Chapter 9 · The Body Bag Breathes

The body bag knocks back.

I freeze halfway down the freezer aisle, one hand still on the chute rail. The sound comes again—a dull thump from inside one of the black vinyl bags hanging on the left wall. Not wind. Not the compressor cycling. Something inside is moving.

Sloane's already got her blade out. "Back up."

"Someone's alive in there."

"Or something's using a corpse." She shifts between me and the bag. Her familiar coils tighter around her wrist, edge out. "Kade said this place was clean."

"Kade also didn't mention he keeps a morgue under his clinic." I step around her. The bag's third from the end, tagged with a red zip tie and a number I can't read in the dark. No name. Just a date—two weeks ago. The vinyl bulges, then goes still.

Sloane grabs my elbow. "Mara. Don't."

I shake her off and reach for the zipper. My hands are shaking. I don't know if it's the cold or the fact that I've seen too many bags like this one, and none of them ever moved. The zipper sticks halfway. I yank it down, and the smell hits first—