Chapter Nineteen
T he police arrived eighteen minutes after Laura jumped.
Pru bullied the motel manager into cancelling their second night and Shay booked a last-minute room at the Hilton.
Georgia cried until she got sick, dry heaving miserably behind the RV, and Aiden watched a storm brew on the horizon while Dylan gave his statement to an attentive cop.
I don’t know, man. I don’t know. We got here, and she just—she just fell.
She didn’t even jump. She just. . . It’s like.
. . Fuck, I don’t know. Aiden smoked a cigarette on the curb and dodged police, scampering into the lobby to search for non-existent coffee whenever someone in a uniform looked his way for too long.
Once the officer let Dylan go, Knight’s Blood left in a hurry.
The tarp draped over Laura’s small, still body shrank in the rearview mirror.
Red and blue flashed across Cit’s lonely truck.
Strangers wiped their eyes and shook their heads, shocked silent at the arrival of a young corpse.
Aiden had wanted to crouch beside Laura’s body. Study her shark mouth and demonic eyes. Learn everything he possibly could about her unbecoming. Instead, he’d stared at her familiar, twisted features from afar, and typed Black Eyed Demon into the search bar on his phone.
Links had directed him to articles about black-eyed children and alleged hauntings, monsters from tabletop roleplaying games and discounted Halloween costumes. He scrolled through poorly filtered selfies, anime drawings, and grainy photographs, and got nowhere. Found nothing , like always.
But she’d changed. Transformed. And Aiden needed to know how .
“You doin’ okay?” Pru asked. Her knuckles paled around the steering wheel.
Aiden shifted in the passenger’s seat, holding Sherlock under his chin. He scratched the ferret’s warm belly. Watched the sun melt into the desert between buildings, turning rooftops gold. “I don’t know,” he said, and pressed his nose to Sherlock’s head. “You?”
“You didn’t look away.” She shot him an apologetic glance. “Sorry, I—I mean, you saw , you?—”
“Yeah, I saw. I’ve always wondered what it’s like to be weightless, you know? Turns out it’s fast. When it happens like that, I mean. Really fucking fast.”
Pru’s throat flexed, but she stayed quiet.
Shay held Georgia on the lumpy couch. She sniffled and quivered, pawing at her flushed cheeks and puffy eyes, and kept her gaze downcast. Aiden imagined she felt safer there, like a child shying away from a jump-scare during a movie.
He rested his cheek on the seat and glanced at Shay, who stared through the window at the pink-tinted sunset. Dylan, bless him, rolled a joint.
The band settled in a spacious, two-bed suite on the fourth floor.
Aiden stood with Dylan on a tiny balcony, stealing puffs off his skunky, hand-rolled indica, dwelling on the concept of power.
Harnessing it, transferring it, becoming twisted and suicidal because of it.
He wanted answers. A reason. The why. The how .
If someone like Cit could create someone like Shay, what was stopping Aiden from doing the same to himself?
Shay ordered room service, requested an extra cot, and disappeared into the bathroom.
Their overpriced dinner arrived on crowded trays, and Aiden stewed in pregnant silence as everyone nibbled on flash-fired pizza and crispy calamari rings.
He hadn’t stopped seeing Laura’s teeth, hadn’t stopped picturing her weak hands on the ritual stone in the desert, hadn’t stopped turning Cit’s words inside out— burn the intent .
At one point, Pru pushed a tray toward him.
He ate, because everyone else was eating.
Because no one wanted to eat, but they’d made an unspoken promise to try.
He picked at pepperonis, forked brownie into his mouth, and followed Shay’s lead, escaping into a steamy shower once he’d eaten enough.
He tended to his stitches alone. A normal-sized band-aid did the job. Bandaged his thigh alone.
Alone had become a learned thing, a lived thing. Yet he wished Shay had been the one to run lotion across the splotchy, swollen bruise parallel to his top surgery scar.
“Favorite winter thing?” Aiden asked, curled under the comforter with Georgia. Across the room, Dylan snored faintly beside Pru. Shay lay on the cot, nested in blankets they’d brought in from the RV.
“Fat birds,” Georgia whispered. “And peppermint mochas.”
“Travel destination?”
“I don’t know. Maybe one day we’ll get on a plane, take our music across the pond. Make it all the way to Paris.”
It went on like that, him asking her innocent things, until they were asleep.
He didn’t know how long they’d gone, but the night still felt young when she stirred awake.
Her chest rose and fell in fast, short breaths, and she scrambled against the sheets, kicking and clawing.
Aiden grabbed her the same way he would Camila.
Held her tightly, pinning her arms, hugging his chest to her back.
“Georgia, hey, it’s a nightmare.” He shushed her. “Just a bad dream.”
She went limp, gripping his forearm. “Jesus, I keep seein’ her. All… All mangled. I wish I hadn’t looked—I shouldn’t have. Shit .”
Aiden let her go. At first, he thought he was awake.
Waking came after sleep, didn’t it? But he blinked.
Stepped into lucidity and found their bed shadowed by something—some one —only he could see.
Thomas hovered over them, knees pressed against the mattress, face half-gone and tipped downward.
His lips had peeled backward, gums receded, revealing a sallow-toothed smile.
His empty chest buckled; ribcage bent away from his body like antlers.
“That poor fucking girl,” she said.
“You need to get some rest, Georgia,” he said, still trained to the ghost standing at their bedside.
Thomas carried the sea with him, like always. Water dripped from his nose and landed on Georgia’s cheek, splattering. She rubbed a hand over her face and sighed, as if the wetness hadn’t struck her, as if it’d been there all along.
“I’m a weepy mess.” She rolled over to face him. “Where you goin’?”
“Cigarette,” he said, slipping quietly from under the covers. “Go back to sleep.”
“Yeah, okay. Quit those, though. I’m serious.”
“I hear you.” He waited for Georgia to close her eyes before squinting at what was left of Thomas.
Aiden grabbed his jacket. Cigarettes. Keys.
Stepped backward. Waited. Stepped again.
The ghost moved awkwardly, dragging himself on fractured feet.
C’mon. You’re here for me . Aiden crossed the doorway.
Listened to heavy, sore sounds: loose skin, sopping clothes.
Once Thomas slumped into the brightly lit hall, he vanished.
“I’m used to you, fucker,” Aiden whispered, easing the door shut. “Can’t scare me anymore.”
That was a bold-faced lie. Aiden almost tripped putting distance between himself and the wet footprints on the carpet. He made it to the elevator without Thomas reappearing, and crossed the lobby to the automatic doors, stepping into the damp, summer air.
The storm he’d seen earlier had arrived without warning, dumping quarter-sized raindrops on Roswell and the surrounding desert.
He stood under an awning and smoked, watching water obscure streetlights and pelt windshields.
At the end of the parking lot, someone else did the same.
Her silhouette punched a hole in the night.
Darker, somehow. Topped with a wide-brimmed hat.
When Aiden lifted his cigarette, she did the same.
When he flicked ash onto the sidewalk, orange embers sparked near her thigh.
When he took a step forward, Cit did, too, and the space between them lessened.
You’re dead, he thought, sucking hard on the smoky filter. I put a knife in you .
“Hey.”
Aiden startled, snapping his cigarette in half. He cursed and whirled around, facing Shay, who flashed his palms in surrender. “Shay. . . Fuck, man, you. . .” He glanced at the parking lot. Cit’s shadow was gone. “You scared me.”
“Sorry,” he said, cringing. “I heard you leave. Just thought. . . I don’t know. Thought you might want company.”
Aiden fished the last cigarette out of their stolen pack, striking the lighter with his thumb. “You saw her, right? Laura?” Smoke billowed from between his lips. He handed the cigarette to Shay. “She had?—”
“Yeah, I saw. Black eyes. Fangs.”
“Not just fangs. ”
Shay smoked audibly, all crackling paper and suckling inhales. “How? I mean, they were trying to do something , but we interrupted it, didn’t we? We stopped it.”
“We changed it,” Aiden said. He held two fingers out and brought the cigarette to his mouth. “Clearly we didn’t stop anything. She evolved. Like you, but. . . but not .”
“It’s over,” Shay said. The finality in his voice carried. “So, I guess it doesn’t matter. Whatever Cit started, we finished it. The police have a body. I’m sure they’ll put together a motive, too.”
“Yeah? Like, what? Young woman cannibalizes cult-leader in a murder-suicide ritual? C’mon, that’s. . .” Aiden trailed off.
Shay nodded, shrugging suggestively. “Like Dylan said, Cassie was into some wild shit. Won’t be a surprise to find out her friends were, too.”
“You don’t think the cops’ll investigate?”
“They will. But we’ll be in Austin this time tomorrow and they’ll have a cut-and-dry cult case. Six victims, dead. Seven, including Cassie. One lead, dead. Tragic, yeah. Sad, yeah. But still. No one’ll suspect a thing with their track record.”
“Hope you’re right.”
“How’d you think you’d get away with murder the first time?”
Aiden smashed the cigarette under his shoe. “Honestly? I didn’t think I would. Just hoped the devil might save me if I got caught.”
“Then consider me the devil,” Shay said. He reached for Aiden. Grasped his knuckles and squeezed. “We’re fine, Aiden. We’ll be fine.”