Elle
Girls.
Girls bundled up in coats are trickling into the lobby, but I’d know those dragonfly lacey stockings anywhere. And I know what’s beneath those coats, sparkly green corsets like the one I’m still wearing.
I thought the auditions were for the back-to-black event. It hadn’t occurred to me that Hale would also need waitresses tonight. I slip into the lobby behind the girls and follow them into the lift with a security guard, and no one pays me any attention besides a few polite smiles amongst new coworkers.
The blonde requirement doesn’t seem to be in effect tonight, though, as I squeeze behind a girl with a massive curly Afro, and another with pin-straight black hair that falls to her ass crack.
When we enter the warm foyer, everyone strips out of their coats before we’re ushered into the kitchen. Tray after tray lines the island with pyramids of chocolate truffle balls, shot glasses of golden liquor, and appetisers. But as the chef spins around to add more ultra-thin slices of fancy cheeses to a nearby tray, I also spin around and hide behind a leggy girl with braids.
Fuck. Zedd.
But how long could I hide with flaming red hair when I couldn’t spot another ginger anywhere and without my hooded coat, I’d be fucked in no time.
Where the hell is Hale? I only have a few seconds to pull him aside, but would he even believe me? That his best friend and father, people he’s known since childhood, want to kill him? And would he believe it from the girl who just walked away from said people with a duffel bag full of cash and a scathing article meant to ruin and humiliate them? Would he just think I was trying to win him over in some bizarre twist?
Either way, I have to try. He’d tried for me.
Why?
“Start with the drinks first,” Zedd says, motioning to the trays. “The silver platters only.”
I grab a tray with a small pyramid of golden shots and duck my head behind it as I prop it up onto my shoulder.
The massive living room is filled with far more people than I’d somehow expected for a private event in Gant’s home. The party-goers grabbing shots off my tray don’t spare me a glance, but I’m looking intently at each face.
Aria’s mother and who I suppose is her stepfather. Alistair Beaumont and a blonde whom I assume to be Stassi’s mother. Stassi’s mother is not what I expected. For all of her body shaming, I’d envisioned a rail-thin blonde, but Stassi’s mother can’t be less than a hundred kilos. Stassi is nestled between her parents, boredly sipping on a martini glass as her parents talk stiffly to a South Asian couple.
I switch my tray to my other shoulder as I switch directions, creep along the perimeter, past some drop-dead gorgeous diamond displays, and slide beside the Beaumonts.
“Stas,” I whisper, and she jumps.
“El — ” Her amber eyes widen.
I shake my head furiously, and she catches on quickly, quieting.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’ll fill you in later. Have you seen Hale?”
Her concerned look turns dismissive. “Who?”
“Stas,” I whisper, my chest tightening. “ I need to talk to him. Now. It’s life or death important. Seriously, have you seen him?”
Her eyebrows knit, her lips parting. “Life or death?”
“Have you?” I insist, and she quickly shakes her head, finally feeling the gravity of my words.
“No. I just got here. I haven’t even seen Gant or Bart yet.”
My throat tightens at their names. “Rie said he left the club hours ago to help set up, and his staff are here.” I peer around the room again to no avail. “He has to be here, too.”
“Maybe he’s…” she trails, nodding over my shoulder. “Somewhere in a bedroom with one of the girls.” She says it evenly, but I know the thought is eating her alive.
“He’s working an event, I doubt…” but then I remember the stoned Hale from just hours before, and this is a party, and he’d been in party mode. Maybe he’d crashed from his high. Maybe he was doing as Stassi said and banging someone right here and now. Or maybe he’s just lying still somewhere, completely unresponsive… “Well, if you see him, tell him we need to talk. It’s an emergency.”
It can’t be too late, right? But what exactly would be too late? It’s not like Bart Aucalir is going to kill Hale in front of everyone, right?
“If it’s an emergency, I’m coming with you,” Stassi says, taking a step forward, but I shake my head.
“Look out for him here while I check the bedrooms. If you see him, don’t leave his side. Come find me.”
She looks like she’s about to argue, but then her eyes flicker over my shoulder to the endless hallway, and it’s clear she’s thinking better of it. She doesn’t want to see what he could possibly be up to. She nods, and I head for the hall, but before I can slip between its massive walls, something in a glass display catches my eye.
A ring.
A marques ring with the most beautiful diamond I’ve ever seen.
One fit for a princess. Cinderella, to be exact.
He got back the ring I sold to the Beaumonts? Why?
Then it hits me as I scan the surrounding emeralds and canaries. It was his mother’s diamond…
He gave me his mother’s diamond!
My ring finger itches, and I try to calm my nerves as I slip down the hallway, filled with a few people leaning against the walls or waiting for the powder room. My mind’s a jumble of worry and romantic memories that weren’t real.
My back scraping across the textured wallpaper as Gant caught me, wrapping me in his arms while I wrapped him in my legs.
My fingernails desperately clinging to the paper as if it could stop Gant from dragging me into our, his, bedroom.
Morning walks to the kitchen on his back where he’d scramble eggs, dice peppers, onions and sausage, before we ate on the balcony, the world at our feet. Literally.
I shake my head, refocusing on the present hallway and not the ghostly one. No one’s paying me any mind as I quietly reach for door handle after door handle. They all turn with ease, but I find nothing inside besides a few cuddling couples, women touching up their makeup, or men seemingly talking business in hushed tones.
When I get to Gant’s bedroom, however, I seize up, remembering all the times he’d carried me across the threshold and turned me into his little doll. I don’t know what I expect to find when I turn the handle and peer into the darkness. Nothing’s a miss, and it’s just as I remember it. Of course, it is. I’d been gone two days, not two years. The bed’s neatly made up, but what’s tucked into the centre are two little dolls.
Doll Gant and Doll stare back at me unseeingly.
Why…why would he still have them?
I quickly close the door, blocking them from my view because they’re just an illusion. They must be.
Door after door reveals nothing new until I reach the door furthest from the party. I turn the knob, but it doesn’t budge. I press my ear to the wood, but unlike the other rooms, I don’t hear any activity inside. It’s that lack of noise besides my own pounding heart in my ears that makes my panic bloom again.
“Hale?” I whisper through the door. Then, a bit louder, “Hale?”
Seconds tick on of more nothingness, then I hear it, a soft moan.
Keys! Where the fuck are the keys? They wouldn’t be on the hooks in the foyer where just anyone can grab them…think…and then it comes to me . Rin.
Her number rings twice before she picks up.
“?”
“Where did Gant hide the black key card for the lift?”
“What?”
“The fucking key card, where did he hide it?”
“In the emergency cabinet.”
“The what?”
“The cabinet where he keeps all the first aid supplies. He hid it in the left drawer with all the glass vials with orange tops.”
A memory of him giving me an antihistamine shoots to the forefront of my brain.
“Why?” she asks, but I hang up and book it down the hall past a bewildered Stassi who only shakes her head to confirm Hale’s still M.I.A.
I don’t have time to update her as I slip into the kitchen and past three waitresses carrying silver trays. I wait until they’re gone, and it’s just a hunched Zedd and me. He’s so engrossed with his latest creation that he doesn’t notice me slip behind him and into the medicine cabinet. Fiddling through the drawer blindly, I keep my eyes trained on his back until I feel the cards I’m looking for. I grab them all and a tiny vial in the process, but my nerves are too shot to drop it back into the drawer and risk a tinkling noise. Then, I grab another tray of tall champagne flutes to hide my face behind as I slip back into the hallway. By the time I’ve made it to the locked door, my trays empty save for one flute I down myself to calm my frazzled nerves.
I push key after key into the slot until I hear the metallic clack of the lock sliding open.
“Hale?” I whisper in the darkness. A shiver wracks my spine as I ease the door shut behind me and settle my tray, the key cards and the stray vial on the dresser. It’s so dark I can’t even make out if there’s a shadow on the bed. I feel around the wall for a switch, and when I finally find it, I jump in tune to the lights flickering on because my legs bump into something cold.
A cage.
Something’s stooped and tucked inside is a dark shaking lump.
A man.
“Hale?” my whisper is raw, panicked. “Hale?”
But when the body rolls over it’s —
“ Silas, ” I breathe as the air rushes back into my lungs.
Silas.
“Help me,” he mouths.
Or gums.
His teeth…all of them are missing. The bloody sight makes me crumble against the opposite wall, my fingers flying to my mouth as if to safeguard my pearly whites.
Bart…no Bart and Gant. This is what they’re capable of. It’s one thing to hear it. Another to see it.
He’s shimmering in glass…and blood. Just like Marisol after the accident. Had they…. Had they recreated the scene?
My stomach churns. There really are demons.