Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
The kitchen looks like a crime scene if the victim was Betty Crocker.
There’s flour on the ceiling. There’s sugar in my hair.
There’s a suspicious red streak across the counter that is probably food dye but could also be blood because Bonehead sneezed mid–powdered sugar avalanche and I don’t trust anything anymore.
I’ve been prepping all morning. Stirring, measuring, shrieking, licking spoons like they’re weapons. Anything to keep my hands moving. Anything to drown out the whisper that lives in the cracks of silence.
Busy is a spell. Distract. Distract. Distract.
But the cracks are showing. Even under the buttercream. Even under the sprinkles.
Every time I blink too slow, I see it—the flicker.
Bonehead bending down and for just a second his face is a skull again, grinning hollow, like flesh was just a trick mirror.
Skully laughing at something he frosted, but his jaw blurs, sockets empty, a punk rocker cut down to bone and graffiti.
Marrow leaning close, flour dusting his wrists like ash, and for one breath I swear I see the skeleton beneath, elegant and endless and waiting.
I press my palms flat against the counter, sticky with dough and sugar, and pretend it anchors me. But the clock is louder than the mixer, louder than Skully’s sarcasm, louder than Bonehead’s growls.
Tick.
There’s today.
Tock.
Then tomorrow.
Tick.
Then Halloween.
Tock.
And then what?
Tick-tock.
My chest squeezes like I swallowed a coffin nail wrong.
I laugh too loud, slop a fistful of sprinkles onto the counter just to have something bright to look at.
“Cooking show,” I shout, manic as a game-show host with a gun.
“But sexier. And scarier. And bloodier. And everyone has to wear aprons or die.”
But my hands are shaking, and I can’t tell if it’s from too much frosting or the fear that’s been gnawing at me since the night I decided to do a drunken séance at that cemetery.
Bonehead grins wide, already shirtless, holding an apron like it’s a loincloth. “This counts?”
“No.” I shove it over his head, and it hangs crooked against his chest, the little cartoon ghost on the front stretched across his massive pecs until it looks like the ghost is screaming for mercy. Perfect.
Skully leans against the fridge, cigarette dangling, stealing frosting straight from the piping bag. “You know, most girlfriends just ask for flowers. You’re over here drafting us into culinary war crimes.”
“Flowers die. Cupcakes live forever. Until you eat them. Which is like murder, but delicious.”
Marrow doesn’t even blink. Of course he doesn’t.
He’s arranging the sugar skull cookie cutters in a neat surgical row, face calm, hands elegant, like he’s prepping for an autopsy instead of a bake-a-thon.
He smooths a dusting of flour over his knuckles, reverent as a priest with ash.
“Death is sweetest when sugar-dusted,” he murmurs. Totally normal kitchen banter.
“Okay, ghouls,” I clap my hands, my voice sharp as the knife I absolutely should not be holding. “Assignments!”
I point dramatically at Bonehead. “Dough duty. And no raw eating-”
He’s already got a fistful in his mouth, cheeks bulging like a deranged hamster, eyes glittering with bliss. He swallows, licks his fingers, and grins like a man who’s never heard of salmonella.
“Fine,” I huff. “Eat your crimes.”
Next, I whirl on Skully, who is lounging against the counter like a delinquent elf caught in Santa’s sweatshop. “Frosting. Write insults only.”
He doesn’t argue, just squeezes the piping bag with surprising grace and scrawls BITCH across the top of a cupcake. He tilts it toward me with a smirk. “On it.”
“Good boy,” I purr, which makes him roll his eyes like he isn’t secretly pleased.
Finally, I turn to Marrow. He inclines his head, already anticipating the decree. “Cookie art,” I say, solemn as a judge sentencing him to beauty crimes.
He bows low, flour ghosting from his sleeves, like I’ve just knighted him in the order of Holy Death Bakers. “Your will is in my hands.”
And then, of course, it all goes straight to hell.
Bonehead sets the mixer to obliterate and the thing lurches across the counter like it’s possessed. I scream, leap on top of it, ride it like a bucking bronco until he grabs it with both hands and laughs so loud the cabinets rattle. “Weapon!” he crows. “Mix and kill!”
Skully is graffiti-tagging the entire tray of cupcakes with phrases like Eat Shit, Karen and Hell is Hotter Than You, smirking every time I gasp in horrified delight.
Marrow, meanwhile, creates a tray of cookies so delicate and ornate I want to slap him. Perfect lacework bones dusted with edible glitter. They look like cathedral windows. They look like death had a wedding cake. I want to throw them at a wall.
And me? I’m everywhere. Stirring, licking, shrieking, wielding the cookie cutters like brass knuckles. For a few minutes it’s just fun, just chaos, just sugar-high apocalypse in my favorite haunted house.
But then—tick.
Again. The flicker. Bonehead bending over the oven and for one split second, he isn’t flesh at all. Just ribs and skull and firelight burning through the cracks.
My stomach drops. I laugh too loud, slam the cupboard just to cover the sound. “More sprinkles!” I shout, voice too bright, too sharp. “Sprinkles solve everything!”
I hurl a fistful of orange sugar crystals across the counter like I’m salting a crime scene, but it’s too late. The air’s gone heavy. The kind of heavy that presses against your ribs and makes you want to claw your way out of your own skin.
They don’t say anything right away, but I can feel it—their eyes. Watching me. All three. Like they know.
Bonehead straightens, dough smeared across his jaw, staring at me like he forgot how to laugh.
Skully pauses mid-word, the piping bag dripping ASSHOLE in red icing down the side of the tray.
Marrow sets his perfect bone-lace cookie down with surgical care, as if dropping it would make the silence louder.
I want to scream at them to do something—smash, mock, wax poetic, anything. Don’t just look at me like that. Don’t look at me like you can see the hollow through my skin.
“I said more sprinkles!” I snap, but it comes out jagged, too high, like glass in my throat.
Nobody moves.
The tick-tock in my chest grows teeth. I can’t breathe past it. My hands are shaking so hard the bottle of black food dye rattles in my grip, and I slam it down just to hear the pop of plastic against wood. Something solid, something real.
“You’re staring,” I say in a broken sing-song, as if that makes it playful. As if it doesn’t sound like an accusation. “What? Never seen a girl have a sprinkle-induced psychotic break before?”
Bonehead takes a step closer, all muscle and soft confusion, like he’s not built for this kind of problem. “October…”
The way he says my name is too gentle. It makes me want to bite him. It makes me want to run.
Skully swallows thickly, “Baby…”
No. Stop. That hurts. Smirk at me, insult me, something. Just not that!
And Marrow—fuck. He just looks at me. That gaze that strips me down to marrow and marrow alone, like he already knows. “My love,” he murmurs, “what’s wrong?”
I laugh. Too sharp. Too loud. It bounces off the sugar-coated walls like a gunshot.
“Nothing! I’m fine! We’re fine! This is fine!” I fling my arms out at the disaster zone of flour and icing, as if the kitchen chaos is proof of my sanity. But the words rattle, hollow as the bones I keep seeing underneath their skin.
And I know I can’t hold it much longer.
“Fine!” I bark, too bright, too brittle. “If no one else is gonna bring the fun, I’ll do it myself.”
Before any of them can stop me, I grab the piping bag straight out of Skully’s hand and scrawl across the oven door in blood-red frosting: HELL’S KITCHEN.
Big block letters, dripping sugar gore down the stainless steel.
Then, for good measure, I slap two candy eyeballs on either side so it looks like the oven is screaming.
“There.” I fling the bag onto the counter, frosting splattering like arterial spray. “Now Gordon Ramsay himself can be summoned and judge us all.”
Bonehead actually winces, which is insane considering he once tore a bathroom door off its hinges because it locked funny. “October…” His voice is low, careful, like he’s trying not to spook a cornered animal.
Skully snorts, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Cute. Really cute. But you’re not fooling anyone.”
Marrow steps closer, slow and deliberate, flour still ghosting his sleeves. His voice is a velvet knife. “October…talk to us.”
I open my mouth to laugh, to spin some cracked-out joke about being haunted by Betty Crocker’s restless spirit—but nothing comes out. Just air. Just the tick-tock in my skull, hammering harder, louder, until I feel like I’ll shatter from the inside.
They’re circling me now. Not predators, not exactly. But not letting me run either.
I can feel them closing in the way you can feel a lid lowering on a pot—steam and panic and a smell of something boiling over.
Bonehead’s big, worried face fills my periphery; Skully’s smirk is gone, carved away like bad frosting; Marrow is too still, like a statue that might start bleeding sonnets at any second.
Tick-tock.
I slam my hands over my ears, begging the whispers to stop.
“Stop it. Stop it!” My eyes burn, so I scrunch them tightly closed, my voice frantic. “This was supposed to be fun. Distract. Distract. Distract.”
The silence on their end is worse than any noise. I can feel them—three bodies holding still, circling me like a pack that doesn’t want to spook the wounded pup in the middle. Their gentleness makes it worse. Their kindness is a blade sharper than any joke.
Bonehead crouches down so his stupid big face is level with mine. His hands hover, not daring to touch. “October,” he says softly, like he’s afraid I’ll break. “Tell.”