Eat Crow (Cheap Thrills 6)

“Where’s it coming from?”

Together we sniffed the air, walking out the room and to the bottom of the stairs where it was stronger.

Looking up them, Logan pointed at the top. “I think it’s coming from up there. Did you leave anything out when you left?”

“Like food or a drink?” When he nodded, I pointed out the obvious. “If I had, y’all would’ve seen it when you were removing the furniture out my room. There wasn’t anything in there when I got back.”

“What about Pops’ room?”

Dread filled me at the prospect of having to go in there and look around, making my voice sound small when I answered his question. “I don’t know. I still can’t bring myself to go in there.”

Reaching down, he gently took my hand and tugged me up the stairs, not letting go of it once.

When we got to the top, he took a deep breath in and made a choking noise. “Damn, that doesn’t smell right. Has it gotten worse since you went out earlier?”

“Yeah, but I opened the windows a bit last night to get rid of any dust in the air. It was making my eyes feel gritty and like I wanted to scratch them out. I didn’t close them fully until before I left.”

This didn’t get the response I was expecting. “You left the windows downstairs open all night?”

“Well, yeah, but they were only open a little bit. There was a lot of dust in the air. Even Ava was sneezing because of it.”

What did he expect me to do, die of dust asphyxiation? Slightly dramatic, but I’m sure it could happen.

Heck, most people didn’t think they’d get caught on national television drinking Sake with their friend, talking about their gag reflex, and demonstrating to the other patrons how bad it was with a banana. Yet, here I was, proof that bad luck existed.

“That’s not safe, Bex. All someone would have to do is push them open a bit more, and they could get in and attack you. Hell, the house is already prepared for someone with a knife to do what they want and then just roll up the mess and leave again.”

Groaning, I rubbed my forehead with the palm of my free hand. “Can we get back to why my house smells like a rest stop bathroom?”

The look he gave me told me the conversation wasn’t over, but he went back to sniffing the air. “Could it be coming from the attic?”

Both of us moved until we were under the door leading to it and sniffed deeply at the same time.

“Ew, what the hell is that?”

Turning the torch on his phone on and passing it to me before taking the small Maglite out of his belt and turning it on, he pulled on the chain hanging down, only just dodging the over WD-40’d ladder at the last moment.

“I hate that he used to WD-40 this every month,” Logan muttered, pulling the last bit down. “You could tell when it was that time of the month for him because he’d go into the store and buy a new can of the shit so he could attack everything in the place.”

It was true, Pops totally had a time of the month, except his involved hinges and stepladders. It came from working on furniture and with tools his whole life, he said, plus the fact that this was an old house, and he’d grown up with things that needed to be lubed so they still worked.

Yeah, as I got older, him saying that sounded dirty, but I remember how the doors used to seize up when I was little before he changed them, so the house was more energy efficient in the winter.

All it’d taken was a knock on the door from the old sheriff, asking if Pops was growing weed in the attic because the new Police helicopter camera had picked up a crazy amount of heat coming through the roof one winter.

They’d gone up so he could prove he wasn’t, and then one of the guys had told him to change out his insulation up there and check the fit of the wi

ndows and doors.

After some research, he’d found out he was paying out a lot more money each year on wasted heating than he would if he invested some in the place, so he’d gotten straight onto it and had changed all the doors, window, and the insulation in the attic.

He stuck to servicing the new ones each month because he said it didn’t matter if they were old or new, all hinges and machinery seized up if they weren’t maintained properly.

That meant this particular stepladder was like something out of Final Destination, though. I had a scar somewhere under my hair from where it’d clipped me when I was little, resulting in six stitches. Ironically, it’d happened when Logan and I had stood on a chair to pull the chain, thinking we’d play up here for a while.

Touching the area it’d hit, I snickered, “Good times!”

“You stay down here, and I’ll have a look up there. It might be bats.”