The persistent chirping of my phone woke me what I took to be several hours later. It was still light out, in a dusky, murky kind of way, so I thought I must have dozed off for no more than an hour or two tops. It was eight, nine at night, nothing serious. I'd drunk my coffee and then taken a little nap.

Yeah, sure. Little nap… my mind chided me when I finally snatched up my phone and looked at it blurry-eyed, my fingers still stinging from the coffee burns of the night before.

"Fuck."

"Well that's not the typical greeting one would expect, but fuck, good morning to you too."

I groaned and covered my face with the hand not holding my phone to my ear. "I'm sorry Kaine; I overslept. I didn't even know this was today. I thought it was yesterday."

"Well maybe fuck isn't the worst way to describe this situation after all." This came out in the typical dry humor I'd learned to expect from Kaine. Nothing really seemed to faze him about me, which was likely why Jan, our boss, had pretty much put him in charge of "managing" me.

As if I were a wild animal that needed a keeper.

Which… might not have been far off.

I moaned again, or… growled potentially, and Kaine sighed on the other end of the phone, sounding dusty and resigned all at the same time. Giving me a mental flash of him standing in the storeroom, surrounded by sockets and wrenches and screws on one side, and bulk ammunition and camo hunting gear on the other.

"You're feeling like shit, aren't you, Joel?"

"No," I grunted. "Just overslept. I'm fucking fine."

"Sure you are," Kaine shot right back. "Yesterday you go find a body for Malcore and that fed dick, and today you come to work like usual. I don't think so, Joel."

I rubbed the hand covering my face hard over my eyes, then let it flop to the side and turned to glare at the light coming through my window. Morning light. Not just-before-dusk light. Gods…

"You ever think about who might be next," I muttered into the phone. The words not even a question because I knew for a fact Kaine thought about it often.

Given Kaine knew I knew a snort through the line was my only answer.

The Ritualist only targeted young men, in or just out of their teens. Kaine fit the bill and he'd been an agitated mess since the third body turned up and I'd got parked in a holding cell for a week.

I rolled to my side and then somehow leveraged myself into a sitting position, the hand not holding my phone basically propping me up. "I'm more concerned about you than me right now, Kaine. I'm fine, I'll be there in a bit."

"Yeah, no you won't."

"Kaine—"

"Don't bother arguing, Joel. I'll be fine. At least for now, and you know that. The Ritualist kills on Fridays and leaves the bodies to be found on Saturdays. It's Monday. I'll be okay until at least the weekend, when I intend to barricade myself in my room with a shotgun. For today, I'm alright and you're not. Jan and I are considering this you calling off for the day. Go sleep, or whatever it is you do in the woods to relax. At this point, you need it."

I scrubbed at my face with my free hand again, exhaling a breath I hadn't known I was holding. "Yeah," I breathed out.

"Yeah?" he grumbled back to me, and I took in and let out another shuddering breath.

"Yeah, I'm calling off."

"Good."

The phone beeped and the line went dead before I could come back with a snarling retort, and I just found myself staring at the device as the screen blinked up at me with how long I'd been on the call.

"Gods, fuck me," I murmured.