IT ALL STARTED WITH A BITE (EBOOK) PRE-ORDER

Dear Diary,
My life has officially gone to hell.

Abigail West
(Soon to be very hairy.)

***

The first sign that my evening had gone sideways wasn’t finding the body sprawled across the front steps of Parkside. It wasn’t even my best friend Ellie projectile vomiting into Mrs. Chen’s prized hydrangeas. No, the first sign would be when Bo, my normally friendly Husky, took one look at the unconscious man we’d decided to bring into our place and tried to climb the wall of our apartment.

I blamed the tequila for how long it took me to realize this wasn’t normal behavior for a dog who regularly tried to make friends with anything that had a pulse. But I digress.

We were currently ETA minus fifteen minutes before this entire situation turned into a shit show.

“Ellie?” I kept my voice low, partly because it was two a.m. in our quiet East Valley neighborhood and partly because loud noises tend to attract attention when you’re standing over a body. “Please tell me you’re seeing this too.”

A wet retching sound was my only answer. I grimaced. The last round of shots had been a mistake, but Ellie had just lost her job at Mystical Moments and drowning her sorrows had seemed like a good idea at the time. Watching her decorate the shrubbery in front of Parkside with the contents of her stomach was making me reconsider this decision.

The man on our steps hadn’t moved except to emit a thunderous snore. He wore what had probably been an expensive suit before someone had used it to mop up what looked like pizza sauce. At least, I hoped it was pizza sauce. The alternative wasn’t something my slightly buzzed brain wanted to contemplate.

“This is fine,” I muttered in a calm voice. “Everything is fine. I’ll just call the cops.”

Ellie emerged from the bushes, mascara streaked down her face and pink fuzzy earmuffs askew.

“What are you doing?” she asked, swaying slightly.

“Looking at a body.” I indicated Exhibit A.

Ellie’s eyes rounded. She let out a high-pitched shriek and jumped behind me.

“Is he—is he dead?!” She clutched my arm in a death grip.

“No. Can’t you hear him snoring?”

“Oh.” Ellie slowly let go and adjusted her earmuffs, embarrassed.

I reached for my cell.

“What are you doing?” Ellie said.

“Calling the cops.”

“Do we really need to?” She squinted at the unconscious guy. “He’s probably had too much to drink.”

“He could be a serial killer,” I said leadenly.

Ellie rolled her eyes and almost fell over. “Serial killers don’t normally pass out in front of their intended victims’ apartment, Abby. He might be drowning his sorrows, like us.”

She had a point about serial killers. I was about to stress that she was the one drowning her sorrows when I recalled my recent breakup. My ex’s face swam before my eyes, bringing with it the immediate urge to punch a wall.

Ellie hiccuped. “He looks comfy.”

I sighed. “We can’t just leave him here. Mrs. Chen will have a coronary if she finds him in the morning. Remember what happened to the college kid who passed out in her petunias?”

We shuddered. Our elderly neighbor might look harmless, but she wielded her garden shears like a ninja assassin. The college kid was lucky not to lose an ear.

“You’d better clean her hydrangeas before she sees them,” I advised as I started dialing 911.

Ellie grabbed my arm with surprising strength for someone who was dead drunk.

“Let’s just have him sleep it off upstairs. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Famous last words.

I looked at the man, at my watch, and at my best friend’s pleading face. The smart thing would be to stick to my original plan and call the cops. But I had a meeting with the auditors in the morning and the last thing I needed was to spend the night giving statements at the precinct.

“Fine,” I agreed reluctantly. “But if he turns out to be a serial killer, I’m blaming you.”

Moving an unconscious man to our apartment turned out to be about as much fun as doing my ex-boyfriend’s taxes. Which, incidentally, was how I discovered Mark was cheating on me. Nothing says ‘I’m a total dickwad’ quite like finding receipts for couples’ massages when you’ve never had a massage with the guy.

“On three,” I grunted, trying to lift the stranger’s shoulders while Ellie wobbled uncertainly near his feet. “One, two—”

“Wait.” She swallowed hard, her face turning a shade of green that matched the shrubbery. “I think I’m going to be sick again.”

Ten minutes and two more hurling incidents later, we finally managed to drag our unconscious guest into Parkside’s art deco lobby. The ancient radiator hissed and popped ominously as we shuffled past it, casting strange shadows across the black-and-white tiled floor. I tried not to think about how many security cameras had just captured us hauling what looked like a dead body through the front door.

“You know, I still can’t believe Mrs. Owens fired me,” Ellie mumbled, her voice echoing slightly in the empty space.

I made sympathetic noises while mentally counting the ways her former boss had shown saint-like patience. Considering Ellie’s talent for disaster, the owner of Mystical Moments deserved a medal for not firing her sooner.

“I mean, how was I supposed to know that crystal skull was actually an antique?” She lowered the unconscious guy’s legs to the floor and adjusted her earmuffs with dignity despite the vomit on her sleeve. “It looked exactly like all the other decorative ones we sell.”

I waited until she picked up the deadweight before maneuvering the body around a potted ficus that had witnessed far too many of our embarrassing late-night returns. “Maybe because it was in the locked display case marked ‘Not For Sale’ in giant red letters?”

“But that kid was so convincing! He said it was for his mother’s birthday.” She dropped the man’s feet with a meaty thunk. “And he had cash!”

The fact that a teenager was carrying around that kind of money should have been her first clue something wasn’t right. But Ellie had been missing social cues since kindergarten and, apparently, over two decades of friendship hadn’t improved her radar for suspicious situations.

A strange warmth emanated from our unconscious guest as we approached the elevator, like he was running a dangerous fever. I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination, but his hair looked thicker.

“Did you notice how the lights always flicker at Mystical Moments when Mrs. Owens gets angry?” Ellie continued, oblivious to my slight unease. “And things fall off shelves for no reason? I swear that place is haunted.”

I swallowed a curse as she bumped into a wall of brass mailboxes. “Look, I know you’re convinced Amberford is secretly full of supernatural creatures, but you can’t keep using that as an excuse every time you screw up. We’re not in ninth grade anymore.”

“There really was a ghost in our class, Abby.” Ellie’s expression turned stubborn. “It was Minty Mindy, that senior girl who got murdered by that caretaker behind the gym.”

I grimaced. Mindy Parsons, AKA Minty Mindy, had suffered an unfortunate fate some twenty years ago at the hands of Eddie Wilco. The school-caretaker-turned-serial-killer was still Amberford’s most notorious criminal.

The elevator dinged, its doors creaking open with painful slowness. We dragged our increasingly warm passenger inside.

“I thought this job was going to be different,” Ellie said mournfully, jabbing the button for the fourth floor. “I mean, I had business cards and everything.” She fumbled in her pocket and produced a shiny rectangle. “With glitter!”

The elevator groaned upward.

“Maybe this is a sign you should try something else,” I suggested. “Something less risky.”

“Like what?”

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