Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Dalton
Despite the inauspicious path we took to get here, the inn is the most cheerful looking building I’ve seen in this town.
The oak trees eventually opened up, allowing some fall sunshine to peek through the clouds and shine on the antiquated Victorian-style house.
The gingerbread eaves give the building a fairytale quality that is very at odds with literally everything else we’ve seen in Oak Hollow.
I put the car in park, and our feet crunch through fresh gravel as we make our way to the front porch. A wind chime sings from above the railing, but this one isn’t made of bone. It’s your typical metal-tube contraption. The sound is much less unsettling.
A tiny bell trills as we open the front door and step inside.
An older woman seated at a large wooden desk pops her head up and smiles as we enter.
After pushing her glasses up her thin nose, she plucks up a pen and pulls a ledger from a drawer.
Her gray ponytail barely wiggles as she sits back in her seat.
“How many guests should we set the table for?” she asks with a giggle.
Rayna looks to me for an answer. Great.
“Just the two of us, but we were looking for a room, not lunch.”
The woman nods, then replaces the ledger in the drawer before pulling out a different one. When she speaks again, her voice has changed. Instead of light and airy, she sounds tired, as if every one of her years has finally caught up to her at this very moment.
“Are the two of you married? If not, you can’t have a room with only one bed.
You have to sleep in separate beds.” She says this without looking at either of us.
Her entire focus remains on the ledger as she flips pages and exudes condescension.
“I have one room with two beds. For two nights, your total will be—”
“Total? Oh, our friend said the room would be comped,” Rayna blurts, and my stomach twists when she calls Samuel our friend.
The woman clears her throat. “Yes, well, that’s why it’s best to let people finish speaking, hmm? Your total will be nothing, as your room has been covered by the town’s mayor.”
“Rude,” Rayna mutters under her breath.
I step forward before she launches herself over the desk. “We appreciate the hospitality, but could we see the room first? We won’t be staying in a basement, will we?”
“Basement?” The woman screws up her nose as she rounds the desk and grabs a key from the holder on the wall. “Why on earth would we put you in the basement? That’s where we house the bodies.”
“Excuse me, did you just say bodies?” My legs keep following her, even though my brain says to run for the door.
She starts up the stairs, and Rayna has to push me to keep me moving. “Yes, the bodies of our dead. The inn is also the funeral home and morgue, you see. And the most popular restaurant in town, thanks to our chef.”
“You have a personal chef?” Rayna asks.
The woman stops at the top of the stairs and turns to face us with a smile. When she speaks, she uses a French accent this time. “You are, how do you say, looking at her, no?” With a laugh, she turns and leads us to a door.
I fight the urge to look back at Rayna and mouth, What the actual fuck is happening? Because this just gets odder by the second. At least this woman doesn’t put me at risk of losing the love of my life. I can almost handle the creep factor as long as Samuel isn’t in our vicinity.
When the door swings wide, we step into a bedroom and glimpse two child-sized beds. They cower against the far walls like terrified rabbits, and I don’t know how we’re expected to sleep on crib mattresses. At least the room is clean, I guess.
Rayna drops her backpack on the bed closest to the door. She runs her hands down her jean-clad thighs and peers at the room as if she’s stepped into her own version of hell. It’s a bit too white, clean, and clinical. The lacey curtains and gold-trimmed furniture don’t help, either.
The older woman’s voice changes again, this time shifting to that sweet voice we first heard. “If you aren’t joining us for our lunch service, we do hope you’ll make it to dinner. It’s served promptly at six p.m. in the dining room on the first floor. Tonight’s menu is meatloaf with a bird’s nest.”
With that, she turns and leaves.
“Okay, what the fuck is a bird’s nest?” Rayna whispers once the woman’s footsteps recede down the hallway.
“I’m more concerned with how the fuck we’re supposed to sleep on these beds. Rayna . . . this is doll furniture.”
A sly smirk slides across her beautiful face. “Who said anything about sleeping? I thought maybe we could partake in a little fun this evening.”
“As tempting as that is, I think it’s best we keep our wits about us. Something is off about this place. Who keeps the morgue at the inn, bones?” I shake my head. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
She pokes out her lower lip and flops back on the bed. “You mean to tell me you can resist this? All of this?” Her fingers raise the hem of her shirt, giving me a perfect view as she slides her hand beneath her waistband with a moan. “Fuck, the fear almost makes it better.”
Tearing my eyes away from her, I kneel at the side of the bed and unzip my luggage. “I don’t doubt that, but we’ll have plenty of time for getting each other off once we’re out of this town. Until then, we have to stay focused.”
Rayna’s nails tickle my scalp before she grabs my hair and tugs my mouth toward her pussy. “Fucking taste me. You know you want to.”
I press my lips to the crotch of her jeans and blow warm breath against her. She’s right. I want to taste her. I want to devour her and drink every drop of her pleasure straight from the source. Especially when she moans like that and grinds against my face.
But it isn’t wise.
“We could check off another tick on the adventure list, you know,” she whispers as I nibble her from outside her jeans. “Remember the—”
“I remember.”
“The morgue is just downstairs . . .”
When I agreed to an orgy among a body pile, I thought that it would be bodies of our own making. Victims of this year’s harvest. The final crescendo of passion after a night of symphonic murder. To utilize bodies of people who didn’t die by our hands feels kind of gross. Inauthentic.
“I don’t know, bones. I really think we should keep our heads on a swivel. As much as I want you to sit on me and rotate, this place is fucking dangerous.”
Rayna sits up with a shrug, but I know that mischievous glint in her eyes. “Fine. If you don’t want to check out the morgue, have fun sitting on this bed. I’m going down there.”
As she stands and leaves the room, I don’t argue. It would be pointless. Instead, I simply stand and follow her as she creeps down the hallway.
“There may not be enough bodies for this,” I whisper. “It’s a small town. How many dead people can they have down there?”
“Shh!” Rayna pins me with a glare, and I close my mouth. She motions through the stair railing, and I peer over the side. Down below, the older woman sits at her desk, scrawling something into a ledger.
“Any idea how we’ll sneak past her?” I ask. “We don’t even know where the morgue is.”
Rayna points again, and I see a placard beside a door that reads MORGUE. Touche.
Still, we’ll be forced to sneak past that desk to reach it.
“We’ll need some sort of distraction,” Rayna whispers.
“Oh, is that all? Well, let me just pull this distraction machine out of my pocket, and—”
I’m silenced by the bell tinkling above the front door as it swings open. Rayna and I sink further into the shadows so that the guest doesn’t see us, but I saw enough of that sharp jaw to know that it was Samuel. Seconds later, their voices filter up to us.
“Are they in their room?” Samuel asks.
The woman scoffs, using her hotel-lobby-desk-clerk voice when she speaks this time. “You know how I feel about unwed couples rooming together. Couldn’t you have found a single woman instead of one who was already attached? What if this goes as poorly as the last one?”
Rayna and I look at each other.
“It won’t,” Samuel says. Boots scuff on the floor, and then he continues. “This one’s right. She has a pet squirrel she carries around, and she’ll fit right into the family. I’m sure of it. She already met Granny at the magic-go-round.”
“And what of the man?”
“We needed a sacrifice, didn’t we? The busted roads keep out the investigators, but they keep out the tourists as well. I can’t keep pulling from the local town, Mama. You know it’s not safe anymore.”
Sacrifice? I mouth to Rayna.
She blinks at me, her eyes growing wider.
“They’ll take off the moment they get a wild hair,” the woman says. “They’re already jumpy.”
“I’ve got her squirrel. I lied and said he needed time to set, but he’s just fine. She won’t leave town until she has him. I could always tinker with their car if you think it’s worth it, but now that Mike is dead—”
“Mike wouldn’t have made a difference. He wasn’t a very good mechanic anyway.
And it’s not like they’ll need the car repaired.
Once we get rid of the man, the woman will never leave.
” The lady sighs, and her chair squeaks.
“Just do whatever you think is necessary. If they come down, I’ll occupy them, but make it quick. ”
Rayna and I turn for the bedroom again, but my feet tangle together, and down I go.
With a silent scream, I sprawl across the upper landing in plain view of Samuel and the woman.
I mentally plead with Rayna, urging her to run, but of course she doesn’t.
She grips my ankles and tries to pull me back into the shadows, but it’s too late.
“Grab them!” the woman squeals.
Footsteps pound up the stairs, and Samuel looms over us like some giant harbinger of doom.
His meaty fists reach down, taking my arm in one hand and Rayna’s in the other.
With the ease of a child picking up sticks, he lifts us into the air and begins dragging us down the stairs.
My blood runs cold when I see which door he’s snatching us toward.
Looks like Rayna will get that morgue tour after all.