It was only his to babysit.
But one of the humans paused at the foot of the stairs and peered upward. Her face, even at this distance, looked somehow familiar. When lightning flashed, it illuminated her. For a brief second, it seemed like she actually saw him. The sense of recognition flared brighter and, for the first time in perhaps an age, his heart beat in his chest.
Magdala?
But it couldn’t be her. Could it? He stepped back from the window quickly, not wanting her to get a better look at him, but he couldn’t back away from the shock of knowledge, the thrill of pleasure, the scent of the hunt.
The lost souls could play with her friends, but she was his.
Chapter Two
Madeline
Earlier excitement practically forgotten, Madeline sat across from Cammie as the boys worked to set up the equipment in one of the upstairs bedrooms. They’d chosen this room because it seemed to have the most solid floor out of the many rooms they’d quickly toured. The initial search of all the rooms turned up quite a few they couldn’t risk entering. Not because they were scary, but because the ceiling, as she had guessed, was gone in places leaving the floors rotted to the point of instability. Based on the pile of blankets in one corner, Madeline worried they were accidentally evicting some poor homeless person into the storm because of their presence. But the room seemed solid, even if the graffiti on the walls and floors proved they weren’t the first to trespass on what was supposedly private property.
It smelled like old sex, urine, and mildew. Not an altogether pleasant combo, but not atypical of the places they’d researched. Nothing shady had happened, at least not yet, and there was no sign of the mysterious eyes she’d spotted when she looked in from the outside. Which meant it was probably just a figment of her imagination.
I really don’t want it to be my imagination.
A groan from the distance had Cammie jerking her head in that direction, but Madeline didn’t budge. She figured the noise had much to do with old broken house in the rain rather than anything paranormal. She’d had her hopes crushed too many times for one creak of moaning wood to get her excited.
But then they all heard it, based on the fact everyone reacted. Something thumped down the stairs. Madeline was on her feet in a second, but she was the last out the door—thanks to a not so gentlemanly shove by Drew—to see what made the sound. Probably it was just an animal, or the homeless person who left their blankets in their base room, but it did sound odd.
Like, if she were entirely honest with herself, the sound a body would make if it was shoved down the stairs.
Cammie, Drew, and Carter all stood at the ruined balustrade, peering down the stairs. Their flashlights caused beams of light to cascade over the area, illuminating a whole lot of nothing they hadn’t already seen. The house likely had been beautiful once, the picture of elegance and grace. Little details proved the builders worked to a grand schematic. Under the grime and abuse of the years, she could still see hints of gold, delicate carved moldings and even peeks of color.
But there was no body at the foot of the stairs, nor any sign of anything which could’ve caused the noise. The others still searched, whispering among themselves about what it could be and whether or not they managed to catch the noise on the recording equipment, but Madeline took a step back. For one, the railing didn’t look steady and she didn’t want to be leaning on it when gravity decided to take its inevitable hold on the old wood and send it down a floor.
For two, there was an almost scratching sound down the hallway opposite of the room they’d decided to use for their base. The floors on that side were the worst, but the hallway had seemed sturdy enough when they’d traipsed down it as a group a short while ago. She figured there was no harm in investigating the sound… unless it turned out to be a skunk.
She paused, tilting her head to listen. She could still hear Drew, Cammie, and Carter talking. They’d come to the consensus that they should set up a remote camera at the stairwell, too, just in case, but they weren’t paying any attention to her. Which was fine and rather normal, to be honest. She had a tendency to wander around when they were hunting, and they knew she had her cell phone to take pics if she found anything that might be interesting. A lot of times, according to Drew, they could find more on their own than they could as a group anyway.