Chapter 7: Feeding time
The walk back to his apartment building felt different with Marcus trailing three steps behind him like a well-dressed shadow. People gave them a wider berth than usual, though Kaine couldn’t tell if it was because of the scythe on his back or the pale man in the expensive jacket who moved with the mechanical precision of something that had forgotten how to be human.
"You don’t have to follow so close," Kaine said as they climbed the stairs to his floor.
Marcus said nothing, but maintained the exact same distance.
"I’m not going anywhere, you know."
Still nothing. Marcus just followed, his pale eyes fixed on the back of Kaine’s head with unblinking attention.
’This is going to take some getting used to.’
Mrs. Kowalski’s door cracked open the moment they reached the fourth floor, like she’d been waiting by the peephole. Her gray hair was down for once, hanging around her shoulders in a way that probably looked good forty years ago.
"Kaine, honey, there you are." She stepped into the hallway wearing a bathrobe that had seen better decades and left very little to the imagination. "I was starting to worry about you."
"Just working late, Mrs. K."
Her eyes shifted to Marcus, taking in his expensive clothes and pale complexion with the calculating look of someone who’d been sizing up men since the Eisenhower administration.
"And who’s this handsome fellow?"