Chapter Twenty-Two
A iden woke to a nearby scream.
He opened his eyes. Shay looked back at him.
They were twin moons, curled toward each other under the covers, ankles linked, hands buckled.
The scream ended, but another two, then three, kicked into the air afterward.
Panicked howls and high-pitched cries twisted through the blue hour like a corkscrew to his temple, worsening a ruthless fucking headache.
He blinked at Shay. Pushed his face into the pillow and brought their knotted fingers to his mouth.
“I’m sick of that sound,” Shay said.
He’d imagined what it was like to rip a scream from someone else, but never had. Every death he’d been responsible for had happened too quickly. “Yeah, I know.”
“Do you think it’s her?”
“I hope it’s not.”
“She’s dead, Aiden. We watched her hit the fucking ground and?—”
A closed fist pounded on the bedroom door.
Screaming gave way to chatter, rising through the hotel as hinges creaked and footsteps filled the hall.
Aiden kissed Shay and slipped out of bed.
Didn’t bother buttoning his jeans, just pulled them over his hips and opened the door to Pru’s bulged, brown eyes.
“There’s a body in the pool,” she said, calmly. Then again, less calmly. “There’s a body in the pool—a dead body.”
“Shit, seriously. . . ? Jesus . . . Just. . . Just don’t let Georgia see it,” he said. “We’ll be out in a sec.”
Pru glanced at his bare chest, inhaling sharply. She lifted her hand, as if she intended to touch the purple lake on his ribs. “What happened?”
“I fell—I’m fine. Seriously, don’t let her go down there.”
She blinked. “Yeah, okay. I’ll order room service.”
“No, just get dressed and we’ll go out,” Aiden said. “Odio policías. Seria mejor, no?”
“Good call. Hurry.”
He nodded and shut the door, forcing the contents of his stomach to stay put.
The moment she’d said pool , he’d known.
Felt a wave of limbic certainty like a hand around his ankle.
He hadn’t drowned last night, but someone had, and Laura Noble had been the one to hold them under.
Knowing came in waves, like rain before a storm, like static before lightning:
I’m being hunted .
“C’mon, get dressed,” Aiden said. He snapped the wrinkles out of a folded White Zombie t-shirt. Buttoned his black jeans, put on deodorant, and laced his boots. “Meet me downstairs, okay?”
Shay narrowed his eyes. “Wait, wait! Hey, don’t just?—”
Aiden darted out the door, leaving Shay half-dressed, Dylan shouting dude, hold up, and Georgia saying his name, high-pitched and scared.
He took the stairs to the second floor. Fingered sandy sleep from his clumped lashes and snuck around groups crowded on the terrace overlooking the courtyard.
A woman with curlers in her hair leaned against the ice machine, whispering loudly about a vengeful ghost. Volunteers for the Metaphysical Assembly stood in matching shirts, fiddling with their lanyards, craning like meerkats.
Aiden shouldered his way through the crowd and braced on the iron banister, gazing at the rectangular wine-colored pool and the body floating face-down in its very center.
Beside him, a man sobbed, dressed in nothing but his sweats, mid-rise black socks, and a baseball cap. His friends comforted him like typical men, gripping shoulders, squeezing forearms, refusing to actually hold him. Their soggy, wrecked voices caused Aiden’s throat to tighten.
“He was supposed to get married tomorrow.”
“God, fuck, man. What the hell happened?”
“What’d they do to his back?”
“We need to call Andrea.”
“Did anyone see him leave the bar last night?”
Aiden scanned the scene, focused on red ripples and the man’s open back. How his spine bent away from the rest of him, causing his skeleton to droop. The shark-mouthed prints on his calves and around his nape, still spitting curls of blood.
He turned on his heels, snuck through the crowd again, and loped down the stairs, fishing his phone out of his pocket.
Aiden Moore: i need to make an appointment
That Bitch Ass Psychic: 2 o’clock. Hotel bar.
Aiden Moore: somewhere else
That Bitch Ass Psychic: The mess will be clean by then and I get discount cocktails. Take it or leave it.
Aiden Moore: fine
Staff guided guests away from the courtyard and directed convention-goers to an early-bird panel—Psychic Hotline Self- Starters—happening on the third floor.
Chaos snaked through the hotel. People swarmed the check-in counter, demanding refunds and cancellations, while bartenders crafted heavy-handed breakfast cocktails for pajama-clad-patrons.
Some people cried. Some laughed, recording shameless, gruesome live-streams for their followers.
Aiden kept his chin lifted and made for the front door, side-stepping an EMT in a blue uniform.
Clammy air hit his cheeks. He jutted his chin toward Pru and Knight’s Blood, standing on the sidewalk a few yards away.
Georgia shielded herself, grabbing opposing elbows like latches on a cage.
Dylan tried to smile, vape pen stuck between his lips, and Shay offered a flighty glance.
Other groups stood in tightly packed circles, some with suitcases, others shouting on their phones.
Red lights flashed atop a white ambulance parked outside the front door, and sirens blared, growing closer.
“What’d you see?” Georgia asked.
“A dead guy,” Aiden said. “Probably had too much to drink and passed out in the pool.”
“What about the blood? People keep talking about a shit-ton of blood a-and his. . . his bones or something?” Pru asked.
Georgia sucked in a shaky breath. “ Blood? ”
“I bet he smacked his head. C’mon, don’t think about it.
Let’s just get out of here, okay? Didn’t you say there’s a hole-in-the-wall creole place you wanted to try?
They do breakfast, right?” He pulled Georgia into a hug.
She didn’t unfold her arms, but leaned into him, rolling her forehead against his collarbone.
He lifted his brows at Pru. She mouthed sorry .
Georgia nodded. “Yeah, it’s a few blocks away. Walkable, I think.”
“Lead the way,” Aiden said.
They trudged past sleepy shops and shuttered bars, sharing Dylan’s vape. Shay fell into step beside Aiden. They slowed, allowing distance to stretch between their bandmates.
“What’d you really see?” Shay asked.
“Back ripped open, spine snapped in half, really, really big bitemarks.”
“Well, fuck.”
“I felt it, I think. Last night when I. . . I. . . whatever, you know what I’m talking about.
It’s like I was there. Like I felt him drown.
Don’t ask me how, because I don’t know.” Aiden spoke too quickly, tripping to keep up with his high-speed thoughts.
“And I have no idea if she’ll help us, but I texted Kelly.
Figured we have a psychic; we might as well use her. ”
“How, though? How would you have felt?—”
“I’m too hungover to think about it right now. Like, way, way too hungover.” He wanted to close that memory away. Lock it with the others—Ocean Grove trailhead, Thomas, Cit. He took Shay’s hand, linking their fingers. “Let me get through breakfast first. Please.”
Shay heaved an annoyed breath.
“Pretty fuckin’ please,” Aiden said.
“How the hell would Laura, one, come back from the dead, two, get all the way to Louisiana?”
“How’d you come back from the dead and get from Malibu to my apartment?”
“We live in L.A., Aiden. I hopped the turnstile and took the metro. No one, literally, not a single person, batted an eye. I’m pretty sure someone had their pet raccoon on the train, and I’m positive another person took their pants off and sang the national anthem. I was just wet.”
Aiden glared at him from under his lashes. “She’s here,” he said, firmly. “I don’t care how she got here. I care that she’s here, leaving bodies in broad fucking daylight with their bones bent backward. ”
Shay lowered his sunglasses, pinning Aiden with an irritated glare, and revealed violet shadows beneath his eyes. Sweat beaded on his temples and his skin chalked, brightened by packed foundation.
“Fucking hell,” Aiden said, and set the back of his hand against Shay’s feverish cheek. “Shay, are you?—”
“Don’t,” Shay hissed, leaning away. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
“I am .”
“Guys, we made it,” Georgia said over her shoulder. She pointed to a diner built into a brick building between a bourbon bar and a clothing store. “See? Nothin’ fancy. Just a little café.”
Aiden took Shay’s hand again and followed Georgia through the arched doorway, scooting into a circular booth beneath the window. Maple, coffee grounds, and fryer oil wafted through Bun-Bun Café, and despite the worry brewing in his bones, his stomach rumbled.
They ordered breakfast to share—cornmeal pancakes, sausage and grits, sweet potato waffles, poached eggs, and fried green tomatoes.
As they ate, circling conversation about corpses and music, unlucky tour stops and psychopath groupies, Aiden caught movement in the skinny hallway between the kitchen and the bathroom.
Velvet fingers around the door. Faded teal hair and pitted eyes. His spoon clattered on the table.
“You okay?” Dylan asked.
Aiden forced a nod. “Yeah, just. . .”
“Just?” Shay prompted, stealing grits off Aiden’s plate.
Aiden nudged Shay, and said, “Nothing. I have to pee—move.”