Chapter 25
Arianette
“For all of you still awake and still with me,” Hunter leans close to the mic like he’s talking to one person instead of thousands.
“I know you feel it. Tonight is heavy in Forsyth, and we all know why. We lost another one. Kelsey Livingston. Nineteen.” A pause.
Just long enough for the words to settle.
“It doesn’t matter what territory she came from.
Whoever is doing this crosses lines. South, West, East, North or the lands in between.
We are all Forsyth. Especially in times like this.
” He takes a drag on his cigarette, holding in the smoke for a moment before he releases it.
“There’s a vigil tomorrow night. Eight o’clock.
Campus fountain. Bring a candle if you’ve got one.
Bring silence if you don’t. We’re not asking for justice tonight.
We’re just asking to remember the name, the spirit, of a girl who never got to fully live.
” He cues the next track, something with a slow and haunting bass line that feels like it’s crawling under my skin.
“This is Royal Noir. Let the music carry what words can’t. ”
The red light flicks off. He leans back in the worn leather chair and takes another drag of his cigarette, the cherry glowing bright in the dark.
Ares is curled at his feet, and Hunter reaches down absentmindedly and scratches behind the dog’s ears.
The dog leans into it, tail thumping once against the floor.
Hunter looks comfortable here. More than I’ve seen him anywhere else except that night at Noir Sanctum.
Shoulders loose, eyes half-lidded, cigarette dangling between his fingers like it’s part of him.
The radio station is his territory, the way the crypt is for some of the others.
It’s private and controlled, a place where he decides what gets heard and what stays silent.
I roam the room while the song plays, feeling restless.
Looking for anything to keep my mind off Kelsey, off the way her body was found next to the fountain, knees bent like she’d been praying, or worse, the beetles pouring from her open mouth in a black, skittering wave.
I trace the edges of old posters taped to the wall: Sleep Token, Nine Inch Nails, Spiritbox, then trace the brightly lit buttons labelled with cryptic shorthand: “Emergency Kill Switch,” “Dead Air Fader,” “Mic Two Ghost.” There’s a note, scrawled in black marker: NO SMOKING IN THE BOOTH.
I lean back against a counter, hands curled around the edge, the hem of my skirt grazing the top of my thigh. Hunter’s eyes linger there for a long heartbeat, dark and unreadable.
“How did you get into this?” I ask suddenly, needing more than music to push the images from my brain.
“Get into what?”
“Radio.” I tilt my head toward the console. “Being a DJ.”
He sucks on the end of the cigarette, the tip glowing red.
“I’d always been interested in the science behind it.
The way electromagnetic waves carry sound across miles involves frequency modulation, amplitude, and the physics of propagation.
No wires. No physical connection. Just energy moving through the air, invisible until it hits a receiver and turns back into something you can feel. ”
He exhales smoke in a slow stream. “I actually built my own radio station in the shed behind my parents’ house when I was in middle school.
Low-power FM transmitter, scavenged parts from old stereos, antenna made out of coat hangers and copper wire.
Broadcast to maybe three houses if the wind was right. ”
“You did?”
“Worked too, until the FCC came and shut it down.” He takes another drag, then blows the smoke out in a long exhale.
His eyes roam over my body again, inch by inch.
“They showed up at the door, scaring the fuck out of my parents. That’s when my father started taking me to work with him.
I think he thought it would keep me out of trouble.
” A small, dry laugh. “Just led me to other things.”
The watching. The hiding. The desire.
A shiver runs down my spine.
The song fades out–echoing guitars trailing into silence.
Hunter spins the chair away from me, cues the next track with a quick flick of his wrist, and adjusts a slider.
The new song starts. He settles back, cigarette between his fingers, watching me over the console like he’s waiting to see what I’ll do next.
When the track settles into its groove, he spins the chair around to face me fully. He doesn’t say anything. Just watches. The red “ON AIR” light is off, but the air between us feels alive, humming with the same frequency as the signal he’s sending out into the night.
He’s on edge. We all are. The whole damn city.
“You were lonely,” I say.
He shrugs, exhaling smoke. “I kept busy.”
“I was lonely, too.” The words slip out before I can stop them. “Living in that Manor with nothing but my uncle and ghosts.”
There are no children.
The voice–deep, buried–whispers it again in my head, cold and certain. I shove it down.
“Tell me more about Ares. You said you found him here, last winter?” Tell me anything, I want to say, to keep my mind in the here and now, not lost in the bad things.
He smiles down at his dog, eyes softening. “Back in the alley.”
“You said he was skinny and scared. How did you get him to come to you?”
“Yeah, poor guy was skin and bones. He had one eye swollen shut, and he looked at me like I was a monster. Whatever human he had been around before didn’t treat him right.
” He sets the cigarette on the can he’s using as an ashtray and leans down to rub Ares’ face with both hands.
“When it was obvious that he wasn’t going to come to me, I went back in the station and grabbed someone’s half-eaten sandwich from the refrigerator.
Even then, it took another hour to get him to trust me enough to take the food.
Almost froze my balls off.” He winces. “But once he ate, he let me get close enough to wrap him in my jacket and get him in the car.”
I look down at Ares, his thick brindle fur and soft brown eyes. I feel even worse about what happened in the fire.
“When I got him back home and into the light, I realized he was filthy and covered in fleas. So I bathed him, gave him a little more food, and just talked to him until he was comfortable.”
“And now he looks at you like you’re the most important person in the world.”
He laughs and scratches behind the dog's ears. “Eh, he knows who feeds him, that’s all.”
It’s not all, I know that for sure. Hunter, whose hands want to hurt more than help, bonded with this sweet creature that just needed a home. I look at his face. “He made you less lonely.”
“He kind of did.”
He bends, hand searching for something under the desk. When Ares sees the stuffed owl, he starts to wag his tail. Hunter gives the happy dog the toy, who takes it in his mouth and crosses the room to hop on the couch.
“How come I’ve never seen you smoke anywhere else?” I ask.
“I try to limit it,” he says, inspecting the smoke curling off the tip. “In case you haven’t heard, it’s not good for you.”
“Then why do it at all?” Hunter’s fit. I know he and Damon work out in the gym over in the dormitory with the other guys. I’ve seen his body and I know he takes care with what he eats. So, why the cigarettes? That’s what I want to know.
He considers, like he’s deciding whether I get this piece of him. Finally he leans back, the hand holding the cigarette resting on the counter.
“Since I had some experience in radio and was willing to work the graveyard shift, they offered me this shift. No one else wants to talk to the void every night.” His lip quirks.
“But I wasn’t very skilled with the conversation part.
I knew how to cue the board, ride the gain, keep the levels clean. But chatting to myself? Nah.”
He lifts the cigarette to his mouth and inhales, letting his words and smoke fill the room.
“I stole my roommate’s pack on the way out the door that first night.
No fucking idea why. I think I knew I was going to have to be someone different the minute that mic came on.
I couldn’t just be all in my head, fixated on math and physics formulas.
I had to become someone new. A voice. A persona.
” He meets my eyes, measuring for judgment.
There’s none there. I’m fascinated.
“And apparently the guy who hosts Royal Noir smokes.”
“I’ve never done it,” I admit. “Smoked.”
“Good.” He flicks ash into the can. “It’s a filthy habit.”
“Could you show me how?”
His brows pull together, like he thinks he misheard me.
“Hex–”
“Please,” I say softly. “I never got to do all the things normal girls got to do. I was locked up in Strong Manor preparing for…” Well, the King. For him. For a life I had no idea how to live.
Something shifts behind his eyes and he exhales through his nose and looks at the cigarette like it’s the problem. Then back at me.
“Once,” he says. “You hate it, we’re done.”
I nod immediately.
He taps ash into the can and brings it toward me, stopping just short of my mouth. Close enough I can smell it, dry heat and paper and something bitter underneath.
“Don’t inhale,” he says. “Not at first. Just draw it into your mouth.”
I lean in.
The filter brushes my lower lip and he stills, just a fraction, like that contact landed somewhere it shouldn’t.
“Gentle,” he murmurs.
I pull. Smoke floods my mouth, harsh and unfamiliar. I swallow instinctively and it hits my throat like fire. I cough hard, turning away, hand flying to my chest. Tears spring to my eyes. The taste is awful–burnt and chemical and wrong.
Hunter’s hand hovers near my shoulder, almost touching, but not quite.
“Yeah,” he says dryly. “That’s the usual first review.”
I’m still coughing, laughing a little through it. “That’s terrible.”
“Told you.”
Eyes watering, I say, “Again.”
His mouth tightens. “You’re stubborn.”