Chapter 59
FIFTY-NINE
NEVE
Isit outside of Cynthia’s door, my spine to the wall, a blanket around my shoulders, phone clutched in my hand. The butcher knife, plus several other blades, are within easy reach, and I lean my skull back, resting my eyes a second.
I got disconnected with Faust and Sylvan half an hour ago, and I don’t know quite how much longer it’ll take them to get here. They said Lincoln told them nothing but got in his car to head back to campus, too.
No knocks on the door.
Tasia didn’t answer when I called her. Ten fucking times.
I didn’t reply to her text, and she hasn’t sent any more.
Nolan’s cell seems to finally have gone dead, and I haven’t bothered with Mom.
She’s in North Carolina, and whether she felt she needed to distance herself from a possible psychopathic son or not, she didn’t have to leave me too, no explanation, letting me assume she simply chose my estranged stepdad over her children.
Besides, what possible good reason could she have for ditching us anyway? What did Nolan do to her, aside from freak her out? They’re both as bad as each other, as far as I can tell, with the small exception of murder, possibly.
It still seems surreal, trying to rationalize it in my mind.
Fit Nolan into the serial killer profile Lincoln has no doubt built for him.
Good thing I’m not planning to go into forensic psychology, I guess.
Clearly, my judgment is clouded, and I’d need to be impartial in that field.
Then again, I suppose most forensic psychologists don’t need to profile their own brothers.
I let my shoulders drop, my mouth still dry from sleep, only deep red cotton shorts and an oversized black shirt on underneath my blanket coat.
The need for sleep pulls at me at the same time that my stomach growls, but I’m not getting up to eat. My body might need the nutrients but my mind is reeling too fast for food.
Blackness overtakes me, and in my dream, I’m sleeping between Faust and Sylvan in silk ink sheets, all three of us satisfied, content, safe.
But someone is knocking at the door.
It’s quiet. Not urgent. A tapping more than a pounding.
Neither of us want to get up, though.
We’re too comfortable here.
Too happy, even in sleep.
The tapping continues, like Dracula’s nails against a windowpane. Tap, tap, tap, tap.
The image won’t leave my mind, but I stubbornly keep my eyes closed.
Vampires aren’t real, after all.
Even if Sylvan’s teeth on my throat and the dot of blood on his lips from mine was the hottest thing I’d ever seen in my life.
Thinking of it, I shift on the bed, pressing closer to him.
But he feels stiff, and not in a good way.
Too hard.
I burrow in further, then reach out my fingers to find Faust’s broad, firm back.
There’s nothing there.
Just cold air.
Tap tap tap tap tap.
I frown in the darkness, but my eyelids are too heavy. There’s been too much. The murders and working around hockey and exams and studying and the feeling of losing my brother so close to the holidays, the person I thought I knew most when really, I understood him the least.
Ace’s death hurt deeper than the rest, yet even that didn’t bring me to tears.
Something is wrong with me. Maybe the same thing that’s wrong with Nolan.
The idea startles me. Like being caught in a hurricane, drenched in realizations and whipped by the icy wind of memories.
Maybe I never cried as much as my friends because I’m incapable.
Maybe I could starve myself so well because my perfectionism overrode any humane aspect of my psyche.
Perhaps I fell headfirst into psychology because studying what made people tick was really a guise for discovering why I didn’t tick the way I should.
Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.
It gets more frantic as my thoughts tunnel.
Maybe I’m with both boys because I’m never satisfied. I can never be normal. I will never want calm or peace or quiet or—
Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.
Maybe my mother didn’t abandon me because of Nolan. Maybe she cut off contact because of me.
What if we’re the same?
What if I killed Jackson? Will? Mitchell?
Ace? Wasn’t I near them when they died? Who is to say I didn’t carry the knife?
I’m sleeping with one, aren’t I? Is this real, or is this a dream?
What if I hurt Tasia? What if I took her phone?
What if I texted myself to make everyone worry about me because I’m not starved just for food, but I need attention?
Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.
It gets worse.
Less pauses between each one. Like my thoughts slicing inside my mind.
What if I’m broken? What if I’ll never be okay?
What if—
There’s a shriek. No, a laugh? Something odd outside the door. A sound that doesn’t fit. Someone who doesn’t belong there, on my doorstep. But they had to have a key to get in, so who could it be?
Is it Faust again, like it was before? He stalked me once. Why couldn’t he fit the profile of a killer?
I mean, doesn’t he? Quiet, controlled, calm. Until he isn’t.
Or am I at Faust’s right now? In the castle? They could jump the fence, right? Despite his alarm, the camera, in some ways, it occurs to me he has less security than I do.
Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.
“Neve, wake up!” A familiar voice.
A smile spreads across my drowsing face.
Cynthia Espinosa. My best friend. I was scared to move to Canada. Terrified I’d never fit in, never understand washrooms and loonies and the TTC. Or Toronto traffic. Or Leafs Nation. Or hockey at all.
But none of it mattered with her. Everything was easy.
Even the six hour wait at urgent care when I sprained my ankle freshman year, both of us running in sneakers on ice like absolute morons.
She sat with me the entire time. We laughed so hard my stomach hurt watching Reels of people falling down, just like I did.
“Neve. Get. Up.”
My smile widens.
Maybe I’m not a psychopath. Maybe Cynthia showed me that.
“There’s someone at our fucking door!” Those words are spoken in a hiss.
I snap my eyes open.
“Why are you on the floor? And why do you have…” Cynthia gestures vaguely, her brow wrinkled as she tugs at an oversized cardigan over her PJs. “Knives?” Her curly hair is loose, down around her shoulders, her eyes wild as she flicks her gaze past me, toward the entrance door, then back.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Fuck.
I suck in a breath, as if I’ve just come up from underwater.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
My phone. I pat around my blanket for it, my heart hammering hard inside my chest as the tapping sound grows stranger, a quieter, slower pattern, but just as incessant.
“Did you look through the peephole?” I ask absentmindedly as relief floods my body when my fingers close over the sleek rectangle.
“Are you insane?” Cynthia counters.
Perhaps.
“It’s three in the morning, Neve!” Her voice is still that whisper-hiss, and I want to tell her they can probably hear us as high-pitched as it is, but I’m too busy unlocking my phone as she stands over me, shifting her weight from foot to foot.
Missed calls from the boys.
Ten each.
A text comes through as I hold my phone.
Sylvan <3
We’re coming up. Open the door.
I frown as the tapping continues, then check to ensure I have no more messages from Tasia.
There’s nothing. She didn’t call back either.
I stand to my feet too fast, the blanket falling from my shoulders and drenching me in cold as Cynthia takes several steps back, her eyes big on mine.
“Call Karter.”
“Did you not hear me?” she hisses. “It’s three in the goddamn morning!”
“Call her.” I hold my friend’s gaze. “She might be in danger.” Then I scurry away on quiet steps, but not before leaning down and swiping up one of the smaller, but no less sharp, knives from my collection.
Easier to plunge into a man’s chest.
Hopefully.
I walk on light steps, my bare feet cold on the kitchen tiles. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Cynthia hold her cell to her ear. My heart swells she listened and she isn’t yelling after me.
No doubt because the tapping hasn’t stopped.
It’s eerie, but after all this time, it’s starting to slide under my skin like a nail, too.
I stand silently in front of the door, not daring to breathe, and press up onto my toes, my heart racing, vibrating my pulse into my throat.
It takes everything in me not to gasp when I see it.
Him.
My brother’s eyes staring back at me, pressed close to the peephole, like he knows I’m here.
The light in the hall shows the shadows beneath his lower lash line. The purple and black. The wildness of his pupils, nearly engulfing the shade of his irises.
His brows are jumping up and down in a strange way, and he sways a little to the side, like maybe he’s drunk or on something else.
He knows.
He knows, because he grins at me in a way I’ve never seen his face move before and he says, “Let me in, Neve.”
My hand goes to the lock.
I’m frozen as I stare at him, but the urge to hear him out is strong. He can’t be the killer. He’s lonely and cold and stressed and worried and he won’t hurt me, will he? He didn’t do it. He’s not a murderer.
“Let me in and let me look after you. You’re not eating enough, are you Neve?”
Calorie counts spring into my mind. 1200.
Never over 1500. Or if I had too much, best to be under a 1000.
And some foods were off limits. Anything with more than five grams of sugar.
Anything that made me bloat, even a little.
If I wanted to look my best, walk at noon in the summer with no hat, little water.
Let my fingers swell but afterward, lying down half-naked, dripping sweat in bed, I’d be lean. Hard to pinch an inch.
Who taught me all of that?
“Let me look after you. I didn’t do what they say. I wouldn’t hurt anyone. You know me, Neve.”
He did. He taught me.
“Don’t you dare unlock that fucking door.” Cynthia’s voice makes me startle away from the lock.
I turn to face her, my heart pounding, a knife still in my fist. “He didn’t do it.” I don’t meet Cyn’s gaze as I whisper the words.
Cynthia’s got her phone clenched in her one hand, her other balled up tight, ready to pounce.
Not on me.
For me.
“Karter hasn’t heard from Tasia in the past few hours considering the time, but she knows she lost her phone.”
Lost.
My brother didn’t hurt her. But of course he didn’t. He wouldn’t hurt anyone.
“Let me hear him out.” I try to reason with her. I lift a hand when she opens her mouth to protest. “Please.” My voice is hoarse.
“You’re not thinking clearly. Imagine me asking you the same thing.” Cynthia speaks softly, but there’s panic edging her tone.
The tapping has stopped.
Worry squeezes my chest.
“He didn’t do it. He’s scared. I can talk to him and convince him to speak to the detective and—”
“How did he get into Blackwell’s?” Cynthia interrupts me gently, taking a small step forward. “If he doesn’t know how to handle alarms or cameras or tread in places he shouldn’t…”
I think of Jackson’s body in the dark shadows of Sky Arena. They didn’t see anyone on film, did they? Or they’d know for certain.
“Then how did he get in, when Mr. Bennet explicitly told us he installed a top of the line alarm system?”
“Maybe Mr. Bennet lied.” The objection sounds weak to my own ears.
Cynthia drops her hand and shakes her head. “Casper isn’t the one who’s lying, Neve.”