Selena glanced up from Jake's body at the sound of the door opening and met Sam's eyes. Instead of looking startled, though, she just looked...bored. "Why are you here?"

"What are you doing?" Sam demanded, horror-stricken. "Why'd you kill my roommate?"

Selena glanced down at Jake and nudged him with her foot. "I didn't kill him. He's dead, but I didn't do it."

Sam was finding it difficult to breathe, all of a sudden. He wasn't sure if it was the shock or the stench of the body, mingling with the smell of coffee radiating off of Selena. "Oh, damn. Oh, damn."

"It's just a body," Selena shrugged, taking a sip of the iced coffee in her hand, her tongue fiddling with the straw as she finished her sip. She examined Jake like he was a customer, her expression just as bored as if they were still at Caffeinated, taking orders and making drinks. Black headphones hung around her neck, the emo music he had heard issuing from the speakers. That definitely didn't help the nausea rising up in Sam. He hated emo music.

Sam staggered back, panting, his gaze fixed on Jake. Jake's eyes were wide open, staring at the ceiling above. His throat had been slit open, blood staining the front of his dark T-shirt and pooling on the floor under his head. A black gag was in his mouth, his wrists slit open and drenched with blood.

Selena glanced at Sam as he panted for breath. "What's wrong?"

"He's dead!" Sam managed to exclaim. "J-J-Jake's dead!"

Selena nodded, taking another sip. "Yep." She stepped away from Jake's body and walked toward Sam. He tried to propel himself up, to run away from this screwed-up girl, but his legs didn't work and he fell, still struggling to breathe.

Selena crouched down in front of him, her eyes meeting his for a brief moment before she slapped him in the face, hard.

Sam stared at her. "What the –?"

"You're welcome," Selena deadpanned. "Look, he's dead. Freaking out doesn't do anything about it. It doesn't change anything."

"How are you so calm?" Sam demanded, catching his breath. The panic had subsided slightly with the force of Selena's slap, much as he hated to admit it.

Selena shrugged. "I really just don't care. That helps."

"You're a monster," Sam hissed, his eyes straying past her to look at Jake again.

Selena just shrugged again and took a sip of her drink, her eyes not leaving Sam's face. "Looks that way."

"You killed him," Sam declared again, glaring at her.

"Nope," Selena said, sounded bored. "I don't kill people. I watch them die, but I don't kill them. Heard your roommate and you talking, this morning. Thought I'd follow up a hunch." She gestured to Jake. "Found him here, shortly before you showed up."

Sam stared at her. Nothing she had said made any sense. "What?"

"I didn't kill him," Selena repeated clearly. She sucked on the straw, still watching Sam with almost dead eyes. "I see death. So I saw him." She gestured to Jake, rattling the ice in her iced coffee.

"What happened?" Sam whispered, looking past her to Jake. He couldn't bear to look in her eyes anymore. There was something so...wrong about her expression, so lifeless. Jake himself, lying stiff and still, could be more alive than the moving and breathing Selena.

Selena glanced back at Jake. "Don't know. Someone slit his throat, but it...I don't know. I didn't see much."

But you looked right at him.

After a moment, she offered Sam her hand to help him up; when he took it, he found her skin cold beneath his touch. "And it doesn't bother you?" Sam asked in a hushed voice, horrified. Her entire demeanor was wrong, off. She should be freaking out. She should at least be respectful of the dead. Not...uninterested, like she had better things to do with her time. No one could look at a dead body like that and not react. Nobody. Not even someone like Selena.

"No," Selena said. "Death is a part of being a human. It's...natural."

"There's nothing natural about that!" Sam hissed, gesturing to Jake's body. "He was murdered! He's my friend, and he was murdered!"

Selena just shrugged. "Technicalities."

"What is wrong with you?" Sam asked, furious and frightened at the same time.

"No one knows," Selena said thoughtfully. "Doctors have suggested I'm a sociopath, but others don't think that's it. I don't fit all the symptoms, only, like, two. So the jury's out."

Sam took a deep breath, trying to calm himself and failing. "I'm calling 911."

Selena didn't say anything as Sam took out his phone and keyed in the three numbers, trying to sort through his thoughts as the phone rang. When the operator picked up, he jumped, his words tumbling over each other in their rush to get out. "Hello, I found the body of my friend in the basement of ULD's student union. It looks like he's been murdered."

The operator took his information, requested him to stay with the body but not to disturb it, and asked if he wanted her to stay on the line. Sam told her no, thanked her, and hung up, swallowing as he looked at Jake's body again.

Selena took a loud sip from her iced coffee, stirring the straw through the liquid and melting ice cubes. "So now we wait?"

Sam nodded. He was going to miss his next class but he didn't even care anymore. "Yep." He dragged his gaze away from Jake's body, wanting to look anywhere else but at the bloody form, and his eyes fell on a dark figure, standing near the corpse. His eyes widened.

The figure was dressed all in black, black slacks and button down dress shirt with the sleeves unbuttoned and hanging loosely about his pale hands. A cloak was secured about his neck, hanging down behind him, the hood pulled over his head and obscuring his face. Obsidian leather boots completed the look, glinting in the low light.

Sam stared at him, blinking, not sure whether to yell at him or run. Selena took one look at him and then followed his gaze, her bored expression slipping into a frown. "You see him?" she asked.

"Yeah," Sam said in a low voice, glancing at Selena. She had stiffened, the first reaction he had seen out of her since showing up here. "Where did he come from?"

Selena didn't answer, just kept her eyes on the figure. Sam returned his gaze as the figure knelt down beside Jake's body, the hooded face appearing to scan the body. Then in a sudden movement, the figure slammed his fist angrily into the ground and stood, his hood falling back with the quick movement.

Dark eyes in a pale, angular face, black hair framing his angry expression, the figure had an unnatural look about him. The urge Sam had to yell at the figure vanished, and all he wanted to do was cower in a corner, pull Selena away from the menacing form. He didn't want to ever confront this figure. Anger radiated off him, filling the room with a mix of rage and fear.

Selena also seemed wary, but she didn't move, and so Sam didn't either, despite the screaming in his gut. But then the figure, without paying any attention to the two of them, turned away from the body and vanished in a plume of shadow.

[----]

Sam and Selena sat on a cushioned bench in the student lounge upstairs, bottles of water sitting by their feet. Selena still had iced coffee remaining her cup and had resolutely stuck to that, but Sam had found he needed to take sips of his water every now and then, just to have something to do. His hands had stopped shaking by now, but he still felt drained and exhausted, like he had run a marathon and then sat through an excruciatingly difficult exam.

The police had shown up shortly after the disappearance of the figure in black, taking control of the crime scene and sending Selena and Sam to wait upstairs. The grim mutterings of the detectives and CSIs as they cordoned off the room, the way they looked at Jake's body, made Sam think there was something else going on aside from the brutal murder of a university student.

Selena, for the most part, had seemed unaffected by the whole thing. One of the detectives had already questioned both of them, Selena telling them about finding the body in the basement and Sam telling of about how long, approximately, he had been missing. For the moment, they were left alone while the police finished up with the crime scene.

"Dammit, I gotta call Raj," Sam sighed, pulling out his phone. Selena slurped up the last of her drink and tossed the cup into the garbage can as Sam hit the number and listened to the phone ring.

"Hey," Raj greeted. "Did –?"

"Raj, Jake's dead."

There was silence on the other end before a disbelieving exclamation of "What?"

"I found Jake in the basement of the student union. He's dead. Murdered. The cops are here. I, uh, I'll talk to you later. Just wanted you to know."

"Sam, wait –" But Sam ignored him and hung up. He didn't want to talk on the phone right now. Selena, for all her irreverent attitude toward Jake's death, was the perfect companion in this moment – she neither needed comforting nor offered it. Currently, she sat with her headphones over her ears and a small pad of paper balanced on her knee, her eyes fixed on the paper as she sketched out something with a black pen.

"I see death."

"I don't kill people. I watch them die, but I don't kill them."

What did she mean, she saw death? How did you see death?

"Are you in the emo club?" he asked her now. Might as well settle the debate whether she's emo or Goth. And he wasn't sure how to ask for clarification on her previous statement. He wasn't sure he wanted clarification.

Selena ignored him.

Sam reached over and rapped his knuckles against her headphones. She leaned away from him and pushed them back, the headphones sliding down her light blonde hair and ending up around her neck. "What?"

"Are you in the emo club?" Sam repeated.

Selena cocked her head, music still playing faintly from her headphones. It sounded like Fall Out Boy, one of the only bands in its genre Sam liked. "I'm on the club list, yeah, but do I go? No. I signed up to make my dad feel good. He thinks I'm a weird loser who doesn't talk to anyone. So I signed up, went to a meeting, and told my dad about it. Now he thinks I'm a weird loser who at least meets up with people Tuesday nights." She shrugged. "It works."

Sam looked at her. He wanted to say something else, but decided against it and instead asked, "What does an emo club even do?"

"Listen to music," Selena said. "When I went, we sat in the room for an hour and listened to a combination of emo bands, and some Goth stuff, from seven until eight. Then I left."

"That's it?" Sam asked, confused. "That's all?"

"The one time I went, yeah."

"Odd," Sam mused. So Jake sat and listened to the music for an hour every week? Why couldn't he just listen to it in his room?

And why listen to Goth music if it's an emo club?

Selena continued with her drawing and Sam glanced at the paper, curious. She had been sketching out a face and with startling accuracy had depicted the figure they had seen standing over Jake's body, right down to the angry expression on his face.

"That's amazing," Sam said, shaken. "It looks just like that guy."

Selena regarded it. "I know."

Footsteps at the door drew Sam's attention and he saw the police detective standing there. "You two are free to go," she said. "We'll contact you if we have any more questions."

Grateful, Sam thanked her and rose. He couldn't wait to get back to his apartment. Screw class and screw homework – he just wanted to go to sleep.

[----]

Bright light streamed through Sam's windows as he opened his eyes, blinking. He lay stretched out on the coverlet of his bed, the stuffed snake his sister Brianna had given him clenched tightly in his hand.

It was late in the morning, judging by the sun. Sam hadn't been able to go to sleep until two in the morning; between telling Marcus and Raj what had happened, trying to eat something and finish up the assignment he had forgotten was due that night, and then having to comfort Becky when she showed up at their door, crying, it had felt like forever before he had been able to fall into bed. He hadn't even bothered to change out of his jeans and T-shirt. But even with all his exhaustion, his sleep had been fitful, restless, the image of Jake's body and the figure in black flashing before his eyes.

He flicked his eyes up to the bedside table, eyes searching for the alarm clock. Its bright red numbers read 10:31. So he had missed his first class. Damn. Rubbing at his eyes, Sam rolled over and sat up just as an unfamiliar voice spoke from the other side of his bed.

"Aren't you lucky my brother decided to send me instead of just killing you?"