Free T*Witches: Dead Wrong by Randi Reisfeld, H.B. Gilmour Page A

nodded. “We’ll be right out,” she told the sheriff and Mrs. Bass.
    “What’s up?” Cam asked as soon as they left.
    “I feel sick.”
    “Well, sure,” Cam said consolingly. “He was a loser, but still — ”
    “No. Well, yeah. But that’s not all of it. Luce definitely knows something about what Evan’s up to. She was trying to get him to tell me what was going on —”
    Cam glanced at Lucinda and Andy. “No use trying to break into her brain. It’s mush at the moment. She is so not about Evan right now.” Cam smiled despite the queasiness in her stomach. “Later for that, okay?”
    “Right. First things first. Ever been to a morgue before?” Nervousness made Alex giggle.
    “Duh, no,” Cam said sarcastically. “Don’t know how I missed it. You take me to all the best places.”
    Fifteen minutes later, there was no sarcasm or giggling left in them.
    Cam stood outside the coroner’s office. “Stood” didn’t exactly nail it. She was propped against the concrete wall, her head hanging down, her shoulders hunched forward. Sweat soaked her burning face as she tried with all her might to forget the grayish-white corpse. It had been lying under the plastic sheet that the doctor pulled back so that Alex could see and identify it.
    Not
it,
Cam told herself. Him.
    Alex had seen him all right. They both had. Only Alex hadn’t thrown up. Cam had.
    She’d gotten increasingly jittery waiting to go into the morgue, waiting while Sheriff Carson interviewed Alex about Ike. So by the time they’d walked into the basement room, she was primed to hurl.
    At least, Cam thought, she’d made it to the sink instead of spewing on the corpse.
    Alex hadn’t puked, but her eyes had teared up. For a minute, Cam thought her sister was crying. But no. She had teared up because of the stinging combo of formaldehyde, antiseptic, and detergent the morgue was awash in.
    The doctor had come over to the sink — after Cam had guiltily rinsed it out — and suggested that she might be more comfortable outside.
    No argument. She fled. While Alex stood staring down at the body on the gleaming metal slab.
    He was the color of cement. Gray. His hair. His face and neck and scrawny chest. All bloodlessly gray. All except for his arm. One arm. Which was the thing that had pushed Cam over the line.
    The dead man’s right arm — a patch of it, anyway — was covered in bumps, green boils, reeking like ripe cheese right through the other harsh odors in the room. The patch of putrid skin extended all the way down tohis hand, which was bent into a claw shape and had thick yellow nails.
    The door to the morgue opened and Alex came out.
    “Was it him?” Cam asked.
    Alex nodded. “Ike,” she said, and cleared her voice. “It was a double whammy, the coroner said,” she went on. “He had a blowout, a doubleheader: His brain exploded and his heart gave out — from a sudden surge in blood pressure. Get this — ‘brought on by stress.’” She shook her head. “Ike Fielding didn’t get stressed; he
gave
it.”
    “Oh, wow, I’m sorry, Als.”
    Her sister looked at her as if she were crazy.
    “I mean, I’m sorry I tossed back there. But also,” Cam said with defiant honesty, “I’m sorry it was him, Ike, your stepdad. I just… I never saw anyone dead.”
    “Scared to death,” Alex said. “That’s what they think happened to him. I guess he was staying at the trailer and someone or something got inside and freaked him out — permanently. And that first thing I smelled? It was gasoline. They think Ike was trying to keep warm or something. There were piles of newspapers and rags soaked in gasoline.” She was crying now, Cam saw.
    Mrs. Bass came down the stairs. She put an arm around each of them and led them out to the parking lot, where Sheriff Carson was waiting to drive them home. Once there, the librarian offered to fix them some tea,but Cam and Alex said they’d rather just lie down in their room for a while.
    Cam