Author: Zoe Chant
Category: Paranormal
Go to read content：https://readnovelfree.com/p/36647_1
Chapter One
Ellie
Ellie McNeil was not having the best night of her life.
It was 3:49 AM, and she felt every second of the sleep she hadn’t gotten. Her eyes burned, her feet hurt, her head throbbed, and her muscles ached with weariness.
Remind me why I volunteered for the overnight shift, again? Ellie asked herself. Oh, right. Because I really, really need the money.
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And also, she had to admit, because sometimes there was nothing more exciting than being the paramedic on call in the middle of the night.
This wasn’t one of those times.
Ellie and her partner, Catalina Mendez, had taken call after call since their shift had begun at midnight, speeding out in the ambulance with sirens screaming. And not a single call had been for an actual emergency. In between calls, Ellie and Catalina debated which was more ridiculous, the drunken frat boy who thought his sleeping roommate was dead because he’d stopped snoring or the elderly man who had thought he had a fever because he’d forgotten to turn off his electric blanket.
As the ambulance sped through increasingly sketchy neighborhoods, Ellie decided that it wouldn’t hurt to close her eyes. Just for a second...
Catalina brought the ambulance to a stop with a screech of brakes, nearly flinging Ellie into the dashboard.
“Wakey, wakey!” Catalina sang out, her voice bright with sadistic cheer. She was a night owl by nature, and volunteered for overnight shifts because she actually preferred them.
“I was not asleep,” Ellie retorted. “I was just... resting my eyes.”
“That’s what sleep is,” Catalina pointed out. “Up and at ’em, Ellie. Just two more hours till we can go home and cuddle up with... Uh, cuddle up.”
Ellie repressed a sigh as she grabbed her medical bag. At 6:00 AM, Catalina got to go home and cuddle up with her cats. Ellie had nothing to cuddle with but her pillow.
One year, eight months, and two weeks since I last had sex, Ellie thought glumly. Not that she was counting.
It could easily be another year— or two, or five, or ten— till she found a man willing to put up with a woman who spent half her nights saving lives away from home. Catalina made do with short-term flings, but Ellie didn’t want to settle for anything less than a committed relationship. Which meant that she’d settled on nothing at all.
When Ellie scrambled out of the ambulance, the icy night air chilled her lungs and face, shocking her to full awareness. She forgot about her weariness and lack of romantic prospects, and focused on her job.
“Review call,” she said automatically.
Equally automatically, Catalina recited, “Male, age eighteen, awoke disoriented and combative. Call placed by mother.”
“Bet you a pizza he snuck out and partied too hard,” Ellie suggested.
Catalina elbowed her in the ribs. “I’m not taking your sucker bets.”
The apartment building faced an alley too narrow for the ambulance to park in. They left the ambulance parked on the wider street that the alley intersected, and walked down the dark, garbage-strewn alley toward the apartment belonging to the disoriented, combative male and his mom.
Ellie’s smile vanished as they hurried up the stairs. She and Catalina might privately joke about their jobs— they had to have a sense of humor, or they’d lose their minds— but once they were in the presence of their patients, the paramedics were completely focused on doing the best they could for them. Even if the boy was just drunk or high, Ellie and Catalina would examine him, make sure he was all right, and reassure his worried mother.
The woman who opened the door was tiny and white-haired, ninety if she was a day. “Oh, thank God you’re here! My poor baby Ricky!”
Ellie frowned in confusion as she followed the woman, who seemed way too old to have an eighteen-year-old son. Maybe the 911 operator had mis-heard ‘grandmother’ as ‘mother.’
The woman pointed dramatically. “Here he is!”
Ellie bit down on her lower lip to stop herself from bursting out laughing.
Ricky was a fat, fluffy, contented-looking Angora cat. He blinked up and yawned at them from his perch on the back of the sofa.
“Ricky is a cat,” Catalina said, her voice quivering slightly.
“He’s my baby,” the woman corrected them. “I woke up and went to get a drink of water, and I reached out to pet him as I passed by. He always purrs when I pet him, but tonight he meowed and twitched his head like he was going to bite me. My poor baby!”
“I think you just startled him,” Ellie said soothingly.
The woman shot her a doubtful look. “I guess that could be it. He does look better now, don’t you, baby? But better safe than sorry! Aren’t you going to examine him, just to be sure?”
Fighting to keep a straight face, Ellie said, “Catalina, why don’t you do the exam? I’ll just go out and radio the hospital with our estimated time of return.”
As Ellie walked past her partner, Catalina whispered, “You owe me a pizza.”
“Come on, you love cats,” Ellie whispered back, and made her escape.
Once she was safely out the door, she gave in to laughter. Poor baby Ricky, the world’s most pampered cat!
Ellie was still smiling as she walked down the stairs. It was calls like these that reminded her of why she loved being a paramedic, despite the crazy hours and the lonely nights at home. Whatever else you could say about the job, it was never boring.
She entered the alley. Blinking down the dark strip of asphalt, lined with garbage cans and buildings with darkened windows, Ellie tried to remember which end of the alley led to the street where they’d left the ambulance. One dented trash can looked vaguely familiar. Yawning, she turned right.
The alley stretched on for longer than she remembered walking when they’d first come to the apartment. The only light was from distant street lights, and everything was dim and shadowy. The still air smelled strongly of mold, oil, and rotting garbage. There was no sound but the occasional rumble of a car driving by several streets away.
Uneasy, Ellie wondered if she’d gone the wrong way. Then she came to a dead end at a brick wall. It was a T-shaped intersection, with even darker and narrower alleys leading to the left and right.
Definitely the wrong way, she thought. She turned around to go back.
“Are you sure he’s dead?” The voice came from the alley to her left. The speaker was a man with a low voice.