make out the details of what any one was saying.

“Help me! Please help me!” One man began begging as he reached for Alexandra’s arm. His grasp was strong and determined. “My wife? Do you know where she is?”

“Where am I?” A middle-aged woman asked, pushing that man aside to clasp Alexandra’s elbow. “My children. Do you know where they are?”

“Outta the way!” A stern-looking old man in a hospital gown knocked them both aside and pressed Alexandra closer to the wall.