No Less Days

by Amanda G. Stevens

  “Not garish Halloween orange. All the other variations, though—peach, coral, Tuscan orange … I think pumpkin pie is a cool color.” She poked her finger at him. “Do not mock me.”

  He would never mock her. Nor would he tell her tonight that he was ever more fascinated with the self she had discovered and molded. Ten o’clock came and went as they tramped over blocks they’d already covered, still chatting, telling light stories—David of his travels, Tiana of adventures with her adopted cousins. She’d been a sober kid, not unexpectedly, but she’d never been timid. As they walked, her thumb massaged the back of his hand, and she didn’t seem to know she was doing it. David said nothing but couldn’t keep from smiling.

  At last he turned to her. “Ought to say good night.”

  “I guess.”

  They headed back toward the Jeep, this time walking on the side of the street that included Appleseed Apparel. A few paces from the store, Tiana slowed.

  “This is going to sound stupid,” she said.

  “Doubtful.”

  “I know that gun wasn’t loaded, but it really freaked me out.”

  “Not stupid.” He wrapped one arm around her.

  “No, not that part.” Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “I love that store. I don’t want to shy away from it in the future. So … could we go back there, reclaim it in my head? I think it’ll help to be with you.”

  The store was closed, like every other on this street. She must mean the clearing in back. “Of course we can. It’s a good idea. But are you sure now’s the time?”

  “I don’t think night will matter.”

  They walked over the grass, around the corner of the building. Tiana stood a long moment at the edge of the brush where David had hidden trying to get a clear shot. His mouth dried. If he’d killed an unarmed civilian … Well, he could only thank God he hadn’t.

  Security lights on the back of the store illuminated the area, discouraging midnight loiterers. They stepped through the weeds to the center of the field. Here Zac had stood. Tiana kept walking to the place she’d stood beside Paul Tait. She planted her feet and looked around.

  “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

  David stayed in the middle, silent. He pivoted slowly to watch the perimeter of the field, but they were alone. Safe.

  “Thanks,” Tiana said after a minute. “I think I’m ready.”

  “We can stay a bit longer if you need to.”

  “I thought I would, but it’s just a place. You know? Maybe it’d be different if something awful had happened.”

  It would be. His gaze swept the area a final time. Tiana approached, crossing in the open, as a tingle lifted the hairs on the back of his neck.

  He thrust an open hand at her. “Stop.”

  The bark froze her. She stared at him.

  Move. He rushed her, wrapped his body around hers, and all but carried her to the edge of the clearing, to the cover of the trees.

  “David?”

  “Something’s wrong.”

  She didn’t ask questions. She didn’t grab hold of him and refuse to let go. She stood still and nodded, okay, and watched while he ventured to the far side of the clearing, the source of the tug in his gut. A brush pile had been dragged over a few feet.

  Overreaction. He huffed. Anyone could have moved the cut branches and debris, for any reason.

  So why the full alert still clanging in his head?

  He paced the periphery and came back to the branches. Long, some of them, well over six feet. They smelled of decomposing grass and … something else. Was it the smell that had made him react? Another visual sweep, but nothing moved, nothing threatened. David kicked the branches, and they rattled, dry.

  He bent over them, and the stench grew.

  His heart thudded. As many times as he’d smelled this before, no doubt what it was.

  “David,” Tiana called.

  “Stay back.”

  “What is it?”

  He kicked the pile again, tried to move branches with his feet, but the length and the tangle of them made it impossible. He pulled his gloves from his coat pockets and put them on, swallowed hard, and hauled the top branches off the pile. A few more and then, through the spaces, there. Open mouth. Clouded eyes.

  “I’m coming over there,” Tiana said.

  “It’s Paul Tait.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Tiana’s boots rustled the dry grass behind him. She halted a foot back then inched closer.

  “Oh, Lord,” she said. David drew her back from the sight, and she didn’t resist. “He’s dead.”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s dead. There’s … a … dead person …”

  Her legs buckled, and David caught her against his chest. “Easy now. Try to breathe easy.”

  “I can smell him. Is he dead? Are you sure he’s dead?”

  Her alto was rising fast. David gripped her shoulders and held her at arm’s length, ready to catch her, but her legs remained firm this time. “Tiana. Look at me.”

  Her gaze dragged from the brush pile to David’s face. Her breathing was even, but her pupils were dilated. She was straddling the line between stress and shock. David cupped her face between his gloved hands.

  “You’re safe. You’re all right. You need to take deep breaths and stay calm. Can you do that?”

  “He died.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Somebody killed him? Why would somebody kill him?”

  He shook his head, thoughts grappling. He could let the store employees find this themselves. Disturb the brush enough to be sure they did. Land them in counseling for months. A sour option.

  He could make an anonymous call, but that was more likely to arouse suspicion than if he identified himself and talked straight to the cops.

  The man was dead. Appropriate dealings with him could wait a few minutes, or however long Tiana needed to recover. She was shaking now, staring at the branches. “I feel sick.”

  With an arm around her shoulders, he supported her to the edge of the clearing, but she didn’t throw up. She leaned into him and wrapped her arms around his back.

  “I’m trying to stay calm.”

  “You’re doing fine. Keep breathing through your mouth. If your vision gets spotty or your hands start tingling, tell me.”

  “David.”

  “Right here.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He held her a long minute, until she stopped shaking. Until she leaned her head on his shoulder and looked toward the body again, this time with a firmness to her mouth, her eyes no longer too wide. She was blinking at normal intervals again. David cupped her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry.” Her voice was small.

  “Don’t be.”

  “You’re fine. You’re not overreacting at all.”

  He drew her close. “It’s not overreacting. You’ve just seen death.”

  “I was with my grandma in the hospital. When they turned off the machines.”

  “It’s not the same, Tiana. Violent death isn’t natural. It’s supposed to sicken us.”

  “But you …”

  “I’m too well acquainted with it. Your reaction is the wholesome one.”

  “What do we do for him now?”

  The quaver in her voice kept his arm around her a moment longer. “He’ll be turned over to the authorities.”

  “Do you think he tried to threaten someone else, but the person saw the gun wasn’t loaded and attacked him?”

  “No.”

  The reply came from instinct, but he was sure of it the moment it left his mouth. Perhaps there had been a mistake, a mugging gone bad. Tait out here meditating on Thor, a thug or two prowling away from the streetlights and the walkways, spotting the man and deciding to take his wallet, only he put up a fight …

  It could have happened. Yet it hadn’t, he knew.

  Tiana’s hand rested on his arm. “Time to call the police?”


  He looked from her to the brush pile. Trudged back to it and looked into the dead face, as if its vacuity could somehow provide clues. David pulled away more of the brush and looked over the corpse. No blood, no bruising to the face, no scuffing of knuckles. Fully clothed. Had his wallet been left here? That would seal it.

  Another branch lifted, and he could see the lower torso, the hips and legs. Both front pockets turned out. Any halfway intelligent killer would rob a body whether he cared about robbery or not. David drew a long breath through his mouth, and now, with Tiana recovered, his brain registered the racing of his pulse, the tightness in his muscles, the heat that coursed down his arms into fingers that remained slack only with effort. He drew the branches back over the body. She stood a few feet off, watching him.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “Okay.” She reached for his hand and gripped hard, but her eyes trailed again to the brush. “He was supposed to have more days left, and somebody took them.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  His jaw was killing him. He took out his phone and shepherded Tiana back to the side of the building, out of sight of both late-night pedestrians and the clearing. He removed his gloves and dialed.

  “Hey,” Zac said.

  “You’d best tell me now.”

  “Uh … tell you what?”

  The man did sound clueless. But he wasn’t to be taken at face value. “What you’ve done, Wilson. Didn’t leave town as early as you said?”

  “David.” Zac’s voice held a hard gravity. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You left with Moira this morning?”

  “Yeah, we’re driving back to the hotel now. Spending the night here by the dunes.”

  Lying over a phone line was easy. David shook his head, paced under the trees, stopped to brace his hand on a trunk. He breathed long and slow, trying to cool the seething in his blood.

  “What’s going on?” Zac said.

  “Paul Tait is dead.”

  The silence wasn’t long, but it held plenty of comprehension. “You’re sure?”

  “He’s in the clearing behind Appleseed under a pile of cut brush.”

  When Zac’s voice came again, the edge had been replaced with a hush David had never heard from him before. “And you think I’m a murderer.”

  “Who else would know to come here to his sanctuary?”

  “Why would I kill the man?”

  “The man who knew too much? Fairly classic scenario.” He bent at the waist, clubbed by nausea. All that swagger about the Demigods Society—such a simple cover.

  “Nothing he knew would have made a viable story. But even if he’d had something—David, I wouldn’t do this.”

  “Would Moira?”

  “She’s been with me. And no.”

  He had to believe Zac or not. The depth of his wanting to almost shocked the breath out of him. This man who’d known him for a hundred years and waited to meet him—these people who wanted to treat David like family—he couldn’t allow that to cloud his view. Not with a man murdered.

  “It can’t be a coincidence.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  Not a challenge. A question. “I don’t know. When are you coming back here?”

  “Well, we were planning on tomorrow, or the day after. The plan was whenever we got bored. But that’s off now, obviously. We need to talk this through. Tonight.”

  “Aye, we do.” In person, he’d see the truth of their involvement or their innocence.

  “I should make it back to your place by midnight.”

  He hung up. Tiana had edged away from the clearing, stood beneath the shelter of a rustling oak tree and watched him cradle his phone in his hand while danger hummed in his veins like an electrical current. He put the phone away.

  “No call to the police?” she said.

  “No.”

  David took her hand and led her away, a brisk pace that didn’t quite resort to jogging. She asked no questions, made no protests, said nothing all the way back to the Jeep.

  When he stopped to unlock the vehicle, she clenched her hands together in front of her. “We would have to lie to them at some point in our story.”

  “Possibly. It would have become quite a labyrinth, at any rate—what to say and what not to.”

  “That doesn’t mean we don’t call at all.”

  “We can’t, Tiana.”

  Yet a sense of impropriety dogged his choice. By now a police car should be pulling behind the building, no lights or siren. An officer should be getting out of his car, going to investigate. Maybe it would have been Jacob Greene, the cop who sometimes brought his two girls into the bookstore for more installments of The Boxcar Children and Nancy Drew.

  By now the authorities should know that Paul Tait was dead. They should be marking off the scene with yellow tape, calling what had been done there a crime. David imagined the number of officers, the forensic team, the photographer and the incessant flash of his camera in the dark.

  Instead, Paul Tait still lay there, his death unseen, unknown.

  “If we’re not going to call them, can we go?”

  Her voice brought him back from his reverie. David set his hand on her shoulder, drew a slow breath, and prayed he hadn’t made any mistakes tonight.

  They drove back to the store in silence. David parked beside her car, but she didn’t get out.

  “You really thought Zac did it.”

  He nodded. No sense in telling her he was far from convinced Zac had not.

  “I’ve had my eye on social media for the last twenty-four hours. Paul Tait never posted a word suggesting Zac Wilson is Thor. That kind of thing would have gone viral in ten minutes.”

  “You think Zac’s monitoring too?”

  She shrugged. “I’m just saying, if he’d killed him, it would have been gratuitous.”

  “It was gratuitous.” He rubbed his face. “I’m sorry for what you saw.”

  “I can’t get it out of my head.”

  “You won’t. But it will fade some.”

  “Guess I’d better head home.” But she didn’t move.

  She wasn’t waiting for an invitation, but she needed to understand.

  “I’d tell you to follow me back to my place,” he said. “Not to be alone, not yet. But I have to speak to them. I have to get them to tell me things they won’t if you’re there.”

  Her lips parted. “You think they’re guilty.”

  “I think they know something.”

  “Oh, David, no.”

  “I need to be sure.”

  “Not Zac.”

  “I don’t know.” But it was connected. All of it. Too great a coincidence otherwise.

  “This is why you didn’t call the police. Not what you might have to lie about—what you might have to tell the truth about.”

  He nodded. Then he walked her to her car. “Will you be all right?”

  “I think so.”

  “If you need anything, you call me.”

  “I will.”

  He went back to the Jeep and drove home, watching her headlights in the rearview mirror until her car turned while his continued straight. Toward home and a man who might have lied to him.

  EIGHTEEN

  A rare clear night for Michigan fall, stars poking holes in the fabric of the void, Orion’s belt always a bit brighter than Ursa Major. David stood in his driveway for a moment, absorbing the old age of the heavens. They would be there after he was gone, after all of them were. Their courses were unchanged by the violence people inflicted on each other, by the crime against Paul Tait as well, but somehow this violence felt different, inflicted on one so young by one as old as David.

  Was that what had happened?

  He’d know shortly. He went inside, sat at the table, and waited. He tried not to try to solve the puzzle. He tried not to think at all.

  Ten minutes past midnight, a soft knock came. David opened the door to both of the
m, somber and pale under the white porch light.

  “May we come in?” Moira said, in a tone unsure of the answer.

  David made a sweeping gesture, and they stepped past him into the kitchen. They settled right there, sitting in the chairs, again seeming to believe they weren’t invited farther inside than necessary. Guilt, perhaps. Or the ability to read their host’s face. David paced the rug in front of the sink and ordered his pulse to normal speed. He didn’t know anything yet.

  Yes, he did. He knew a man had been killed, that justice must be done, and that as long as he withheld the outlandish truth, the police were working with a handicap. Then again, if Zac was the killer, the police couldn’t be involved at all. David leaned into the counter and folded his arms and measured the two strangers sitting at his table.

  “What do they know?” Moira’s mouth crimped.

  “Not who killed him,” David said.

  “Of course not.” She leaned forward, long fingers curling on her knees. “But what do they know?”

  “I didn’t speak to them.”

  Her eyes widened a quick moment. “At all?”

  “He’s lying there still. Until some mortal finds him who can be forthcoming with them.”

  She and Zac straightened in their chairs, watched him.

  “Well?” Moira said.

  “Well, I’ve protected both of ye as well as myself from discovery without knowing what might be discovered. Whatever that is, I’ll not turn a blind eye.”

  The tension in the room tore down the middle like a spiderweb. Zac stood, and David planted his feet, an instinct though Zac made no move toward him. Moira looked back and forth between them.

  Zac stood still, a quiver in his shoulders. His eyes were like ice. “I told you where we were.”

  “And admitted this isn’t a coincidence.”

  Zac pressed his palms to his face, breathed deep, and rubbed his hands outward as if to wipe his expression. His eyes remained closed a moment, and then he looked out the window over the kitchen sink, into the night.

  “No,” he said quietly. “I don’t see how it could be.”

  “Zachary,” Moira said.

  “And the cops wouldn’t see it that way either.” His gaze met David’s again, frank. Guiltless? “They’d see a harassment and stalking case that got out of hand. That’s motive enough to pursue me as a suspect.”