In The Shadows

Chapter Five: The Headline Reads

The news of the death of the Queens girl had more than circulated by Monday morning when Elowen came into the shop looking rested but worried. Her mom had called the night before to make sure Elowen was carrying pepper spray and a pocket knife and taking a cab or subway instead of walking home after work. It all had Elowen more than a little on edge after the past week's attack.

"Morning," she said to Julian who stood behind the sales counter. A worn leather journal sat spread out in front of him and his eyebrows furrowed as he stared down at the pages. He closed it when Elowen tried to peer closer at it with the assumption that it was something found in a box of junk. She pretended not to notice the jip.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

Elowen gave him a dubious look. "Not like I needed an entire weekend's rest." In truth, she had woken up Friday morning with a sore neck, shoulder, and shins. The last must've been from her riotous kicking at her assailant. Beyond that, she had grown bored in a hurry. After reading an entire book, she spent most of the weekend either in the café near her apartment or watching Netflix. She had called Ivy for movie night but the girl had a date. She offered to cancel it or come over after but Elowen told her to have fun. It was two weeks until Christmas and everyone was busy. Everyone except Elowen.

Julian shrugged, unperturbed. "I closed early on Saturday to visit a friend. The business was slow anyway."

"You have friends?" Elowen asked cheekily in favor of commenting that business was never exactly booming. Not even at Christmastime. Their prime customers were older people who hated to brave the cold to browse a shop. Everyone else just shopped online.

"Haha." Julian tucked the journal under his arm and started into his office. "I have some letters to write so I'll be back here if you need me."

Elowen nodded and watched him go. The sound of his footsteps and his movements were quickly masked by the ever-present and over-enthusiastic music next door. Elowen breathed a quiet sigh of relief that once Christmas was over, the music wouldn't be so obnoxious. Jojo Siwa and Kidz Bop sounded like a treat.

Once she was positive Julian was safely tucked behind his closed office door, Elowen pulled her laptop out of her bag. She'd almost began to regret bringing it along with the weight of it on her shoulder for the entirety of her commute but now she could steal Julian's wifi to further delve into the creepy side of the Internet she had been waist-deep in the night before. Netflix had gotten old pretty fast and had resulted in questionable web searches.

The first Google search was on human bites and the threats they pose to the recipients. The results were enough to scare her away from the medical side of the Internet for a long time. But then Reddit threads popped up and YouTube videos and weird forums. The phenomenon of people being randomly jumped on the streets by crazed assailants and leaving with nothing more than a bite to the shoulder or neck dated back generations and some people were fascinated by it enough to keep track of them. Most went unreported to authorities, like Elowen, but people came forward in comment sections to say they experienced the same thing. Theories on why it was a regular occurrence spanned all the way from drugs laced with some new and untested element to wannabe vampires.

Long after the forums were closed out and Elowen scrolled through the cat side of Instagram, a thought occurred. Maybe the woman was some Twilight enthusiast or drug addict but something else odd had happened in recent weeks. The guy Henry and his friend Mitri and the night they came to the shop. Nevermind Mitri somehow coming into the shop through the back. She chalked that up to picking a lock. Easy enough. Technically illegal but not uncommon. But then there was the question of how Mitri had moved so fast after Julian body-slammed him. After pondering over where five-foot-nine Julian Foster had learned to body slam people, Elowen couldn't reconcile the fact of how lightning fast the stranger had moved. It was a blink-and-you-miss-it moment and Elowen couldn't remember blinking. It wasn't explained away.