Why was I so comfortable with this guy? If this was a movie, this was the part that'd make me yell at the screen. No idiot! Don't go down the stairs!

I took my time testing each step as I descended, unsure the creaky things would hold me. Downstairs, Owen sat at a desk in a clean, windowless room. Oil lamps lit near him softened his edges and faded his appearance making him much more ghostlike. Nerves bubbled in my stomach at the sight, but I tamped them down until the feeling of safety washed over me again.

Scanning the space, there were several enormous wooden trunks stacked against the far wall, and a small bookshelf stood behind the desk. The bright spines of the piles of books it held were the only splashes of color in the entire room. A couch and a big cozy chair, both in shades of brown and tan, were the only other pieces of furniture.

A familiar furball slept snuggled in the chair. It lifted its head to peer at me before curling back up, unimpressed.

Leaning against the far wall, I spotted the missing front door. It was hard to tell in the dim light, but it appeared to be a reddish brown wood and a carved pattern of vines framed its edges. "Shouldn't that be upstairs, blocking the big hole in the front of the house?" I asked.

Owen glanced at it, and his shoulders dropped a fraction before he straightened and said, "It got in my way."

"How does a door get in the way?"

"Is that important right now? Or do you want to hear about why you're here?"

I stayed quiet, and Owen stood and motioned for me to take his seat while he dug through a drawer. When I sat, he piled newspaper clippings on the desk and shuffled through them, selecting four and lining them up with only the pictures showing. "What do you see?"

I studied them under the light, and my chest tightened at the too familiar scene. "Search parties near wooded areas. The police are scanning maps and forming groups. These two are older than those."

"You're right, those are the newest I have, but they're from fifty years ago. What else? Focus on the faces."

I examined the crowd in the first pictures while blocking all thoughts of the missing people. These photos were old—Ford produced the shiny new police car before 1920. Whatever happened, they'd resolved these cases long ago, and there was no reason to equate them to Mom's disappearance. Slow breaths helped to keep my heart rate in check.

Squinting at the grainy images, I was about to ask for a hint when I saw it. "Her." I jabbed my finger at a specific woman, then dragged it across the paper. "And these two guys are in both pictures. Were these searches in the same area?"

"No, they were a couple of towns apart. Now, the other photos."

These seemed like they were taken in the sixties. The dresses were shorter, and there were hippies in bell bottoms. If Owen had been waiting fifty years, this was when he was alive—that was a weird realization.

I tried memorizing the faces in the first image to compare them to the second picture from this year and my mouth fell open—I'd already found it.

"The same woman and two men are here." I held an older photo next to a newer one and looked at them. "The same people, but they didn't age!"

"Yep." Owen took the photos. "This one's from 1919, and this one's from 1969. That's fifty years with no aging. They're mimics." He pointed out two more males that hadn't aged. "You missed these guys."

"So, four men and one woman?"

"Here, but there are more. Altogether, the last I heard, there were between twenty-five and thirty."

My attention oscillated between the pictures and the ghost. This was nuts. So why did I still trust him? "So... they're vampires?"

"No, bozo. Vampires aren't real. I'm saying they're mimics. Try to keep up."

My mind stalled as I sat immobile, trying to process this bizarre information.

"Are you ready to beat feet yet?" he asked, pulling me from my incoherent thoughts.

"Beat feet? I'm not running, if that's what you mean. Why are they called mimics?"

"The first people to realize what they were doing, the way they imitate us, gave them the name mimic. That was a couple hundred years ago."

"If they've been around this long with no one noticing, how bad can they be?"

"Real bad. Mimics have friends and jobs. They copy ordinary folks with typical lives. Except they don't age, so before anyone has time to notice, they move."

"That's weird, but I still don't see the problem." I narrowed my eyes, waiting for the catch.

"Before they leave, they feed." Owen paused. "This is where things get strange."

"Sure." I laughed. "Because the rest of this was an average Saturday morning."

Owen smirked, but became serious before answering, "They usually live on regular food, but once a decade, they feed on us, eating the beating heart right out of their victim's chest."

I gagged at the imagery. I didn't want to believe him, but I was talking to a ghost, so the reality I knew stepped out a while ago.

Owen glared silently at the floor, the muscle in his jaw working.

"Are you alright, dude?"

At the sound of my voice, his head jerked up. "No, I'm not, but that won't stop me from killing them all."

His hostile tone sent a chill through me. "Why hasn't everyone heard about them?"

"Mimics are masters at hiding, but it's necessary for them to feed on somebody every ten years. Feeding more would make it harder to hide."

"Sure," I said, as though that was obvious and not repulsive.

"No one connects the incidents when once a decade a few people go missing from a bunch of different towns, but sometimes there are search parties."

Sour bile rose in my throat, and I glanced at the photos on the desk. "So these mimics each ate someone and then joined the groups searching for their dinner?"

"They hadn't all eaten, or they'd have disappeared. They eat and run, then do the same thing somewhere else ten years later."

"This has been going on for two centuries? Twenty-five victims at a time? That's five hundred people they've killed!"

Owen pursed his lips. "It would be, except there used to be more of them, and every fiftieth year is different. They gather in one town to party and eat too much. It's like a family reunion."

"Wait." I closed my eyes to concentrate. "That has to be at least fifty lives in one area during those years. How does that go unnoticed?"

"Usually, they choose people who won't be missed. They make others seem like runaways or families that moved away suddenly. Mimics are quick. By the time anyone notices, they've already left and spread out to different towns. They don't keep in touch, so if you catch one, they can't tell you anything."

"If they don't communicate, how do they know where to meet?" I leaned back in my seat and rubbed the newspaper ink from my fingertips to avoid seeing the pictures—they made everything too real.

"It took a while to figure it out, but they've met in the same town the last three reunions. I'm hoping that means they'll do it again."

Things were coming together in a terrible direction. My mouth went dry. "What town?"

Owen scratched his neck before meeting my gaze. "This one."

Crap. "So, the fifty-year mark means there'll be a mimic gathering here, where they'll eat a bunch of human hearts."

Owen nodded, but remained silent.

My blood ran cold as I asked, "Could they have been here ten years ago?"

"Maybe. Some might live in town. I've been stuck here, so I don't know."

My heart pounded, and Owen's voice became muffled. They could've been here when Mom went missing. I knew she wouldn't leave us.

Air puffed in and out of me in quick gasps. I needed to get a grip before passing out in a ghost's basement. Breathing deep, I counted to five, relieved when my lungs filled as they should. I held that breath for a few seconds before releasing it to the count of ten and doing it again.

This could be it. I could finally know for sure what happened to her. This could be the closure Dad and I needed. My heart slowed to a normal pace, and my hearing cleared.

Owen yammered on, oblivious to my plight. "I understand this is a lot. I grew up with it, and it was still pretty hard to wrap my head around."

My eyebrows pulled together. "What do you mean, you grew up with it?"

"Both of my parents were hunters. They taught me from a young age that monsters are real, and they don't bother hiding under the bed."

"Kids shouldn't know stuff like that."

"Your parents taught you not to play in traffic, didn't they?" Owen shrugged. "Same thing. My family kept me safe. Now, I'll make everyone else safe. I'm the last person who knows about mimics and how to kill them." He crossed his arms, his eyes flickering over me. "But I need your help."

📚💜📚
Will Bash agree to help or catch a flight to anywhere else? What would you do?