Chapter 15 #2
He’s hovering perfectly still, a foot off the ground with one arm wrapped around his stomach, and the other cupping his face.
He looks like he’s in his late twenties or early thirties, and has a straight nose, strong brows, and wavy hair swept to one side.
His body is drained of all color, made entirely of smoke, although his hair and eyebrows are a shade of gray darker than the rest of him.
He’s inside a glass dome large enough for a tall person to stand in, secured to the floor with iron brackets that look sturdy enough to withstand an explosion.
His mouth stretches into a toothy smile.
“Hello, Eden.” His lips don’t move, but the words burning into my mind are unmistakably coming from him. “Come closer. Let me get a good look at you.”
Absolutely not.
I snap my eyes to the floor, staring at the metal under my feet. I try to step backward, and my foot actually moves, but it’s like I’m trying to wade through molasses. I want to stay right here.
Wait.
That’s not my thought. I don’t want to stay here.
He’s in my head?
“Get out of my head,” I manage to croak out, my voice barely audible even to my own ears.
“Such an obedient little thing, aren’t you? Walking right down here when I called.” His eyes gleam. “I see what has him so taken with you.”
My mind races, trying to place this man. I’ve seen him before. It’s on the edge of my memory. The handsome face, the dark hair…
Shit.
“You’re Billy Lundby, aren’t you?”
“Clever girl.”
In my last foster home, I shared a room with a girl who was obsessed with true crime.
Maya figured out who I was the second she met me and peppered me with questions I didn’t want to answer.
Did you see Stanley Daniels watching you when you let your dog out?
Did you think he looked suspicious? Do you think you could have gotten away if you had run when he pointed the gun at you, or do you think he would’ve shot you?
She plastered photos all over our shared wall: Richard Ramirez, Ted Bundy, and her personal favorite, Billy Lundby, right above her bed.
She’d watched the Netflix mini-series on him three times.
Talked about him like he was some misunderstood artist instead of what he actually was.
Billy was too handsome to be suspected of something like rape, let alone murder. That’s what made him so dangerous. By the time anyone realized what was happening, twenty-seven girls were already dead.
“Tell me. Eden.” His voice slides through my head with ease. “What do you know about me?”
I say nothing. He chuckles.
“Shy? That’s all right. I’ll tell you. I killed girls who looked just like you. Pretty girls. With dark hair and big, frightened eyes. They get even prettier when they die. My girls all died the same way.” He takes a pause, and then the next word explodes through my head: “SCREAMING.”
It feels like the word is being drilled through my skull. I need to move. I need to get out of here right now.
But when I try to step toward the stairs, my legs won’t cooperate.
Billy’s laughter fills my mind, low and amused, like he’s watching a mouse realize it’s trapped.
“What’s wrong?” he asks. “Going somewhere?”
I’m not paralyzed. I can wiggle my toes and can clench my fists, but I can’t make myself take a single step toward those stairs.
I want to wring this asshole’s neck. He killed twenty-seven girls, and now he thinks he can just control me?
“I said no,” I snarl. “I’m not your fucking plaything.”
“EDEN!”
My eyes snap up at the sound of my name before I can stop them. Fuck.
I try to look down so hard my eyeballs burn in their sockets, straining against muscles that won’t obey, but they are stuck on him. His eyes are gleaming with triumph, pupils blown wide and hungry.
DJ told me not to look a ghost in the eye, and what do I do? I deserve whatever’s about to happen for being so monumentally stupid.
He oscillates his head from side to side like a cobra. My peripheral vision collapses inward until all I can see are his eyes.
“Did nobody tell you not to look me in the eye?” His voice drips with satisfaction. “Perhaps you can’t help yourself.”
I try to close my eyes, but they won’t obey. They’re locked open, forcing me to stare at him as the pressure builds.
“Do you feel me inside you?” Billy asks. “Tapping the backs of your eyes?”
I gasp as the feeling of cold fingers probes the delicate tissue behind my eyeballs, exploring, like they’re testing how hard they can push before something ruptures. My thoughts scatter like dropped marbles, rolling out of reach.
“The boy never lets me get this far,” he says. “But you. You’re so… permeable.”
My head is going to split open. The pressure builds until I’m drowning in pain.
His cold presence slithers inside my mind, and I try to resist, but I don’t know how.
It’s like drowning except the water is inside my skull and I can’t find the surface.
He slinks through my memories, touching things that are mine, pulling them out to examine them.
He opens the box.
Rosie’s face flashes across my mind. Rosie dancing, throwing her arms and legs in every direction.
Rosie with ice cream on her nose. Rosie smiling with her front teeth missing.
Stanley Daniels leading her down the hallway by her small hand.
She glanced back at where I was lying on the floor with the bag still over my head, and I couldn’t see the details of her face through the fogged-up plastic.
She died thinking she was completely alone. And I did nothing.
My knees buckle, but I don’t fall, because my body isn’t mine anymore. I’m sinking into dark water with no bottom, and Billy’s presence is the weight tied around my ankles, dragging me down.
“I wonder if you’ll scream like Rosie,” he says. “One way to find out.”
A hand clamps over my eyes and yanks me sideways. The connection severs with an almost audible snap inside my head, and I can feel my body again. My legs give out completely, but strong arms catch me before I can hit the ground, pulling me against a solid chest.
Billy’s laughter echoes in my mind, fading but still there, and his voice slides into my head with perfect clarity: “Still playing the hero, are you, Nicholas?”
Nico’s hand presses hard against my eyes. His palm is rough and cold, and his other arm stays locked around my ribs, holding me upright.
“Don’t look,” he growls. “Keep your eyes closed even when I let go.”
I nod against his hand, and I could collapse right here on this freezing metal floor from sheer relief.
Nico lowers me carefully, and I pull my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them.
The world spins around me even with my eyes closed, like I’m on one of those teacup rides at Coney Island that Rosie and I used to beg Mom to go on over and over until we both felt sick.
“Oh, Nicholas, don’t be upset,” Billy says. “I didn’t tell her what you did.”
My teeth chatter uncontrollably. I can still see Rosie’s face. Her small hand laced with Stanley’s big one. The way she looked back at me.
A machine roars, the bass so deep it reverberates in my ribcage. The hum builds until my teeth ache, and then there’s a whooshing sound, like all the air is being vacuumed out of the room at once. There’s a resonant boom. Then a click.
Then silence.
My throat pulses where that rope burned me five days ago. Is Billy gone? Trapped again? What did Nico just do?
My eyelids feel like they’ve been glued shut. A lightning bolt of panic slices through me because what if they never open again? What if they look like Bonnie’s, milky white?
Blind.
“Should I open my eyes?” I ask Nico, because I can’t hear him.
“Yes.” Footsteps approach until a shadow falls across my eyelids, and I hear the soft thud of his knees hitting metal. “Open your eyes.”
I try to pry my eyelids apart, but the second I put any pressure on them, pain lances through my sockets like someone’s driving hot needles straight into my brain.
“They burn,” I say.
“I know.” I can feel his hands hovering near my arms, close enough that I sense the heat of them but not touching. “But you need to open your eyes. I need to see if he damaged them.”
Gritting my teeth, I gather all my resolve and force my right eye open.
Light pours in through the slit. A whimper escapes me before I can swallow it down, which is embarrassing, but it hurts so much I can’t pretend to be tough right now.
I force my right eye to stay open, then pry my left one open too.
Nico swims in front of me like I’m looking at him through water.
His hands come up to cradle my face, one on each side, and his touch is so gentle it makes my chest ache.
He steadies me as the room pitches sideways, his thumbs resting just below my cheekbones.
“Good.” One hand stays against my face while he pulls the other back, holding up a finger. “Can you follow my finger?”
I track his finger as he moves it left, then right, then up and down. Slowly, focus returns to my surroundings, and the light stops hurting so much. I pull my knees up closer to my body so they don’t accidentally brush his.
Nico lowers his hands, shifting back onto his heels but staying kneeling in front of me. I take him in properly for the first time. He’s wearing blue plaid pajama pants and a gray hoodie. His eyes are bloodshot, but soft in a way I’ve never seen them.
My stomach does this weird lurching thing at how close he is. At how different he looks when he’s not glaring at me, and just looking at me.
His eyes search mine. All I can do is stare at the cloudy green color because it’s so pretty. I’ve never seen eyes that color. His brows draw together, creating a line between them. I have the ridiculous urge to smooth the line away with my thumb.
“Your pupils are responding,” he says. “Your vision should return to normal in a couple of hours. Can you see me clearly?”