SANGUINE SUMMER

A NOVEL

ABE MOSS

Grim Heart Publishing

Copyright © 2025 by Abe Moss

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover Design by James T. Egan of Bookfly Design LLC.

ALSO BY ABE MOSS

THE WRITHING

BATHWATER BLUES

BY THE LIGHT OF HIS LANTERN

LITTLE EMMETT

UNDER THE WICKED MOON

GILLS

A GHOST ARRIVES

RUBY HOLLOWAY READS AFTER DARK

OUR MOTHER IN THE LAKE

WICKED WAS THE NIGHT

THE RESTLESS ONES

MORSELS

THE DREAD VOID SERIES

SANGUINE SUMMER

sanguine

adjective

1 optimistic or positive, especially in an apparently bad or difficult situation.

2 blood-red.

3 bloody or bloodthirsty.

- New Oxford American Dictionary

PROLOGUE

THE STRANGER

Ned Phillips was no stranger to strangers. As the proud owner of the Silver Lining Motel, all manner of humanity had at one time or another sauntered, stalked, or stumbled through his lobby doors, most commonly down on their luck. A bit desperate.

Whatever that might suggest about his establishment, Ned never took it to heart. He was more than happy to cater to the lost and downtrodden. Thrilled, in fact. Whatever circumstances may have led them to the sticky nook of Brewster, Tennessee, Ned hoped to be their silver lining for the night. Hence the name.

“Welcome to the Silver Lining Motel,” he liked to say as they entered, and watch as those strange faces brightened, even if just for a fleeting moment.

But no matter how accustomed he might have been with the wide array of personalities the world had to offer, nothing could have prepared him for her.

Because until that fateful, heat-drenched night in June, Ned Phillips had never met a vampire before.

The Silver Lining Motel squatted dark and lonesome along the deserted outskirts of Main Street, where the railroad was loudest and the cicadas never slept. Steeped in shadow, the motel’s singular streetlight provided little more illumination than the stars themselves across its pockmarked parking lot. Three vehicles were parked there tonight, one belonging to the owner himself.

Ned Phillips sat behind the front desk, feet kicked up, streaming old Star Trek episodes on his laptop while he waited for any last-minute guests to arrive.

The time was 10:49 p.m.

There was a distinct heaviness about the place. A weariness, between the smothering summer heat and the unyielding gloom along the traffic-sparse street outside.

Ned glanced from his laptop to the front door’s freshly wiped windowpane, where the hot, fragrant breath of night pressed against the glass. Main Street was slower than usual tonight, he thought.

Soon it was 11 p.m.

No one’s coming, he told himself.

Finally Ned shut the lid on his laptop. His shirt, damp with sweat, unstuck from his back as he stood and gave a long, groaning stretch toward the ceiling. He switched off the desk lamp, grabbed his laptop, and turned for the door behind him when the entrance rang its little overhead bell, announcing someone.

Startled, Ned turned on his heel, a Pavlovian smile already finding its way to his lips. With the lamp turned off and the parking lot so bereft of light, the figure that now stood in his lobby was mostly featureless—a modest pillar, standing narrow and delicate. Regardless of its form, big or small, the silhouette across the desk struck Ned with an undeniable foreboding.

You’re the one I’ve been waiting for.

He froze with his laptop still cradled under his arm, uncertain what his next move should be, as if he’d never greeted a guest before in his forty-eight years on this earth. As he remembered himself—as his voluntary thoughts returned to him—he returned to his desk, set down his laptop, and flipped on the lamp once more.

The young woman was made no less mysterious in the lamp’s warm glow.

She was already smiling as the light revealed her, white teeth twinkling, dark eyes—so dark Ned could hardly tell the difference between pupil and iris—catching sharp pinpricks of light in them. Ned was instantly lost in those eyes as she stepped closer into the lamplight, trapped in the tar-black wells of her gaze.

“Welcome to the Silver Lining Motel,” he recited in a quiet stupor, the words drawn dreamily from habit alone.

Her smile broadened, the sharp corners of her mouth flexing, humored by his greeting. It was then Ned noticed something else about her. Her teeth. Sparkling white and…

“I would like a room, please.” Her voice was soft, sweet. She tilted her head expectantly, exposing the slender length of her neck to the light, her skin the color of pale cream. “One room in particular, if I may.”

Ned would wonder about this later, but he could have sworn that her eyes changed shape then. Those black pools spilled into the whites, elongating in odd directions. By some strange means, Ned’s own eyeballs wobbled in reply. A vibration.

“One room in particular,” he repeated.

“That’s right. Room Ten, at the very end.”

“Room Ten, at the very end.”

“That’s the one.”

Ned couldn’t look away, mesmerized by those dancing, shifting oblongs of black. Then, without warning, her eyes snapped back into their appropriate shapes. Ned blinked. He gave a shake of his head, forgetting himself once again—like walking into a room and forgetting what you’ve come for.

“Excuse me,” he said.

He reopened his laptop and opened his property management software. The young woman waited patiently.

“Room Ten,” Ned said, reconfirming.

“That’s right. Room Ten.”

“Hmm.” Ned paused. “I’m sorry, but there’s already someone checked in to Room Ten. But I can offer you… well, any other room, really. Besides Ten and Four.”

“I’ll take Room Ten,” the woman said. Her voice remained sweet, congenial.

Ned glanced up as she leaned in upon the desk, her chin propped in the palm of her hand, watching him with vague interest.

“I’m sorry, but Room Ten is currently occupied⁠—”

“I want you to stay right where you are,” the woman interrupted, as she began to perform her curious ocular trick a second time, her eyes like Rorschach blots. Ned’s came to life likewise, quivering in their sockets, a tickling sensation as his soft eyes fluttered against his eyelids. “Wait there until I return.”

“I’ll stay right here until you return,” Ned said.

She offered him one last smile before she departed through the lobby door, out into the warm night. Gone. For now. Ned straightened from his laptop the moment she was out of sight. He scratched his head curiously.

There’s something about her, he thought, though he couldn’t place what it was, exactly.

For starters, there was the sickly pallor of her skin. She was practically translucent, the blue of her veins vivid and bright through her temples. Even in her absence, her visage burned across Ned’s vision. Those dark, shifting eyes. Those pink, supple lips which gave life to a voice so buttery-smooth it was difficult not to hang on her every word. He was hanging on them even now, he realized, her command repeating in his mind like an echo.

Stay right where you are.

Wait there until I return.

He did just that. He waited.

In the meantime, he allowed his gaze to wander to his illuminated laptop screen, where the Rooms & Scheduling chart notified him that the room in question—Room Ten—was already taken. A man had checked in to that room only a few hours prior. Visiting family, he’d said. He couldn’t stay with them for all the noise, he’d explained. Too many kids. Preferred to catch a cheap motel and have somewhere to escape to, if need be…

Stay right where you are.

Wait there until I return.

The only other unavailable room was Room Four. That young man was a regular—more a tenant than a guest. Ned would find it harder to relocate him, as he’d made his room into a bit of a temporary home, but that was neither here nor there. She was only interested in Room Ten.

Oh, gosh, Ned thought. She wasn’t out there knocking on that man’s door, was she? At this hour? Waking him up in the middle of the night to negotiate a room swap? Was that her plan?

And you’re just standing here instead of stopping this bothersome intrusion?

He should have insisted, he should have⁠—

The bell dinged loud and merry once more, and the woman appeared in a gentle stride across his dimly lit lobby. It was only now he finally noticed the black dress she wore—so dark you could almost miss the tattered fabric, the popped seams along her left shoulder where her pale skin peeked through in an icy sliver.

She stepped back into the warm light of the lamp, and Ned nearly cried out at the sight of her.

“The room should be available now,” she said, her once-pink lips now caked in crimson—a messy smear forming a mask across her lower face. Her dark eyes blinked prettily.

Ned was nearly unable to tear his gaze from the gruesome scene of her mouth. He regarded his laptop, the Rooms and Scheduling chart, which showed that the man called Dwight Miller was currently checked in to Room Ten for the next two nights.

“But that room…”

“Is available now,” she repeated.

Ned glanced at her as she spoke, catching another glimpse of the gore rolling down her chin before he lowered his gaze once more.

“Look at me, Ned.”

He did as she told him. He looked into those ever-changing eyes, staring more deeply into them than ever before, as their sucking depths allowed him to forget the rest of her.

He vaguely wondered how she knew his name.

“Very good. Don’t look away.”

“I won’t look away.”

“Room Ten now belongs to me.”

“Room Ten…”

“It’s mine now. The previous guest is no longer in need of it.”

“The previous guest…”

“He’s gone. He’s left. The room is now available, and it’s mine. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“Are you sure?”

“Room Ten is yours.”

“Excellent. You’re a very good boy, Ned.”

A shiver traced the length of Ned’s spine, up the back of his neck, a pleasurable tingle across his scalp, like someone running their fingers through his hair.

“I’m a very good boy,” he agreed.

“Yes you are. In fact, you’re such a good boy, you’re not going to charge me for my stay. And I’ll be staying for some time. Room Ten will remain mine until I say otherwise. Do you still understand?”

“I understand.”

“You’re not to allow anyone in the adjacent room, either, nor in the rooms above. Do you understand?”

“No one in the adjacent room, or… or…”

“You will not allow anyone in Rooms Nine, Nineteen, or Twenty.”

“I won’t let anyone stay in Rooms Nine, Nineteen, or Twenty.”

“That’s great, Ned. Very good. And if anyone should ask about me, you won’t tell them a thing, because you value your guests’ privacy above all else, isn’t that right?”

“That’s right.”

“That’s right,” the woman repeated. “God, you’re good, Ned. I could just eat you right up.”

“Eat me right up.”

The woman laughed—a conspiratorial little giggle under her breath.

“Now hand me the spare key to my room.”

Ned turned to the cabinet on the wall behind him, where each of his rooms’ keys hung on their designated hooks inside. He grabbed the spare key to Room Ten and handed it to the pretty young woman at his desk—gorgeous, she was gorgeous, actually, even with all the blood—and as he placed the key into her palm, she closed both her hands over his, holding him there like a precious thing.

“Thank you for this,” she said, her black eyes swelling, shrinking, swelling. “You don’t know how much this means to me. You’re a lovely man. A gracious man. You should be proud of yourself, for being so generous. You’re one of a kind, Ned. Truly.”

Her hands were utterly frigid. Ned felt his own warmth leeched away in her grasp, and yet a different kind of warmth altogether filled him up in hearing her kind words. Tears sprung into his eyes. His pounding heart bloomed with affection, with flattery, with a genuine sense of yearning he hadn’t felt in some odd years.

When at last she left him, taking the key to her new room and stealing into the dark parking lot outside, Ned had already forgotten the otherworldliness of her—her incredible gaze, the manner in which she spoke his name without being told, or the disturbing aftermath of a terrible meal worn across her mouth.

Instead, he only remembered that she was full of adoration, full of gratitude, full of love. In a world made up of mostly strangers, Ned Phillips hadn’t been lucky enough to receive such kindness in years.

It hardly occurred to him that he’d never learned her name.

PART ONE

WATCHERS

1

FAMILIAR FACES

Twenty-seven-year-old Ruth Sheridan was the fastest, most reliable cashier employed at Dollar Delights—an accomplishment she normally took pride in, regardless of whether or not her wages reflected her abilities. But no such feats would impress her customers tonight.

There were about eight of them lined up now. Occasionally, as she swiped their items in quick succession, she glanced at those tired, puffy, impatient faces gathered single file, and saw only contempt in their eyes as they listened to the shrill sobs coming from the tiny corner office behind her check stand.

Ruth was one of only two employees in the store tonight, which meant that the sounds of despair pealing from the corner office not only belonged to her boss, but also the only help available to her… which of course meant she would be receiving no help whatsoever.

She handed another full bag across the counter, smiling as pleasantly as possible as the customer snatched it from her grasp so abruptly that she jumped. Her smile only faltered for a moment. She turned to the next assortment of dollar items waiting on her conveyor belt, and beamed with as much simultaneous cheer and apology as her face could muster.

“You have quite the line,” her customer said—an older woman with salt-and-pepper hair braided over one shoulder. “Don’t you have any help?”

Another pitiful burst of blubbering erupted through the door at Ruth’s back.

“Just me at the moment,” Ruth said, and flashed another sheepish grin.

The woman glanced toward the corner office, eyes narrowed. “Doesn’t sound like it’s just you.”

Ruth forced another half-smile, half-grimace and shrugged, dragging another item across the scanner.

Beep, beep, beep, each item went, as she stuffed them into the bag.

“They should give you a raise,” the woman said with a secretive smile of her own, her narrowed eyes saying ‘just between you and me.’

Ruth had heard this a million times before, of course. It came with the territory of working understaffed retail—so many pitying looks, so many supportive nods, like this woman’s. The truth was, Ruth had gotten a raise! She received one every year, after her annual performance review. This year’s was a whopping fifteen cents, while last year’s had only been ten. So things were looking up, she thought.

In reply to her customer, Ruth merely answered, “It’s not so bad.”

The woman sighed. “Couldn’t pay me enough to deal with the public.”

By that point Ruth had finished ringing up her items and the woman’s credit card angrily demanded to be removed from the card reader. Ruth handed the woman her bag.

“Have a wonderful rest of your night,” Ruth said with a smile—a real one this time.

Truth be told, Ruth loved working with the public. She loved meeting so many peculiar faces, so many personalities from so many different walks of life. And it was a good reminder, she thought, that no matter how difficult things might seem, she was never alone in that everlasting struggle. Life itself was an ongoing battle, but a beautiful one. And in many instances, she was reminded that things could always be worse, and to be grateful for what she had.

She worked her line down customer by customer, until suddenly the store was eerily quiet. She leaned against her register with a satisfied sigh, and scanned the narrow aisles she would need to begin vacuuming soon. And yes—she would need to juggle that task while handling any additional customers who might wander to her register in the meantime. That’s what the little bell on her check stand was for.

Nights at the dollar store often felt like a one-woman show.

As she enjoyed a moment of silence, Ruth caught the sound of a single sniffle coming from the office behind her. The assistant manager—also known as Gracelyn—was still in there. Ruth had nearly forgotten. She knocked on the office door and spoke in a whisper.

“Gracelyn?”

The door opened as Gracelyn pulled the handle from the other side, letting Ruth in. Otherwise the door locked as soon as it was shut and needed a key from the outside.

The office itself was a cramped space, with a built-in desk along the opposite wall where they kept the office computer and the money-counting equipment, as well as the store safe tucked neatly underneath.

Upon letting Ruth in, Gracelyn plopped herself back down into the chair she’d been sitting in all night, where a mess of used tissues were scattered across the desk.

“Is everything okay?” Ruth asked.

She regarded her manager with a mixture of pity and confusion, as well as a certain amount of fondness.

Gracelyn was eight years Ruth’s junior, at nineteen. She was just a kid, basically. She’d only been employed at Dollar Delights for a year, whereas Ruth had worked at this particular store going on three years now. For many, that might beg the question: how was Gracelyn already an Assistant Manager while Ruth remained a cashier? The answer was quite simple, and more common than one might expect: Judy, the Store Manager, the head honcho, was also Gracelyn’s mother.

Some might cry foul, might cry nepotism, and while technically correct, Ruth wasn’t personally bothered in the slightest. She’d observed the responsibilities of an Assistant Manager and quickly decided she liked the responsibilities of a cashier much better. Cashiering kept her busier overall—on her feet longer, with more tasks to juggle, more to occupy her time which made her shifts fly by. The Assistant Manager position seemed to involve a lot of puttering around, disappearing for hours at a time, and worst of all, dealing with customers only in the foulest of circumstances. After all, nobody ever asked to see the manager to give their compliments.

To Ruth’s question, Gracelyn had to fight off another wave of tears. Her face scrunched up before she hid herself away in her hands.

“It’s nothing,” she answered into her sweaty palms. Ruth remained silent, waiting for the answer she knew would come eventually. “It’s just my stupid boyfriend.”

“Brandon,” Ruth said.

She knew his name because Gracelyn liked to complain about him regularly. And as she began to do so once again, Ruth stood and listened, offering the occasional ‘oh my gosh’ and ‘are you serious?’ when appropriate. As with her customers, Ruth didn’t mind listening. At worst, Gracelyn’s personal drama was interesting, and at best, Ruth enjoyed the opportunity of lifting someone’s spirits if they were open to it.

She wouldn’t get that opportunity tonight, however.

Halfway through Gracelyn’s meandering tale, the bell on Ruth’s check stand began to ding.

“Oh, that’s me,” Ruth said.

She excused herself as Gracelyn continued mopping at her eyes with tissues. She stepped out of the office, head bowed politely as she returned to her register, the office door locking shut behind her.

“Hello, how are you this evening⁠—”

Ruth stopped dead in her tracks as she discovered the man standing across her register. He wasn’t looking at her, his downturned eyes focused on digging some cash out of his wallet.

“I’m fine, thanks,” he said, pulling a couple bills out onto the counter.

He flicked his eyes in her direction, finding her standing perfectly still, her eyes on him. His gaze electrified her—shocked her senses back into place so that she remembered herself. She cleared her throat, reached for his items on the belt. Her heart was beating out of her chest.

“How are you?” the man asked with a curious inflection, as he must have noticed her surprise.

“I’m good!” She glanced his way without truly seeing him, forcing a smile.

She scanned the first item—the only item, actually—which was a ninety-nine-cent birthday card. Then she dared to meet the man’s gaze a second time, his warm brown eyes shocking her as much as the first, unfortunately.

“Would you like a bag for this?”

“No, thanks.”

She placed the birthday card on the counter as she traded him for the two dollar bills in his hand. She noticed he wore a wedding ring, as she pulled the cash from his grasp.

“Whose birthday?” she asked.

“Oh, just a friend,” the man replied.

Ruth opened her cash drawer, stuffing the bills into their tray.

“You can keep the change,” the man said.

He swiped the birthday card off the counter and gave Ruth a cursory smile of gratitude as he turned for the doors. Ruth watched him go, open-mouthed with an awe she couldn’t hide.

With no additional customers, Ruth allowed herself to float toward the front windows, where she watched the man cross the empty parking lot to his car—a bright blue Subaru parked under one of the tall light posts. She didn’t blink. She didn’t want to blink, or else she’d miss him as he climbed into his vehicle, out of sight. The Subaru’s crimson taillights flared to life as he started the engine.

“Hey, Ruth?” Gracelyn said, emerging from the office.

“Yeah?” Ruth answered, never taking her eyes off the blue Subaru as it darted across the vast abyss of the shopping center parking lot.

“Would you mind cleaning the bathrooms tonight? When you’re finished vacuuming, I mean. I need to catch up on some stuff in the backroom before we close up.”

Those red taillights shrank with distance, until finally the Subaru pulled out onto the road, where it vanished entirely into the night.

“Yeah, I’ll get right on it,” Ruth murmured.

Already his face was etched into her memory.

2

HARD WORK

Dario Caruso lay buck naked on top of his bedcovers, head propped on his pillow as he watched the gentleman dress himself at the foot of the bed. The man caught Dario watching, and could scarcely conceal his grin.

“Do you have to watch me like that?” the man asked, still grinning.

Dario grinned likewise.

“Oh, now you’re shy?”

The man pulled up his pants, pulled up his zipper, then did up his button. Next he grabbed his shirt from the floor and draped it around his back, slipping each of his arms into the sleeves.

“It feels weird afterward, that’s all,” he said.

“Still?” Dario said. “How many times have we done this?”

The man rolled his eyes—again, still smiling. “I guess it just never stops feeling weird.”

Dario playfully bit his lip as he continued to watch. The man watched him right back as he proceeded to button his shirt, studying Dario in kind. Dario could sense that he fought the urge to look away, willfully defying his discomfort. He lost that battle, however, as he began struggling with his buttons halfway through. In an attempt to distract Dario, the man grabbed an envelope from the motel dresser and tossed it onto the bed beside Dario’s naked body.

“That’s for you.”

“For me?” Dario said.

Dario had already seen the envelope, of course. The man had placed it on the dresser as soon as Dario let him into his room, though he was careful not to ask about it in advance.

He flipped open the freshly sealed envelope flap.

“What’s this, now?” he said, pulling the card out from inside.

It was a birthday card he held, with an illustrated cake on the front, the words ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY’ strung across the top of the illustration. Dario’s coy smile melted away as he opened it. He was stunned, to say the least. It was partly the card itself—that his client would remember such a thing—and partly it was the thousand dollars that fell out onto his bare chest. Ten crisp hundred-dollar bills.

His eyes darted back and forth along the fallen trail of bills across his body. He scrambled upright, sitting cross-legged, the card held open so that he could at least pretend to read it, even though his thoughts were still circling the cash sliding off his body. He made a concerted effort to read what was written inside the card aloud.

“Thanks for all the fucks, here’s a thousand bucks… Zach.”

“Some would describe me as something of a poet.”

“Zach, you really didn’t…” Dario lowered the card to peer at the man at the foot of the bed, whose shirt was now properly buttoned. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“I know,” Zach said. “That’s how gifts work.”

“This is a lot of money.”

It was seven-hundred dollars more than Dario’s hourly fee, to be precise. He regarded the man before him—older, dark hair beginning to gray along his sideburns, looking especially distinguished now he was fully dressed in his shirt and slacks, unlike Dario who was still as naked as the day he was born. Suddenly Dario felt a little too exposed, sitting with his client’s generous bonus sprinkled about his lap like confetti.

“I just wanted to make sure you felt special on your birthday.”

Zach came back to the bed, where he sat on its edge and twisted to face Dario beside him.

“I can’t believe you even remembered.”

“I’m really good at birthdays, what can I say?”

Zach smiled, though his gaze wandered up and down Dario’s figure. Most of Dario’s clients didn’t instill in him any true sense of flattery—he’d heard it all before, numerous times, to the point of coming across as obligatory—but Zach certainly had a way about him. Dario fleetingly wondered how often Zach flattered his wife this way.

These thoughts dispersed as Zach leaned in, a hand on Dario’s face, and kissed him sweetly on the cheek.

“How old are you now, anyway?” he asked.

Dario took a great deep breath, so as to give the illusion that he needed to think about his answer.

“Twenty-one.”

Zach reared back a little, feigning surprise.

“Well… whatever you do, don’t waste all your money at the bars now, huh?”

“You say that like I’ll be buying my own drinks.”

That gave Zach a good laugh. Dario enjoyed the sound—hearty, just the right amount of wheezy. Again, a flattering response. He leaned in a second time, this time kissing Dario on the lips, before pulling back slightly, their eyes close.

“How could they resist?”

He gave Dario’s bare leg a gentle pat before standing and making his way to the motel room door. There he checked himself once over, making sure his pants were still buttoned, along with the rest. He opened the door and gave Dario one last grin and a wink.

“Thanks again,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.”

And with that, he was gone.

Dario looked about the room, then traced his eyes across the money on his bed. He gathered it all up, nice and neat, all ten bills.

A thousand dollars.

For one single hour? That certainly put a smile on his face. For a short while, anyway. He slapped the money onto his nightstand and strolled into the bathroom to relieve himself.

As the toilet went on flushing behind him, he went to the motel room window, where he pulled the curtain aside and peered into the dingy parking lot. Zach’s car was already long gone. He peered toward the main office, the short part of the L-shaped motel, where the ‘Vacancy’ sign in the window shed its sleazy red light onto the cracked pavement for out-of-towners to see.

As he stood with the thick curtain in his hand, standing naked behind its dusty fabric, he was suddenly overcome with the strangest sensation—one that sent goosebumps climbing up his buttocks, his back, his shoulders.

It was the distinct sensation of being seen.

He pulled the curtain shut a little more, his view just a sliver as he glanced to the main office again. No one there. The only cars left in the lot tonight were his and the owner’s. Still that feeling persisted. Finally he let the curtain fall back into place, and all at once that unsafe sensation fizzled away. Night and day. He moved away from the window, turned his attention to his nightstand instead where his latest payment lay in a pretty little stack. He snatched the birthday card from the bed and read it over once more.

Thanks for all the fucks, here’s a thousand bucks. -Zach

It should have been funny. It was funny. Dario knew that. But now, left alone in his motel room, Zach’s message was just another reminder of something Dario already knew but preferred not to acknowledge.

Before he could think too much on it, Dario’s phone buzzed on the nightstand. He eagerly replaced it with the card in his hand.

It was merely another notification from his ‘work’ app. Another potential client. Dario tapped the notification reluctantly, opening his messages.

The most recent read: Are you available tonight?

Forty-five minutes later Dario once again stood naked at his window, watching as another vehicle’s brake lights flashed bright before pulling out of the parking lot, disappearing not toward Brewster, but in the other direction. Toward Nashville. He crossed the room to his nightstand, kicking his pile of clothes along the way—clothes he’d only put back on so that his client could take them off again—and added another $300 to his nightstand, this time all in twenties.

He sat on the edge of his bed. He took up his phone once more, checking to see if he’d received any new notifications. It was now after 11 p.m., his birthday nearly over, and there were no new messages.

He set his phone aside and took himself to the bathroom, where he vigorously brushed his teeth and got ready for bed. When he returned, climbing under the covers and switching off his bedside lamp, his phone gave another buzz. He almost dreaded looking at it—dreaded the disappointment of seeing another faceless horn-dog looking for an exchange.

Instead the phone continued to vibrate. Not a message, but a phone call. Dario picked it up. The caller ID read: RiRi.

He couldn’t answer the call fast enough. He lay back in the dark, his head on his pillow, staring at the ceiling as he put the phone to his ear and spoke with a genuine smile.

“Hey.”

RiRi’s voice came across the line in a scratchy, barely audible whisper, but her words were clear just the same.

“Happy birthday you little Gemini bitch.”

His sixteen-year-old sister could hardly spit the words out before she choked on her own laughter, hissing and wheezing in late-night secrecy. In the dark, under the covers, Dario burst into full belly laughter right along with her. He couldn’t help it.

Nor could he help the flood of tears that filled his eyes.

3

LATE NIGHT APPETITES

Nineteen-year-old Mike Williams hated to let her go, so he didn’t. He kept his hands around her waist, feeling the curve of her back as they stood against one another outside her family home, her face against his chest. The surrounding neighborhood breathed with crickets and distant traffic.

Eighteen-year-old Sabrina Coleman pulled away from him, blinking with sleepy, smiling eyes. They locked their hands together and swayed back and forth, in and out, away from and against each other’s weight, each of them reluctant to be the one to say goodnight.

“Okay,” Sabrina said. “I have to go. For real this time.”

“For real this time,” Mike parroted, as he pulled her toward him again, their bodies bumping like ocean buoys.

“I mean it,” she said, though the devilish smile she wore suggested otherwise—not to mention the way she gripped his hands much harder than he gripped hers.

“Then go already. No one’s stopping you.”

Sabrina fought not to laugh. Instead she braced her bowed head against his chest for a moment. Then she straightened, pulling back and letting go of his hands at last. One step, two steps back, her feet whispered across the front lawn where they stood in the house’s shadow.

“Goodnight, Michael,” she said, continuing toward the gate at the side of her family’s yard.

She was the only person who called him that. Michael instead of Mike. He liked the way it sounded when she said it.

“Goodnight, Sabrina,” he replied, taking not a single step, rooted to the lawn like a garden fixture.

Sabrina unlatched the gate, stealing glances at him the whole time. She slipped partially behind, peeking out to see him, her pearly-white grin bright in the shadows.

“Goodnight,” she whispered once more.

In a mocking fashion Mike whispered back, “Goodnight…”

Sabrina stifled another laugh as she pulled the gate shut and was gone.

Mike stood a moment longer, just to make sure, then turned for the sidewalk and began his journey home.

Home was a two-mile walk without a car of his own. But on a night like this, still humming from their time together, a two-mile walk was nothing. If anything, it would help to wind him down before he put himself to bed, without thoughts of Sabrina swirling through his head and making sleep difficult.

That would probably still happen, either way.

He walked an entire block with the same dumb smile plastered to his face. That’s how long it took for the lonesome night to start seeping in—the insect noise, the hum of tires on the nearby highway, the scuff of his feet reminding him that he walked alone.

Despite the late hour, he looked both ways before crossing the street. On the other side he cut through the neighborhood park, onto the asphalt walking path which would lead him two blocks north. The playground equipment twinkled under the night sky. Farther ahead, the walking trail vanished under the shade of the trees which grew thick on either side.

Mike had walked this path many times before, in the daylight and in the moonlight hours, so the darkness didn’t faze him in the least as he stepped under those lush canopies. Patches of moonlight poured through the branches and onto the pavement the whole way through. The branches themselves rustled with life—squirrels or raccoons, take your pick—and the wild grass chirped with so many crickets tonight their noise was almost deafening.

And yet still her voice was loud and clear when she said, “Michael.”

He glanced in her direction, feet still moving, his mind unconvinced that he’d actually heard his name. He performed a double-take as he saw her, sneakers sliding to a halt. Standing in the trees, barely visible against the slice of slanted moonlight behind her.

“Sabrina?”

She laughed softly, swaying left and right in a flirtatious manner Mike wasn’t wholly used to seeing. Was it really her? It’d sounded like her. At least he’d thought so. He peered behind himself, back along the path toward the playground. How had she managed to follow him, he wondered? She must have sprinted to catch up. But why? Had she missed him so badly already? Decided she hadn’t gotten enough of him yet?

The path was secluded at this hour. Dark, deserted. One could get away with all kinds of depravity in a place like this, Mike thought. On a night like this. Was Sabrina thinking the same thing?

These ideas crossed his mind in a matter of seconds as he abandoned the path and waded into the grass, into the deeper dark where she stood, still swiveling in that way.

The way of pixies. Troublemakers. Temptresses.

“Did you seriously follow me?” he said, beaming in the dark. “What happened to ‘I have to go, for real this time?’”

She made a sound, a funny sort of hum, like she had an answer but wouldn’t tell. That was just fine by him. He’d play her game, whatever it might be.

It was only when he finally reached her, and slipped his hands around her like before, that he realized something was different. Off. It occurred to him only vaguely, not enough to question it, not when the crotch of his pants was already so tight.

“Hi,” she said.

Her voice was breathy and low. Intoxicated. Except it wasn’t alcohol he smelled on her breath. It was something else—the first scent he’d caught as he’d reached her, in fact. A strong, metallic stench. Coppery. She sounded different, too. This gave Mike greater pause. He slid his hands up along her body, to her shoulders, where he held her back slightly to get a better look at her. But it was so dark, too dark, he couldn’t see a thing with the moonlight as bright as it was behind her, her features silhouetted against it.

“What’s wrong, Mikey?”

Mike’s smile faltered entirely.

She pulled him in and planted a big, sloppy kiss upon his open mouth and finally he tasted her, tasted the pungent odor wafting from her lips.

It was blood.

“What the fuck?”

He pushed her away. She held onto him, pulled him right along beside her, their feet stumbling together. She was stronger than she looked. Stronger than she should have been, Mike thought. They staggered into the moonlight, harsh against her already pale-as-a-corpse skin. She grinned. Her mouth was wet and dripping, like she’d just had her face buried into something…

“Oh my god⁠—”

That was all Mike could utter before that grin yawned wide, and her sharpened canines plunged into the muscled flesh of his throat.

4

FIXATIONS

Ruth tiptoed out of her apartment just as the sun was rising, careful not to wake the variety of strange faces strewn about the living room—leftovers from her roommate’s party the previous night. Shaylee threw these little parties most weekends, which usually consisted of music, alcohol, and lots of idle chatter, a combination Ruth rather enjoyed from the other side of her bedroom door. Up close and personal, not so much.

She shut the front door gently behind her so as not to wake Shaylee’s guests, locked it with her key, and then hurriedly started down the apartment stairwell, creaking step after creaking step, until she pushed her way outside into the pale blue morning light.

She loved early mornings, even when her body and mind revolted against them. Behind the wheel of her car—a white Toyota Camry approaching 140,000 miles—she rubbed the remnants of sleep from her eyes and tapped her hands against the steering wheel to the morning radio. The roads were nearly empty at this hour, and the traffic Ruth did see included many cars she’d seen before, morning after morning, the same bright-eyed faces heading to their early-morning destinations. It was like being part of a secret club—The Early Risers Club—and Ruth liked being a member, even if she didn’t truly have anywhere she had to be.

She pulled into the McDonald’s parking lot at 6:04 a.m. She headed inside and stood in a short line of one other person at the counter ahead of her. When it was her turn, she placed the same order as always: a Sausage McMuffin with Egg, a side of three hash browns, a plain black coffee, and a cup for water.

After a short wait, she took her tray of food into the same window booth as always alongside the parking lot, where she had the best view of the eastern sky, where the sun was still just a mystery below the horizon. She took the lid off her coffee and took a great big whiff as its warm steam plumed into her face. Then she set it aside, where she wouldn’t touch it for the remainder of her meal.

She didn’t like the taste. Just the smell.

She checked for cars as she stepped outside, cautious of the increase in traffic as early morning became just morning. A line of vehicles had formed at the drive-thru, steadily building.

That was when she saw it.

A blue Subaru waited in line. Ruth’s eyes zeroed in as her feet stopped dead, her body reacting before her mind did. The realization came after.

That could be him.

Her car waited just across from the main doors, but instead of heading there, she followed along the drive-thru line, moving briskly, coming around the curve of vehicles until she had a decent view of the Subaru and the single driver inside.

Her breath caught in her throat.

It was him. Unbelievably. Miraculously.

How many blue Subarus must there have been in this city? Surely more than one. More than several, even. She’d never noticed them much before, but…

It’s a sign.

It had to be—that she should run into him again this way, so soon after their first meeting? It defied plausibility, didn’t it?

Ruth remembered herself as the man pulled forward to place his order. She returned to her car. She started the engine, carefully pulled out of her spot, and proceeded to the other side of the building where she found another empty stall. There she waited for the blue Subaru to make its way through the line.

Her chest pounded with excitement. Exhilaration. She watched in her rearview mirror until he reappeared, pulling up to the payment window. She waited longer still, watched as he pulled forward to receive his order—a bag and what looked like a coffee.

He likes coffee too.

That was nothing special, of course. It was the furthest thing from special. But Ruth was intrigued. Any little detail she could parse about this man, she would. And greedily.

At last he pulled away. Ruth pulled out of her spot in a hasty fashion, eliciting a noisy honk from the car she hadn’t seen coming behind her.

“Sorry!” she exclaimed, and waved her hand apologetically out her window as she shifted into Drive and followed the blue Subaru out of the parking lot and into the road.

She followed him for miles. From city streets onto the highway, onto more city streets, until finally he pulled into some corporate parking lot where the office building was at least eight floors tall, all shiny windows reflecting the bright morning sunlight. She didn’t follow him there. She kept driving. Just for another block or so. Then she circled around, found the same parking lot, and finally pulled in. She scouted a nearby stall where she could spy his blue Subaru at a distance. She parked there, close enough to see his license plate, which she jotted down in her phone for later.

Just in case.

It was almost 10 a.m. when Ruth returned home. Her apartment had since been emptied of overnighters, though the living room was still draped in spare blankets and pillows. Her roommate emerged from the bathroom just as Ruth shut the front door behind her. Judging by Shaylee’s expression, she hadn’t been awake for long.

“Morning,” Ruth said.

“Morning,” Shaylee grumbled.

She remained in the hallway outside the bathroom, considering Ruth, and something else besides.

“Sorry about the noise last night. Some people were…” Shaylee paused. A look came over her then, like an unpleasant realization. She swallowed it down, whatever it was. She took a deep breath. “Anyway, sorry.”

“No worries,” Ruth said. “I wear earplugs, anyway. Plus my white noise machine. I can’t hear a thing.”

Shaylee gave her a halfhearted smile. “How did I luck out with such a cool roommate?”

Ruth shrugged. “My dad always used to say: time spent complaining is better spent improving your situation.”

Shaylee considered this with another unpleasant expression.

“Yeah… I think I’m gonna puke,” she blurted out, before diving back into the bathroom to do just that.

5

A WARM WELCOME

It was Saturday night and Dario was striking out on prospective clients. The messages he received led nowhere, most inquiries nothing more than hollow attempts to get his nude photos. Luckily he was experienced enough to spot the fakes and flakes from a mile away. His few regulars weren’t reaching out, either, however. He prided himself on never initiating in these matters, as he believed it was important to maintain the illusion of complete independence; they needed him, not the other way around.

He lay in his motel room scrolling on his phone, his isolation making him restless. Bored. He couldn’t sit still. He needed to get out of this place, needed to go somewhere where something was happening. But without any close friends he was uncertain what to do with himself. He wished he could spend the evening with his sister, but she had a life of her own. She was seeing a movie tonight with her high school friends, chaperoned by their parents, whom Dario wasn’t about to see again any time soon.

And then he remembered something.

…whatever you do, don’t waste all your money at the bars now…

Zach’s words. But there it was. An idea. Dario had never set foot inside a bar before. Now he was old enough. Legal enough. He could do whatever he wanted tonight. He had the money for it, too. At the moment, anyway. And where better to go on a lonely Saturday night than a bar, he thought? Plenty of strangers like him looking for easy company. He craved it—the company, the liveliness, to be surrounded by bodies.

He sprang to his feet and began searching through his clothes for something presentable. Something fun. Something sexy.

Something to be noticed.

After a bit of Googling, he drove himself to the most popular queer club he could find in the city. There were a handful to choose from, at least. He parked in the street and walked on nervous, gelatin legs toward the entrance, where a very short line had formed—new arrivals getting their IDs checked. He pulled his out as well, wanting to be prepared.

In flattering shorts and a loose muscle tank top, he already felt on display. A simultaneously nauseating and thrilling sensation. He observed those around him, standing in line ahead of him, some idle stragglers coming from the parking lot. He met a few gazes and noticed the way they took him in, summing him up like a cut of beef behind a glass counter.

Again, nauseating and thrilling.

Dario handed over his ID, his stomach churning, and with a cursory glance the bouncer smiled warmly and said, “Have fun.”

Have fun.

It was that easy. He stepped inside. Into darkness and light. The music hit him in an instant, booming, overwhelming. He moved with uncertainty, not knowing where to go, a constant meandering flow about the place, so many bodies and faces going about their business, so many currents, Dario just another fish in the stream, easy to blend in amongst the rest.

I could get lost in here.

That simple fact gave him life.

There was an unspoken camaraderie in the air, a shared understanding that formed the very foundation of this gathering. It would be near impossible to find an individual in this establishment who didn’t understand what brought them all here.

He caught stray glances everywhere he looked, most of them curious, none of them harsh.

Not knowing which current to follow, Dario simply located the bar and made a beeline. There was an empty spot, so he took a seat, and within seconds the handsome bartender noticed him there.

“What can I get ya?” he shouted over the music.

Dario opened his mouth to respond but didn’t know what to say. In a moment of desperation, he blurted the truth.

“This is my first time!” he shouted with a meek shrug. “A beer?”

The bartender’s smile reached his eyes and he nodded understandingly. At that moment, someone gently nudged Dario’s arm with their elbow. He turned to see the man beside him, an older gentleman with a beard.

“You look too young to be here!” the gentleman shouted.

Like every other strange face Dario had seen tonight, this man’s was warm, inviting.

“I turned twenty-one this week!” he replied. Admitted.

The man positively lit up at that.

“Ah! That’s wonderful! What’s your name?”

“Uh, Dario!” he replied, his own name momentarily escaping him. “You?”

“I’m Neil!”

The man offered his hand to shake. Dario shook it and laughed, feeling so entirely out of his element and yet so entirely where he belonged. One might think, given his chosen line of work, that he would know the ins and outs of such places, such experiences, but the truth was simply that Dario’s life hadn’t played out that way.

As the bartender returned and placed a freshly poured beer in a tall plastic cup before him, the man called Neil clapped a friendly hand upon Dario’s shoulder and told the bartender, “That goes on my tab!”

He gave Dario’s shoulder another series of comforting pats as he stood up from his stool and said, “You have fun tonight, Dario. And take care of yourself. Those boys’ll eat you alive if you let ‘em.”

Dario nodded gratefully and gave Neil his sincerest thanks.

As far as the warning was concerned, Dario thought maybe he would.

Let them, that was.

He stumbled out of his Uber—paid for by an incredibly generous man whose face Dario had already forgotten, though he remembered the sound of his laughter when Dario had admitted to driving himself to the bar alone in the first place—and fished his keys from his pocket as he stumbled across the parking lot, careful not to trip into the numerous potholes along the way. He stopped at his motel room door, head hung low, his drunken vision bleary as he struggled to place his key into the lock.

A nearby sound startled him halfway sober.

“Huh?”

His voice escaped him in his surprise, his shoulders hunched, his keys rattling to the ground. He turned toward the sound—some kind of breeze, a quick motion that had seemed within inches of his ear—and peered along the length of the motel. He saw only darkness in that direction. Except…

No, there was someone. A figure leaned against the building there, just outside the final room. Room Ten. The singular streetlight didn’t quite reach them where they stood, but its glow was just enough that Dario could make out the turn of their head as they peered toward him in kind. The shiver that followed was nearly enough to sober the other half of him. The figure stared. Featureless. Mysterious. There rose the shape of an arm, an open hand. A wave. Dario waved back. Then, taking a deep, shuddery breath, he grabbed his keys off the ground and resumed unlocking his door. It wasn’t any easier this time around. Self-conscious, he stole another glance their way and the figure was gone.

Come on…

Finally he stuck the key home, gave it a twist, and opened his door in a rush of relief. He shut the door behind him. Locked it. He attached the chain as well, for good measure. Then he stood for a moment, leaning with his hand still resting on the chain, catching his breath, his wits. A dread clung to him, a sensation he couldn’t rightly understand.

Putting it out of his mind, he carried himself into the bathroom, where he relieved himself one last time before collapsing into bed and allowing his sleepy, beer-dazed thoughts to carry him away into slumber.

He briefly woke sometime later, but not so much later that the alcohol had left his system. He lay with his face smushed against his pillow, damp from his drool, and blinked his eyes softly in the dark. He wasn’t alone. Too tired and sluggish to move, he rolled his eyes in their sleepy sockets and discovered it there—a shadow beside his bed.

“I was only curious,” the shadow said. “Go back to sleep, sweet one.”

Doing as he was told, Dario closed his eyes and drifted off with ease.

6

RUSH HOUR

“Ithought this was the dollar store?”

Ruth gawped, as her brain worked overtime in search of the least offensive response she could come up with. The customer—an elderly man whose wrinkled scowl suggested a life of dissatisfaction—waited sternly for her to explain herself.

“This is the dollar store, sir, it’s just…”

“Well, then why isn’t that a dollar?”

“Well, it’s a dollar twenty-five…”

“That’s more than a dollar, young lady. Can you count? Can you do math? Or do they just hire anybody these days?”

“Things used to be a dollar, but in the last few years⁠—”

“Had I known this wasn’t really a dollar store, I wouldn’t have bothered coming in,” the old man interrupted. “That’s false advertising, you know. You know that, right?”

“I’m… well, I’m not in charge of the prices, unfortunately.”

“Young lady, I’d be surprised if you were put in charge of anything at all.”

With that, the old man stormed off, scoffing repeatedly on his way to the exit like he couldn’t believe his eyes and ears. Ruth watched him go with a concoction of feelings, but the strongest was relief that he was gone. As soon as he was, the office door opened and her manager—her real manager, the Store Manager, also known as Judy—stepped out to see what the disagreement had been about.

“What was all that about?”

“I don’t know.” Ruth shrugged helplessly. “He must have just been having a bad day.”

She spotted the blue Subaru as soon as she pulled into the office parking lot. She picked a spot of her own, with the best vantage point she could find. She shut off her engine, unwrapped the enormous steak-and-egg burrito she’d picked up after work, and started her stakeout.

It was just after 4 p.m.

Assuming he worked a regular nine-to-five, she wouldn’t be waiting long, she thought. Her burrito kept her occupied for at least ten minutes. She washed it down with a medium Sprite. When she was finished eating she played on her phone, glancing every twenty seconds or so to try and spot him leaving.

At 4:43 p.m. she had to pee. She told herself she could hold it.

At 4:52 p.m. she glanced up to see him climbing into his Subaru.

Leaving work a little early, huh?

She started her engine just as his blue Subaru pulled out and departed for the street.

Now was the tricky part.

Ruth followed as discreetly as she could, which was no easy task in rush hour traffic. Her only saving grace was that his bright blue Subaru was easy to track amongst the waves of white and silver. She followed him onto the highway, keeping close. Traffic was dense enough, she thought she could get away with following right on his tail. At least for a while.

And then traffic began to slow.

“Oh, come on,” she said, as they were met by a wall of brake lights.

They slowed, slowed, slowed until they were bumper to bumper. She had the slimmest view of the man in his side mirror, as he turned this way and that, straightening in his seat in an attempt to see what the slowdown was. It was probably an accident, Ruth thought. Usually it was.

Ruth squirmed in her seat likewise, as her bladder punished her for being so negligent.

“Come on, come on, come on…”

Without warning, at the first sign of a gap the blue Subaru hastily signaled and pulled into the next lane. Ruth had no such luck. Traffic slowed to a stop once again. Except now instead of tailing him, she pulled up right alongside him.

Oh, for crying out loud…

She stared dead ahead. Or tried to. She saw him from the corner of her eye. The shape of him. She turned ever so slightly to get a better look. His head was down, reading something on his phone. She studied him, the profile of his handsome face. His handsome, familiar face. How old was he, she wondered? Late forties, perhaps? That would make sense, she thought. That would put him precisely⁠—

Traffic started moving again. Ruth inched forward. She craned her neck to see the shifting vehicles of the next lane. She preemptively signaled, then steered that way, determined to force herself into his lane whether the vehicle behind him liked it or not.

“Let me in, let me in, let me in,” she murmured, followed shortly by, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

As soon as she was behind him, he signaled again and she groaned. He was making his way toward the upcoming exit, she was certain. Ruth signaled too. She brute forced her way in front of the next car, freeing up space for them both. She imagined him muttering his thanks now, grateful for her initiative.

They never made it far enough to see what the cause of the slowdown was, as they took the nearest exit. Ruth followed close behind, white-knuckled to the steering wheel until, by the grace of god—she didn’t know which god, so she thanked the general idea of one—they were off the interstate entirely.

Her bladder felt on the brink. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold it.

She also wasn’t sure which town they were in. Someplace just outside of Nashville. Ruth eased up on the gas, letting the distance between the Subaru and herself double, triple as they entered a residential zone. She even allowed another couple vehicles to get between them, just to keep a low profile.

I just hope he hasn’t noticed me already.

Surely he hadn’t. She was a white sedan in a sea of white sedans.

He turned right. Ruth shortly followed, pulling onto a street by the name of Campfire Lane. There she maintained a half-block distance between them until he turned into one of the driveways up ahead. She pulled up a little farther, a little farther, looking conspicuous as hell but she didn’t care.

So long as he didn’t notice, that’s all that mattered.

The Subaru vanished into the garage, but the garage didn’t close. Not yet. Ruth came to a complete stop as the man himself emerged. He walked the length of the driveway to the mailbox at the curb. He collected the mail inside, sorted through it as he returned toward the garage, then made a brief stop at the two garbage cans at the driveway’s edge where he tossed his junk mail into the trash. Then he vanished inside once more and finally the garage door lowered shut.

He’s home.

Ruth pulled ahead, closing the distance. She stopped along the opposite side of the street. His home was perfectly lovely, in the plainest sense. A lovely front yard, lovely landscaping, with a tidy white privacy fence around the back. The home itself was brown-and-beige brick with red shutters. It looked like every other property on this street. All lovely homes. All very nice.

I’m gonna pee my pants.

She took out her phone and made a note of the exact address.

She stopped off at a gas station and relieved herself before the long drive home—before she rejoined the swell of rush hour traffic all over again.

She dragged her tired feet into her apartment and dumped her things on the kitchen table. The TV was on in the next room. She poked her head in and found Shaylee watching the local news while she ate her microwave dinner.

“You see this?” Shaylee asked, and pointed her fork at the television.

“What is it?”

“They found two kids murdered over in Brewster. Just a couple nights ago.”

“Oh,” Ruth said. “That’s so close.”

“Yeah, just this young couple. College kids. The girl’s body was found in her parents’ backyard. Her boyfriend was found about a mile east in the same neighborhood.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Yeah. You wanna know what the most fucked up part is?”

Not really, Ruth thought. “What?”

“Apparently their bodies were discovered ‘mutilated’ but there was very little blood found at the scenes. They’re speculating they might have been killed someplace else and their bodies were transported after the fact.”

“Oh, how weird,” Ruth said, feeling squeamish.

“Weird is putting it mildly.” Shaylee took another bite of her dinner, her eyes full of television light, wide and sparkling and intense.

As far as Ruth could tell anymore, people were dying every day in all manner of terrible ways. It was one of the few things she tried not to think about so much.

“You could write about it and email it to that podcast you like,” Ruth suggested.

“Oh, no, it’s too early for that,” Shaylee said. “The story’s still unfolding. I just hope they catch the fucker who did it.”

Ruth gazed at the television, currently broadcasting a series of images of the children’s park where the boyfriend had been found—perfectly ordinary, perfectly safe, one would think. There was even a shiny, beautiful playground. Ruth discreetly watched her roommate, leaning forward on the couch with her TV dinner in her lap, eating up the news more than her actual meal.

“Yeah,” Ruth said. “I hope they catch them, too.”

Over the last several months—fourteen, fifteen?—of living together, Ruth had learned that her roommate was a bit of a “true crime” junkie. A horror junkie, too. All the nastiness of the world, the things that made most people turn away, fascinated Shaylee to no end. Ruth didn’t find such things too interesting herself, but she found her roommate’s interest interesting, at least.

She attributed Shaylee’s fascination to her personal experiences: that her brother had been killed in some mistaken identity mishap some years ago, something to do with a revenge plot gone wrong. Ruth wasn’t sure on the details, as Shaylee had only mentioned it once in passing and Ruth preferred not to pry about such things.

But it was something they had in common, at least—something that afforded Ruth a greater understanding of her roommate, even while they were so, so different in just about every other respect.

Losing loved ones too soon was rough.

7

ANGEL IN BLACK

Dario learned very quickly that he loved the club. He loved it enough to return there on his next slow night, with nothing else to do—and nobody else to do, so to speak.

It was a weeknight, which meant the club was slower than it’d been during his previous visit. Less bodies, less energy. But even that was a nice change of pace, he thought. More intimate. The music wasn’t as loud, and the lights were turned up a little. Less dancing on the dance floor and more mingling around the edges, at the tables and at the bar. Dario headed to the bar like last time and ordered himself another beer.

“I remember you,” the bartender said, friendly as ever.

“Really?” Dario asked, genuinely surprised.

“Of course.” The bartender winked. Charming as hell. Good at his job. “It’s not so crazy here during the week, as you can see.”

Dario looked around, taking everyone in. He caught a few gazes looking back.

“What brings you here on a Tuesday night, anyway?” The bartender leaned against the bar with his chin in his hand.

“Slow night for me, too, I guess,” Dario said.

“You’re not worried about work in the morning? School?”

Dario shrugged. “I make my own hours.”

“Lucky duck,” the bartender said, then stood straight as another body settled onto the stool beside Dario. “What can I get you?”

“I think I’ll have what he’s having,” the gentleman said, and nodded toward Dario’s beer.

Dario met the man’s gaze—eyes sharp, narrow, a bit of a Richard Gere quality about him, though not quite as handsome. His hair was mostly silvery gray, too.

“I’m Ian,” the man said, and offered his hand to shake.

“Dario.”

Much like his eye contact, Ian’s grasp was very firm.

“It’s rare I see anyone like you here on weeknights,” Ian said.

“Like me?”

“Young.” Ian smiled with all his teeth, his eyes turning to black slits. “Usually just us older folks.”

“Oh. Yeah, I was just…” Bored? Lonely? Hungry for shallow validation? “…in the area,” Dario said, lying through his teeth the same way Ian smiled through his—without any subtlety whatsoever.

He took another sip of his beer, then opted for another followup gulp, eager to feel its effects as he was feeling entirely too uncomfortable in his own skin at the moment.

Ian leaned in a bit closer, head bowed like he had a secret to tell, and said, “Next one’s on me.”

Dario couldn’t help but become talkative with a few beers under his belt. Soon Ian had him talking about his personal life which, drunk or not, Dario was able to steer in a direction that suited him. It wasn’t long before he found himself talking about ‘work.’ And it wasn’t much longer after that before he found himself propositioned.

Ian offered to drive them, as Dario was clearly in no condition, and was even so polite as to offer to drive Dario’s car so that he wouldn’t need to fuss with Ubers or Lyfts the following morning.

“It all gets so expensive after a while, doesn’t it?” Ian said behind the wheel of Dario’s black 2007 Chevy Impala.

Dario was feeling pretty good. He spent most of the drive staring out the passenger window of his own car, at the passing streetlights and dwindling late-night traffic. In such a state of relaxation, the drive seemed to transpire in the blink of an eye. True to his word, Ian got them safely to Dario’s motel where Ian parked and killed the engine, dropping them into a comfortable silence.

“Nice place,” Ian said, leaning toward the dashboard as he studied the motel parking lot with a scowl.

“It’s a bit sketchy, I know,” Dario said. “But it’s home. For now.”

“Yeah…” Ian sat back in his seat with an unimpressed sigh. “So which is yours, anyway?”

Dario pointed. “Room Four there.”

“Well. Shall we?”

Ian climbed out of the car. Dario wasn’t so fast, as he considered what felt to him like a sudden shift between them. A shift in Ian. Impatient. Short. Not half as charming as he’d been moments ago. Or twenty minutes ago. Dario wasn’t sure how much time had gone by.

He startled as Ian opened his door for him.

“We going in?”

“Right,” Dario said. “Yeah…”

He climbed out on floaty feet. Ian offered his arm like an old-fashioned gentleman and gestured ahead, where he proceeded to lead Dario’s stumbling self to his door. Once there, Dario remembered he needed his keys and dug them out from his pocket. Now came the challenging part—actually getting the key into the door. He fumbled around, scraping the key just along the outside of the lock, when suddenly there came a whoosh of wind nearby. Dario bolted straight—distantly surprised by his own quick reflexes in his drunken state—and peered into the surrounding dark.

“Did you hear that?” he asked.

Ian was quiet momentarily. “I didn’t hear anything.”

Dario peered toward the end of the building but saw no one there. No one at all.

“You gonna let us in or not?” Ian said.

Dario finished unlocking the door. He pushed inside, into the pitch black as Ian shuffled in behind him and shut the door. Dario reached for the switch to the ceiling light and had to fumble along the wall for a moment before he could find it. The light came on, dim and yellow through the dust-coated dome covering.

When he turned around, Ian was pressed right against him, his cologne and sweat forming a pungent mixture. Ian kissed him. Dario kissed him back. His eyes were so heavy, he felt on the brink of passing out. He blinked his eyes dramatically, willing himself to stay awake.

“You look sleepy,” Ian said, as he turned Dario away from the door, toward the waiting bed. “Are you sleepy, Dario?”

Dario laughed softly under his breath. “A little, yeah. But I’m okay. Are you okay?”

“I’m just dandy,” Ian said with a whispery laugh of his own. He kissed Dario again, but his lips were stiff, his body pushing Dario until the backs of his knees met the foot of the bed. “Would you like to take a nap, Dario?”

Dario didn’t know how to respond to that, so he simply laughed again.

“Later,” he said. “I’ll nap later.”

Hands crawled up his body. Ian whispered in his ear, “I’ll help you fall asleep right now.”

Those tickling hands found Dario’s throat. They grasped him firmly. Dario didn’t think this entirely strange at first—he’d met a few clients with kinks such as this—until Ian’s grasp tightened. Uncomfortably so. Getting carried away. Dario smoothed his hands up Ian’s body likewise, found his arms, his wrists, and gently—intimately—tried to direct his hands elsewhere. But Ian didn’t let go. In fact, he grabbed hold of Dario even tighter. Crushing.

“Ian…” Dario forced a breathless laugh, like there was a chance this might still be a joke or a drunken game. “Ian, you’re…”

Ian’s grasp wasn’t a grasp at all. It was a chokehold. Dario tried to speak but his voice spluttered. Already gripping Ian’s wrists, he attempted to yank Ian’s hands away. When that failed, he pressed his whole body against his, tried to force him away from the bed, away from him.

“Ian, stop⁠—”

Ian stopped just long enough to remove a single hand from Dario’s throat, which he pulled back into a fist and clocked Dario square in the eye. Dario stumbled. His knees met the foot of the bed once more, but this time he went down like a felled tree onto the bed itself. Ian followed him down. His hands found Dario’s throat once more, squeezing the breath out of him. The life out of him. Dario kicked. Squirmed. Ian pressed down on him with his hands and body alike, pushing Dario into the mattress as that dirty light overhead strobed dimmer and brighter, dimmer and brighter.

Stop, don’t do this, Dario thought but couldn’t say.

“That’s it,” Ian whispered. “Nice and easy. Nice… and easy.”

Dimmer and brighter, dimmer and brighter.

Dimmer, dimmer, dimmer…

Suddenly Ian’s hands fell away. The glass dome of light blinked in and out of Dario’s vision as the blood rushed back into his head, as he inhaled fresh air into his lungs—as fresh as the air of his motel room could be, anyway. He curled in on himself, gasping and wheezing.

But he wasn’t the only one gasping and wheezing.

There came a god-awful croaking sound from the end of the bed. Dario directed his gaze that way. Ian stood rigid there, head turned to the side, trying to see what stood behind him. Not what, but who. There was someone else there.

It was then Dario noticed the hands upon Ian’s face—as well as the troubling creases of Ian’s neck as his head continued to turn, and turn… and turn. His vertebrae audibly popped one after another. Cracked. His shoulders slackened, arms dangling at his sides as his body went limp. Yet he remained upright as the hands upon his face—the hands turning his head the wrong way around—held him suspended.

He was still alive. Dario could hear the rasp of Ian’s breath, strangled somewhere in the back of his twisted windpipe.

“Let’s be better in the next life, shall we?” said a woman’s voice.

She appeared over Ian’s shoulder, as she promptly sank her teeth into his rubbery neck. She held him to her mouth like a pierced beer can, her shoulders undulating as she exhausted him gulp after gulp. Her black eyes turned upward as she drank, glimpsing Dario on the bed. He couldn’t move. He could do nothing at all but remain perfectly still, perfectly petrified, until at last she was finished and allowed Ian’s body to collapse with an empty thump on the floor. She ran her crimson tongue around the pink oval of her mouth, licking up whatever blood had escaped her lips. She looked Dario over from head to toe with a greedy hunger in her eyes, like she was considering him next.

“No,” Dario said.

It was the only word that came to mind. No.

He backpedaled across the bed until he crashed against the headboard.

“It’s all right,” the woman said. “You don’t need to be afraid of little ol’ me…”

“You… you…” Dario could hardly spit out the words. “You killed him.”

She regarded the body at her feet with a proud smile, as if to say yeah, I did do that.

“Would you rather I let him kill you?”

She tilted her head quizzically, those black eyes of hers reaching into him like tendrils. There was something wrong with them. Something terrible in those eyes. Their shapes were inconsistent, those black pools stretching and pulsing within the pale white. Dario felt his own eyes freak the fuck out in response—a maddening trembling in his skull.

She smiled, then hiked up her black dress, just enough to climb comfortably onto the end of Dario’s bed. She waddled on her knees to meet him where he cowered against the headboard. She was barefoot. He felt a scream rising in his throat, a desperate plea for help—or a frightened command that she stay away from him. He wasn’t sure which might come out first.

“Don’t be afraid, sweet one,” she said, as she stopped with her hands pressed politely between her legs where she knelt. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

Dario’s eyes wobbled more violently than before, enough that his vision slightly blurred with the movement.

“What…” He squeezed his eyes shut, wishing for the sensation to stop. “What are you doing to me…”

When he opened his eyes next, the woman—the young woman, he realized, as she looked close to his age or even younger, though her strange demeanor suggested otherwise—had her wrist to her own mouth. She pricked open her flesh against her sharpened teeth, spilling tassels of blood down her pale skin.

“Here,” she said. “To help you relax.”

Dario recoiled against the headboard a second time as she crept toward him, her bleeding wrist outstretched, her wicked smile revealing her bloodied teeth. Her eyes continued to warp and shift. Dario’s eyes quivered in reply.

“Stay away from me,” he begged.

That scream rose into his throat again. This time he couldn’t stuff it back down. He screamed. Yelped. And in the instant he did, the young woman darted against him, pressed her wrist to his open mouth. He tried to turn away but it was too late. The coppery—yet sweet?—taste of her blood splashed across his tongue.

The taste wasn’t altogether terrible. He melted right then and there, relaxing against the stiff headboard as a certain dreaminess washed over him. It was incredible, that sensation. His body warmed with it. Soothing, unwinding every knot in his body. It reached his mind in a bloom of color, vision sparkling. He slid down the headboard and onto the mattress in an avalanche of ecstasy.

Oh my god, he thought.

“That’s it, Dario.” The young woman hunched over him where he lay, a soft, pale hand upon his sleepy face. He vaguely wondered how she knew his name, but hadn’t the mind to ask. “You deserve a good night’s sleep.”

She kissed him lightly on the forehead and stood from his bed. She turned the light off on her way out, and the darkness swam with color, with electricity, his mind fizzing with the most brilliant stars he’d ever seen in his life.

PART TWO

BLOOD RELATIONS

8

MOVEMENTS

He jerked awake, a dirty sheen of sweat across his naked body. It was a moment or two before he remembered where he was. Before he remembered anything at all, in fact. He reached for his phone on the nightstand. The time was 9:49 a.m. His head ached something fierce.

Then the previous night assaulted him like a fist in the dark.

He flipped on the lamp and jumped out of bed. He stood there for a moment, panting with fear as he eyed the room around him. He gazed toward the foot of the bed. His heart chugged in his chest, faster and faster.

Impossible. All of it.

His mind flashed with visions. Memories. Dreams? He wished it’d only been a dream. He touched his fingertips to his face and winced, a ring of tenderness around his eye where Ian’s knuckles had laid him flat. Not a dream.

He gazed toward the foot of the bed.

She killed him. He’s dead. She killed him…

Dario crept along the length of the bed, the floor revealing itself inch by inch until at last he saw there was nothing on the floor at all. No body. Not even a speck of blood.

“What the hell…”

He studied his bedcovers, where he was sure she must have dripped some blood. But there was none. He touched his face once more. Not a dream. He hurried into the bathroom, flicking on the light, and stooped before the mirror over the sink. A nice dark bruise surrounded his eye, along his cheekbone. His throat was also bruised where Ian had tried strangling the life out of him. It had happened. All of it. And yet…

Moving more quickly than his thoughts, Dario hastily threw on his pants and shirt and made his way outside. The morning sun blinded him, sent his pounding skull yearning for the dark. He proceeded into the parking lot, where he spun on his heel and confirmed his suspicions.

He’d moved rooms. Or rather, he’d been moved. The room he’d just exited was not Room Four, but Room Nine, the second-to-last room on the ground floor, the final room being Room Ten, of course. Her room. He’d seen her standing outside its door the other night, watching him as he’d arrived home from the club.

Dario darted across the parking lot and pushed his way into the main office. The door jingled its little bell upon his entry. The motel manager was already waiting behind the front desk. He startled at Dario’s entrance, spilling a little of his coffee as he’d been mid-sip.

“Good morning, Dario!” Ned said, setting down his mug, straightening in his chair as Dario hurried to meet him.

“Ned, I…” Dario paused, unsure what he’d even come to say. “Are you aware that I moved rooms last night?”

Ned’s eyes were wide, mouth agape as he considered Dario’s question.

“Why, of course!” he answered. “And you’re welcome to any room you’d like, you know. It’s no problem. None whatsoever…”

“But I didn’t…” Dario stopped himself. He studied Ned—an incredibly kind and generous man, as Dario had come to know him over the past year or so. There was something different about him now. Not quite the Ned Dario thought he knew. “Did the woman from Room Ten come to you last night?”

Ned stiffened. His face visibly paled.

“Woman in Room Ten?” he said. “There’s no one in Room Ten. And I would know because… well, because I’m the owner.”

“The woman in the black dress? You must know who I’m talking about.”

“I don’t know of any woman at the motel,” Ned answered.

He offered Dario a polite smile. Dario wasn’t sure what else to say, or how to address the obvious shift in Ned’s demeanor. He’d become something of a caricature, hadn’t he? Too friendly, even as he lied. Obviously there was a woman staying at the motel, as Dario had seen her twice now, days apart.

She’s done something to him.

Normally this line of thought would register as insane to Dario, but after what he’d seen last night, he didn’t know what else to believe.

“All right,” Dario said. “Then can I request to move back to Room Four?”

Ned’s friendly face drew long and expressionless for a moment, hesitating, like he knew something Dario didn’t.

“That room isn’t available now, unfortunately,” Ned said. “I’ve scheduled it to be deep cleaned.”

“Deep cleaned?”

“It’s standard procedure that we deep clean each of our rooms on a rotating basis,” Ned said. “But with you being a more ‘permanent’ guest, that room’s been long overdue, you see…”

“Uh huh,” Dario said. “You’ve never mentioned anything about that before.”

“Listen, Dario,” Ned said, becoming flustered as he turned his attention to the papers on his desk. “I’m very busy this morning, you see, and I have so much paperwork to get through…” He checked his watch and, failing to finish his previous thought, said, “Let me know if you need anything else, all right?”

Dario chewed his lip, dubious of the whole situation. With no choice but to accept Ned’s peculiar behavior, he nodded and left without another word.

By virtue of habit, he crossed the parking lot toward Room Four. He stopped a few paces away, the rough asphalt hot under his bare feet. Was Ian’s body still inside, he wondered? Still lying in a bloodless heap at the foot of the bed? The mere thought sent a shiver up Dario’s spine, even in the summer heat.

He changed course, heading back to Room Nine. He needed to make sure his things were still his, that nothing had been left behind. He stopped short of his new room, peering next door where she stayed. The previous night resurfaced in bits and pieces—flashes of blood and beastly teeth.

He returned inside, where he found his things neatly gathered on the floor on the other side of the bed—his clothes, his shoes, his laptop bag. Not only had she moved him in his sleep, but she’d handled his belongings as well. He felt so… so…

Violated.

His privacy had been invaded. His sense of peace was shattered. His space was not his own. Not that it’d ever really been his to begin with, of course. It was a motel, after all. But even still…

He checked his phone and discovered several new notifications, mostly from his work app. He ignored those for now. He opened his texts, his conversation with his sister. He wished to message her, to tell her everything that had happened. It was a sudden swell of shame that stopped him. There were too many unsavory details he’d have to share in order to tell her the truth—about the club and the men and his work and the rest of it. RiRi didn’t know about such things. He didn’t want her to know about such things. The less she knew about her big brother, the better…

Dario set down his phone without messaging her anything at all.

Then he noticed what lay on the second pillow beside him. He hadn’t noticed it earlier, jumping out of bed.

He plucked the scrap of paper into his hand—a torn half-sheet with an inked message left just for him.

The message read: 10pm tonight. Your room.

Signed, Your Guardian Angel

9

THE SLEUTH

She waited until her next closing shift before proceeding with her plan. For convenience’s sake.

It was nearing 10 o’clock. Traffic was light at this hour so she made good time, drumming her fingers against the wheel to the radio the whole way. She mostly remembered how to get there, though she let her navigation app give her step-by-step directions regardless.

Can never be too careful.

A silly thought, considering what she was about to do.

Eventually she found herself once more on Campfire Lane. Her navigation notified her that her destination was on the left. She drove right past it. She followed the street to its next intersection, where she turned left and promptly parked her car along the fenced-in corner property there, nice and dark where her vehicle would go unnoticed in the meantime. She killed the engine. The radio fell silent. She gazed into her drop-down visor mirror for a time, gauging the anxiety she saw in her own eyes.

It’s fine. You’ll be quick. You’ve got this.

She shut her door as quietly as possible as she stepped out. Then she stole across the street and began her casual late-night stroll. It was a weeknight, so naturally the neighborhood was asleep. Most houses were dark, but a few were alive with flashing television light.

In and out. Easy breezy.

Her plan was hardly a plan at all. More like a premeditated impulse, she thought, if you could excuse the oxymoron.

Unlike most of the neighborhood, there were lights on in his house. But the yard was dark. Comfortably so, for a burglar. Ruth cast a nervous glance at the surrounding street and then proceeded up the driveway, to the pair of garbage cans near the edge. She took her phone from her pocket, lifted the lid to the recycling bin, and shined her flashlight inside.

It was empty.

“Crap,” she whispered.

She checked the regular garbage next. She lifted the lid and found two white garbage bags inside, both tied shut. She pressed her lips in thought, holding the lid high.

Do it. Do it now. Do it fast.

She tucked her phone away for just a moment, just long enough to push the garbage can’s lid against the fence behind it, reach inside, and hoist one of the white bags out by its yellow ties. It was packed full, almost filled to bursting. She set it down on the concrete, then shined her light on the knotted yellow ties. She made one small attempt to undo them with her fingers. It wasn’t happening. She’d have to tear the whole thing open.

She looked around nervously—toward the walkway that led to the house’s entrance, toward the street, toward the houses across, sound asleep. The night was alive with its usual violent hiss of insect noise. Careful not to make a mess, she tore the bag just below its cinched opening. A coalescence of odors escaped its confines, sweet and sour and unpleasant. Ruth briefly questioned this line of action, questioned her part in it as the stench of sour milk and spoiled chicken reached her nostrils. She tore the hole a bit wider, careful to lean the bag against the base of the garbage can so it wouldn’t topple as she began picking through its contents—empty yogurt cups, banana peels, half-eaten food that must have been scraped away from someone’s dinner plate.

“Aha,” Ruth said aloud.

From the mess of disposable waste, she plucked a singular, intact envelope. She turned it over in her hands and discovered the recipient’s name.

Zachary Holcomb.

That was it. That had to be it, she thought. Him. She opened her phone’s camera and snapped a picture. The bright flash made her wince. She checked the street over her shoulder once again.

She’d just returned the envelope into the garbage bag when the overhead light sprang to life, dousing her in its bright, cold beam of white. Ruth flinched, nearly lost her balance with her hands full of lopsided garbage bag. There came the sound of an opening door. Footsteps. She had no time to return the garbage bag into the can, nor to flee the scene. Instead she scuttled backward into the swollen hedges along the property line, just at the edge of the paved driveway. She pressed herself into them, between them, careless of the scratchy bramble that clawed her cheeks and hands.

Crap, crap, crap…

She buried herself until she felt the hidden fence behind her, behind the hedges themselves. Then she froze, held her breath. Her face and hands began to sting where the thorns had bitten her. She would just have to grin and bear it for the time being.

It was him. Zachary Holcomb.

He traipsed down the porch steps, along the walkway with a new garbage bag bouncing against his leg. It was only as he neared the cans that he noticed the open bag on the ground. He stopped. Ruth could see well enough through the patchwork of twigs and thorns that she saw the surprised, open-mouthed expression he wore. He glanced to the street, searching. He glanced toward Ruth, embedded in his shrubs, and she felt her heart strike the base of her throat.

“What the fuck…” he muttered under his breath.

He tossed the new bag into the bin, then crouched before the torn one. He examined it—the tear in its plastic, where Ruth had pulled it apart—probably ascertaining if an animal had somehow done it. Of course that wasn’t the case. What animal could lift the lid, reach inside, and hoist an entire garbage bag out onto the ground?

As Zachary carefully heaved the bag up and into the garbage can once more, a second figure emerged from the house, coming down the porch steps to meet him near the driveway. She revealed herself in the patio light—a woman with long, beautiful blonde hair pulled over her shoulder.

“You left the door open,” she said. “Bugs were getting inside.”

“Someone went through our trash,” Zachary told her.

“Huh?”

Zachary shrugged as he pulled the lid shut.

“Yeah, the lid was open and a bag was torn open on the ground. Someone had to have pulled it out.”

The woman’s hand found its way to her heart. “Why would someone wanna dig through our trash?”

“Hell if I know,” Zachary said, wiping his hands on his pants. “Maybe some homeless person.”

They both took a moment to study their street, as though the culprit might still be within reach, within sight.

And then a third figure emerged from the house.

“Mommy, mommy!” the little boy chanted. He was dressed in a green onesie, barefoot besides, perhaps five or six years old. He arrived at his mother’s hip, where he put his little hands around her leg to make sure he had her attention. “I know what book I wanna read!”

“Okay!” his mother exclaimed. “Let’s get back inside and read it, then, shall we?”

The little boy excitedly darted back up the porch steps. The woman followed without another word to Zachary, who followed at her heels, though his attention remained on the street, on the neighboring houses and the shadows in between. He looked over his shoulder once as he reached the porch steps, casting a final glance to the garbage cans and the shrubs where Ruth was nestled. She gulped as she met his gaze. Surely he didn’t see her, she thought. Then he was gone and the front door audibly shut.

Ruth waited in the bushes another five minutes or more, catching her breath and waiting for the outdoor light to shut off. It didn’t seem it’d be doing that anytime soon.

Now or never.

She scraped herself up just as much climbing out of the bush as going in. Once she was on her feet again, she made a mad dash down the driveway, onto the sidewalk, and through the neighborhood back to her waiting car.

Her apartment was full of people when she arrived home. Another of Shaylee’s parties. She moved quickly through the kitchen and living room, smiling as she dodged between friendly conversation on her way to her bedroom. She ducked inside and shut the door behind her, through which the party’s chatter was perfectly muffled.

She scooped her laptop from her desk and carried it to her bed, where she sprawled on her stomach and began searching.

She started with his name: Zachary Holcomb.

He wasn’t the only Zachary Holcomb in existence, but there were few enough that she was able to find his social media accounts in less than sixty seconds. She clicked on his Instagram, where she discovered a plethora of photos of himself and his family. He had a wife and two children, though Ruth had only glimpsed the one tonight. Besides the little boy, Zachary Holcomb had a little girl as well, perhaps a year or so younger than her brother. There were many, many pictures—camping trips, Disney vacations, backyard birthdays, and on and on.

Ruth’s heart swelled with each and every one.

She was still scrolling through them all when a young man burst through her bedroom door, looking lost and quite drunk. It was a moment before he noticed her staring from her bed.

“Oh! I’m so sorry, I… I thought this was…”

“The bathroom’s across the hall,” Ruth told him with a polite smile, eyebrows raised.

“Oh, man. Ha! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

“It’s okay.”

“I really thought this was the bathroom…”

Despite the apology, the young man remained in her doorway, peering around her bedroom like he’d stumbled into a museum exhibit. His wandering eyes happened upon her again, her patient gaze narrowing with skepticism.

“How come you’re not enjoying the party?” he said.

“Parties aren’t really my thing. That’s all.”

The young man slowly nodded. Then he continued gazing around her room some more, as if searching for something of interest.

“So… what is your thing?”

“Oh, um, well…”

Ruth shut the lid of her laptop as the young man stepped deeper into her room, taking notice of something on the far wall.

“You collect models?”

He approached the shelf over her desk, where there was indeed a series of model cars all in a row, different makes, all different color paint jobs. He picked one of them up. Ruth’s stomach plunged into ice water.

“Those aren’t mine.” She jumped up from her bed and gingerly took the car from his hand, replacing it on the shelf. “I’d rather you didn’t touch them.”

He clasped his hands together against his belly, wringing them in a guilty sort of way. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Ruth took a deep breath to settle her nerves.

The young man studied the cars a moment longer. Then he turned to her, and a funny expression came over him—surprised to find her standing so close. Before he could say another word, Ruth faked a yawn, covering her mouth so he couldn’t tell just how fake it was.

“Listen, it’s been nice chatting, but…”

“But you want to be left alone. I got it.” He smiled, and Ruth was struck by how soft his features were. Boyish. “I’ll let you get back to your… whatever it was you were doing.” He turned to leave, then stopped just short of the door. “I’m Marcus, by the way.”

He lingered there, as if waiting for Ruth to exchange her name as well. She resisted at first. She wasn’t sure why. Was she annoyed? A little, yes. More than that, she was impatient to get back to her sleuthing.

He’ll forget any of this happened by tomorrow morning anyway, she thought.

“Ruth,” she answered, and offered a congenial smile of her own.

“Nice meeting you, Ruth,” Marcus said, giving her a toothy, drunken grin as he finally stepped out into the hall and pulled her door shut behind him.

Ruth stood in place for a time, processing what a strange experience that had been. Then she plopped back onto her bed and resumed scrolling through the pictures of yet another man whose name she’d only just learned tonight…

She wished to send Zachary Holcomb a message. Unfortunately his messages were set to ‘Friends Only’ so she sent him a friend request and left it at that for the night.

10

THE WOMAN FROM ROOM TEN

Dario barely left his room. He ordered Chinese takeout from town, had it delivered right to the motel, and found he barely had an appetite when it came time to eat. He couldn’t stop thinking about the previous night—the assault, the murder, the blood, the eyes, the teeth—and found each subsequent bite harder to chew, to swallow.

He ignored every message he’d received throughout the day. His face and throat were badly bruised, which meant he couldn’t meet potential clients. Probably not tomorrow, either, he thought. Or the day after that. How long would it take for these bruises to heal? He wasn’t sure. Ian had cost him a lot of business. Whatever squeamishness Dario felt over the matter, he couldn’t deny he was still heated about the whole thing—angry that Ian had betrayed him that way, had abused him that way, and angrier still that he’d allowed himself to be betrayed, to be abused. He hated that he’d been so naive, so trustworthy. Despite knowing how dangerous this world could be, especially in his line of work, he’d let his guard down. He had no friends in the business, but he was sure that if he did, they would shake their heads at his carelessness…

So fucking stupid…

He also ignored messages he’d received from his sister. She’d asked how he was doing, and considering he couldn’t stop thinking about the previous night, the truth wasn’t easily shared. He would rather ignore her than lie.

He spent much of the day holding the torn scrap of paper in his hands, reading her message again and again.

10pm tonight. Your room. - Your Guardian Angel

More than anything, he wanted to run—to pack up his things and get away from this place and never look back. Some part of him knew it wasn’t possible. Some part of him feared what might happen if he tried. That woman wasn’t like him. Like any of them. ‘Them’ being people. She was something else. Something dangerous. He’d already gotten a taste of what she was capable of…

…a taste…

He’d gotten that, too, all right. He shuddered, remembering the coppery tang of her blood in his mouth. He also couldn’t forget the bliss that had soon followed. As much as the memory disgusted him, he was disturbed to find some part of him craved more. Perhaps not the blood, but its effect.

Dario was no stranger to illicit substances. He’d tried many things at least once. He’d smoked pot, of course—eaten it, too—and had taken molly several times. He snorted coke once during his eight-month stint as a dishwasher at a certain well-known steakhouse establishment.

But none of that compared to last night.

10pm tonight. Your room. - Your Guardian Angel

As the sun began its final stretch into night, Dario buzzed about his room, sitting and pacing interchangeably. He fantasized that he’d lost his mind, that the previous night never happened despite the many pieces of evidence that it clearly had.

The light through his window warmed with the setting sun, and darkened with its departure, leaving only the scant glow of the streetlight. Soon the time read 9:12 p.m. at which point Dario sat upon the foot of his bed, awaiting her inevitable arrival. The remaining minutes ticked by slowly. Agonizingly. His palms began to sweat.

At 9:57 the lamp on his nightstand flickered and Dario nearly cried out.

Run. Now. There’s still time.

He didn’t. He couldn’t.

9:58 p.m.

His leg seemed to bounce of its own volition. Images of last night marbled across his vision. Her voice, her words, spidered across the cavernous space of his mind.

You don’t need to be afraid of little ol’ me…

He was afraid. He was very afraid.

He was captivated.

9:59 p.m.

Dario stiffened as a shadow moved past his window, along the walkway just outside. There and gone. He eyed the door, where he assumed the shadow now stood, awaiting a knock that wouldn’t come. He hoped it would never come.

His eyes wobbled in their sockets and he knew precisely what time it was.

“Open the door,” she said, her voice faint on the other side.

Dario stood and drifted to the locked door. He twisted the lock, undid the chain, his hand steadier than it should have been—guided by another. He opened the door and there she stood in the dark, her pale skin glowing in the night. Her lips made a sound as they pulled back from her teeth in a smile. A wet click.

“Good evening, Dario,” she said. “Did you miss me?”

She moved past him, into his room. He shut the door behind her. He watched as she paced into the middle of the room, taking it in, as though it didn’t look just like all the others, just like hers, he was certain.

“I hope there wasn’t any confusion about the room,” she said. “I thought it easier this way, than having you wake up to that mess…” She sighed pleasantly and turned to face him. “How are you feeling?”

Dario’s eyes ceased their vibrations. He felt the slightest headache forming in his temple.

“I don’t know,” he answered.

She smirked, looking upon him dotingly. She plopped down onto the end of his bed, where she patted the spot next to her, urging him to take a seat. But Dario didn’t move. He couldn’t bring himself to get any closer to her.

“What do you want with me?” he said.

He expected the question to offend her, but she simply continued smiling.

“You’re wary of me. I get that. I suppose I would be wary, too, in your shoes. But I think the better question is: what do you want with me, Dario?”

Dario furrowed his brow. “Huh?”

“You know you didn’t have to stay for me. You could have fled and never looked back. But instead you’re here, waiting.”

“Because… well, because I figured I had no choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” she said, already ignoring her little quivering eyeball trick that rendered him obedient to her every whim. “Did you really stay out of fear? I find that hard to believe. True fear would have dictated that you flee, however hopeless that might have been.”

“Exactly. I just assumed you’d come after me, after last night. After what I saw…”

“After I saved your life, you mean?” Her lips made that sound again as they pulled back from those sharp canines glinting prettily in the lamplight. “That’s why you really stayed, isn’t it? You knew that if I’d wished to harm you, I’d have done it already. Isn’t that right?”

“Just tell me what you want…”

“I want you to sit.”

Dario’s eyes trembled as he moved to the bed, feet practically marching. He sat beside her, as every fiber of his being pulled taut at their proximity, his own body straining to undo itself into mere particles if that’s what it took to escape her. Then his eyes stilled, and his skull throbbed.

“How are you doing this?” he asked, hunching forward with his head in his hands.

Dario tensed as the woman placed a hand upon his back. She rubbed his back in comforting circles, palm whispering against the fabric of his shirt.

“I scared you last night, didn’t I?” she said. “When I saved your life?”

“You didn’t save my life,” Dario muttered.

“Maybe you’re right,” she said. “Perhaps he only meant to rape you. I suppose that’s better?”

Dario remained with his head in his hands, his eyes squeezed shut, hoping he could simply wait this out, that eventually she would leave, that he’d be alone again, the storm blown over.

“I’ve been watching you,” she went on. “You and these men, who come and go…”

“They’re just customers…”

“Yes. And I think you sell yourself short.”

At last Dario straightened, looking directly into the young woman’s malformed eyes.

“And what do you know about me?”

“I know you’re capable of more than… this.” She gestured to the room at large.

Fueled by defiance, unable to sit beside her a second longer, Dario stood and crossed to the window, his back to the room.

“I know you’re a lonely soul,” she went on. “I know you only wish to feel wanted. I know, because I know that feeling myself. That desire to be desired. I know what it means to be cast out. You deserve better than to be used and abused by these cowards, punished for living your truth while they are rewarded for their deceits, their hypocrisy, their complicity in that which stifles you. They use you, Dario, and then go home to their wives and children whom they merely use as masks for their gutlessness. You detest them. I know you do. It’s excreted from your very pores—your loathing. Your previous room reeked of it. A floor-to-ceiling stench. How would you like to never serve them again?”

Dario’s heart was trampling his insides, his legs watery where he stood. He turned his head so that her shape on the bed was visible from the corner of his eye.

“And serve you instead? Is that what you’re asking? Is that why you’re here?”

“Dario,” she said, instilling her voice with sympathy. “Look at me.”

He turned only slightly, his body still angled away, just enough to meet that unnerving gaze of hers.

“You’re not wrong. I do want something from you. I thought perhaps you and I could help one another.”

“And what could you offer me? Besides enough nightmare fuel to last me the rest of my life.”

Now she stood, reaching one hand into the fold of her black dress, from which she produced a wad of cash. She offered it to him. Dario stared at what appeared to be a small bundle of $100 bills. Just the sight of it made him want to cry—a flurry of emotion he didn’t expect at a time like this.

When he didn’t reach for the money, the woman paced across the room and placed it on the nightstand.

“And if my actions have caused you any distress, or any sleeplessness, I can help with that, too.”

From her pocket, she produced a small glass vial filled with a dark liquid. Held before the light of the lamp on the nightstand, its color was obvious. She set it down right next to the money.

“This is a vial of my blood. It’ll give you a better night’s sleep than any amount of drugs or alcohol ever could, without the hangover.”

Dario’s gaze lingered on the money.

“And what do want in return, exactly?”

The woman smiled in a manner Dario hated—a manner which suggested she knew she had him, that he was ensnared, his interest piqued. He hated that she was right.

“I won’t overwhelm you,” she said. “It’s not every night a vampire knocks on your door, after all.”

“You didn’t knock,” Dario reminded her.

This evoked a giggle from her, finding him quite amusing, apparently.

“Yes, well… we’ll go over the details later, anyhow. I’ll give you some time to… process me.” Another quiet laugh. “First things first. I believe a proper introduction is in order.” She glided toward him from the nightstand, extending one delicate, porcelain hand. “Carissa,” she said.

Dario took her hand thoughtlessly, his mind reeling. As he did, he could have sworn that her eyes took the shapes of black serpents.

In the vampire’s absence, Dario did the only thing he could, which was rest his throbbing head upon his pillow and try to sleep.

He tossed and turned for some time, his thoughts doing the same. Suddenly the terror of the previous night felt distant. Foggy. Easy to brush aside. Instead he found himself agonizing over something entirely new.

…I know you’re capable of more than… this.

Was she right about him, he wondered? Calling him lonely was one thing—it didn’t take a psychiatrist to determine that—but what about the rest? Did he hate his work? Did he detest the men who moved through his daily life like a revolving door? It wasn’t news to him, the lives those men led. Admittedly, Dario had often found himself envying them, and their ability to compartmentalize this aspect of themselves, while he on the other hand had lost so much in his determination to be ‘true to himself.’ Whatever that even meant these days…

He reached for his phone on the nightstand. In doing so, he nearly knocked over the small glass vial sitting there, full of the vampire’s blood. He eyed it for a moment. Just a moment. Then he grabbed his phone, opened his conversation with RiRi. He’d never messaged her back. Still he couldn’t bring himself to do it—to reply with the words ‘I’m good’ when he most certainly wasn’t.

I’m not good. I’m so far from good.

He returned his gaze to the glass vial. Knowing its contents was enough to make him feel nauseous just looking at it, and yet some part of him was tempted. He couldn’t lie about that, either.

Let me sleep. Let me close my eyes and disappear.

He snatched the vial from the nightstand. Lying back on his pillow, he held it over his face, studying the viscous fluid in the dark—sticky and staining the glass.

Let me not exist, at least for a little while.

He pulled the tiny stopper and tipped the vial to his lips in one quick motion, like taking a shot. The metallic tang washed over his tongue, down his throat. The taste wasn’t so bad. He swallowed it, quickly set the vial aside, and clasped his hands across his belly.

He didn’t have to wait long.

It bloomed warmly inside him, and that warmth spread with near immediacy, springing into his limbs, racing into his fingers, his toes, each of them lighting up with some electric comfort, his every inch uncoiling until he felt he was a puddle on his bedcovers, spread thin in the best way. He blinked his eyes. The room darkened blue, brightened reddish pink, the shadows revealing their true colors. His head crackled. Fizzy. Weightless.

Her blood made an absolute mess of him, and he wished never to be put back together again.

11

SILVER LININGS

Ruth’s friend request to Zachary Holcomb had gone entirely unnoticed. Or ignored. She checked frequently, practically any chance she got, any time her phone was in hand. She reasoned that he was a busy man, or perhaps a disciplined man who curbed his phone usage. Perhaps by the weekend he’d open his various social media accounts and finally notice her request, and—hopefully!—accept.

She couldn’t stop thinking about it anyhow. At work, as she scanned item after item across her check stand, her mind often mistook the resulting beeps as notifications on her phone, despite sounding nothing alike.

“Can you believe this shit?” her coworker asked.

Ruth startled, as she hadn’t even known he was standing behind her at that moment. She lowered her phone. Jacob was his name, a young man only a couple years her junior. A bit of a ‘gym bro’ which got him plenty of attention behind the register, which always amused Ruth and seemed to please Jacob. At the moment, he was anything but pleased.

“I’ve been working at this shit hole for two years,” he said, his face flushed with emotions she’d never seen him express in their time working together. “Corporate just announced record profits last year, and what do I get for my annual raise? Fifteen cents. Talk about a fuckin’ slap in the face…”

Ruth wasn’t sure what to say. She was shocked, not only by Jacob’s reaction, but by the realization that others might be less than appreciative of such a raise. She’d appreciated hers, hadn’t she?

“I guess it’s better than nothing…”

“You can’t be serious,” Jacob said, the veins in his arms, as well as the ones along his temples, bulging more than usual.

Ruth shrugged. “I don’t know, I just… try to look on the bright side…”

“Nah, fuck that.” Ruth winced, his anger palpable. “There’s no bright side, Ruth. This is cut-and-dry bullshit. Like… what are we fuckin’ doing at this point?”

Ruth peered around them nervously, the store luckily in an afternoon lull so that no customers were nearby to overhear and possibly take offense at Jacob’s words.

They each startled as another voice joined in.

“Hey guys, is there a problem?”

Judy, the store manager, seemed to materialize out of thin air, stepping out from the backside of Ruth’s check stand. She folded her arms, waiting for someone to fill her in on Jacob’s outburst. Jacob unclipped the name tag on his shirt and tossed it on the ground at Judy’s feet. Her eyes flicked to watch it land before snapping back to Jacob.

“Not anymore,” Jacob said. “I’m out this fuckin’ bitch.”

With that, he stormed across the storefront and shoved through the two entrance doors on his way out into the parking lot. Ruth and Judy watched him go in utter silence, before he disappeared from their line of sight. Judy sighed with exasperation.

“Jesus,” Judy said, followed by another sigh. “Ruth…”

“Yeah,” Ruth said, already knowing what was coming.

“I’m so sorry to ask you this, but I might need you to stay a couple hours until I can get someone else to cover Jacob’s shift. Is that all right? Can you do that for me?”

Ruth turned to her boss, whom she believed to be as much a victim in all of this as her or Jacob—following orders to keep her job just like the rest of them.

“Yeah, of course,” Ruth said, smiling for Judy’s sake. “No problem.”

Those couple hours became a full double shift as Judy failed to find anyone to cover Jacob’s, who’d only just started his shift before abandoning it. By the end of the day, Ruth was both physically and mentally fatigued, but told herself she was happy to do it regardless. Judy even tended to the bathrooms and the vacuuming duties tonight so Ruth wouldn’t have to—a rarity for the Store Manager and the Assistant Managers both.

Finally it was closing time. They locked the doors and pulled Ruth’s till. Despite thirteen hours spent behind the register, Ruth’s till was astonishingly balanced, a feat Judy only pretended to be impressed by while Ruth was unabashedly proud. As Ruth clocked out for the night on the office computer, Judy dug around inside her purse until she pulled something out. She handed it to Ruth.

“Here, I want you to have this,” she said. “As a thank you, for all your hard work today.”

“Oh!”

It was a Starbucks gift card her boss handed her. Ruth took it with some uncertainty, though she was grateful.

“There should still be about nine or ten bucks on there, I think,” Judy said. “Enough to buy a coffee. You like coffee, right?”

Ruth didn’t think she’d ever mentioned coffee before in her three years at Dollar Delights, but of course most people liked coffee, so it was a safe assumption to make, she thought. She nodded agreeably and stuck the gift card into her pocket.

It’s better than nothing, she thought, once more reminded of her final interaction with Jacob.

“Thank you,” she said.

“No, thank you,” Judy said, with a heavy sigh to punctuate the day. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you, Ruth.”

Judy turned off the store lights and they departed together, stepping out from the chilly air-conditioned store and into the muggy night. Ruth loved that feeling—the heat that clung to her like steam after a hot shower. She waited as Judy locked the doors behind them. Then, turning for the parking lot, Judy began telling Ruth goodnight when suddenly a vehicle hastily swung across the shopping center, stopping them in their tracks as it doused them in its headlights.

“What the hell?” Judy asked aloud.

Ruth’s stomach dropped. She recognized that car in an instant. How could she not?

A blue Subaru.

It screeched to a halt. The driver’s door opened. A dark figure emerged. Ruth instantly recognized his dimensions, even if she couldn’t readily see his face against the blinding light of his headlights. He stepped around his open door, approaching the walkway along the storefront where they stood. Judy shielded her eyes against the light.

“Excuse me?” she said. “Can we⁠—”

Stopping just below them on the blacktop, Zachary Holcomb jabbed an accusing finger in Ruth’s direction.

“You,” he said, standing rigid, his stern voice quavering. “If I ever see you again, I’m calling the cops. Do you understand?”

“Um, I’m sorry,” Judy interrupted. “Is there something the matter or⁠—”

“Your little cashier here is a goddamn stalker, that’s what’s the matter. Creeping around outside my house? Going through my garbage? I have cameras, moron. Stay away from me and my family. This is the only warning you’re gonna get.”

Zachary Holcomb climbed back into his car, slammed the door, and faintly squealed his tires as he pulled around in a tight circle on his way out. Ruth and Judy stood in stunned silence, watching him go.

“Ruth,” Judy said, her voice thin with hesitation. “What the hell was that?”

“I…” Ruth hesitated. “That was⁠—”

“Actually… don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I don’t need to know. Your personal life is none of my business…” Judy exhaled like her day couldn’t possibly get any more stressful. “Just stay outta trouble, Ruth. I can’t afford to lose one of my best cashiers right now.”

In the heat of June, Ruth flushed with hot, unexpected flattery.

“I’m one of your best? Really?”

“I mean, you don’t call in sick every other week, so yeah, you’re one of my best.” Judy shook her head, exasperated. “I need you here in the morning. On time. Can I count on you for that?”

“Yes, of course!” Ruth said, all but elated to have the last few minutes swept under the rug. “I’ll be here first thing!”

“Great, see you then,” Judy muttered as she started toward her car without a second glance.

Ruth scuttled toward her own, legs swishing over the asphalt. She climbed behind the wheel, shut her door, stuck her key into the ignition, and paused. The parking lot was much too quiet, with her thoughts so loud and screaming inside her head, screaming with horrified embarrassment for what just transpired.

Judy’s car pulled away, speeding off into the night toward some private life Ruth didn’t know the first thing about. Her chest was still thumping, thumping, thumping. Altercations were never fun. She took a deep breath.

And what’s the bright side of this, huh?

She hunted for it desperately. The silver lining. There had to be one, somewhere. Usually there was. It was only a matter of realizing. Anything to dispel the shame she felt, the crushing disappointment of Zachary Holcomb’s words, which had yet to settle their full weight upon her. He’d been angry. He’d been downright hostile. He’d called her a stalker…

“I can’t believe he even remembered me,” she said aloud.

And suddenly there it was, in all its beautiful, glimmering glory.

How else could he have recognized her on his security camera’s footage? How else would he have known to come here, to confront her here? Their first and only meeting had been almost a couple weeks ago, at least. She’d been nothing more to him than another cashier, their interaction lasting no longer than two minutes, and yet…

“He remembered me,” she repeated, and actually managed to smile with the thought.

12

SOMETHING WICKED

The old man lay in bed but couldn’t sleep. He was too stiff for sleep, too expectant for sleep. With his head on his pillow, he watched the single window across the room—the curtains letting only a sliver of moonlight onto the floor—and waited for what he suspected might be coming, what he felt was coming.

It was only a matter of time.

Outside his door, he could faintly hear the footsteps of the orderlies walking past, conducting their hourly patrols of the facility. He glanced at the dresser beside the door, where he kept an arrangement of belongings—trinkets, gifts, framed photographs, all sentimental reminders of the past.

He kept even more of these things on the nightstand beside his bed. He reached for one of them now. A photograph. He clutched it to his chest and closed his eyes against the dark as he whispered his gratitude for his time on this earth, for their time together on this earth, as long as it had lasted.

She was gone now, the woman in the photograph. But he kept her in his mind always. Scarcely an hour went by each day that he didn’t think of her. It was a small grace given to him, that he should still remember her so vividly when his memory weakened in all other respects these days.

Getting old was a curse in and of itself—never mind the real ones.

Even with his late wife’s memory as a safeguard, he felt its approach. The greater darkness. The air thickened with it. An ominous swell. He broke into a cold sweat, shivering under the covers as a clawing paranoia crept into his mind like a roach through his ear, snapping his eyes wide open.

Her shadow pooled upon the window.

Eyes glued to the moonlit curtains, to the silhouette just beyond the glass, the old man muttered a last-ditch prayer. The air was so heavy, so thick, that not even his private murmurs reached his ears. He gripped the photograph tighter than ever, felt the contours of its wooden frame bruising his bony chest. The shadow at the window stood perfectly still. He closed his eyes once more and envisioned the past. The good of the past, more specifically. There was plenty of bad as well. Plenty of wickedness. Enough to never sleep again without the help of so many medications. Enough wickedness to form a life of its own, a shadowy sentience, and follow him to the ends of this world, sleeping or not.

A curse.

All at once the heaviness lifted. The air thinned. Cooled. The old man shivered all the more as it touched his damp brow. Still whispering softly to himself, he opened his eyes and discovered the shadow at the window had gone. He was alone again. He could hear again—the whispers of the orderlies out in the hall, the tick of the clock upon his dresser, and the drone of the air conditioning blowing from the vent in the ceiling.

He sighed with relief. The darkness had passed.

At least for tonight.

13

FAMILY FEUD

Dario poked and prodded his bruises in the bathroom mirror. He was healing up nicely. The tenderness was all but gone, the bruise mostly faded, as well as the ones around his throat.

It’d been several days since his visit from the woman next door. Carissa.

I’ll give you some time to… process me.

He studied Room Ten each day on his way to and from the motel, where the curtains were always drawn shut. Each night, he struggled to sleep as he expected her to return at any moment, to divulge the details of her plans. What would she ask of him, he wondered? Would it be any better than what his previous clients asked? At least sex was easy…

He’d yet to spend any of the money she’d given him, though he routinely marveled at it—$3000 total. It seemed wrong to spend anything given to him by such a creature. Where had that money come from, he wondered? Could there really be more? Was he truly willing to find out?

As he rubbed his bruises in the bathroom mirror, his phone buzzed from the nightstand. He hurried to see who it was. Part of him hoped it would be his sister, despite his ongoing reluctance to contact her himself. But it wasn’t RiRi. It was Zach, asking if he was available tonight. Carissa’s words echoed in his mind.

How would you like to never serve them again?

Dario hadn’t accepted any clients since her offer. He still couldn’t decide whether or not he might prefer his work. It wasn’t all bad. It was decent enough money, and he’d actually met a handful of very decent people. Sure there were duds—creeps galore that he was forced to sift through—but his work had provided him something he was otherwise missing in his life, as miserable as he was to admit it: that intoxicating validation of being wanted. Desired.

Carissa had been right about that. Right about him. But Dario supposed maybe it was time to find that elsewhere. His limited experience at the club had taught him it was possible. He was an attractive young man. A monetary exchange didn’t have to be part of the equation, did it?

He ignored Zach’s proposition. Instead, eyeing the wad of cash still sitting on his nightstand, Dario opened his conversation with his sister and finally shot her a quick message:

Wanna get lunch today? My treat.

They agreed to meet at their favorite spot—a place called Chloe’s, a burger joint within walking distance of Dario’s childhood home.

Once upon a time, Dario would have swung by to pick his sister up and they’d have driven together, but unfortunately those days were behind them. Instead Dario sat in a booth alone, two menus for two patrons on the table, waiting.

He waited twenty minutes for his sister to show.

He checked his phone repeatedly, with no word on any delay despite asking ‘Running late?’ or five minutes later, ‘You coming?’

RiRi’s last message read: I’ll see you at 2! Can’t wait!

Nothing since.

He was about to message her a third time when his phone began to vibrate. It was her. Dario answered before the first buzz had finished, practically slapping himself in the side of the head with his phone.

“Hey, what’s going on? Where are you?”

“I’m calling you as a courtesy,” said the voice on the other end. Not RiRi’s voice, but a deep, gravelly, grouchy man.

“Dad? Why do you have Arianna’s phone?”

“You’re not to contact your sister again. Not by text, not by phone, not by email, and certainly not in person…”

Dario’s stomach plummeted such a distance inside him, it should have spilled out in a wet mess on the floor of his booth.

“When I hang up, I’m blocking your number. That’s it.”

“Wait,” Dario blurted. “What the hell are you saying? You can’t tell me not to speak to my own sister…”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

“You… you can’t do that. You’re insane.”

“Oh, I’m fucking insane?” His father scoffed—a gritty, breathy noise through the speaker. “I know about you, Dario. I know what you’re doing with your life.”

“Oh, give me a break…”

“No, you see, I’ve already given you far too many breaks in life. That’s the problem…”

“Arianna’s her own person, too, you know. You can’t just…”

“Your sister wants to attend college in two years, Dario. Unlike you, she wants a better life for herself. And if she wants my help with that, she’ll do what’s right. I won’t have you poisoning her chances with your… degenerate lifestyle.”

“I’m sorry, my what?”

“I know all about your little side gig, or whatever you wanna call it. Honestly, I don’t care what you do anymore. But you’re not dragging your sister down with you. No chance. If you wanna continue like you are, do us all a favor and stay out of her life. Stay out of all our lives. I won’t hesitate to get the police involved, if that’s what it takes.”

Dario trembled with rage, hot and burning behind his eyes. A lump formed in his throat. Speechless.

Then, as abruptly as it began, the call ended. Just like that. No goodbyes. Nothing. Dario lowered his phone from his ear just to see the ‘call ended’ screen for himself, mouth hanging open, his previously stormy thoughts dissolving into a ringing silence.

He returned to the motel in a tight-fisted blur, black smoke fuming from his ears. He barely noticed the additional car in the parking lot. It wasn’t until he was marching toward his motel room that he saw her—a new guest on the second floor. She leaned against the railing with a cigarette to her puckered mouth. Her brilliant chili-pepper hair blazed in the sunlight. She blew a puff of gray smoke into the afternoon heat and gave Dario a wave as he glanced her way. He didn’t return the gesture.

He slammed his door behind him and stood in the stillness, the emptiness, his mind a mutiny of self-destructive impulses. He ached to ache—to feel something besides betrayal, besides the hollow loneliness. Rather than stick his fist through the wall, he pulled out his phone again. A weapon as dangerous as any other.

He opened his most recent message from Zach and responded in three succinct words.

I’m free tonight.

14

DANGEROUS ROADS

Ruth watched the clock on her phone carefully. He would be leaving work in a matter of minutes. Or so she thought. Twenty minutes went by without any sight of him. 5 p.m. came and went. Then twenty more minutes.

“Where are you?” she whispered, only grateful that she’d relieved herself before coming so she wouldn’t have a repeat of last time.

6 p.m. blew by.

Perhaps he was working late. That was all right. It only gave Ruth more time to work up the courage to confront him when he did eventually emerge from those front doors. This was the best way to do it, she thought. It was either here or in front of his home, and she thought she’d like to spare his wife and children the drama, if there was to be any. Zachary Holcomb had proven himself capable of making a scene, after all. If he wanted to make a scene outside his work this time, at least they’d be even.

There won’t be a scene. He’ll understand once he hears me out.

This was Ruth’s hope—that she could explain everything to him, if only he’d give her a chance, if only he’d listen.

It was getting late. Pretty soon it was creeping past 7 p.m. Ruth fidgeted in her seat, her butt beginning to hurt.

“What the hell are you doing, dude?”

Her courage was beginning to wane, tipping in the other direction—from boredom to impatience, anxiety, dour speculation. A little after 8 p.m. the sun was on its way down, bright and blinding in the west.

And of course that was when he appeared. Or at least Ruth thought it was him. She straightened in her seat, leaning forward to get a better look as the sunshine glared across her windshield. She didn’t want to mistake him for someone else.

Oh, for crying out loud…

It was only as Zachary Holcomb climbed into his Subaru that she knew for sure, and by then it was too late. She wouldn’t get to confront him here. All that time spent waiting, wasted…

She considered trying again another day, but quickly dismissed the idea. She would follow him home after all. She’d confront him at the end of his driveway when he fetched his mail, like he’d done before. That might work, she thought.

She twisted the key in her car’s ignition. The engine rumbled to life. She rumbled to life, her boredom and all the rest extinguished like an unremarkable dream.

Once again she tailed the blue Subaru, this time under the growing cover of dusk.

Zachary Holcomb wasn’t going home. She followed him on the interstate for a while longer than expected, as his usual exit flew by without any hesitation. She stuck to him like glue nevertheless, as the sun began to dip under the horizon.

“Where we goin?” she asked aloud, her curious eyes wide and full of Zachary’s taillights.

They exited the interstate onto some insignificant service roads. At this point she allowed herself to slow considerably, putting a great deal of distance between them, seeing as traffic was sparse and Zachary would soon notice a singular car following him along such bare backroads.

Maybe he’s already noticed. Maybe he’s leading me out into the middle of nowhere, away from his house, his family, where there won’t be a scene because there won’t be any witnesses…

Ruth considered this with the ghost of a smile upon her lips. She didn’t believe such a thing was possible, of course. Sometimes she just liked to let her imagination go freely, humoring herself. Occasionally her own crazy thoughts even made her laugh.

While Zachary certainly had a temper, Ruth was confident he wasn’t a dangerous man. She’d trawled through most of his life on social media to know that much. Not to mention the way his voice had quavered during their little parking-lot quarrel. He was angry, but he was also nervous. Not the type to pick fights, nor the type to lead young women out into the woods to make some kind of frightening point. She hoped…

They followed the frontage road for a minute or two, Ruth staying well behind, her headlights mere pinpricks to him in his rearview mirror, she was sure. Eventually the frontage road connected to another busier street, onto which Zachary’s Subaru hung a right. Ruth saw this was Main Street, though she wasn’t sure of the town. She also wasn’t sure why Zachary insisted on taking the scenic route to get here. Perhaps it had been faster somehow. Perhaps Zachary Holcomb knew this because he’d come this way many times before.

The bulk of Main Street lay behind them, in Ruth’s rearview. Ahead of them, around a slow and steady bend, the glow of streetlights and operating establishments dwindled, turning dark and largely unpopulated. It seemed they were already at the edge of town here.

Ruth followed at such a distance that she lost sight of Zachary’s lights for a moment, flickering through the trees that choked either side of the road. Then the road straightened out again and Zachary’s Subaru was gone. A singular, lonesome streetlight marked the dark stretch ahead, which Ruth soon realized was meant to illuminate the building discreetly nestled along the roadside there. She flipped off her own lights, becoming one with the dark as she coasted into the road’s shoulder opposite the establishment. She shut off her engine.

It was an L-shaped building, two stories along the back of the parking lot—what appeared to be about twenty rooms, ten on top of the other—with the nub portion of the building jutting toward the road on the righthand side. In the large front window were two illuminated signs. One blue, which read Office. The other, in soft, cherry-red letters, read The Silver Lining Motel.

The parking lot was mostly empty, and mostly dark thanks to the singular streetlight which fell short of even illuminating Ruth’s vehicle parked across the road. Three others were parked outside the motel. One of them was Zachary’s blue Subaru.

He stepped out, and idly glanced toward the woods across the road where Ruth sat hunched and bewildered. He didn’t seem to notice her. He started for the motel, for one door in particular, upon which he rapped his knuckles. The door was adorned with a golden ‘4’ on its face. Zachary hung his head as he waited, but no one answered.

Several doors down, another opened. Someone emerged. Ruth breathed heavily through her open mouth, chest rising and falling. A young man stepped out from the second-to-last room on the ground floor. Room Nine. He was a very young man, as far as Ruth could tell in the murky light. At least half of Zachary’s age, if she had to guess. He called to Zachary, his voice inaudible to Ruth at this distance, from inside her car. Zachary turned to see him, a bit startled. He appeared to relax. He’d gone to the wrong door, was all. An innocent mistake.

There’s nothing innocent about this, Ruth thought, heart hammering.

Zachary followed the young man into his motel room. The door shut behind them. Ruth sat and watched in a stupor.

Maybe it’s drugs, she thought. A quick drug deal. In and out.

Fifteen minutes later and Zachary still hadn’t reemerged. The possibility of a drug deal went out the window, unless of course he was partaking inside the motel room. Somehow Ruth didn’t think it was that—the manner in which they’d greeted one another, the manner in which Zachary had placed his hand on the young man’s shoulder as he’d followed him into the room…

Ruth wasn’t sure how to feel about all of this. She grappled with it, in the comfort and silence of her car under the eerie dark of the woods, losing her gaze in the dim red light of the sign in the office window.

I don’t know. I don’t know anything.

Ruth didn’t know the first thing about leading a double life. Of course, she knew a thing or two about this place. This society. The people in it, the views many of them held. Her own mother—religious to a fault at times—had openly condemned such things before. Not just adultery, but the rest. Ruth supposed if one were surrounded by intolerance, one might take extra steps to conceal those parts of themselves which weren’t tolerated.

It was like her father once told her: “You can’t know what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes, let alone live in their mind.”

All in all, she believed she was getting ahead of herself.

Distracted by this train of thought, Ruth only resurfaced when the motel parking lot suddenly plunged into shadow, a dazzle of fiery sparks raining from the now-dark streetlight across the road. The bulb must have burst, Ruth thought. She scoured the property, then peered into the distance, where the road trailed farther into the outskirts of town. This wasn’t a place you wanted to be caught stranded, she thought. Alone, in the middle of the night…

Someone rapped their knuckles on her window. She recoiled, a shout on the tip of her tongue. A pale face smiled back through the glass. Ruth swallowed her exclamation, as well as her jumping heart as she realized it was a woman standing outside her window. Where had she come from? Ruth gazed toward the motel again, where she’d only just been looking a moment ago.

After a brief hesitation, she rolled down her window. It lowered with an electric hum. The woman stooped, her smile never dimming. Without the streetlight to reveal them, her delicate features were hard to grasp for longer than a few seconds, softened by the shadows between them, but Ruth could tell she was beautiful, and even more strikingly young, especially to be alone out here at this hour.

“I’m sorry to bother you.” Her voice was light and pleasant to Ruth’s ears—a voice you could fall asleep to. “You wouldn’t happen to have a couple spare dollars, would you?”

The question rocked Ruth in the silliest way, so that she was stumped on how to reply. In any other context, it was a fairly basic question. But out here, in this isolation, the question rippled over Ruth with a certain unreality. Absurdity. Her skin crawled.

“I’m sorry, no. I don’t carry cash on me.”

Ruth peered down the road again, then craned her neck to peer in the other direction, searching for another vehicle, or anything that might explain where this woman came from. When finally she returned her attention to the woman, meeting her gaze, she noticed just how dark her eyes truly were.

The woman frowned with disappointment, those black eyes wandering liberally across Ruth’s face in such a way that made Ruth want to roll up her window and put the pedal to the metal.

“Are you staying at this motel?” she asked instead.

The woman looked over her shoulder at the place, the only light in the parking lot now the soft blue and red signs glowing in the front window.

“Yes,” she said with a disheartened sigh. “I need cash for the vending machine. Are you waiting for somebody?”

Even her excuse was odd, Ruth thought. Running across the street in the dark to a stranger’s car just to ask for vending machine money?

“No,” Ruth said. “I’m on my way home. I just needed to pull over for a second, that’s all.”

“Ah,” the woman said, and all at once the tone of her voice was different—heavier, sharper. “Well you’d better hurry on home, then. It’s dangerous around these parts after dark.”

Her eyes turned to slits as she smiled, her soft pink mouth pulling finely at the corners. Ruth’s foot inched toward the gas pedal despite knowing the engine wasn’t running. A nervous impulse.

She was overcome with the most frightening instinct—that this woman was dangerous. She couldn’t explain it, beyond the tension she felt along the nape of her neck, one wrong move from erupting into goosebumps.

“Thanks for the advice,” she said. “I think I will.”

She pressed the button to raise her window, not waiting for further reply. The woman returned to the other side of the road, where Ruth was finally able to see what she wore—a long black tulle dress with half-sleeves. She was also barefoot.

“What the hell,” Ruth muttered.

At the edge of the motel parking lot, the woman gave Ruth a wiggly-fingered wave. Ruth didn’t waste another second. She started the engine and gave the motel one last fleeting glance as she pulled out into the road, the woman still smiling and waving from the gutter.

Zachary Holcomb still hadn’t emerged from the young man’s motel room.

15

IMBIBING

Dario lay naked with the bedsheets around his lap, watching as Zach laced up his shoes on the edge of the bed.

“What is that look?” Zach asked, catching him staring.

“What look?”

Zach quirked an eyebrow. “I don’t know, like you’ve just gotten away with something.”

“You got that from a single look?”

“Mhmm…”

Zach finished with his shoes, then stood and watched Dario for a moment, drinking him in.

“I hope you got your money’s worth,” Dario said.

This elicited an eye roll from Zach. Shaking his head, he came and stood next to Dario, where he gently touched the spot beneath his eye.

“I noticed this,” he said, and smoothed his thumb across Dario’s fading bruise. “What happened?”

“Oh…” Dario turned away. He sat up against the headboard, pulling the sheets along with him. “It was nothing. An accident on the dance floor.”

“An accident on the dance floor?” Zach said, surprised. “I had no idea you were a dancer.”

“Not a very good one, obviously.”

“I see. And you… what, fell? Got elbowed?”

“Something like that,” Dario said. “I was pretty drunk, so…”

“Ah. Convenient.” Zach continued to smile, but his eyes carried a hint of concern. “I hope you’re taking care of yourself, Dario.”

Dario looked away then, drawing his gaze across his motel room. Would he be living in a place like this if he was taking care of himself, he wondered?

“Of course I am,” Dario answered with the cheesiest grin he could muster.

Any satisfaction he’d gained with his little rebellion was short-lived. As soon as Zach was gone, Dario scraped his phone off the nightstand and checked for messages from his sister. Of course there were none. His father must have been telling the truth, he thought.

Now he lay naked and alone like always, without even the comfort of RiRi’s humor to keep him afloat.

Surely she must have been upset, too, he thought. She’d be seventeen soon, eighteen only a year after that, an adult, making her own decisions. What exactly had their father told her, he wondered?

Why did he fear he’d never hear from his sister again?

Dario turned off the lamp on his nightstand and rolled over into the center of his bed, where he punched his pillow and forced his reeling head into its mangled shape. His heart was racing. His thoughts, too. He rolled over again. The dark was stuffy, and his bedcovers were already slightly damp with sweat.

…it’s excreted from your very pores—your loathing. Your previous room reeked of it. A floor-to-ceiling stench…

Soon this room would smell the same, he thought.

His stomach growled ravenously. He turned over again, onto his back like a starfish across the bed, sweating and seething and starving.

He craved it. That bliss. The nothingness of sleep that followed. He believed that’s what he yearned for most. To cease existing, if only for a few hours. To die a temporary death.

Dario sprang out of bed, clutching the top sheet around himself as he went. He flung the door open and fled outside. The parking lot was especially dark tonight, he noticed, as he pivoted toward the room beside his own. He lifted his fist to the door and froze.

What the hell am I doing?

Was his craving really so strong that he would willingly put himself in her sights again?

He lowered his fist, wrapped his sheet around himself a little tighter, as it dawned on him that he’d raced outside all but naked. He studied the golden ’10’ on her door with a peculiar expression, like suddenly he didn’t know how he’d ended up here.

Shaking his head, Dario returned to his room. He shut the door behind himself and hung his head, a dull ache forming along his temple.

“Is this really all he pays you?”

He shouted in surprise to the voice coming from across the room. There she waited—the woman in black—standing at his nightstand, flipping through the $300 Zach had left for him.

Looking over her shoulder at Dario, she said, “I thought you wouldn’t want to do this anymore?”

“He’s a regular,” Dario said, as if that explained anything.

“Ah,” the woman said. Carissa. “So you like it, then? With him?”

With his bedsheet still clutched to his body, Dario crossed the room to meet her where she stood. He took the money from her hand and placed it back onto the nightstand.

“Or maybe old habits just die hard,” she said, smirking. “Is that it?”

Dario shrugged. “Sure. I guess.”

“I came to tell you not to make any plans tomorrow night. Do you have any?”

Dario paused as if he needed to think about it. Really, he needed a moment to collect his bearings. That dull ache in his head was beginning to throb.

“No. I don’t have any plans.”

“Good. Our work begins tomorrow night, then.”

Dario didn’t know what else to do but nod. Then, as Carissa began to leave he stopped her.

“Wait. I wanted to ask…”

She turned to look at him from the shadows by the door. Dario’s question died in his throat. He couldn’t bring himself to ask this woman for anything, not if he could help it. Carissa crossed the room once more, coming to stand before him, eye to eye. She took Dario’s face, his chin in the crook of her thumb and index, and turned him left and right, studying him on either side. She smiled. Her wet lips clicked. Her slick fangs winked.

“You’re so cute, Dario.”

Releasing him, she pressed her wrist to her open mouth and bit. Dario could hear it—the sound of teeth piercing supple flesh. The scent stung his nostrils instantaneously. Sharp and metallic. She held her bleeding wrist toward him, the blood trickling, about to spill. He eyed her wound with utter repulsion while his growling stomach and aching head begged him to drink.

And so he did.

He placed his mouth and tongue upon her fresh openings and tasted her. Coppery yet sweet. His stomach warmed in an instant. He sucked greedily. Forgetting himself, he lost his grasp on the bedsheet, pooling to the floor at their feet. Carissa laughed rapturously, as though surprised by his appetite. He had to admit, he was surprised by it, too.

There came a thump from upstairs. With his lips still pressed to Carissa’s wrist, Dario joined her in peering that way, each of their gazes to the ceiling. It was then he remembered the new guest he’d seen earlier that day—the redheaded woman smoking on the upper balcony. Carissa narrowed her eyes irritably.

“I told that fool the rooms upstairs were off limits.” She turned her attention to Dario once more. He hadn’t moved an inch, her less-than-warm blood still trickling into his open mouth. “Go on, then,” she said.

He resumed drinking, as her blood soon crashed over him in a dizzying tsunami. His sense of place bled out from him. His legs turned rubbery. Soon he couldn’t even keep his lips stiff enough to continue drinking without making a mess. With two fingertips against his bare chest, Carissa pushed Dario and watched him topple helplessly onto the bed. He lay in a naked heap, too stoned to move.

“Sweet dreams, Dario.”

She did him the favor of turning off his bedside lamp. The resulting darkness swam with texture and color, fuzzy and prismatic. A whirring filled Dario’s ears, like power lines in the summer heat. The door opened and slammed shut. He lay alone once more. But now it didn’t matter. The loneliness was joyous.

As he spiraled into heavenly ecstasy, Dario listened to the indistinct sound of a woman’s screams. The ceiling thumped, thumped, thumped.

Thumped and screamed. Thumped and screamed…

Until the ceiling thumped and screamed no more.

16

RELICS

Ruth was sitting in her usual booth at the usual early hour with her usual order—one Sausage McMuffin with Egg, a side of three hash browns, a plain black coffee, and a cup of water—when someone approached from the main entrance.

“Ruth?”

She found him standing a few paces away, a sheepish smile on that boyish face of his. For a brief moment—perhaps it was her initial shock—she couldn’t remember his name. It required immense effort to conjure it up as quickly as she did, and it came so suddenly that she blurted it back at him.

“Marcus!”

The sound of her own enthusiasm wilted her. Marcus came to stand near her table, his eyes darting every which way, absorbing her morning ritual with far too much interest for Ruth’s liking.

“This is crazy running into you like this,” he said.

Ruth had a single bite left of her final hash brown. She stuffed it into her mouth, crumpled up her wrappers and trash, and finished off her cup of water in a single gulp.

“I was actually just leaving,” she said, jumping to her feet. “I have a bunch of errands I need to run before I head to work this morning.”

“That’s all right. I just wanted to say hi, and also apologize for the other night… barging into your room like I did. I was pretty drunk. Drunker than usual, and…” Marcus paused. “Oh hey, you barely touched your coffee.”

“Oh. Yeah,” Ruth said. “I don’t drink coffee, actually. Do you want it?”

Marcus frowned, puzzled. “You…”

“I just like the smell of it.”

She lifted her coffee, giving Marcus a look that said ‘last chance.’ He shook his head.

“I’m good, thanks.”

“Okay, well… It was nice seeing you.”

She whisked around him toward the garbage, where she quickly dumped her trash—coffee included—and left her empty tray on top. She offered Marcus a friendly-but-hasty wave before she turned and started for the doors.

The look of bewilderment on his face might have made Ruth laugh if she wasn’t equally bewildered—and mortified—by her awkward self.

She took a moment for herself outside the small complex—a moment to steel her nerves, to arrange her thoughts, to mold her feelings into better versions of themselves, such as convincing herself that her anxiety was excitement, or that her dread was actually just an eagerness to return home and climb into bed after a poor night’s sleep.

It was all just a matter of perspective.

“This won’t take long,” she said—one last morsel of optimism.

She climbed out of her car and swiftly followed the sidewalk to the entrance, the sun drenching her in its heat. The apartment vestibule was small and empty and silent. She chose the stairwell over the elevator. Always did. She climbed to the second floor, then cut through the hallway until she reached Apartment 9. Taking a deep breath, she rapped her knuckles four times and then pressed the doorbell once for good measure.

This won’t take long…

Footsteps shuffled toward the door and paused there. Ruth felt eyes on her, peering through the tiny peephole in the door. The door unlocked, pulled open.

The gray-haired woman in the doorway looked at Ruth like she was no better than a door-to-door salesmen hocking magazine subscriptions. An unexpected nuisance.

“Hi, mom.”

“What are you doing here?” her mother replied.

“I told you I was coming.”

“When?”

“I texted you last night.”

Her mother grimaced. “Well that was last night. You know I don’t remember these things.”

“Okay, well… can I come in, or what are we doing?”

Her mother narrowed her eyes, but ultimately opened the door to let her in. Ruth had to laugh, albeit humorlessly. Her mother liked to wear an irritable mask, but deep down she was grateful for her visits, Ruth knew. Ruth even believed she secretly looked forward to them, though she’d never admit it—all for the sake of maintaining the appearance that she needed no one, not even her own daughter.

Ruth took off her shoes as her mother shut the door and locked it. A metallic jingle drew Ruth’s attention down the hall, where she glimpsed a gray fluffy tail vanishing into the kitchen. She could already hear daytime television playing in the next room, something involving a lot of shouting, a lot of cheers and ‘boos’ from the audience. A whole lot of manufactured drama.

Ruth’s mother liked to keep the windows open all summer long, even when it was ninety degrees outside and the humidity was unbearable, so the apartment was always stifling. Despite that, however, there was a distinct coldness about the place. A blue pallor to each room. This was because her mother’s corner unit faced two alleyways, the opposite buildings blocking whatever light the sun had to offer. Ruth’s mother claimed to prefer this, citing that too much sunlight gave her migraines.

“You wanted to look through some photos?” her mother said, moving past Ruth and down the adjoining hallway.

“So you do remember my texts,” Ruth said, knowing there wouldn’t be an answer for that.

She followed her mother down the dark second hallway, where the walls were adorned with many framed depictions of Jesus Christ himself, as well as numerous ornate wooden crosses sprinkled in between. Ruth couldn’t help shrinking into herself when she traversed this hallway, feeling so many pairs of Christly eyes upon her.

“All right,” her mother sighed. “What do we have here…”

She stopped in the guest bedroom doorway and flipped on the light inside. At that precise moment, another cat came bolting out of the room, darting between Ruth’s legs and down the hall toward the living room—a flash of brown fur, there and gone.

The guest bedroom was more of a storage room. There was no bed. Just a collection of cardboard boxes and garbage bags full of old clothes and whatever else. Ruth wasn’t much for prayer, but she prayed then that her mother knew where her photo albums were—that she wouldn’t be spending the next three hours searching.

Much to her relief, her mother headed to the closet, where there were more boxes stacked inside, but also an old dresser. She crouched onto her knees with a great big groan and pulled open the bottom drawer, revealing several binders and albums stored inside.

“Was there a particular photo you wanted?” she asked.

Ruth swallowed nervously.

“I was hoping I might find some pictures of dad.”

Ruth’s mother scowled over her shoulder, face pinched.

“Why would I keep any photos of him around?”

“I dunno, maybe because you were married for twenty-five years or whatever.”

“Twenty-four,” her mother corrected. “And what a waste of time that ended up being…”

Ruth pressed her lips firmly, frowning. There were many things she could have said, or would have liked to say, but she kept her thoughts to herself. In matters such as these, she preferred to say nothing and let her mother’s bitter thoughts remain mysterious to her.

“Do you have any or not?”

Her mother groaned as she climbed back to her feet. Most people would be surprised to learn that she was only fifty years old, given how leathery she was, how gray she was, combined with the chronic back pain that lent her gait a permanent wobble.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But those are the albums, if you want to search through ‘em yourself.”

“Okay, thanks.”

Ruth’s mother made a noise of acknowledgement under her breath as she returned into the hall, wobbling back to the living room where her talk shows called her like a siren song.

Everyone copes with grief in their own way, Ruth reminded herself.

Alice Sheridan’s preferred coping mechanism was a deep, misplaced hatred for the dead, for having the audacity to leave her behind in this cruel world full of sinners. Probably she was jealous that Ruth’s father got to meet Jesus Christ before she did.

Ruth didn’t know what her mother was talking about. Her albums were full of pictures of her father—pictures of her parents together, pictures of Ruth and her father through every stage of her life, from a baby to a toddler to a teenager. All of it.

Despite her mother’s apathy, Ruth didn’t take them all, just the ones she liked most, which still amounted to twenty or more photos altogether.

She poked her head into the living room on her way out, where her mother sat rocking back and forth in her plush rocking chair, the gray cat from before nestled in her lap as some Jerry Springer ripoff played on the television. It was an interesting juxtaposition—the bleeps of crass language and phony outrage on the television program against the sheer amount of religious paraphernalia decorating every inch of her mother’s apartment. On the TV stand itself stood a plaque that read ‘God is my co-pilot.’

“Thanks again,” Ruth said. “I didn’t take all the pictures, but… I’m taking quite a few.”

Her mother glanced her way only for a moment, looking once more at the television. “So you got what you came for, huh?”

Ruth leaned in the doorway, chewing her lip.

“I’d stay, but I’m gonna be late for work.” It wasn’t a lie.

Ruth’s mother remained focused on the television as she slowly stroked the gray cat.

“You still wasting your life away at that place?”

Ruth grimaced. “You mean the dollar store?”

“I’m surprised you don’t want more for yourself,” her mother said, still refusing to actually turn to see her daughter in the doorway.

Ruth observed the space around them, the chilliness of the place, her mother with her four cats—or was it five?—watching daytime television as an excuse to judge the lives of others.

“I’m happy with less, I guess.”

“Just be careful you don’t end up like these people,” her mother said, gesturing toward the TV.

“Well, I’m pretty sure most of them are actors, so I’m probably safe.” Ruth cleared her throat, standing straight. “Anyway, I’d better get going. Thanks again for letting me take these pictures.”

“Mhmm,” her mother said cheerlessly. “Any time.”

Ruth lingered, simply observing. She wished so badly to understand her, but her mother was a woman who liked keeping her cards close, which meant keeping others at a distance.

At least, this was what Ruth told herself.

Arriving home that evening, Ruth found Shaylee watching one of her horror movies in the living room. Ruth stood watching for a moment or two, as the characters on screen accused one another of being responsible for someone else’s murder.

“Did you tell Marcus where to find me this morning?” Ruth asked suddenly.

Shaylee scrambled for the remote in order to pause her movie. “Huh? You saw Marcus?”

Ruth regarded her roommate doubtfully.

“I’m sure you mean well, but… I don’t need you to do that. Really.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Shaylee said, though the grin she could barely conceal wasn’t doing her lie any favors. “So did you talk to him?”

“Not really, no. I had to leave in a hurry.”

“Do you want me to tell him to leave you alone?”

Ruth stared at the TV, where Shaylee’s paused movie captured a young woman’s grief-stricken face frozen in time, teeth bared, eyes spilling tears.

“That’s okay. If I see him again… I’ll tell him myself.”

Shaylee squirmed in her seat with sudden interest.

“Okay, Ruth, be honest with me for a second.”

“I’m always honest.” This was a lie.

“Do you think he’s cute? Like, even a little?”

Ruth was caught off guard. She returned her attention to the TV, to the crying woman.

“I mean, sure, he’s a good-looking guy.”

“But you’re not attracted to him?”

“Well, I don’t know that I’m not attracted to him, I’m just…” Ruth shrugged. “I’ve got other stuff going on. I don’t have time for dating right now.”

Shaylee nodded like she understood. “So you are attracted to him.”

Not knowing what else to say, Ruth could only laugh at the silliness of this conversation.

“If it makes any difference,” Shaylee continued, “I can one hundred percent vouch that Marcus is a total sweetheart. Like, he can be goofy, but somehow I think that might be perfect for you.”

“Perfect for me?” Ruth looked at Shaylee sideways. “Sounds like you’ve put more thought into this than you let on…”

“Come on!” Shaylee said. “If you want, I can give him your number. Then you can text back and forth for a little bit, see how things go. Him showing up at McDonald’s or whatever probably wasn’t the coolest thing, I’ll admit…”

But do you admit it, Ruth thought, having known better all the while.

“But I’ll tell you this much,” Shaylee said. “He met you by complete accident the first time. You know, at my party the other night? He’s been smitten ever since.”

“Oh, yeah? Smitten?”

“Completely.” Shaylee leveled her eyes on Ruth in an earnest way, begging for her earnestness in return. “I think if you gave him a chance…”

Ruth sighed. “How about I’ll think about it and get back to you. How’s that?”

Shaylee looked quite pleased with herself. “Don’t think about it too long, though. I’m an expert nuisance, believe me.”

“Oh, I believe you.”

Shaylee donned an expression of shocked hurt, but couldn’t help but laugh. “Okay gurl, I see how it is. But seriously, just think about it.”

When finally Ruth escaped her roommate’s probing—hadn’t Ruth been the one to initiate that conversation?—she went straight to her bedroom and shut the door behind her. It was like taking her first real breath of the day. She immediately pulled the photos from her back pocket and plopped onto her bed, where she cycled through them one by one.

Each photo was a sting to the heart, so that by the time she’d looked through all twenty or so, her chest was positively aching— longing to see someone she would never see again.

You don’t know that for certain.

Ruth wasn’t nearly as zealous as her mother when it came to faith, but some part of her upbringing had stuck with her all these years, some small sliver of hope. She wasn’t an atheist. She wasn’t altogether sure about Jesus Christ or the Holy Bible, either. Somewhere in between. She believed in something, but it was indistinct. Flexible.

You’re out there somewhere, aren’t you? Watching over me? That’s what I believe.

The hurt she felt at the sight of her father’s photographs was evidence enough of that. Love wasn’t just a chemical. Not when it could survive so much. Even death. It wasn’t just her love for her father she felt, but his love for her in return. It persisted. She knew this to be true. It was the sole thing that kept her going some days. Perhaps most days.

He loved me. He loves me.

Like no one else ever had or ever could.

Ruth startled as something fell over in her bedroom. She jerked toward the noise, gripping her father’s photographs tight enough to bend them.

One of her father’s model cars lay upside-down on the carpet, having rolled right off the shelf. Ruth climbed to her feet. She snatched the car off the floor, then eyed the shelf where the others remained exactly as they were.

That’s curious.

The car in her hand just so happened to be the same one Marcus had handled the other night. Perhaps when Ruth had placed it back on the shelf, she’d set it down in such a way…

“Oh my god,” she murmured.

The color of the car. The shade of blue. It only now dawned on her that it was the very same as Zachary’s Subaru. A chill raced up her shoulders, the nape of her neck, along her scalp. Holding the car in both hands, she felt a mild tingling through her fingertips, an electricity in her grasp. This was no coincidence, she thought. Not Marcus choosing this particular car, not the color of it, nor its rolling off the shelf at this precise moment when Ruth’s heart was swelling with so many memories.

She peered about her room, her eyes to the ceiling, like something unseen surrounded her.

This is a sign, she thought.

She took the car to her bed. She lay down, head on her pillow, and rolled it along the edge of her nightstand, back and forth, back and forth, wondering and wishing.

Dreaming wide awake.

17

THE DEAD DON’T CARE

The horizon was just beginning to burn with the approach of dusk as Dario shuffled into his room, many bags hanging from his arms, clothes from half a dozen different shops. He dropped them all at the foot of the bed. He locked the door, kicked off his shoes, emptied his pockets onto the nightstand, then got to work on unpacking his new threads—so many he could fill an entire load of laundry.

From the final bag, he pulled out a brand new black leather jacket he was positive his sister would adore. He couldn’t wait to see her face when he gave it to her.

After stewing over their previous conversation, Dario ultimately decided he wasn’t about to let their father dictate their relationship. They simply needed to go about things in such a way that wouldn’t jeopardize RiRi’s future. That meant discretion. Secrecy. Dario believed he could manage that easily enough.

“Cute jacket.”

Dario screamed. He spun to face her—the woman in the black dress, her ghostly skin radiant as the moon itself in the deepening dusk. The door behind her was locked just as Dario had left it.

“Who’s that for, anyway? Doesn’t seem your style. A sister perhaps?”

Dario froze with the jacket in hand. Carissa continued to smile, her black, mischievous eyes full of knowledge.

“How do you know about my sister?”

“You don’t think I’d enlist your help without running a simple background check, do you?”

“A background check?” Dario said, returning RiRi’s jacket into its bag. “Why do I feel like that means something else, coming from you?”

Carissa sauntered around Dario, sitting on his bed with her hands propped behind her back, the skirt of her dress puffing up around her legs.

“I hope you’re ready for tonight,” she said.

Dario studied Carissa, still a complete stranger to him, and a dangerous one at that.

“And what should I be ready for, exactly?”

“Oh, nothing dangerous,” she said, as though she’d plucked the word from his very thoughts. “Are you squeamish, Dario?”

Dario willed his heart to slow, his lungs to take a full breath. Her very presence was upsetting. A week later and visions of that night still haunted him—her twisting Ian’s head around on his shoulders and sucking him dry.

“Just tell me what I’m doing before I agree to it,” he said, and folded his arms.

“So serious,” she said. “Relax.”

“I don’t want to be involved in…” He couldn’t decide what he meant to say. Murder? That ship had already sailed, hadn’t it? “…anything illegal.”

“Oh?” Carissa said, sitting straight. “Nothing illegal, hmm? What do you call this?” She gestured to the motel room, to everything. “Do you mean to tell me everything you’ve done up to this point in your life has been on the up and up?”

“You know what I mean,” Dario retorted. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t want to be…”

“An accomplice to murder?” Carissa said, her eyes becoming slits. “Well then, you can take solace in knowing there will be no murders tonight.”

Dario relaxed upon this assurance, though a distinctly dreadful cloud remained overhead, as he was certain that whatever this woman could possibly need him for would be devious in nature.

“No, the bodies I need your help with tonight are already dead. Some of them have been dead for quite some time.”

“Excuse me?”

Carissa stood up. She swept toward Dario, their faces inches apart as she gazed intently into his eyes, looking from one to the other, back and forth.

“You know what I am,” she said. This wasn’t a question.

“Yeah,” Dario said, pulling back as she stood so close. “I know what you are.”

“Which means you’ve heard the stories.” Her tangy breath wafted into Dario’s nostrils. He hated that it stirred his hunger, his belly grumbling noisily between them. “You must know that not all of them are true. And while some hold truth, most are inaccurate.”

She paused, ascertaining that he listened.

“Okay,” he said.

“It’s true that I must feed every night, that I must sink my teeth into the soft flesh of one’s neck and drink my fill in order to guarantee my vigor. This of course means casualties—victims, unfortunate as they may be.” She leaned in closer, their noses nearly touching, her black eyes penetrating his. “This means bodies, Dario.”

Dario gulped. “Couldn’t you, I don’t know…”

“Find someone who might let me feed on them willingly? No. The human body doesn’t produce enough blood to satisfy such an appetite on a regular basis. And I can’t very well have half-emptied victims wandering every street corner knowing my face besides.”

“What about Ned?” Dario said. “The owner? You hypnotized him somehow, right? That thing you do with your eyes…”

“Not everyone is susceptible to such tricks.” Carissa smiled. “Though I appreciate the brainstorming session, Dario. You’re very sweet. But what I’m trying to convey to you is this: these casualties are a simple fact of life for me. I have the same desire and right to exist as any other creature on God’s green earth, and like any predator, I can’t survive without prey. Can you understand that?”

Dario wasn’t sure he liked the sound of it, but he nodded that he understood.

“Good. I had faith you would.” She caressed Dario’s cheek with the backs of her fingers, smiling affectionately. “Now if you’d be so kind, I could really use your help loading some of these bodies into your trunk.”

Carissa started for the door. Dario lagged behind a moment, not believing his ears.

“Wait, what?” he said, chasing into the parking lot.

There were three bodies total: one in Carissa’s room, one upstairs, and one in Dario’s old room. Of course the body in Dario’s old room would be Ian, whom he hadn’t seen since his untimely death.

“I’ll collect the bodies down here if you’ll collect the woman from upstairs,” Carissa said.

Standing beside his car with the trunk already popped open, Dario peered toward the second floor, his mind reeling, his skin crawling just thinking about it. Carissa promised him another payment when the night was through. Cash and blood. The cash excited him. The blood… did more than that. More than Dario could admit even to himself.

“Come on now,” Carissa said, looking back as she headed toward Room Ten. “We don’t have all night.”

Dario started for the stairs, flicking nervous glances toward the main office along the way. Was Ned watching, he wondered? Was Ned afraid? Was that why he complied? Or was she paying him, too? In cash, blood, or something else?

This is crazy. Actually crazy.

Where did Carissa come from, Dario wondered, and how was it he’d found himself in her employ? She’d rescued him from an assault? Was that all it took? And now he was helping her load bodies into the trunk of his car?

I want more for myself, he thought. More than this sleazy motel. More than the two-faced men who cycle through it.

He needed to prove to RiRi that their father was wrong about him. In order to do that, he needed to better his situation, which required money. Carissa had money, and was willing to pay. And yes, perhaps the work was unpleasant, but Dario was no stranger to justifying his ends with less-than-savory means. No matter the work, no matter the industry, a person must sell themselves in some capacity in exchange for what they want from this world. Was that not the truth?

At least now Dario got to keep his clothes on.

He climbed the metal stairs to the second floor, then followed the upper landing to the second-to-last room. Room Nineteen. The door was already cracked open. Dario immediately caught a whiff of what lay ahead—the scent of fresh bloodshed, of someone who’s soiled themselves in the process of giving up their ghost, the very beginnings of decomposition. He hesitated, took a deep breath, and proceeded inside.

He left the light off, on account of not wanting to see every grisly detail, but the room wasn’t so dark that he couldn’t see the bundle at the foot of the bed. Carissa had already wrapped the woman’s body in a motel blanket. The floor was spotted with dark bloodstains. Carissa had made a mess of her, that was for sure. Moving quickly, trying not to think too much, not to breathe too much, Dario grabbed the bundled body by the legs and dragged it, feet shuffling over the carpet and across the threshold and onto the upper landing once more. The dead woman’s fiery hair unfurled from the other end of the blanket. Dario was reminded of a giant paintbrush, its bristles dipped in vibrant red.

Don’t think. Just do.

He reached the stairs. Down below, Carissa was hoisting another body into the trunk of Dario’s car. He regarded the dead woman in his arms, considering the stairs behind them.

She’s already dead.

He started down step by backward step. The woman’s body thumped and banged along after him. He glanced nervously to the road, to the main office. Still no sight of anyone but them. No witnesses, yet. The dead woman’s head gave one last clang on the bottom step before Dario began dragging her across the asphalt toward his waiting car. Carissa had already gathered the other two bodies, each piled inside in their matching wrappings. Dario dragged the body alongside the trunk, where Carissa grabbed the other end and helped to hoist her in.

“There,” Carissa said. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“Well,” Dario said, panting, “I wouldn’t say⁠—”

“Hey, guys!”

Dario flinched. It was Ned, emerging from the safety of the main office. Dressed in gym shorts and an off-white undershirt—his sleepwear, Dario assumed—Ned came to stand near Dario’s car, hands on his hips, a curious expression.

“I couldn’t help noticing you two were in the middle of some heavy lifting. Everything okay?”

“Everything’s great, Ned,” Carissa said, beaming so broadly that her magnificent canines were revealed in full. “Thanks for asking.”

Ned scratched his head, smiling at them both. He glanced at Dario’s trunk and his expression flickered with concern—the briefest twitch of the brow, a saddening of the eyes. He knew what lay inside, of course. He’d probably been watching from the window all the while.

“We’re all right, Ned,” Carissa told him. “You can go back to bed now.”

Ned’s awkward smile relaxed into nothing as he met Carissa’s gaze, his eyes growing vacant. Dario thought he understood the look, as well as the odd sensation Ned must have felt in his eyes at Carissa’s suggestion. Without another word, he turned around and headed back inside.

“Not an ounce of love in his life, poor guy,” Carissa said. She slammed the trunk shut with a huff. “Anywho. You ready to get this show on the road?”

Dario peered toward the main office, where he saw the venetian blinds were bent apart, Ned peering back. The blinds sprang shut upon Dario’s noticing.

With Carissa’s assessment of the ‘poor guy’ looping through his thoughts, Dario climbed behind the wheel and took them out.

Carissa’s directions found them winding along rural backroads, through the wooded hills, with nothing but Dario’s headlights to light their way. The knowledge that there were three dead bodies bumping around in his trunk haunted Dario the whole journey.

“So what is it exactly that makes someone susceptible to your… control?” Dario asked, steering them around another dark bend.

Carissa said nothing at first. From the corner of his eye, Dario found her watching him.

“You mean to ask me why it is that you’re susceptible,” she said. “Isn’t that right?”

Dario shrugged, trying to feign indifference. Carissa placed her hand softly on his shoulder.

“I think it’s best you don’t know such things,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because you wouldn’t like the answer, Dario.” She removed her hand from his shoulder and pointed to the small bridge up ahead. “Stop at this bridge. Leave the engine running.”

Dario pulled over into the road’s crunchy shoulder. Carissa told him to pop the trunk so Dario did that as well and joined her outside. One of the bodies had unwrapped from its covers. The redheaded woman. It was only then Dario noticed that her left arm was torn clean from her shoulder, the arm itself simply bundled up alongside her. Carissa hauled the body out onto the dirt.

“Grab the rest of her, will you?” she said, and began dragging the one-armed corpse toward the bridge.

Dario gingerly lifted the woman’s arm by its hand, the gruesome stump swinging. He avoided studying it too closely as he carried it to the wooden bridge. Down below, the river burbled in the moonless dark. Carissa pushed the body over the bridge railing—a flash of pale skin and red hair, before vanishing with a splash. Dario flung the severed arm over the railing likewise, spinning baton-like into the water below. His stomach somersaulted similarly.

“Two more to go,” Carissa said. “But not here. We need to spread them out. There’s still much to do tonight, so let’s get a move on.”

Couldn’t you have done this without me? Dario wondered but didn’t ask. She was obviously incredibly strong, and no amount of exertion seemed to tire her. So why ask for his help?

Heading back to the car, he peered in the direction of the river’s current, and wondered how long before the corpse might be discovered, or how far before it snagged along the riverside and became lost.

He reminded himself to tread carefully, to ask his questions sparingly, lest he become another corpse in a river some day.

With no shortage of rivers or streams in the Tennessean hinterlands, Carissa directed Dario to two additional locations where they disposed of the remaining bodies.

When they finished the time was 12:36 a.m.

“Now to gather a new one,” Carissa said, climbing back into the passenger seat. Then, as she noted Dario’s expression, “This one’s already dead, just like the others. Deader, even.”

Deader even, Dario thought, as he drove them back toward civilization.

Back on the highway, they exited just shy of Brewster, into the neighboring town of Kingsley—small like Brewster, though half as sleazy. Most would describe it as quaint.

“Where are we going, exactly?” Dario asked.

“You’ll see when we get there.”

Following the sleepy streets, Carissa pointed to the place she wanted Dario to park the car. They slowed along the curb, beside a long stretch of wrought-iron fence. Across the street was a high school football field and running track.

“Not there,” Carissa said, focusing Dario’s attention instead on the wrought-iron fence. “Here.”

The property teemed with shadows and overgrown trees, and just enough dirt-smudged lamplight to make out the marble and granite structures glimmering underneath…

“No,” Dario blurted. “No, no, no.”

“It’s fine,” Carissa said, opening her door. “I’ve scoped it all out in advance. Trust me.”

“But you said⁠—”

He didn’t get to finish before Carissa stepped into the gutter and slammed the door on his words. She bent and beckoned him with a curl of her finger, a playful curl of the mouth. Through the window, her muffled voice beckoned him likewise.

“Come on, Dario.”

He peered toward the neighboring high school, then reminded himself it was after one in the morning. Their chances of being seen were minimal. Finally, with a deep sigh, he climbed out and followed Carissa alongside the cemetery.

Soon they arrived at a large gap in the fence, where a simple paved path entered from the road. No locked gates, not even a loose chain clipped from one side to the other.

“This is the back entrance,” Carissa said, strolling inside. “There’s a bigger entrance on the north end with a sliding gate they don’t bother closing, but it’s more discreet coming through this side, don’t you think?”

For a small town, Kingsley’s cemetery was quite expansive. Many branching paths snaked under the trees into the distance, dotted with countless lampposts that better served the eerie atmosphere than to actually light the place.

A short distance onto the grounds, Carissa stepped off the path, looking spectral in her tattered black dress, flashing the soles of her dirty feet as she moved between the graves. Dario followed close behind. Something waited in the dark up ahead. They arrived outside a wooden shed. The door was latched, fitted with a padlock. Carissa grabbed the door’s handle and, making it look far easier than it was, bumped the door inward and tore the latch’s screws right out of the wood. The door creaked as she stepped inside. Dario waited and convinced himself he was keeping watch.

“Ah. Here we are…”

Carissa emerged with both hands full—a shovel in each of them. She offered one to Dario.

“Fuck,” he said, as it finally, truly dawned on him that this was what they were here to do.

“Oh, come now, Dario. It’s really not so…” She turned sharply, peering into the nearby dark. “Did you hear that?”

Dario listened. The cemetery seemed to breathe, its lungs full of thick summer air. Really all he could hear were the usual nightly sounds: horny insects and the whisper of leaves. He shook his head that he didn’t hear anything.

“Hmm.” Carissa pursed her lips warily.

She offered the shovel once more. Dario took it reluctantly, as though it were a filthy thing. Given its purpose, it was actually quite clean for being stored in a cemetery toolshed. With her own shovel in hand, Carissa started back toward the path. Dario followed.

“I don’t know how I feel about this,” he admitted.

“Do you feel worse about it than dumping bodies into rivers?”

Dario considered. Somehow he thought he did feel worse about this. Perhaps it was the idea that cemeteries were meant to be sacred places. Digging up a grave was like vandalizing the inside of a church. Though Dario didn’t believe in God, he couldn’t deny his upbringing left a lingering guilt about such things.

“It’ll be fine,” Carissa said. “This place is for the living, anyway. The dead don’t care.”

He followed her into the heart of the cemetery, until finally she stepped once more into the grass, standing before one grave in particular. It was a standing headstone, a simple oval made of granite which read: Margaret Clarke. According to the dates, she’d died six years ago at the age of eighty-two.

“Who is she?” Dario asked.

“My mother,” Carissa replied, her usual cheek giving way to startling, cold sobriety.

“Jesus. We’re digging up your mom?” Dario regarded the woman beside him, eyes wide. He looked at the headstone, back to Carissa, then back to the headstone. “How old are you? Really?”

“Seventy,” she said.

Dario privately did the math in his head—accounting for the six years her mother had already been dead—and figured that she’d given birth to Carissa at the age of eighteen. Then another question occurred to him.

“When were you⁠—”

“I was nineteen,” Carissa answered, a bit snappish. “Hence my appearance. That’s enough questions for now.”

She stepped across the grave, to the spot where her mother’s head would be, six feet down. There she planted her shovel in the grass with a satisfying thunk. She glanced to Dario, urging him to begin helping similarly at his end. Without further questions—he’d specifically been discouraged, had he not?—he got to digging likewise.

It was hot, sweaty, exhausting work. Carissa was much better at digging than Dario, never breaking a sweat herself, tossing shovelful after shovelful onto the adjacent grave, never slowing as she did it. Once again it begged the question: why did she need Dario’s help at all? And once again, he didn’t dare ask.

It must have been somewhere around three o’clock in the morning when they finally struck the casket. Standing deep in their hole, Dario leaned against the earthen wall as Carissa cleared around the casket’s upper lid so that she could finally open it up. She lifted the upper lid wide open, resting it against the wall and revealing the body inside.

Dario didn’t know much about dead bodies—about the rates at which they decomposed under varying circumstances—but he was surprised to find Carissa’s mother wasn’t nearly as decomposed as he would have imagined after six years. Truth be told, he’d expected a bare-boned skeleton. Instead they found a shriveled woman with most of her hair still attached to her scalp. The eyes were hollowed in, and her waxy flesh was tight enough Dario could make out the shape of her skull, visible bones or not. She wore a still-vibrant emerald green slip dress, with a lovely pearl necklace draped across her very prominent collarbones, her chest sunken much like the rest of her.

Without skipping a beat—without pause for sentiment or consideration—Carissa crouched, grabbed her mother under her arms, and began unceremoniously heaving her up from the casket. Dario’s stomach lurched, needled with cold anxiety.

“So we’re just… taking her, then?”

“Yes,” Carissa said, lifting her mother’s stiff corpse into her arms. “The whole thing.”

The whole thing. The words echoed in Dario’s mind as Carissa hoisted her mother up and over the edge of the hole they were in, onto the grass topside.

The dead don’t care.

Carissa climbed out. Dario did the same, although with a bit more jumping and scrambling. He stood upright, panting heavily. He was covered in dirt. He could taste it, the grime and sweat on his upper lip. Nothing sounded lovelier than a long hot shower at that moment. And nothing sounded worse than the voice that suddenly greeted them.

“What do you people think you’re doing?” a man’s voice called.

Dario’s blood ran cold at the sight of them: two figures standing on the nearby walkway, a man and woman, their rigid postures telling him everything he needed to know.

This is not possible, he thought.

They were a couple, by the looks of it, dressed in workout clothes, out for a late-night stroll. A very late stroll. Dario was tempted to ask them why the fuck they were here of all places at this time of night. Instead he stood rooted in terror as Carissa gazed wearily in their direction, her mother’s exhumed corpse between her feet.

The woman pulled on the man’s arm, urging them to go. Instead, the man reached into his pocket and produced his phone, which he shortly began filming them with.

“Christ almighty,” Carissa muttered under her breath. “Doesn’t anyone have any sense anymore…”

She started toward the couple, her form disappearing and reappearing in the patches of moonlight, moving at a leisurely pace.

“I’m recording you,” the man called, as Carissa closed the distance between them. “You’re not getting away with this.”

Carissa raised both hands in a gesture of truce. A promise of peace.

“This isn’t what it looks like,” she said, the bored mockery in her voice clear even at a distance. She continued toward them as the woman continued pulling on her partner’s arm, as he continued filming on his phone. “We were actually given permission by the graveyard staff⁠—”

“You were given permission?” the man repeated incredulously. “To come digging graves in the middle of the night?”

“Well, yes,” Carissa said. “To avoid disrupting the public during the day. Exhuming a grave is a sensitive endeavor, as you’ve well demonstrated.”

“What are you wearing?” the man asked as Carissa crept ever closer. “You’re not even wearing shoes!”

As Carissa came closer, however, the man appeared troubled by something much greater than her attire. He indicated it to his partner, pointing to the phone in his hands and shaking his head at what he saw—or perhaps what he didn’t see.

That’s when Carissa struck.

She bound from the grass onto the walkway, knocking his phone to the ground as she swept his arms aside and buried her face into the angle of his neck. She reared back, spat his meat onto the pavement at his partner’s feet. The woman screamed. She stumbled, feet tripping as she pivoted and fled in the other direction. Carissa gave the man a shove and toppled him onto the pavement, his body jittering, his opened throat spurting red. Then, as the woman shrieked across the cemetery, Carissa gave chase.

Dario did not budge. He could not. He stood at the edge of the open grave, in awe of what just transpired. What was transpiring. A cool breeze stirred the humid air, rustled the branches and leaves overhead. Left behind on the walkway, the man gurgled on his final, bloody breaths.

In the distance, the woman’s screams were cut short.

Dario could hear his own panting breaths, but they didn’t sound like his, feel like his. He felt nothing. Not even the ground beneath his feet. The breeze in his ear became a thundering roar.

Movement soon caught his attention. Carissa returned, something in her hand. It was the woman’s ankle, her lifeless body dragging along the pavement behind her. Carissa grabbed the man by his wrist along the way and, with a corpse in each hand, dragged both her victims across the grass, back toward her mother’s grave.

The roar in Dario’s ears grew quiet, and suddenly he realized he was holding his breath. It wasn’t easy forcing himself to take another.

“Help me bury these,” Carissa said.

With a lofty sigh, she flung both their bodies into the open grave. They folded on top of one another at the bottom, like rag dolls in a toy chest, their lifeless expressions frozen with surprise, as if they couldn’t believe they were dead.

Feeling rather numb, Dario took up his shovel as instructed. He glanced into the grave, at those false faces peering back. He scooped up some dirt. He was about to toss it in as there came a raspy wheeze from inside the dark hole.

“Oh,” Dario said. “Carissa, she’s…”

The woman shifted down below. A low, continuous whine escaped her, like a tire leaking air. Her dirt-and-blood-smudged face twitched. She’d been chewed open similarly, a nasty gaping wound just beneath her chin. That’s where the noise emitted—not from her mouth, but her throat.

“She’s still alive.”

“She’ll be dead in a matter of seconds, Dario. Unless you’d like to jump down there and finish her off with your shovel.”

Carissa scooped up some dirt and dumped it down. It covered the dead man’s face. She scooped up another, dumped it down, this time sprinkling across both their torsos. The dying woman continued fidgeting about. Fighting, Dario thought.

With a full heap of dirt still resting in his shovel, Dario’s arms began trembling with the weight. It was heavier than it looked, dirt. So much heavier than it looked…

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Carissa said.

She hurriedly scooped and tossed another five shovelfuls into the hole, dropping them squarely on her victims’ heads. The woman coughed, inhaling dirt as it covered her eyes. Another nicely placed pile silenced her for good. Dario felt a swell of emotions—a sudden and desperate need to weep, in order to stanch the loss of his better senses.

“There,” Carissa said. “That better?”

Slowly, shakily, Dario emptied his shovel into the hole atop the fresh bodies. He hated to think it, to admit it, but it was better now the woman was silenced. He added another mound of dirt. Then another. Before long, the mountains they’d unearthed were mostly replaced in the grave.

Carissa told him to take a short break while she returned their shovels to the toolshed, so he sat at the edge of the grave and stared blank-eyed at her mother’s corpse lying on the grass. Every muscle in his body was sore. His head was full and empty at the same time. Tired and bursting with nervous energy. Spinning and immobile.

“Ready to get back?” Carissa said when she returned.

Dario stood up without answer. Carissa carried her mother in her arms and together they retraced their steps through the cemetery. They exited through the back entrance, shuffled along the side of the road back to Dario’s car. He opened the trunk. Carissa dumped the corpse carelessly inside. Then, as she was about to slam the trunk shut, Carissa glanced in the direction of the football field across the street, scouring the shadows there.

“Did you hear that?” she said.

Dario hadn’t been paying attention. Carissa listened a moment longer, before she disregarded whatever it was and slammed the trunk shut.

Dario climbed behind the wheel. He felt rocky even sitting in place, the sensation of stepping off a boat, in constant motion. Carissa took her place in the passenger seat and proceeded to smile at him, her mouth a mess of crusty, dried blood.

“All done,” she said. “Now let’s get you back and into bed, huh? How does that sound?”

Dario started the engine. Again, without answer.

They pulled into the motel parking lot at 3:57 a.m. Dario killed the engine. He blinked his heavy, sleep-deprived eyes.

“You’ve been awfully quiet,” Carissa said.

He resisted the urge to look her way. He didn’t want to see her or the sarcastic grin she likely wore. He just wanted to go to bed and forget. Forget…

Didn’t you sign up for this?

He didn’t know what he’d signed up for, he reasoned with himself. Nothing like this, nothing like tonight.

“Why did you even need me tonight?” he said. “You don’t need my help carrying bodies, or digging holes. When you first asked for my help, I thought…” He peered into the nearby woods, dark and overgrown. “I thought it’d be daytime stuff. Things you couldn’t do on your own…”

Dario tensed as Carissa stole his hand from his lap. He looked at her then. He couldn’t not look at her, when he feared what she might do with his hand. But all she did was cradle it between her own, perhaps to emphasize her sincerity as she spoke.

“Because I needed your car,” she said, and smiled again like it was all some kind of joke.

Dario pulled his hand away. He gazed out into those trees once more, harboring all manner of hungry, nasty things.

“You’re gonna kill me eventually,” he said, his voice barely more than a mumble. “Aren’t you…”

“Dario, look at me.”

Dario did not look at her. Partly just to prove that he could resist her if he wanted to. He expected his eyes to wobble at any moment. When that didn’t happen, however, he finally did as she asked. He looked at her. He was astonished to see what he believed to be real sincerity in her black eyes, with no hint of amusement along the bloodied curve of her lips.

“I have no plans to harm you,” she said. “Ever. In fact, I quite like you, and that’s the honest truth.”

Blood and carnage flashed before his eyes—a twisted neck, a gaping throat, a mouth full of dirt. He wanted to turn away again, to lose himself in the distant dark. Instead he settled his gaze on the motel, rooms Nine and Ten.

“Here,” she said. There came a rustle of movement. “Maybe this will help ease your doubts.”

She placed something into his lap, between his limp hands resting between his thighs. Glancing down, he found a thick wad of cash waiting there. Even thicker than the last.

“That’s five-thousand dollars,” she said. She reached into the folds of her dress once again and produced something more. “And this should prevent you from losing any sleep over what we’ve done tonight.”

She offered the glass vial in the palm of her hand, waiting for him to take it. Dario’s former hunger sprang to life in a frenzy—a crude impulse to snatch the vial into his fist and take off running with it. He resisted that urge. In as nonchalant a fashion as possible, he took the vial from her open hand and held it beside the bundle of cash, studying them both with a careful indifference, even as his thoughts rejoiced and his stomach growled shamefully.

“After all, I’ll need you in tip-top shape tomorrow,” Carissa added, believing these things would be enough to solve Dario’s discontentment. “As for the body in your trunk, it’ll need to stay there a couple days, at least, so try not to get pulled over if you can help it.”

“A couple days?” Dario said.

“It’s fine. The body’s well decomposed, so there’s hardly a smell, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

It wasn’t quite what Dario was worried about. It was the more general ‘keeping a dead body in his trunk’ that concerned him.

“Try and get some sleep,” Carissa said. “I’ll see you again tomorrow night, okay?”

She gave him a reassuring smile with her gore-encrusted mouth before stepping out of the car. Dario simply watched as she returned to her room, just beside his.

The thought of going to bed was simultaneously dreadful and irresistible. He eyed the money in his lap once again, as well as the vial of vampire blood. He would definitely be drinking that tonight, he thought.

Or else he wouldn’t get a wink of sleep.

PART THREE

HELL HATH NO FURY

18

UNDER THE WEATHER

She woke in the early hours of the morning like normal, only something was terribly off. Someone had poured cement into her open mouth during the night. With each breath her throat tickled something fierce, so that she found herself tortured between coughing and trying to swallow the lump in her throat. Each swallow was its own agony. She shivered under the covers, despite her room being fairly warm this time of year even with the air conditioning going all night. She pulled her blankets up around her head and shuddered with a fresh wave of chills.

Why, she thought woefully. Why…

She grabbed her phone from the nightstand. There was an hour left before she was due for work. She opened up her text conversation with her boss. Judy. She stalled, reading over the last several exchanges between them.

Judy: Are you available to cover tonight after 5?

Ruth: Sure thing!

Judy: You want an extra shift? Andrea called in this morning.

Ruth: I’ll take it!

Judy: Can you cover closing shift tonight? Sorry for short notice.

Ruth: I can cover!

There were nearly three years of these exchanges. Each of Ruth’s responses were punctuated with enthusiasm, sent within five minutes of the original—irrefutable evidence of her long-term reliability, she thought. And yet still she hesitated to send the first message in this instance.

…you don’t call in sick every other week, so yeah, you’re one of my best…

Judy’s words played in Ruth’s feverish mind, sending stabbing icicles through her quivering guts. Was she nauseous, too? On top of everything else? It was hard to tell.

She typed the words: Hey Judy, I’m sorry but I’m not going to be able to make it in today. I’m super sick.

Somehow ‘super sick’ didn’t accurately describe what she was feeling.

Judy, I’m dying.

She retyped her original message over and over again, trying to tweak it to perfection, to arrange the news in such a way that would garner Judy’s sympathy.

Of course she’ll be sympathetic. I’m one of her best.

Ruth hit SEND.

She pulled her blankets up around herself once again, shivering with fever chills. She lightly coughed, which started a chain reaction of increasingly violent wheezes. The cement in her throat threatened to crack wide open. She audibly whimpered when the fit finally settled.

Then her phone began to ring. It was Judy.

Ruth answered the call, put her phone to her ear, cleared her throat, struggling not to start wheezing all over again.

“Hi, Judy,” she croaked.

“You’re sick?” Judy asked, as though the text hadn’t been clear enough.

“Yeah,” Ruth said. “I’m pretty sick.”

Judy groaned into the phone. “I need you here, Ruth…”

The line filled with silence. Was she meant to respond to that?

“I’m…” She paused, stifling another cough. “I’m really sick, Judy. I’m sorry. There’s no way I can⁠—”

“All right, fine.”

The line filled with silence again, but a different kind. A closed silence. Ruth held the phone away from her ear and saw the call had ended. No ‘get some rest’ or ‘feel better soon.’

She’s mad at me.

This idea sent another icicle piercing Ruth’s heart. An ice-sword, more like. She replaced her phone on the nightstand. She rolled over in bed, her throat tickling unbearably. She gave into another violent wheezing attack. By the end of it, her throat was raw and throbbing. She needed something to soothe it. Tea, perhaps? The thought of climbing out of bed was dreadful in and of itself. She sat up wearily. Her whole body ached, her bones creaking like an old ship.

She wrapped her blanket tight around her shoulders and shuffled into the hall, into the kitchen, their apartment’s spongey flooring groaning and squeaking along the way. She was surprised to find Shaylee already awake, sitting at the kitchen table with her laptop, a half-eaten cream cheese bagel in her hand. She looked at Ruth and knew in an instant something was wrong.

“Oh no,” Shaylee said, frowning. “You’re sick.”

“Yeah…”

“A cold? Looks worse than a cold.”

“I think it’s the flu.”

“Shit, I’m sorry. That sucks.”

Ruth shrugged. “I had a sick customer sneezing all over the place a couple days ago . Probably where I got it…”

Shaylee made a face. “People are disgusting…”

Ruth shuffled to the cabinet where they kept a variety of items, including tea.

“I’m sure they didn’t mean to get me sick…”

“Of course they didn’t mean to get you sick,” Shaylee said. “The problem is people like that don’t consider anyone else at all.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Ruth fetched a teabag and a mug, which she filled with water and microwaved for two minutes. “But everyone’s got their own stuff going on.”

Another wave of chills spread across her body, breaking her out in goosebumps. She pulled her blanket tighter around her shoulders.

“We’ve all got our own stuff going on,” Shaylee said, taking another bite of her bagel. “People these days act like being oblivious is an excuse, when really it’s just another sign you’re an asshole.”

Despite feeling like crap, Shaylee’s unexpected tirade made Ruth smile a little as she waited for her water to heat. Shaylee got like this about a lot of things. She was very opinionated, very intense. She loved people as much as she hated them. Whereas Ruth tried to leave as much room for doubt and understanding as she could, Shaylee was proud to draw lines in the sand and hold everyone to the same standard to which she held herself—and she held herself to quite a high standard.

The microwave beeped. Ruth took her steaming mug out and dropped her chamomile tea in. The smell was heavenly.

“Well, hopefully I don’t get you sick,” Ruth said. “I’m gonna try and get some more sleep…”

“Hey, I’m going to the store later,” Shaylee said, stopping Ruth as she headed for the hallway. “Do you want me to pick you up anything?”

The mere offer stunned Ruth. With her hot mug of tea in one hand and the folds of her blanket clasped in the other, all she could do was shake her head.

“I don’t think so. But thanks.”

“Well, lemme know if you think of something and I’ll get it.”

Shaylee returned to her laptop, none the wiser that Ruth lingered in a daze of appreciation. Finally she returned to her bedroom. She shut the door and climbed into bed, where she took small sips of her tea. The heat was actually a bit painful to her sore throat, but with each swallow she felt a little more relief. She sipped until her mug was half empty. She set it aside, snuggled under the covers once more, and shivered herself back to sleep.

She knew something was amiss the moment she stepped into her mother’s sweltering apartment. It was too quiet, for starters. A distinct lack of talk-show chatter in the next room. A distinct lack of any noise at all. The silence was heavy. Heavier still was the creeping, overwhelming sense of walking into something she shouldn’t. Something waiting, just around the corner. A thinking, plotting, hungering thing.

Despite not wanting to take another step, she moved deeper into the apartment, toward the first doorway on the right, the doorway to the living room, where her mother liked to sit and rock and stroke a cat in her lap while she watched the latest televised-outrage special.

I don’t want to look. I don’t want to see.

Something ghastly loomed in the next room. She felt its pull on her, as she glided effortlessly through the hall, as every cell in her body begged her to stop, to turn around, to leave this place. Instead she stepped across the threshold, into the living room, and she looked. She saw.

Her mother wasn’t so much a corpse on the floor as she was a disintegrated thing unraveling there. Her cats—all five of them—were having their fill of what was left. Nibbling. Ripping. Tearing. Their little bodies purred hungrily.

Ruth opened her mouth to scream but couldn’t. The word itself, the thing she wished to scream to the high heavens, was a solid thing lodged in her throat, each letter jutting with thorns.

MOM.

That was the shape of it. It swelled inside her, unspoken, balloon-like, the garden hose of her voice filling it up to dangerous proportions.

MOM.

The cats continued to pick and lick and circle for more. They hissed at one another as they got in each other’s way. Ruth could only tremble in the doorway.

Bottled up and fit to burst from the pressure.

Ruth screamed. Her eyes snapped open and she was screaming, actually screaming, and it was only as she realized where she was—a pillow beneath her head, legs tangled in her sheets—that she silenced herself. She sat straight up, heart thudding against her sternum. Outside her bedroom, a series of approaching footsteps. There came a knock on the door.

“Ruth? Are you okay?”

It was Shaylee.

“Yeah!” Ruth tried to shout, straining her voice. “I’m fine.”

But she wasn’t fine. Her heart continued to slam. She reached for her phone. She pulled up her contacts and scrolled until she came to one in particular: Mom.

She called without hesitation. She lay back on her pillow, her phone to her ear as it began to ring through. Ring, ring, ring. Ruth waited with bated breath. A tickle in her swollen throat. A head-to-toe shiver as she lay in her sweat-drenched sheets.

Ring, ring, ring.

Finally the phone picked up. An impatient sigh. A blow of crackling static.

“What is it?” were the first words out of her mother’s mouth.

Ruth sighed a breath of relief.

“Sorry,” she said. Her mouth was so intensely dry she could hardly speak. “I didn’t mean to call. I just…”

“You sound terrible.”

Her mother’s abrupt words might have made her laugh if it wouldn’t have sent her into another coughing fit.

“I’m okay, mom. Thanks. Sorry. I didn’t mean to call. I’ll talk to you later…”

Just as she placed her phone back onto her nightstand, there came another knock on her bedroom door. It was Shaylee again.

“Can I come in?”

Ruth was slow to respond, already spent from the brief conversation with her mother. She untangled herself from her bedsheets, pulled her covers over herself appropriately. Her head swam with a sudden delirium.

“Yeah,” she answered.

Shaylee entered cautiously. Her hands were full—a glass of water in one, a box of something in the other.

“What was that I heard?” she said. “It sounded like screaming.”

“Oh, yeah…” Ruth tried to force an embarrassed laugh and, predictably, forced herself into a breathless wheeze instead. When she could speak again, she said, “I had a nightmare, was all.”

Shaylee stopped short of her bed, head cocked curiously.

“You woke up screaming from a nightmare?” She almost looked impressed. “Shit. I thought that only happened in movies.”

She set the glass of water down on Ruth’s nightstand. Then she pulled open the box in her hands, from which she removed a plastic sheet of blue pop-out liquid gels. Flu medicine, Ruth finally realized.

“I picked these up from the store,” she said. “They technically sell non-drowsy stuff too, but this will help you sleep all day if that’s your goal.”

Ruth watched in growing disbelief as Shaylee fiddled with the liquid gel pack, struggling to tear one of them open.

“You didn’t have to do this,” Ruth said.

“It’s nothing,” Shaylee said. “I was already going to the store anyway.” She finally managed to tear out the liquid gels, which she placed on Ruth’s nightstand beside the glass of water. “I also picked up some of that boxed noodle soup if you’re hungry.”

Ruth felt as though she were dreaming again. “You did?”

“I can make some if you want. Are you hungry?”

“You’d do that?” Ruth said, her voice croaking. “For me?”

Shaylee laughed. “It’s just boiling water. I’ll make some right now. And you should take those in the meantime. By the time the soup’s done you’ll be ready for another eight-hour nap.”

Shaylee smiled and left the room. Ruth lay in a haze of overwhelming questions she couldn’t begin to piece together in her head, let alone speak aloud. If there wasn’t already a ball of sickness in her throat, she was sure there’d be a lump of sentiment now. She took the blue liquid gels in her hand and swallowed them down with the glass of water. It took a few painful gulps to manage it. The water was oddly delicious, though, as parched as she was. She lay back down onto her pillow, into her pool of murky thoughts.

The blue model car was still sitting beside her on the nightstand. She noticed it now, remembered it rolling off its shelf the previous night. Not a coincidence, she reminded herself. That had been a sign, she was sure of it. But a sign of what?

That Zachary Holcomb is exactly who I think he is.

She was close to falling back to sleep when Shaylee entered her room again, this time with a bowl of soup in hand. She shuffled things around on Ruth’s nightstand to place it there, steaming and aromatic even to Ruth’s dulled senses. Chicken-flavored seasoning. Her appetite perked up in an instant.

“You actually made soup for me,” Ruth said.

Shaylee gave her a funny look, like she were a child you couldn’t help but find amusing.

“It’s like you’ve never seen a bowl of soup before,” she said. “Eat that and get some sleep. You obviously need it.”

“Why are you being so nice to me,” Ruth blurted. She wasn’t sure if it was the flu medicine or her tired mind, but her emotions were positively storming now, making a mess of her both inside and out. She couldn’t conceal them.

Shaylee only gave her another, funnier look.

“It’s nothing,” she said. “Besides, you’ve been an awesome roommate. I bet you’d do the same for me.”

I would, Ruth thought. I absolutely would. I would take a bullet for you, Shaylee…

Obviously her mind was getting away from her. She recognized this even as the thoughts came freely, as she felt these things so intensely in her half-delirious state. She was only fortunate that she didn’t embarrass herself by saying them aloud. She could have burst into sobs at any moment. She could also pass out at any moment if she wished, she was so exhausted…

“Thank you,” she said.

“Of course,” Shaylee said.

And with that, Shaylee left her alone. Ruth wiped the tears from her eyes. She propped herself up with her pillow behind her back, took the bowl into her lap, still steaming hot, and proceeded to eat the whole thing, drinking the salty broth to the very last drop. When she finished she placed the bowl aside, pulled her covers back over her shivering self, and returned to the land of dreaming.

19

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Dario idled at the curb with the AC on full blast, the summer heat beating down on his car as he watched his sister’s softball practice from across the parking lot. He knew she had practice almost every day. He also knew she walked herself there and back, and that this would be the perfect opportunity to see her, safe from their parents’ supervision.

Fucking assholes.

Between bouts of jaw-clenching resentment for their father, he couldn’t stop thinking about the previous night. Even as the softball players began funneling across the field and gathering their things to head home, Dario’s eyes glazed over, his vision superseded by images of bodies wrapped in motel covers, bodies lying crumpled at the bottom of an open grave, a body in the trunk of his car.

The latter of which was still there, of course.

But as often as last night’s events forced their way into his mind, he also couldn’t stop thinking about the money he’d been paid for his hard work. Five-thousand dollars in a single day. He still couldn’t believe it. And there was more work to be done tonight?

How much worse will it be?

These thoughts scattered as he finally noticed his sister crossing the field toward the sidewalk, heading home. He put his car into gear and followed. He rolled his window down as he approached, pulling up beside her.

“Hey!” he shouted.

She turned to see him, and the anxious look on her face quickly brightened as she realized who it was—and just as quickly shifted back as she peered anxiously up the street, as if their father might suddenly appear at any moment.

“What are you looking around for?” Dario said. “Dad’s a plumber, not a government spy. Get in already.”

Finally she opened the passenger door and climbed inside, dumping her duffel bag to the floor at her feet.

“I just don’t want you getting in trouble,” she said, hesitating to even put on her seatbelt. “Dad isn’t messing around, you know.”

“I don’t care what dad is or isn’t doing. What gives him the right to tell me I’m not allowed to see my own sister? You know that’s crazy, right? You know he’s crazy, don’t you?”

“I know,” was all RiRi could say. She gazed out her window at the nearby softball field, where a few stragglers were still making their way across.

“Anyway, how was practice?” Dario said, as he reached into the backseat.

“It was good,” she answered listlessly.

Dario grabbed the bag behind her seat and placed it on RiRi’s lap. She regarded it skeptically, until she saw the clothing brand logo on the outside and realized what it might be.

“What is this?” she said.

“I got you something. I hope you like it.”

She appeared torn between appreciation, intrigue, and unease. She reached into the bag and slowly pulled it out. The leather jacket unfolded from her hand as she held it toward the roof of Dario’s car.

“Oh my god,” she said. “Dario…”

Her mouth formed an O. She obviously loved it, even as she soon furrowed her brow.

“How can you afford this?”

“I got a new job,” he answered proudly.

“A new job?”

“Yeah, as someone’s personal assistant.” That was vague enough, he thought. Safe enough. “I knew you’d like it. It doesn’t have any of the corny zippers or pockets I know you hate.”

“I love it, I really do, but…” She turned to see him, meeting his gaze with her relentlessly worried one. “How am I supposed to wear this? Mom and dad will wonder where I got it.”

“I don’t know, tell them… a friend received it as a gift but decided it’s the wrong size, so they gave it to you? Besides, it’s not exactly jacket season, so you can hide it in your closet for a bit.”

“I wish I had friends who were that generous…”

She sighed, lowering the jacket back into her lap. Dario so badly wanted her to smile. Even just a little bit.

She surprised him instead with a sudden hug, leaning out of her seat and throwing her arms tightly around him. That made Dario smile, at least.

“I’ve missed you,” she said.

“I’ve missed you, too.” Dario hugged his sister just as tightly. “I was thinking, maybe in a couple years when you’re old enough to move out, we could even find a place together.”

As they separated, Dario found RiRi beaming at the idea.

“That would seriously be awesome,” she said.

Dario was glad she thought so.

He watched and waited as the light shifted from molten sundown to pale moonlight, until finally her shadow swam across the curtains and he got up to answer the door. She stood politely on the doormat, hands clasped, wearing the same black dress as always. Black was a great color on her, Dario thought, as it masked how horridly dirty her dress must have been. Her bare feet were less subtle in that regard.

“Ready for another interesting night?” she asked, grinning playfully.

Interesting wasn’t quite the word Dario would have used.

“That depends,” he said. “How interesting do you expect it will be?”

“You’ll be thoroughly stimulated, I assure you. And adequately paid.”

Dario grabbed his shoes, his wallet, his keys, and they were off.

Carissa gave him specific directions, never telling him in advance where they were headed. But it wasn’t long before Dario found himself following backroads into Kingsley again, the same town whose cemetery they’d plundered just the night before.

Tonight they stuck to the town’s rural outskirts, however, where many isolated properties were sprinkled across the countryside. The winding roads splintered into long, veiny offshoots of dirt and gravel driveways, each home concealed around the next rolling hill or behind the next tree-choked bend. These country roads were scarcely lit. Dario relied mostly on his headlights to navigate them.

“Almost there,” Carissa said. “There should be another turnoff up here on our left. We’ll stop the car just beyond that, along the shoulder here.”

Dario slowed, as he didn’t want to miss it. They drove along a stretch of wooded area on the right, with a thin smattering of single-file trees along the opposite side of the road as well, on the left, blocking their line of sight to the property there—their destination, Dario thought.

“Here,” Carissa said.

Sure enough, concealed beyond the privacy of those single-file trees, a gravel driveway branched along the slight grade of a hillside, toward some dark property nestled near the top. Dario passed the driveway, easing them into the shoulder under the shade of the looming woods. He parked, killed the engine, shut off the headlights. He peered across the road, through the thin curtain of trees, and could faintly see the shape of the house on the hill, its contour revealed under the moonlight.

“Where are we?” Dario asked.

“There’s a house just up that driveway,” Carissa said.

“Yeah, I see that. But whose house is it? What are we doing here?”

“I have business with the woman inside.”

“Okay. Why are we being so secretive?”

Carissa laughed. “You’re so cute, Dario…”

She was studying herself in the drop-down visor mirror, pressing her lips, her eyes darting all about the reflection of her face. He’d vaguely wondered about that—if she’d have any reflection at all. He discreetly leaned out of his seat to try and see for himself.

“Yes, I have a reflection,” Carissa said drably, startling Dario back into place. “Capturing me on camera, though, is another matter entirely…”

Apparently satisfied with her appearance, she folded the visor back up. She regarded Dario plainly, looking him up and down as if deciding whether or not he was worth the explanation.

“The woman in that house doesn’t wish to see me,” she said. “But she’s expecting me, all the same. Which makes things tricky.”

“Tricky?”

“She knows about me. What I am. Which means she doesn’t set foot outside after dark. And seeing as I’m unable to set foot inside without an invitation…”

“So that one’s real, then.”

“It’s real, yes.”

Dario’s thoughts began launching like rockets in quick succession.

“How come you can enter my motel room, then? I never invited you inside.”

“Because that isn’t a home, Dario,” she said, a severe boredom settling into her gaze as she eyed the hillside across the road.

“Oh,” Dario said, slightly wounded. “Well then… what qualifies as a home?”

“Less than you’d expect,” she said rather distractedly, still studying the property, the darkness there. “But there are ways around it. The invitation, I mean.”

Dario still wasn’t sure what to think of her answers, or the logic behind her condition, so he moved on.

“All right, so… what sort of business do you have with this woman?”

“The unfinished sort,” Carissa said, and smiled at him. Despite sitting in the dark, with no city lights to illuminate them, her black eyes somehow seemed to glint like a cat’s.

“This isn’t a repeat of last night, is it?” he said. “I told you I didn’t want to have anything to do with⁠—”

“Last night was an accident,” she interrupted. “Tonight will include nothing of the sort, and you’ll be paid handsomely for your time when we’re through. Don’t look at me like that, Dario. Would you rather be selling your body for a fraction of the earnings?”

“At least sex work is honest…”

“Oh, sure. Honest.” Carissa scoffed. “And if it weren’t for me, you’d be just another body in somebody else’s trunk.” She sighed, exasperated by his questions. “All I want is to talk to the woman inside. That’s it.”

“So what do you need me for?”

“Well…”

She reached into the dark folds of her dress. What she pulled out sent Dario’s throat tightening, his palms sweating. It was a small knife she held, winking in the dark between them. Just the sight of its meager but sharp blade cut Dario’s confidence to ribbons.

“First things first,” she said, “I need you to trust me.”

20

THE RUSE

The old man and woman sat side by side in the dark with their portable dinner trays, as the television light flashed them repeatedly like a paparazzi bombardment right in their own living room. Neither of them minded. They rather enjoyed it, in fact—sitting and watching the latest Dancing with the Stars. They never missed an episode. Not on purpose, anyway.

Both the old man and woman startled as there came a barrage of knuckles on the front door, followed by a frenzy of doorbell dings. The old man took up the TV remote and was about to mute their program when his wife waved her hand in objection.

“We’re not answering that,” she said. She scowled toward the door. “Who could that even be? At this hour?”

It was nearing ten o’clock.

The old man said nothing for a moment, thinking, when another desperate round of doorbell dings assaulted them, again and again, and someone’s shouting voice floated through the door.

“Please! I need help!”

The old man’s eyes grew wide. The old woman’s narrowed.

“Don’t you dare answer that,” she said. She pursed her lips, waiting.

It was a man outside. A young man, judging by his warbling pitch. He sounded afraid.

“He could be in some real trouble,” the old man said.

“Or made-up trouble,” the woman replied. “You know folks are crazy these days. They’ll do or say anything to get their foot in the door and then you’re robbed or dead or both.”

“Please!” the young man shouted once more, still ringing the doorbell.

The old man sprang to his feet. His wife grabbed him by his sun-spotted wrist.

“I said no.”

“I’m getting my rifle,” he explained. “Then we’ll answer the door together and see what the fuss is about.”

“Paul…”

“I don’t want anyone’s misfortune on my conscience,” he replied and started out of the room, into the nearby hall where the light flicked on and his footsteps padded out of earshot.

The woman stood up likewise. She went to the window, pulled the blinds apart, and attempted to spy who was out there on the front porch. It was too dark to see anything. She went to the door—locked and deadbolted—and flipped the switch to the porch light. She paused with her hand on the doorknob, waiting for her husband to come back from fetching his rifle under the bed. His footsteps returned down the hallway, into the living room.

“I’m ready,” he said, his rifle fitted against his shoulder.

She unlocked the deadbolt, twisted the lock, and opened the door.

The young man on their front porch was just a baby. He looked like he might have been in high school, though it was getting harder and harder to tell these days. Either way, both the old man and woman were surprised to see him there, alone and disheveled, a sheen of sweat upon his panicked brow under the porch light.

“Please,” he said, flustered. “I was just attacked and…”

“Attacked?” the woman said. “Who attacked you?”

The young man turned to the moonlit night, mouth agape, momentarily short on words.

“A man,” he said, scouring the dark like his attacker could still be out there somewhere. “I hitched a ride with him and…”

“Hitched a ride?” the old man said. “Boy, don’t you know how dangerous that is nowadays?”

“I didn’t have much choice. I really needed to be somewhere and… well, I think he might have been drunk. I jumped out of his car…”

“Jumped out of his car?” the woman said. “Oh my goodness…”

“Can I please use your phone?”

The old couple exchanged wary glances. The woman stepped into the doorway, scanning left and right across the fields, the road at the bottom of the driveway. The old man kept his rifle shouldered, eyeing the young man with a mixture of wariness and pity he couldn’t hide. It was only then the young man seemed to notice the weapon, his Adam’s apple all the more prominent as it bobbed with a nervous gulp.

“All right, come inside,” the woman said, apparently recognizing that the boy hardly posed a threat, even against two old birds like them.

She shut the door behind him, then led him through the living room and into the adjoining kitchen. She turned on the light and motioned for him to have a seat at the small round table. The young man sat down, his eyes darting skittishly between them, the rifle more visible under the kitchen’s light there.

“Thirsty?” the woman said.

“Oh. Uh. Sure,” he answered.

“You want us to call the police?” the old man asked.

“No!” he exclaimed—perhaps a little more animated than he meant to be, as he bashfully withdrew. “Sorry, I just… I need to call myself another ride, that’s all. I would do it myself, but… I’m between phones at the moment.”

“You said you were attacked,” the woman said. “You should call the police and let them know there’s a dangerous man out there.”

“Are you in some kind of trouble?” the old man said.

The young man took a deep breath, clearly reluctant to say too much about it.

“Something like that,” he muttered.

“Hmm.” The old man was familiar with the kinds of troubles folks around these parts might find themselves in with the police. “All right, I’ll fetch the phone for you.”

Just as her husband left the room, the old woman reached into one of the cabinets for a glass.

“So where are you headed exactly?” she said, filling the glass with water from the kitchen sink.

She turned to face the young man and gasped. She staggered against the lip of the countertop, a hand over her heart, nearly releasing the glass in her astonishment.

“Oh my god…”

The boy’s arm was sliced open, right down the length of it, a thick runnel of blood fanning to the floor. A small knife quivered in his hand. He regarded the woman with the sorriest expression, his face gray as concrete, his blood pattering noisily to the floor in an impossible stream.

Realization soon dawned on the woman—what this was. She inattentively set the glass aside, sent it toppling into the sink with a noisy rattle, and began screaming for her husband.

21

TRANSACTIONS

Dario hardly heard the old woman’s screams as he was entirely enraptured by the sight of his own blood spilling in loose sheets from the slit in his arm. It seemed to him his blood was thicker than it should have been. Like pancake batter. At least the color was right. And the odor was right, or so he believed…

Coppery… yet sweet.

“Paul, get him out of here! Get him out of here now!”

Her husband slid to a halt in the kitchen doorway, armed and ready to blast Dario straight in his chest if he was impulsive enough to pull the trigger. Luckily for Dario, Paul was too confused by what he saw—Dario’s wound, the copious gore on their kitchen floor, or the bizarre fact that it was moving.

Yes, the blood. It was moving.

Dario gazed upon the puddle at his feet, where he discovered his syrupy materials were beginning to ripple. To splash. It was like watching rain droplets upon the surface of a lake, those retaliatory droplets spritzing into the air, his blood beginning to boil, splashing higher, higher still, long wet cords rising, spiraling around one another, higher and higher until Dario was forced to stumble out of its way. The backs of his legs knocked against his chair where he heavily planted himself, and was grateful to do so as he didn’t think his legs could support him much longer. The blood continued to rise. Those cords thickened as they pulsed round and round, three, four, five feet into the air. Within a matter of seconds those bloody ropes merged into one solid pillar, shimmering wet, and from there it began to take shape.

She began to take shape.

Shoulders and hips broadened. From between said shoulders, the distinct domed bubble of a head sprouted. Arms and legs separated themselves from the trunk. Her finer details began to form, the bodily dimples and curves, as the dark, black-red hue of the blood brightened, becoming flesh, becoming whole.

It wasn’t until Carissa was nearly standing naked in their kitchen that the old woman finally lunged for the rifle tucked uselessly in the crook of her husband’s armpit. She snatched it away from him with an angry grunt. She tucked it against her own shoulder, lifting its barrel into the air as she swiveled toward them. Carissa stepped against her and, with the unbreakable poise of a well-oiled machine, swept the rifle from the old woman’s grasp, sent it clattering across the kitchen floor. Then she grabbed the old woman by the throat and pinned her to the wall.

“Nice try,” Carissa said.

The woman’s husband, Paul, took one lousy step in their direction before Carissa struck him with the flat of her palm. He crumpled in the doorway, onto the living room carpet.

The old woman writhed in place. She grabbed the necklace she wore, pulled it from the front of her blouse, and revealed the golden cross on its chain.

“Back!” she screamed.

Much to her dismay, Carissa burst into laughter rather than flames. Carissa broke the necklace from around the old woman’s neck and tossed it to the floor, where Dario glimpsed the smallest lick of smoke rising from its surface.

Not entirely useless, then, he thought.

Carissa clenched her scalded hand into a fist.

“I advise you to stay put, old man,” she told the woman’s husband, as he tried picking himself up in the doorway. “Unless you want your lovely wife’s lights snuffed out.”

All I want is to talk to the woman inside. That’s it.

Carissa’s words rang hollow in Dario’s mind. Judging by the grip she had on the woman’s throat, it seemed very little talking would be accomplished tonight.

“Carissa…” the old woman rasped.

Carissa peered into the old woman’s squinted eyes and replied, “Hello, dear sister.”

Dario momentarily forgot his throbbing wound. He studied the two women before him, inches apart, so many decades between them, and believed he saw a striking resemblance after all.

“I worried you wouldn’t remember me,” Carissa said.

The old woman coughed. “What do you want from me?”

“I just wanted to see your lovely face,” Carissa mocked. “And to perhaps have a little chat.”

“What do we have to talk about?”

Carissa laughed. “What don’t we have to talk about, dear sister? Or perhaps you’re in need of a refresher? I’m sure your memory isn’t what it used to be, in your old age. Whereas I’ve hardly aged at all, as you can see…”

Carissa darkened, an unspoken grudge permeating the air so profusely that even Dario might have choked on it, if not for the two sisters stealing most of the room’s oxygen in their heated quarrel.

“I had nothing to do with that,” the old woman said, wincing as Carissa’s grip shifted upon her neck.

“Of course not, Kimberly, but you were there. I remember that very well. I still recall your cries when our dear father handed me over into that car, where I was so kindly whisked away to my new forever home. I’ve been there ever since, you know. Until only recently. I just thought I’d swing by and see how everyone was doing, how you were holding up—how life’s treated y’all without me.” Carissa regarded the old man in the kitchen doorway, sitting up with his back against the doorframe, still panting tiredly from his earlier tumble. “I see you’ve happily married. Sorry I couldn’t make it to the wedding. I would have so loved to have been there, but unfortunately I was tied up.” She gazed deeply into her sister’s eyes. “Sometimes literally.”

She released her sister then. Kimberly hunched, greedily gasping for air. Carissa grabbed her by the arm and, without a word about it, directed her sister to the kitchen table, to the chair across from Dario, where she roughly sat her down, like putting a child into timeout.

Massaging her wrinkled throat, Kimberly asked, “What do you really want?”

Carissa leaned back against the wall where she’d had her sister pinned, her long dark hair pulled over one shoulder, draped over one breast, arms folded beneath, ankles crossed, watching Kimberly with a certain unenthused expression.

“I need to speak to our father.”

Kimberly sneered incredulously at this.

“He’s dead,” she said, a hint of pleasure to her tone.

Dario turned back and forth between the sisters with near-whiplash effect, unsure where this exchange could possibly be headed.

Keeping her tone perfectly calm, perfectly collected, Carissa said, “That’s a lie. A bad one, too. Don’t try that again, lest I tear your husband’s head from his shoulders as one snaps a dandelion from its stem.”

Whatever color had been restored to Kimberly’s face sans hand around her throat now drained all over again.

“You’re disgusting…”

“Says the woman trying to protect so hideous a creature as our father.” Carissa scoffed. “That’s disgusting, Kimberly.”

“If you already know he’s alive, then go speak to him yourself. What do you need me for?”

“I can’t speak to him so easily, as you well know. And I know you know, dear sister, because you’ve just tried wielding a crucifix against me. Not only is father’s room well protected, but his visiting hours are limited to the daylight, which rules me right out.”

“So what are you asking for, exactly?” Kimberly said. “Get to the point, why don’t you…”

“You’re authorized to check him out for a time, are you not?”

Kimberly finally stopped massaging her throat. She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her belly, much like Carissa did across the room.

“I believe so.”

“You believe so? No, you know so, dear sister. Stop wasting your own time, playing coy. I’d like for you to check him out for a night. Then we’ll have ourselves a lovely family meeting.”

“A family meeting,” Kimberly said. “Which ends with all of us dead, I’m sure.”

Carissa let out a long, aggravated sigh.

“Kimberly, I’m well aware we were only children back then. You were only a child then. I hold no grudges for you. In fact, I’ve missed you a great deal all these years…”

“Ha!” Kimberly exclaimed, without any hint of a smile. “Tell that to the bruise around my throat.”

“You left me no choice,” Carissa said. “Don’t pretend otherwise. And no, as far as those old matters are concerned, I’m only interested in speaking with our father. But I can only do that with your help.”

Kimberly tongued the inside of her mouth as she seemed to mull it over.

“I’ll think about it,” she said.

Carissa pressed her lips firmly, as though she expected such an answer. She moved toward Kimberly’s husband, Paul, still sitting in the doorway. He drew his gaze up and down Carissa’s naked form as she came to stand before him.

“You’ll do more than think about it,” Carissa said. “Because until I see our father face to face, your husband’s will be a mere memory to you.”

Paul fidgeted nervously. Kimberly cocked her head, confused.

“What the hell are you saying?”

“I’m saying, sweet Paul here is going to come stay with me until these matters are settled.” She pointed a single, scornful finger toward him as he stirred. “Don’t bother fighting me on this, sir. It won’t end well for you, I can assure you.”

“You’re insane,” Kimberly said, to which her sister shrugged.

“Yes, well… you would be too, if you’d lived my life. Consider yourself blessed.” Now Carissa turned her attention on Dario. Her sudden gaze startled him. “Dario, what day is it?”

“Uh… it’s Thursday.”

“Thursday,” Carissa repeated. “All right. Have father here by tomorrow night.”

“I can’t do that,” Kimberly said, shaking her head. “His facility requires twenty-four hour notice before checking family out overnight.”

Carissa scrunched her face in disbelief, as if the suggestion were preposterous.

“To hell with their notice, he’s our father. How can they⁠—”

“That’s just the way it is,” Kimberly said. “For the safety and wellbeing of their residents.”

“Fine,” Carissa said, relenting. “Have him here by Saturday evening, then. That just means I’ll be holding onto Paul for longer, is all.”

“What?” Paul said, finding his voice at last. “You can’t do that. I have work!”

“Aren’t you retirement age?” Carissa asked. “In any case, your job is the least of your concerns right now. Perhaps Kimberly here can call in sick on your behalf. Get creative. Kimberly? We’ll see you Saturday night, with father.”

Carissa bent, grabbed the old man by his wrinkled arm, and hauled him to his feet. Paul was visibly frightened by her unexpected strength.

“Let’s go,” Carissa said, nodding for Dario to follow.

Dario sprang to his feet. He looked back once to see Kimberly at the kitchen table, staring daggers at their backs as they went. He followed Carissa through the living room, out the front door, into the deep summer night. Dario lagged as he closed the front door behind them, then rushed down the porch steps to catch up, Paul struggling not to trip over his own feet. Along the driveway, Carissa flicked a cursory glance in Dario’s direction.

“How’s the arm?” she said.

Dario had somehow forgotten his wound. Strangely, he wasn’t bleeding anymore, and the slit he’d cut across his flesh appeared tighter, closing up. He couldn’t be healing already, could he? That seemed impossible. Then again, everything tonight seemed impossible in one way or another. Suffice to say, he was beginning to realize he understood very little in the way of vampires.

“Fine, I think.”

“Please don’t do this,” Paul pleaded, dragging his socked feet through the gravel. “Please…”

“Do what?” Carissa replied. “Nothing’s happened yet.”

“I don’t blame you for being angry,” Paul said. “For… for what happened.”

“And what do you think happened, exactly?” Carissa snapped. “To tell you the truth, Paul, I’m not interested in the opinions of those who don’t even know the half of it…”

They reached the bottom of the driveway, where Dario’s car waited under the shadow of the woods.

“Dario, be a dear and grab that for me, will you?”

Carissa indicated something in the dirt at the side of the road. Dario picked it up—a pile of rough, lacy fabric which he soon realized was her dress. She must have removed it there in advance, knowing her little trick would leave it behind anyway.

She opened the car door and shoved Paul into the backseat. Then she took the dress from Dario, which she proceeded to slip over her head, her arms through the sleeves. She tugged and shifted it about her body until she was satisfied—until she once more resembled the undead, out-of-time phantom Dario recognized.

Dario drove them back in silence as Paul pleaded endlessly with Carissa in the backseat, begging her not to harm him or his wife.

“I’m a woman of my word,” she told Paul. “So long as my sister stays true to hers as well.”

Back at the motel, Carissa instructed Dario to let them into his room, as she escorted Paul with a firm grip on his bicep. Inside, she instructed Paul to sit on the lid of Dario’s toilet.

“I’ll be right back,” she said. “Don’t give my friend here any trouble.”

Dario did his best not to look at Paul while they waited. He avoided the bathroom mirror similarly, as he didn’t think he could stand facing himself tonight.

“Please,” Paul whispered. “Don’t let her do this.”

Dario sniffed, unsure what to say. He wanted to say nothing. He wanted to wash his hands clean of this night, to climb into bed and lose himself to sweet nothingness again.

“You’ll be fine,” he muttered. “Just do what she says.”

Did he even believe that? That everything would be fine so long as they did what she told them?

Carissa returned with a loose gathering of thin rope.

“On the floor,” she told Paul. “On your stomach.”

“You don’t have to do this…”

“On the floor, I said.”

“You don’t have to do this!”

“How many times must I tell you? Everything will be just fine if you do as I say. All right?” She leveled her gaze on Paul with an expectant pause. “So do as I say.”

Dario wondered why she didn’t just control him with that unusual power of hers. Paul must not have been susceptible to it, he supposed. Nevertheless, Paul reluctantly slipped from the toilet onto the floor, onto his stomach. Carissa tied his wrists together behind his back, knotting the thin rope quite finely. The old man groaned, his face upon the bathroom tile. Dario couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. Old bodies weren’t so flexible. Stiffer joints and everything else. Carissa tied his ankles together similarly. Then they left him there, lying on the bathroom floor. Carissa shut the door as they stepped out.

“So I’m just supposed to watch him, then?” Dario said. “For the next two days?”

“You have some other urgent business that needs your attention?” Carissa said, her playful demeanor all but drained from her.

Dario was beginning to think Carissa’s dress was some kind of bewitched thing, like Mary Poppins’ magic bag—a bottomless bust from which she pulled another thick wad of cash. Whatever protestations he might have had, he was silenced by the weight of the bundle in his hand.

“And in case he keeps you up at night with all his whimpering…”

She reached into her dress again and produced yet another dark vial of her blood. Dario held it pinched between his fingers, the thick liquid inside stirring his appetite in an instant. It stirred something else in him as well—a suspicion that had begun growing since departing Paul’s and Kimberly’s house, a suspicion he couldn’t bear to ignore.

“You’ve been planning tonight since the beginning,” he said, still studying Carissa’s blood as he felt her eyes studying him in kind. “This stuff… your blood… it’s how you were able to use me tonight, isn’t it? How you were able to get inside without an invitation. Because some part of you is already inside me…”

“Yes, and?” Carissa said, impatient with Dario’s slow uptake.

Dario shrugged. “I guess I’m only now realizing you didn’t just happen to step in and save me that night. You’d already picked me for this.”

Carissa sighed, digging deep for a modicum of sympathy.

“Yes, Dario, it’s true. I ultimately picked you because you’re an… unassuming young man. A doe-eyed boy, in the eyes of some, I’m certain. It’s precisely the quality that earned you the clientele you so enjoyed before I came along as well. But that wasn’t the only thing I saw in you. I also saw a man gravely down on his luck, desperate for a better life…”

“Gee, thanks,” Dario said.

“Someone whom I believe deserves a better life. I’m not just using you, I promise you that. I like you, Dario. Honestly, I do. I think we have much in common, in fact. Dare I say… I believe you and I to be kindred spirits.”

Dario couldn’t help grimacing at the suggestion.

“You’re laying it on a bit thick now,” he said.

He tensed as Carissa took his injured arm into her hands. She turned it over, his wound facing the ceiling for them both to see. It was still raw and red, gummed up with dried blood.

“I’m really sorry about this,” she said. Dario chanced peering into her eyes, and was surprised to find that same sincerity he’d seen the previous night. Was it real, he wondered? Or just a good act? “If there had been any other way to accomplish what we did tonight, I’d have gone that route instead, believe me.”

Believe me.

That was perhaps the most troubling thing about all of this—that he was actually beginning to do just that.

Growing uncomfortable with that fact, Dario looked away, to the bathroom door beside them.

“What are you really going to do with them?” he asked.

“You’re not to worry about that,” Carissa said. “But if it helps ease your purer sensibilities, just know that these people we’re dealing with… they are not good people, Dario. And I should know. I was raised by them.”

Dario thumbed through the new bundle of cash and counted another $5000. He’d never had so much money in his life.

$13,000 in just over a week?

He used the bathroom once before bed. It was an awkward endeavor, stepping over Paul’s body on the floor and urinating in the toilet just beside him. Paul had given up begging, it seemed. He said nothing as Dario stepped out of the bathroom and shut the door.

Whether or not Paul would be a nuisance, and despite now knowing about Carissa’s potential influence on him through its ingestion, Dario decided he’d drink the new vial of blood tonight regardless.

A blissful night’s sleep was too good to pass up.

22

SWEET DREAMS

Blinking in the dark, head heavy on her pillow, it was a moment before Ruth gathered her dreamy thoughts, remembering what had come before, remembering her place in time. She swallowed, her mouth dry and thirsty, and was promptly reminded of her sore throat.

Oh yeah. I’m sick.

Shaylee’s flu medicine combined with a hot bowl of noodle soup had proven to be a potent concoction, knocking her right out. Now she was wide awake and needed to pee like the dickens.

She pulled off her covers, climbed out of bed, and shuffled through the gloom to her bedroom door. It creaked as she stepped into the hall. She tiptoed into the bathroom, leaving the door ajar to avoid any unnecessary noise.

Because you’re an awesome roommate…

Shaylee’s words warmed Ruth as she relieved herself, gazing upon her feet in the pale blue glow of the bathroom’s nightlight.

Ruth glanced to the bathroom door as there came a groan from the hallway. The sound of a singular footstep. She watched the inch-wide gap of the door, listening. A feverish shiver traced her body and she longed to climb back under the covers.

She finished up, washed her hands, then began tiptoeing back to her room when a voice greeted her in the hallway.

“Feeling any better?”

A dark shape stood at the end of the hall, just outside Shaylee’s bedroom door. The door itself was shut. But it had to be Shaylee standing there, Ruth thought. It was her voice, wasn’t it?

“I’m feeling a little better, I think,” Ruth answered.

She stood waiting for something more to be said, but the figure remained quiet. Oddly still. Ruth yearned to lay down again, to rest her weary head and catch some more Zs before sunrise. She looked to her own bedroom door, then back to the shape at the end of the hall, and found it was gone. Dematerialized. Had it been there at all? The voice certainly had been, she thought.

Or had it?

Her weary head grew heavy, loud, a buzzing between her ears. She returned to her room. She shut the door and shuffled back to bed. She climbed under the covers, pulled them up to her chin. Her fever must not have broken yet, as she felt another chill over her body, raising goosebumps as she wiggled in place, trying to get comfortable.

“She’s going to kill me, I just know it.”

Ruth turned to stone. With her bedcovers pulled to her throat, she peered into the far corner of her room, where yet another shape had grown. It stood tall, broad-shouldered but lean. Lanky, even. A young man. Ruth struggled to swim through the soup of her thoughts, her confusion insurmountable. Incoherent.

“Marcus?” she asked aloud, as if knowing it was him would make any sense of the situation. As if there was any sense to be made of this situation.

“Please. I have a wife and children.”

A second shadow. It stood at the foot of Ruth’s bed, near the window, as tall as the first, perhaps taller, and meatier. Another man’s voice. Ruth thought she recognized this one. Better than the other, at least. There was no guessing this time around.

Zachary?

She didn’t ask. She simply watched as he took a seat at the edge of her bed. The first shadow drifted eerily through the dark to him, as though without feet. It placed a hand against Zachary’s chest and pushed him down, so that Zachary reclined onto his elbows. Ruth had to pull her feet toward herself to avoid him, as his weight settled just below where she lay. Her mattress whined. The young man dropped to his knees at the foot of the bed, hands braced on either side of Zachary’s lap, and…

Ruth lay her own head down, allowed the weight of her skull to settle into her pillow, heavy as a cannonball, eyes staring into the distant dark as there came the rustle of clothes, the distinct hum of a zipper undone, a sigh of breath through parted lips.

“There is evil in this world,” a new voice scratched. Ruth recognized her mother’s conspiratorial whisper better than all the rest. “Mark my words, Ruthie… these degenerates will steer you straight into its dark belly. Stay away.”

Ruth marked her mother’s words with a giant red X in her mind’s eye in hopes of banishing her voice outright. She closed her eyes, hoping to shut them all out—her mother, the moans of pleasure at the end of her bed, somehow growing louder even as she withdrew into the safety of her own sick mind. The springs of her mattress bore the weight of it—their rapture.

I’m dreaming. I’m dreaming. This is all just a dream…

“It’s dangerous around these parts after dark.”

Another voice, this one distinct from the rest. Distinctly present. The clarity, the immediacy. Ruth’s eyes snapped wide open. She turned them heavenward, where she saw it.

Her.

A woman lay flat on the ceiling, nestled in a bed of murk, a dark curtain of hair behind her head. Her black eyes lit up like an animal’s at night, gleaming hungrily. She smiled at Ruth, a fearsome show of teeth…

It was then the others’ moans turned to screams, as they must have seen her, too.

And Ruth screamed with them.

She wasn’t screaming as she woke, but the sounds lingered just the same—an echo of terror from another plane. She peered at the ceiling above, where there were no longer any shadows to be seen. Mostly because it was morning now, and her bedroom was already filling up with light.

Night had come and gone, and taken her fever with it. Her throat wasn’t half as sore as it was, but maintained a slight tickle. Her body still ached with fatigue despite so many hours of sleep.

Any improvement is still improvement, she told herself.

She climbed out of bed and shambled into the kitchen, this time without the need for a blanket wrapped around her. Once again she found Shaylee at the table on her laptop, with a half-eaten bowl of cereal.

“Hey,” Shaylee said. “How you feelin’?”

“A little better,” Ruth answered.

She fetched a glass from the cupboard and filled it with tap water.

“That’s good. You were pretty out of it yesterday.”

“Yeah, I think my fever’s gone. Now it’s mostly just what’s left in my head…” Ruth chugged her glass of water. “Still hurts to swallow, though.”

“I’ve got some cough drops under the bathroom sink if you want any. They don’t taste great but they’re strong.”

Once more, Ruth was knocked off center by Shaylee’s generosity.

“Thanks again, by the way,” she said. “For yesterday.”

“Yeah, of course,” Shaylee said, barely peeling her attention away from whatever it was she worked on. She hardly seemed to know what her kindness meant to Ruth. Did it really come so effortlessly to her?

“No one’s ever done anything like that for me before,” Ruth admitted.

She immediately clammed up once she said it, afraid she’d said too much. Shaylee finally looked up from her laptop, quirking an eyebrow at Ruth.

“No one’s ever made you soup before, when you were sick?”

Ruth shrugged, as she was certain she’d remember such an instance if there’d ever been one.

“Huh,” Shaylee said, considering. “Well, my mom’s a nurse. Maybe that’s where I get it from.”

Ruth wanted to thank her again, but knew to say anything more would be groveling, so instead she refilled her glass and started back to her room.

“Oh, by the way,” Shaylee said, “I hope it’s okay… I was planning another little get together tonight.”

Ruth remembered now that it was Friday. Somehow she’d almost forgotten.

“That’s fine,” she answered. “I’ll probably sleep through the whole thing.”

As soon as she returned to her room, she grabbed her laptop and began making the rounds, visiting each of Zachary Holcomb’s social media accounts. She quickly discovered that most of them were now set to ‘Private’ so that only friends could view his content, which eliminated her outright.

She sighed with disappointment, sparking a bout of sickly coughs. Perhaps she’d steal some cough drops from under the bathroom sink after all.

23

FAVORS & FLAVORS

Sunlight shone dull and brown through the window curtains as Dario stretched himself wide across the bed. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d slept so deeply and undisturbed, or the last time he woke so reinvigorated, so clearheaded.

It was only as he grew still and quiet that he heard the other’s movement, and remembered.

He sat up. Paul was stood against his motel room door, fiddling with the doorknob at his back. Their eyes met. Paul’s visibly brightened with panic.

Dario jumped out of bed. Paul shrank against the door, spluttering his apology, pleading for Dario’s mercy as Dario reached him and promptly deflated. To see an old man looking so small, so fragile, Dario couldn’t help feeling remorse for being the subject of his terror.

Don’t flatter yourself. He’s scared of her, not you.

“Please,” Paul said, wringing what tears he could from his eyes. “Let me go. Just let me go…”

“You know I can’t do that,” Dario said.

Paul slid to the floor with a thump, legs bent, head hung in defeat.

“You know I’m a dead man,” he said. “If you don’t let me go, that is…”

“You’re not a dead man.”

Dario fetched his own cup from his nightstand and filled it with water from the bathroom sink. As he crouched beside the old man, Dario caught the stench of urine. He’d wet himself during the night, apparently. Dario gazed toward the bathroom, where Paul had been left all night. Had he not been able to use the toilet? Even tied up like he was? Or perhaps he’d wet himself in fear.

“Here. You’re probably thirsty.”

Paul was thirsty. Dario slowly tipped the cup to his lips. Paul wanted to drink faster than Dario was brave enough to pour, fearing he’d spill it all over the old man—which might not have been the worst thing. Once he was finished, Dario rinsed the cup in the sink and left it there.

“You’re a good person,” Paul said. “I can tell. Please. Don’t let her do this to me. To us. She’s crazy, you know. You have to see that. She’s dangerous…”

“I know she’s dangerous,” Dario said. He’d seen it with his own eyes, after all.

“Just tell her I escaped while you were asleep. She won’t know the difference.”

“She’ll know,” Dario said. “Besides, she’ll just come after you again. And who knows what she’ll do to you then.”

“I’m dead either way,” Paul said. “We all are.”

Dario knew he’d need to drag Paul back inside the bathroom eventually, but for now he took a seat on the floor beside him.

“What do you know about her?” he asked. “What do you actually know about her?”

“I know she’s a monster,” Paul said. “A real monster. She’s not human.”

“She’s your wife’s sister.”

“You know what I mean,” Paul said. “She’s not like the rest of us. Like you and me.”

Dario grimaced. “I don’t know how I feel about you lumping us together.”

“Don’t kid yourself into thinking she’s on your side, kid. She’d kill you in a heartbeat, if she had one. As soon as you’re no longer useful to her, that is.”

“And how do you know that? What do you know about her, besides that she’s different?”

Paul leaned his head back against the door with a heavy sigh, like he didn’t know where to begin.

“I know she was wronged. My wife’s told me that much. And hell, maybe their daddy deserves what he’s got coming to him, but me and Kimberly… we’ve got nothing to do with that. It was a long time ago.”

“Then you shouldn’t worry about it,” Dario said. “The only reason you’re here is to make sure your wife holds up her end. I’m sure she’ll let you go when it’s over.”

“You don’t know her either, do you?” Paul said. “No better than me. What are you getting out of this? In return for helping her?”

“It’s complicated,” Dario said, even though it wasn’t.

“Listen, kid. She might look like us—might’ve even been one of us once upon a time, though that version is long gone. But her kind… their kind… they don’t care about what’s fair, you understand? They don’t operate on the same values we do.”

“I doubt you and I even operate on the same values,” Dario said, “so what’s that got to do with anything?”

“You said it yourself, you know she’s dangerous. You’ve seen it, haven’t you? What she’s capable of? You can guess what she’ll do to me when this is over.”

It was true, Dario had seen plenty. Those poor souls at the cemetery were a testament to Paul’s words. Carissa would call it an unfortunate necessity—ensuring her own survival—but did the end justify the means? Paul was right—she wasn’t like them. She could kill on a dime if she felt the need. Trying to understand her would be a tall order.

Dario peered toward his nightstand, where he could see the newest stack of money even from the floor where he sat.

Tell yourself whatever you have to if it means collecting the next payment, right?

He squirmed, stung deeply by his own thoughts.

“I’m gonna need to take you back into the bathroom,” Dario said, climbing to his feet.

“No,” Paul pleaded. “Come on, kid. Think for yourself for once.”

“I am. I’m leaving and I don’t know when I’ll be back.” He noticed the immediate glimmer in Paul’s eye as he said this, like he thought he stood any chance of getting away in Dario’s absence. That was just as well, Dario thought. Whatever made this next part easier. “I know you can stand well enough. I assume you can use the toilet if you need to while I’m gone?”

“I…” Paul hesitated, seeing as he’d already wet himself.

“I’ll turn on the light, and I’ll leave the lid up for you, if that helps at all.”

“Sure. Fine,” Paul said.

Obviously he just wanted Dario to go so he could start working on his second escape attempt. Again, just as well. Dario collected Paul from against the front door, carrying him under his armpits. He dragged him back into the bathroom, sitting him up against the edge of the bathtub.

“Are you still thirsty?” Dario asked him. “Do you want more water before I leave?”

Paul shook his head adamantly. “If you’re not letting me go, just leave me be.”

Before closing the door and leaving him be, Dario collected a bottle of lube from his nightstand. He squirted some into the palm of his hand, and rubbed it all over the interior bathroom doorknob.

“Hey, what the hell?” Paul said, his face twisted in disgust.

“Something to slow you down, at least,” Dario said. “But I’m telling you… you’re better off staying put.”

He shut the door behind him… and hoped that he was right.

With dark, ruddy evening light against his back, he let himself into his room, shopping bags in hand—more new clothes for him, and a pair of new sneakers for RiRi. He hoped she’d love them enough not to be angry. At least she could wear these now if she wanted, unlike the jacket he’d bought her.

The bathroom door remained shut. Upon setting down his shopping bags, he could hear the faint stirrings of the man on the other side. Dario paused there listening, waiting for Paul to say something. Paul seemed to be listening as well.

“It’s me,” Dario said.

“Is it dark yet?”

“Not yet. But it will be soon.”

“You really gonna leave me in here to rot for another day?”

Dario sighed. “We’ve been over this, man…”

He took himself to bed where he scrolled on his phone, checking his messages and emails. After a bit of that, he lay back and waited for night to fall.

“Enjoying your new income, I see.”

Dario sat up with a start. The glow of dusk was gone, his room drowned in shadow. He reached through the dark and flipped on his bedside lamp, illuminating her at the foot of his bed. Had he really fallen asleep?

“Jesus,” he said. “Do you really have to do that?”

“You need to relax, Dario. Always so on edge…” She gently kicked the shopping bags on the floor. “What’d you buy this time? Something exciting, I hope…”

“Some shoes, for my sister.”

“Shoes for your sister,” Carissa said. “You sure buy her a lot of gifts.”

“I don’t get to see her as often as I’d like, that’s all.”

“I see. And you fear she’ll forget you love her without the material reminders.”

Dario faltered. “It’s not like that. Anyway, you wouldn’t understand.”

“I understand,” she said, a certain ‘you’re no fun’ quality about her tone. “Speaking of transactional relationships, when was the last time you checked on our little guest?”

“A little bit ago.”

Carissa moved to the bathroom door. She cracked it open, peeking inside. Without a word, she pulled it shut.

“I need another favor tonight,” she said.

Dario tried to hide his apprehension by folding his arms.

“With what?”

“I believe I’ve already explained to you my situation—that I must feed each night in order to maintain my strength? Well, I have a lengthy list of to-dos to contend with tonight, and it would be most helpful if I didn’t need to worry about procuring a meal on top of everything else. You of all people must understand the frustrations of finding safe, reliable means.”

Dario believed he did understand those frustrations—finding clients who didn’t flake at the last minute, and who were mentally sound to boot. However, he wasn’t entirely sure yet what Carissa was asking of him.

“You’ve mostly figured it out, haven’t you? A steady stream of discreet visitors at your disposal.”

Disposal. The word hung in the air like a noose without a neck.

Before he could speak, Carissa had already pulled another twinkling thing from her dress. Dario felt its pull on him, an invisible tether tied between his ribs and the glass vial in Carissa’s possession. She must have kept a sizable stock of them, he thought, to have so many prepared at a moment’s notice.

“You want to feed on my clients,” Dario said.

“You’ll get another of these, of course,” she said. “For your trouble.”

Even as his irresistible craving for her blood persisted, a black pit of dread opened up inside him—the sensation of falling while remaining upright.

“I can’t… I can’t just…”

“Lead lambs to the slaughter?” Carissa’s otherwise polite inflection took on a biting edge. “You and I both know these aren’t lambs we’re dealing with, Dario.”

“Not all of my clients are bad. Most of them are decent men. Lonely men.”

“But can’t you tell the difference? Between the lambs and the wolves?”

Dario ached for the blood in that vial. As Carissa proceeded to wave it about with her hand gestures as she spoke, Dario tracked it through the dim light with his gaze, and Carissa tracked his gaze with her own, amused by his fixation.

“Just find me someone who won’t be terribly missed. Send them to my room. That’s it. That’s all I ask. Can you manage that in the next hour?”

She clutched the glass vial into both hands, one over the other against her chest in a pose of pleading anticipation. Dario could scarcely tear his gaze away.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding.

“Perfect.” She placed the glass vial into Dario’s palm, and closed his fingers over it with her own. “Thank you, Dario. Truly. You’re a life saver.”

He’d received a dozen requests in just the last three days alone—messages he hadn’t bothered reading, seeing as he wasn’t doing sex work anymore. He skimmed through each one, tried to organize them according to perceived character, as if such a thing could be fairly judged by a single proposition on a discreet sex-for-pay app. It was crazy, he knew. He was crazy for entertaining it.

He repeatedly eyed the blood vial on his nightstand, wishing to take it now, to put this whole nasty business out of his mind.

Just make a decision. Get it over with. Be done with it.

He didn’t want to send anyone to their death. Then again, he also didn’t want a man tied up in his bathroom, and yet here he was.

He’d also received a message from Zach—his longest, most reliable regular. The message read: I know it’s early since our last meet, but it has been a week, let me tell you…

Zach was an adulterer. Zach was…

Not a bad man.

Dario didn’t think so, anyway. Dario didn’t want to believe any of his clients were bad men. He also didn’t necessarily believe that people could so easily be separated into lambs and wolves, as Carissa had put it. People were messy. People were complicated.

We’re all just doing our best, right?

No, he didn’t believe that, either. The Ians of the world were not doing their best. In fact, they knowingly reveled in doing their worst.

Dario closed Zach’s message. He continued scrolling. Skimming. There were others. There were worse options, so to speak. It was simply a matter of detecting them, of⁠—

A notification popped up at the top of his screen. He’d just received a new message. From username ‘putawaywet420’. He clicked on their message immediately. It read: aggressive play? Slapping? Spitting? I’ll pay extra. Need to let off some steam.

Dario’s heart slammed. His pulse pounded between his ears. He knew better than to judge anyone for their kinks, but he needed to decide. The sooner the better. He studied the blood vial from the corner of his eye, waiting to be uncorked and emptied in a single swallow. However guilty he might feel over his choices tonight, it could all be erased in a matter of seconds. The instant euphoria the blood provided him was undeniable. By morning, he would hardly feel a thing.

He replied with a message of his own: I’m available now.

It was an unbearable wait. He was tempted to simply assume everything would go according to plan, to just drink the vial now and settle in for the ride. But of course there was always a chance his client would flake. He needed to be sure, in case Carissa came knocking, wondering why he hadn’t fulfilled his end of the bargain.

Headlights splashed across the window. Dario sprang up from bed. He peeked outside. A rusted white pickup was parked just before his room. The headlights were killed. The door opened. A man in blue jeans and cowboy boots climbed out, slammed his door shut, pulled his matching hat down low over his brow, like he was trying to hide from the night itself. He jammed his hands into his pockets, shoulders hunched, clearly uncomfortable as he hurriedly strode toward the room next door.

Room Ten.

Dario let go of the curtain. He moved toward the shared wall between them, where he could distinctly hear the muffled knocks followed by the immediate opening of the door—the man entering of his own volition, just as Dario had instructed him to do.

The door is unlocked, he’d told him.

It wasn’t five seconds before the screams began.

Dario flinched away from the wall. He returned to his bedside, where he grabbed the vial with shaky hands. He pulled the stopper, tipped the glass to his lips, tasted the metallic tang. He flipped off his lamp and reclined onto his pillow.

A single tear was all he shed before a wave of ecstasy came to wash it all away.

24

LIGHTING CANDLES

The sounds of Shaylee’s party getting started—the music, the jovial greetings as newcomers arrived, and the chatter just outside in the hall—wasn’t enough to distract Ruth from her newest assignment.

If she couldn’t confront Zachary Holcomb in person, she’d just have to do it another way.

She settled on the idea of a letter. Handwritten, seeing as neither she nor Shaylee owned a printer, which was perfectly all right with Ruth. Handwritten was more intimate, personable, more humanizing—she hoped.

She wrote many half-drafts, crumpling them up when the wording didn’t seem right, or if the flow wasn’t perfect. Her bed was littered with as many crumpled up letters as cough drop wrappers. She would only get to do this once, so it needed to be the best it could be, the most persuasive it could be.

This has to work.

She was well into her sixth or seventh draft when someone knocked on her door. Juggling a fresh cough drop around her mouth, Ruth tentatively answered, “Come in?”

She should have guessed. It was Marcus. He began stepping into her room before Ruth could think of how best to excuse herself.

“I’m actually pretty sick, so you should⁠—”

“I know,” Marcus answered. “Shaylee told me. But I brought you something.”

With a small blue gift bag in one hand, Marcus gently shut the door behind him, quieting the noise floating in from the party.

“You… brought me something?” Ruth said, caught completely by surprise.

“Yeah. Here, open it.”

Marcus placed the gift bag on the edge of her bed, then retreated two steps, standing in the middle of her room. Ruth regarded his offering as though there might be a bomb inside, that it would explode the moment she touched it. She pulled the white sheets of tissue paper from the bag first, and added them to the rest of the scraps and wrappers on her bedcovers. Then she reached inside. She grabbed something round. A large jar. It was heavy. She pulled it loose, stifling a cough in the back of her throat as she did.

It was a candle she held. A big one, wrapped in a brown label.

“You said you liked the smell of coffee,” Marcus said. “Now you can smell it whenever you feel like.”

Ruth marveled. It was indeed a coffee-scented candle. She pulled off the lid and smelled the cold wax. She wasn’t entirely sure she smelled coffee, but it probably smelled different once it was lit. She replaced the lid.

“Marcus,” she said. “You didn’t need to get me this…”

“Well, yeah,” Marcus said. “That’s how gifts work.”

He was grinning ear to ear. Ruth turned the glass jar in her hand, bewildered and amazed and flattered all at once. It was enough to short-circuit her already loopy mind. She wasn’t sure what more to say.

“Thank you,” was what she settled on. “But why?”

Marcus scrunched his mouth, furrowed his brow, like he was simultaneously confused and entertained by the question. ‘Do I really need to explain this?’ was the gist of his face.

“Well, because I like you,” he said.

Somehow Ruth had managed to convince herself there was room for doubt in this regard, despite anything Shaylee might claim. To hear Marcus say it in his own words, suddenly she found herself crushed beneath the statement, like she needed to squirm her way out from under the weight of it.

“Oh. I… I guess I didn’t…”

“Am I barking up the wrong tree?” Marcus said, scratching his neck, looking as nervous on the outside as Ruth felt on the inside. “Because if I am, I’ll stop. If you’re not interested, I totally understand…”

Ruth’s mind was racing. She held the candle cupped in her hand, choosing to stare at its lovely label rather than at Marcus.

Just say it. Just tell him.

She wasn’t certain what she was feeling. She avoided these types of things as a general rule if she could help it. It was a distraction from the more important parts of her life. Such as her business with Zachary Holcomb…

“You’re not barking up the wrong tree,” she said, and was genuinely stunned by her own words—like her mouth and tongue knew something she didn’t, a revolt between body and mind.

Marcus’ smile took shape again, his brow softening. “I’m not?”

“It’s just…” Ruth paused, heart aflutter. “I’m not any good at this, to be honest.”

Much to her growing anxiety, Marcus took her words as an invitation to move closer. He sat on the edge of her bed, beside the empty gift bag, his gaze absentmindedly wandering across the smattering of crumpled pages across her bedcovers.

“Yeah, me neither,” he said, and beamed with that trademark boyish grin of his. “I’m sorry you’re sick, by the way.”

“Thanks.” Ruth struggled to look at him for longer than a second or two, her gaze repeatedly retreating to the candle in her hand. “I’ve been waiting all day for your apology.”

Marcus laughed at that, and the sound of his laughter surprised Ruth. It wasn’t quite the laugh she expected from that boyish face of his. Could a laugh itself be handsome? Because she believed his was especially handsome. The sound was enough to make her smile in kind. She might have even laughed along with him, if not for the threat of coughing violently all over the place.

“I was even sicker this morning,” she said. “I’m already feeling a lot better than I was.”

“You mean since I walked in?” Marcus said.

“Hmm,” Ruth said, still struggling not to laugh even though she wanted to.

Once again, Marcus scanned her many failed writing attempts. “What are you working on?”

“Oh, uh…” She scrambled for an answer. “Something… personal.”

“Ah,” Marcus said. “I haven’t earned the right to be nosy yet. Gotcha.”

Ruth was tempted to tell him—at least part of it, at least something. It would be nice to share her recent obsession with someone, if not for the likelihood of scaring him off.

“We should light this,” Marcus said, taking the candle from her grasp. Their hands grazed as he did, which sparked a flutter of butterflies in Ruth’s belly. “You have a lighter?”

“There’s one on my dresser over there,” Ruth said, pointing.

Marcus took the candle to said dresser, where he removed the lid and proceeded to light its three wicks. He set the candle down there, as the flames swelled, flickering and dancing behind the glass. It was cozy, Ruth thought. Marcus returned to her, moving the gift bag to the floor so that he could sit in its place, closer than before.

“I really don’t want to get you sick,” Ruth said.

“I’ll be okay,” Marcus said. Then in a playful, proud fashion, “I get my big boy flu shot every year.”

In the ensuing silence, Marcus couldn’t help drawing his attention back to the numerous balled-up notes, or the fresh one she was currently writing on her clipboard. That urge resurfaced—to tell him what she was working on. She’d be crazy to do so, she thought. To reveal something so private so soon, she’d surely scare him off. And maybe that’s where the urge really came from, she thought.

Maybe some part of her wanted to scare him off.

“There’s something I’ve been dying to ask you,” Marcus said. He turned to look at Ruth’s desk, or rather the shelf above it. “You said before those model cars weren’t yours. Whose are they?”

“My dad’s,” Ruth said. A simple answer. A simple tip of the iceberg, more like. “At least, they were my dad’s. He died a few years ago.”

“Oh. I’m sorry,” Marcus said. “You must miss him a lot.”

That was an understatement. Ruth studied those model cars a while longer, as Marcus studied her studying them.

“He was everything to me,” she said. She found Marcus watching her intently, his pupils dilating as their eyes met. She looked elsewhere. An involuntary deflection. She peered toward the candle on her dresser, and believed she was beginning to notice its scent at last. “He’s why I like the smell of coffee so much. I never liked the taste, but he did.”

Marcus joined her in watching the candle, chewing the inside of his cheek. “And here I was trying to be all romantic, but I’m just reminding you of your dad…”

He gave Ruth a funny look then, like he’d committed a major gaffe.

“No, I like it,” she said. “And to be honest… it doesn’t really smell like coffee.”

“No, it doesn’t, does it,” Marcus said, sniffing the air for himself. “It’s more like chocolate than coffee, huh?

“But I do like it!” Ruth said. “It smells really nice.”

“Well, I’m glad you like it anyway,” Marcus said. He took a deep breath. “Anyway, I’d better let you get back to your personal business. Do you think I could get your number before I go? And maybe when you’re feeling better or whatever, we could… I don’t know, get dinner or something.”

Feeling entirely out of her depth, Ruth answered that she’d like that very much. Marcus pulled out his phone and allowed her to add her number to his contacts. Then he stood up and stuffed his phone back into his pocket.

“It was nice talking to you, Ruth.”

“It was nice talking to you, too, Marcus,” she said, brimming with too many strange feelings to begin making any sense of them. “And thanks again for the candle.”

“You want me to blow it out before I go?” he asked, making his way to the door.

Ruth considered it.

“No,” she told him. “Leave it.”

25

COLD FEET

Paul was sitting up when Dario checked on him the following morning, though not in the same place as before. Whereas Dario had left him sitting against the bathtub, now he was against the wall just beside the bathroom door, likely listening for Carissa to come and finish him off. He gazed at Dario with sleepless, bloodshot eyes. His lips were already chapped and flaking from thirst.

Dario flooded with remorse at the sight of him. He went to the bathroom sink and began filling up the cup of water.

“I was wrong about you,” Paul said, his voice a weak rasp, as though he’d aged a decade in a day. “You’re not a good person.”

Dario shut off the faucet. “Yeah? And when did you realize that?”

“I listened to y’all’s conversation last night. Your little agreement. How many more innocent people are gonna die while you stand by doing nothing? Or worse—knowingly sending them to their deaths?”

“Worry about yourself,” Dario said.

Paul licked his dry lips, already red and sore around the edges from so much thirsty licking. “What is she giving you that’s worth all this?”

Dario considered the old man, though it pained him to do so. As he did, he realized he was quite thirsty himself. He promptly drank the water in its entirety. He finished with a soft, satisfied breath.

“Worry about yourself, I said.”

He filled the cup a second time in the sink. He brought it to Paul, crouching. Paul hardly seemed to notice the cup, focusing instead on Dario, peering intently into his eyes. A beseeching look, but not for water.

“Drink this,” Dario said. “Before I leave again.”

“Why should I drink it?” Paul said. “I’ll be dead after tonight.”

“You don’t know that.”

“We both know it, kid. You only pretend you don’t because it gives you permission to do nothing.”

“You say that like I have any choice in the matter.”

“Don’t you?”

The water in Dario’s cup was rippling as he realized he was trembling, softly.

I’m afraid to find out, he thought.

Dario made his way to the back of the store, passing between various racks of dumbbells, rows of athletic shoes, bins full of footballs, basketballs, and exercise balls, toward the long glass counter against the far wall where he proceeded to stand and wait for someone to notice him there. Behind the counter were so many rifles and shotguns, shiny and black. There had to be almost a hundred weapons just along the wall, plus a couple dozen more under the glass counter where he waited. He studied those most of all.

“Hiya!” said the employee who came to meet him—a stocky middle-aged woman with a cherry-red bob framing her round face. “What can I do for ya?”

Dario pointed to the handguns under the glass countertop. “I think I’m interested in buying one of these.”

He explained to the employee that he was mostly concerned with home defense. He listened as she talked him through the various options. In the end, Dario simply asked which was the most popular. The woman indicated a select few, a couple of which Dario had heard of before—the Glocks and Smith & Wessons.

Dario went with one of the 9mm Smith & Wessons, which would run him just short of $700. But first he needed to hand over his driver’s license and fill out some simple paperwork. The woman behind the counter—her name was Jesse—ran Dario’s background check in the meantime, which took less than ten minutes to complete. He paid in cash. All in all, Dario was in and out of the sporting goods store with his newly purchased firearm in less than thirty minutes.

He sat behind the wheel of his car, the gun and safety manual in his lap, a single box of ammunition in the passenger seat.

That was easy.

Yet his hands were sweating just to be holding the thing. He turned it over, then turned it over again, afraid of what such a small thing was capable of—what he was capable of.

And yet he feared it still wouldn’t be enough.

He returned to the motel only when he felt he had to—when the sky grew cold and purple with the approach of night.

He was halfway to his door when someone called to him from across the parking lot.

“Dario!”

Ned jogged to him from the office entrance.

“Hey,” Ned said, panting. “How are you?”

“I’m okay, Ned. How are you?”

“Oh, I’m great.” Ned put his hands on his hips, slightly bent forward as he caught his breath. “I just wanted to catch you while I had the chance…”

Before nightfall, Dario thought.

“What’s up?”

“Well…” Ned paused, choosing his words carefully. “One of the other guests has requested that I… delay housekeeping, for a select handful of rooms—about five or six of them—and of course I’m more than happy to accommodate this guest…”

“You mean Carissa,” Dario said.

“Carissa?” Ned knitted his brow in thought.

“In Room Ten, next to mine?”

Ned glanced that way, toward the final room on the ground floor.

“Right. Anyway, I just wanted to remind you, you’re more than welcome to request personal housekeeping whenever you’d like, of course. Just say the word.”

“All right. Thanks for letting me know.”

“Yeah, of course,” Ned said with a smile.

A bead of sweat dripped down his temple. The day’s heat continued to radiate off the blacktop even as the sun descended farther out of view over the nearby woods, the sky darkening at an almost perceptible rate.

As they stood in an awkward silence, Ned’s smile began to twitch.

In a near whisper, he said, “Do let me know if you need anything, Dario. Anything at all.”

He straightened. It appeared to require a conscious effort to stop his lip from trembling, as his smile broadened, yet there remained a lingering look in his eye. A certain vulnerability. A helplessness. Then Ned politely nodded and turned on his heel, his head down as he went, the burning light of the sunset against his back.

Dario watched him go, clueless what to make of it.

He offered Paul another drink of water. This time he accepted. He drank so greedily that he nearly choked, spitting up enough water that Dario had to refill the cup.

“Everything’s gonna be good,” Dario told him. “You’re going home soon.”

“Mhmm,” Paul said, uninspired.

Dario sat on his bed and waited for Carissa’s arrival. Eventually the parking lot was as dark as it would get and still she hadn’t come. Dario was so accustomed to her punctuality, he grew nervous the moment he realized he’d been waiting longer than a few minutes.

Something’s happened.

What if she never came, he wondered? Would he become responsible for Paul? Would he let Paul go? Take him home himself? And when Paul and Kimberly reported Dario for his part in her schemes, what then?

He repeatedly checked the time. He reminded himself that tonight was the agreed upon night. Saturday.

He stepped outside, the moist summer air warm and clinging, and made his way to Room Ten. He glanced over his shoulder at the surrounding lot, at the lonesome stretch of road, the black woods beyond.

He knocked on the door. As soon as he lowered his fist, the door gave a faint click and began drifting open. Slowly, slowly, inch by inch, before it fell still, only partly cracked. Dario bent toward the dark gap, listening. The only sounds he could hear were those of the creeping night at his back.

From the pitch black, her soft voice spoke, “Come in, Dario…”

Dario pushed the door open further, revealing a dirty wedge of carpet toward the middle of the room. Carissa remained out of sight, somewhere in the choking darkness. A subtly putrid odor reached Dario at the threshold. He took one step into the room and it intensified. Something dead. The man from last night perhaps?

“Carissa?” Dario asked.

“I’m here,” she said.

Dario looked toward the sound of her voice but it was a moment before his eyes adjusted, before the indefinite shape of the bed appeared to him, someone sitting at the end of it. A ghost. As his eyes continued to adjust, he believed he saw the faintest strokes of pale skin against the black canvas of the dark.

“Do you fear God, Dario?” she said suddenly.

“I…” He wasn’t sure what to say, caught off guard by the question.

“I fear Him,” she said, her voice spiritless. She shifted in the dark. “I fear Him…”

“What’s going on?” Dario asked. “I thought we were… you know.”

Carissa sighed, her breath long and sorrowful.

“I don’t know,” she murmured. “I don’t know, I don’t know…”

She was clearly taken by some deep thought. She sounded worried.

“We’re taking Paul back tonight,” he said. “Remember?”

“I don’t know if I can stand to look at him…”

“At Paul?”

Another long sigh. “My father.”

“Oh. Right.” Dario was so wrapped up in his own immediate concerns, he’d forgotten why they’d taken Paul in the first place. At the mention of her father, Dario recalled what Paul had said before.

…hell, maybe their daddy deserves what he’s got coming to him…

“What happened exactly?” Dario asked. “When you were a kid?”

When Carissa spoke, her voice was deadened, monotonous, speaking almost with the cadence of a sleep-talker.

“My father is the reason I am this way…” She paused, another long sigh, perhaps wishing not to speak of it at all. “We were very poor, you see. But even that was my father’s doing. His work ethic left much to be desired. To this day, I remember their arguments—my mother and father bickering about money. He always promised that some great windfall was just over the horizon, that our mother only needed to trust him. According to him, her lack of faith in his ability to provide was the real problem. If my father had half as much discipline as he had ideas, I think we might’ve been all right. But then, shortly after my thirteenth birthday, he showed up…”

Carissa fell silent. The bed groaned as she shifted in place. Dario was tempted to prod her along, but kept his mouth shut and waited.

“The exact details are foggy, or they were never really explained to me. All I know is that a man—he described himself as a traveler—showed up at our door to discuss some apparent dealings he’d made with my father late one night at the local bar. Dealings made on my behalf. This traveler claimed his master had been eyeing me for quite some time. His master wanted me, and so he purchased me, like livestock. This was in the late 1960s, mind you. In this very state, in the next city over, in Kingsley. My father actually sold me, his own daughter, to a complete stranger for ten-thousand dollars. Ten-thousand dollars, Dario. Granted, that was a great deal more money in those days, but…”

“But it’s still fucked up,” Dario said.

“Yes,” Carissa said. “Quite fucked up.”

“So then… you went with this guy?”

“From there I was carted off some thousand miles north, to the estate of one Grégoire Baudelaire—the traveler’s master, and the creature who believed he now owned me.”

“And this master, he was like you? He was a⁠—”

“He was nothing like me,” Carissa snapped, her vague form on the bed stiffening with contempt. “Think of me what you will, Dario, but this was a true monster. There was no humanity left in his mind, his body, his marrow, however much he would have liked to believe. He wanted me in all the worst ways you can imagine, and then some. I’ll remind you, I was a child. And then, eventually, when I was nineteen, he turned me—a torturous three night affair that nearly killed me outright. I’ve spent many nights wishing it had…”

“How did you manage to get away from him after all these years?” Dario said. “I mean… I’m assuming you did.”

“I killed him, of course.” Despite the callousness with which she said it, Carissa squirmed upon the bed as though the recollection disturbed her.

“How did you manage that?”

It only occurred to Dario after he’d said it, what his question might imply. Carissa must have suspected as much, as her next words were spoken with the hint of a knowing smile.

“That’s enough questions for now,” she said. She stretched with a weary groan. “Anyway, I believe all this reminiscing has again whetted my appetite for a family reunion. Thank you for listening, Dario. I feel much better now. Are you ready to leave soon?”

Dario answered that he was.

“Good. Then let’s fetch that blubbering mess from your bathroom and get this show on the road.”

26

HOME TO ROOST

They arrived outside the same property as before, along the dark country road which followed the edge of the woods. This time, however, Dario pulled the car onto the hidden driveway, the gravel growling under the tires as they climbed the slope. Paul stirred anxiously in the backseat with Carissa, his hands still tied.

Ahead, the house stood squat and waiting, its windows alight. As Dario pulled the car nearer, he glimpsed someone peering through the front curtains. Kimberly had probably been anxiously waiting all evening. Or all day, Dario thought. He parked the car, shut off the engine. For a moment Paul’s labored breathing was all Dario could hear.

The curtain in the window fell back into place. The front door opened wide shortly thereafter, Kimberly standing silhouetted in what appeared to be a house dress.

“Shall we?” Carissa said.

They stepped out of the car. Dario followed as Carissa led Paul toward the front porch, their footsteps crunching the gravel in unison. They stopped short of the porch steps. Around them, the dark countryside was furious with the rasp of katydids, the yips of coyotes in the distance.

“Where is he?” Carissa said.

“He’s in here,” Kimberly said. “Paul, honey? You okay?”

“Paul’s great,” Carissa said, gripping him by the bicep. “What else is waiting for me in there?”

“Nothing. Just dad. Like you asked.”

“You’ll have to invite me inside.”

“You were already inside.”

“The rules of my condition are not as convenient or logical as you’d expect. Just invite me in, please.”

Kimberly looked over her shoulder, into the house, considering.

“All right,” she said. “But first I wanna know exactly what you’re planning to do inside my home.”

“I just want to see him,” Carissa said. “And talk. A bit of closure would be nice.”

“Closure,” Kimberly said.

“Yes. Closure. Is that so hard to believe?”

A light breeze swept around them, rustling the leaves in the trees along the driveway, fluttering the hems of both Carissa’s and Kimberly’s dresses.

“We haven’t seen each other since we were children, Kimberly. What could I have possibly done in the meantime to make you so wary of me?”

“Because I don’t know who you are anymore,” Kimberly said.

“I’m still your sister. I’m not a complete stranger.”

“But you’re not my sister. You’re…”

“What? What am I?”

“You’re something else now. Obviously.”

“I’m only what that man made me,” Carissa said, nodding to the house, to the man supposedly harbored under its roof. “If that scares you so much, perhaps you should take it up with him.”

“That man,” Kimberly said, “has spent the last sixty years of his life afraid this day would come. Isn’t that punishment enough?”

“I never said I was here to punish anyone.”

Another warm breeze stirred the night. Dario peered toward the shadow-shimmer of the nearby fields, rustling in dark waves.

“Just invite her in already, Kim,” Paul said, breaking the silence. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Yes,” Carissa said. “Listen to your homesick husband.”

Dario couldn’t see Kimberly’s face in the gloom, with the interior light at her back, but he was certain she watched them with slitted eyes. He believed he understood her hesitation. They might have been sisters once upon a time, but thirteen-year-old Carissa Clarke probably didn’t have an appetite for blood or a penchant for brutality.

“Come inside, Carissa.”

Kimberly stood aside as Carissa led Paul up the porch steps. Carissa tightened her grip on his arm just outside the door, taking a moment as she seemed to feel the threshold, sensing something, or trying to. Finally she urged Paul into the house, following him in. Once inside, he pulled away from her, rolling his shoulder as though her grip had been especially rough. Dario stepped into the house last, passing Kimberly, who regarded him with daggers in her eyes. She shut the door.

Inside, the television was on, flashing the dark living room with its light.

“Where is he?” Carissa said.

Kimberly simply pointed.

Dario hadn’t noticed him, either, seated on the couch watching television, none the wiser as they all stood staring. He was a shriveled thing, hunched forward on the sofa in his sweatpants and tank top, his bony shoulders angled, neck bent, eyes narrowed as though he struggled to see the strobing screen. A thin bird’s nest of white hair formed a crown around his bald head.

Carissa appeared dumbstruck at the sight of him. Only for a moment. All too aware of the others watching her, she quickly pulled herself together. She advanced, placing herself between the old man and the television. Blocking his view, the old man drew his slack-jawed gaze slowly up her body, to her face.

“Hello, father,” Carissa said.

The old man simply stared, blinked, his expression mostly void. Carissa furrowed her brow.

“Recognize me?”

He took a breath as though he was about to say something, then let it out and fell silent. His gaze wandered to the light surrounding her from the television set and he waved his hand, demanding that she move out of the way.

“He’s not the man you remember, Carissa,” Kimberly said.

“What do you mean…” Carissa stood aside, glancing between her father and the television which mesmerized him.

“He’s a ninety-two-year-old man. His mind… isn’t what it was. There’s a reason he’s living in an assisted living center, you know.”

“And you couldn’t have warned me?” Carissa said, turning her own daggers upon her sister at the side of the room.

Kimberly shrugged. “I just did what you asked.”

In the dim glow of the television, Dario could see Carissa’s jaw clenching, brooding, stewing. Finally she turned and switched the television off, dropping the room into shadows, the only other light shining in from the adjoining kitchen. The old man made a sound from the sofa, a grumpy sort of grunt.

Speaking slow and wheezy, he said, “What the hell is this?”

Carissa loomed over him. She crouched, meeting him eye to eye where he sat.

“It’s me, dad. Carissa.”

The old man turned his face skeptically, observing her from the corner of his eye, his upper lip curled with displeasure that she should get so close to him.

“You’re not my Carissa…”

Carissa straightened with an angry huff.

“Up,” she said. “Up with you…”

When he didn’t immediately follow her command, she grabbed him by the arm and hauled him to his feet.

“The fuck do you think you’re doing?” he whined.

“Carissa, you’re going to hurt him⁠—”

Kimberly stepped toward them as if to intervene, but stopped short as Carissa dragged their father past in a hurry, his veiny, knobbed feet stumbling across the carpet to keep up.

“Carissa!” Kimberly barked.

“Oh, poor him,” Carissa said, walking the old man into the kitchen, out of sight.

Kimberly hurried after them. Paul hurried after his wife. Dario stood near the front door, an enormous terror rooting him in place—the disturbing certainty that nothing tonight would go as planned or promised.

He followed everyone into the kitchen as there came the squeal of wood across wood. There he found Carissa once more bent over her father, now forcibly seated beside the kitchen table, the light shining down on them like some kind of soft interrogation room.

“There,” she said. “Recognize me now?”

The old man looked as if he’d rather do anything than look at her. But his gaze once more happened upon her hovering face, and suddenly his aggravated expression melted away.

“M-Margie?” he said.

Carissa’s restraint visibly drained from her body. She remained bent like she was, one hand on the table, the other on the back of the old man’s chair, head hung low in frustration.

“No,” she said. “Her daughter. Your daughter. Carissa. Don’t you remember?”

He scowled again. “You’re not my daughter. My daughter…”

Everyone in the kitchen physically flinched as Carissa took the old man by the face, forcing him to see her.

“It’s me, daddy. Carrie Berry. All grown up.”

Dario half-expected her father to fight back, to push her hands away, but he didn’t fight at all. Suddenly he looked quite afraid. His eyes were huge and sparkling, lost as they were, and they darted past Carissa to the others standing by, standing back, as though pleading for their help.

“Don’t look at them. Look at me. You remember, don’t you? I know you do.”

The old man was so thin, Dario swore he could see the pulse in his bird-like neck, the beat of his heart hammering against the thin plate of his chest. He looked Carissa up and down again. There came the slightest hint of recognition, though his bulging eyes suggested he was afraid to say.

“Margie?”

“No,” Carissa said, those muscles in her jaw popping as she spoke through gritted teeth. “Margie’s dead. Margie died six years ago…” She hung her head a second time, exasperated. Defeated. Then she turned to see them gathered behind her near the kitchen doorway. “Dario?”

“Huh?” he said, straightening.

“Will you bring it inside?” she said. “From your trunk…”

Ice water chilled his veins. He nodded that he would. He turned his back on them—the terrified, confused old man, the vengeful undead, and the married retirees glancing back and forth as they hadn’t a clue what was coming, what he was fetching from the trunk of his car.

He moved swiftly through the living room, out the front door, down the creaking porch steps, across the crunchy gravel, the summer night’s breeze blowing in his ears, its moist warmth hardly refreshing. But it was a relief to be out of that house, even for a moment. A brief respite from the building storm.

He opened his trunk, where her mother’s corpse lay in a graceless heap, sliding and tumbling about all the while. He grabbed hold of her—it, it, he reminded himself, it’s dead, long dead—and hoisted the body into his arms. It was light. A mere husk of a person. He carried it back to the house, wobbling up the porch steps and into the living room. He tried to kick the door shut behind him but the breeze blew it right back open.

He avoided the looks on Kimberly’s and Paul’s faces as he entered the kitchen with Margaret Clarke’s corpse in his arms, but their expressions were so dramatic, so visceral, he couldn’t help but see their gaping mouths in his peripherals as they gasped.

“Over here, Dario,” Carissa said, instructing him to seat her mother’s remains at the kitchen table, opposite her father. “That’s it. Right there.”

“Jesus Christ,” Paul said.

“Quiet,” Carissa said. She rounded the table, back to her father’s side, where she guided his gaze in the direction of his late wife slumped in the chair, head lolling against her shoulder. “There’s your Margie. Do you see now? Do you see the difference?”

Dario had to admit, Carissa looked nothing like her mother at this point in time. Her father must have agreed, as his quivering mouth yawned wide in horror.

“I know,” Carissa said sorrowfully. “You loved her so much. It still amazes me that a man so heartless could be capable of such love. It boggles the mind, really.”

“Carissa, what is this?” Kimberly said, her wrinkled cheeks streaked with tears. “You said you wanted to talk…”

“And that’s what I’m doing. Never you mind.” Carissa knelt before her father as his horrified gaze remained locked to the dead woman, unable to look away. She snapped her fingers before his eyes, commanding his attention. “Look at me, daddy. That’s it. Very good. Now tell me something. Was it worth it? Was the money worth it? Did it afford you a better life? I have to assume not, or else you wouldn’t be living in that second-rate care facility, and your daughter—the one you decided to keep—wouldn’t be living in this dump…”

Carissa glanced around the cramped kitchen with a frown to emphasize her distaste. Dario found himself studying the house as well, wondering what she meant—it seemed a perfectly quaint home on a sizable property—and it was then he noticed Kimberly had vanished, no longer standing witness to this obscene reunion.

“Was that really all I was worth to you?” Carissa said, peering deeply into her father’s eyes.

He appeared unable to decide where to look—to the dead woman across the table, or the undead one at his feet. He chose to focus on the one before him, waiting for his answer.

“Carrie?” he said.

Dario was astonished to see Carissa smile in reply. A real smile, not the twisted ‘I know something you don’t’ one she usually wore. But it was short lived. A second or two. Then the bitter thoughts surged over, darkening her.

“That’s right,” she said.

“You look… different,” the old man said.

“That’s because I’m older, daddy. Six years older than when you last saw me, technically speaking. But a lot can change in six years, let me tell you…”

Her father reached for her then, placed his hand upon her face, cupping her cheek. Carissa closed her eyes, absorbing his touch, processing the sensation in more ways than anyone else in the room could likely guess, Dario thought.

Anyone else in the room…

Approaching footsteps. From the hallway, toward the kitchen. That’s right, Dario thought. Kimberly had stepped away for a moment. Now she returned, emerging into the kitchen with something held in both hands. It happened so fast, none of them could have possibly reacted in time—though Dario was the only one who might have tried to stop it.

Moving on quick, deliberate feet, Kimberly put the rifle to the back of Carissa’s head and pulled the trigger.

The blast was deafening, immediate. Carissa’s face blew outward into so many pieces, she might as well have been made of sludge. Flesh and bone and blood painted the table, the wall, their father. He was the only one who didn’t flinch, freckled with his daughter’s gore. Already on her knees, Carissa flopped onto the floor beneath the kitchen table.

Kimberly panted, the rifle still aimed where her sister’s head had been. She turned to her husband, then to Dario. Dario gathered his wits sooner than Paul did.

Fuck.

“Grab him!” Kimberly barked.

Dario shoved past Paul, darting through the living room to the front door still standing open. He raced outside, leapt down the porch steps. He slid in the gravel, pitched forward, pushed himself up, lunging toward his car. He jammed his hand into his pocket, tugging his keys loose. He skated to a stop outside the driver’s door, barely managing to stop from falling again, just in time to see Paul scrambling down the porch steps in pursuit.

Shit, shit, shit…

Dario yanked the door open, swung himself behind the wheel. He pulled the door shut. He tried to lock it, his trembling hands fumbling over the controls as Paul jerked the door open again, reaching in. The keys slipped from Dario’s hand, onto the floor under his seat. Paul grabbed at Dario’s clothes, tugging him by the sleeve of his shirt. Squirming in his seat, Dario planted the sole of his shoe against Paul’s chest and forced him back. Paul stumbled against the open door, fell to one knee. He grabbed Dario by the leg then, and proceeded to try and drag him out of the car. Thinking quickly—or not at all—Dario leaned into the passenger seat, popped open the glove box. A shiny black serpent was nested inside. He grabbed it, just as Paul managed to drag him out of his seat, onto the hard gravel. Dario flicked off the safety on his newly purchased handgun. He aimed it at the old fogey climbing over him, their eyes meeting, their breaths catching in their throats.

Dario pulled the trigger twice—two harmless pops which paled in comparison to Kimberly’s rifle blast inside. Paul straightened, braced himself against the car door for a moment, a hand to his chest. He observed that hand, the blood that glistened there. He turned away from Dario, staggered around the door, feet scuffing the gravel back toward the house. Dario lay on his back, gun still pointed to the dark sky, frozen.

What did I do? What have I done?

He climbed to his feet, as Paul shuffled his way to the front porch. Kimberly reappeared there, rifle in hand. She stopped at the head of the porch steps as her husband neared, still clutching his torso where Dario had plugged him. Paul fell to his knees at the bottom step.

“Paul!” Kimberly cried.

She raced to meet him, dropping the rifle onto the gravel as her husband collapsed onto his side. Kimberly knelt beside him in a panic, hands hovering.

“Paul!”

She pushed him onto his back, searching for the cause, the source. She touched the same places he’d touched moments ago, staining her hands with his blood. She glanced in Dario’s direction, paralyzed behind his car door, his handgun hidden there, too.

“Paul…” Kimberly bent closer, her face over his. “Paul…”

In the doorway behind them, an additional silhouette appeared. It drifted from the house, down the steps, into the moonlight. Even at a distance, Dario could see Carissa’s skull knitting itself back together, an incomprehensible mishmash of bone and flesh. Kimberly stiffened, sensing her there. But it was too late. She let out a sharp yelp as Carissa took hold of her hair, wrenched her backward onto the steps, up the steps, screaming into the house.

Dario regarded the gun in his hands, head spinning. A tremor moved through him, sent him shivering in the summer night.

Not even a rifle to the head…

He tossed the gun onto the driver’s seat, desperate to be rid of it. He chased after them, stepping over Paul’s body on his way to the porch, doing his best not to study him too closely.

I did that, I did that…

He entered the house on rubbery legs. In the kitchen, Carissa sat Kimberly down in the chair between their mother and father. The old man hadn’t even attempted to get up, still splattered in red. Carissa’s face was almost whole again, one bulging eye without eyelids, although those too were beginning to web together, good as new.

“Sister, sister,” she said disappointedly.

“You killed him,” Kimberly wept. “You killed him!”

Carissa tugged her sister by the hair again, her neck bent over the back of the chair.

“No, you sniveling twat, you killed him! Why would you try such a thing? When I already said I had no qualms with you?” Kimberly couldn’t answer, her hair tangled in Carissa’s fist, tears streaming into the gray at her temples. “Why protect this sorry excuse for a man? This sorry excuse for a father? How stupid are you people?”

“Stop this,” their father said.

He trembled in his seat, scrunching his mouth, his fearful eyes barely able to focus.

“What’s that, daddy?” Carissa said.

“Let her go…” He glared across the table from his upturned eyes. “…monster…”

“Me?” Carissa looked like she could have laughed if she weren’t so baffled. “Between the two of us, I’m the monster?”

Kimberly tried to lift her head but Carissa tightened her grip, eliciting a pained squeal from the woman. The sound hardly registered as Carissa stared unflinchingly at their father.

“Sure, daddy. I’ll show you just what a monster I am…”

In the snap of a finger, she pulled a winking blade from her dress and struck it across her sister’s throat. Kimberly’s mouth gaped. She clapped her hands to the wound as fresh blood sprayed her lap. With her fist still wrapped in her sister’s hair, Carissa yanked her once, twice, three times against the hard edge of the chair’s back until something audibly snapped and Kimberly went limp, quiet.

The old man seemed to scream, but his voice had abandoned him. Carissa moved on him next. She skirted the table, grabbed her father by the throat, lifted him out of his chair, and pinned him against the refrigerator door. He looked especially frail, suspended by her hand like he was, feet dangling inches off the floor.

“Perhaps you’re right,” she told him. “Perhaps I am a monster. You would recognize your own handiwork, wouldn’t you?” Her father choked and gasped, eyes squeezed shut, feet kicking. “I just want to understand why you did it, that’s all. Was it something I did? Something I said?”

Her father wrapped his feeble hands around her wrist. He was too weak to stop her. As the seconds ticked by, his feet kicked less and less.

“Why wasn’t I enough to stay? Why was I so easy to let go? Was there something wrong with me, even then? Did the devil in you recognize the devil in me? Was that it?” She shook him by the throat, thumping him gently against the wall. “I was a good kid, wasn’t I? Wasn’t I? I was a good kid…”

Her father had since turned still. His eyes, previously squeezed shut, were restful now, his face slack. Realizing the state of him, Carissa released him in a hurry. His feet met the floor and the rest of him soon followed, crumpling flat with a heavy thud. She regarded the old man at her feet, momentarily stunned. She pushed her hands through her hair, holding her head between them as though she might lose it.

“Oh, daddy!”

She fell to her knees at her father’s side, folded herself upon his back, and began to sob.

Dario couldn’t move. The sounds Carissa made startled him. Achingly human. Never in a million years would he have suspected such emotion to exist inside her. He regarded the bodies at the table—the exhumed corpse, Kimberly’s head dangling over the back of her chair, eyes staring into the infinite—and nothing made sense to him. The nightly breeze found its way through the front door, the living room, into the kitchen, warm and wet as fresh perspiration upon his face.

“Carissa,” he said. “We should probably⁠—”

“Go…” she replied, and waved a dismissive hand for him to do just that.

Dario couldn’t explain it, but the thought of leaving her here seemed wrong to him. The violence alone should have sent him running, but instead he stepped closer, overcome with some alien need to… what, exactly? Be with her? Comfort her? That couldn’t be right, and yet suddenly he was kneeling beside her on the hardwood floor, not knowing what else to do or say, only knowing that he couldn’t go.

He started to speak when Carissa threw herself upon him. She clung to him, snorting and sniffling as she proceeded to literally cry on his shoulder. An unusual odor slipped into his nostrils—sharp and salty and sweet—and it was a moment before Dario realized he could smell Carissa’s tears. That need in him, that peculiar bond he couldn’t shake, was amplified. It was a craving—not of the stomach, but of the heart.

Is that it, he wondered? Was he drawn to her tears in this way? Not unlike the way he was drawn to her blood?

Whatever the case, Dario placed his arms around Carissa and gently held her as she wept.

Eventually Carissa ran out of tears. She released Dario, wiping her remaining tears from her eyes. She studied him in a curious way, and Dario could tell she felt it too. That strange magnetism. Then she straightened, willfully collecting herself.

“Thank you for your help tonight, Dario,” she said. “You may go.”

Dario looked at the mess, the bodies. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. I can handle things from here. You should go back to the motel. I need some time alone.”

Dario didn’t want to argue. He stood up, took in the grisly scene one last time, and finally left Carissa to sort it out, if that’s what she wanted. He was more than happy to get away from this place, from this whole horrid night.

He only stopped again as he laid eyes on the body at the bottom of the porch steps outside. Paul, as dead as the rest.

I did that. I killed someone.

Dario hurried past, not looking back. He collected the handgun from his seat as he placed himself behind the wheel and stuffed it back into the glovebox.

Go, go, go…

He started the engine, flipped on the headlights, shining bright against the house and the body on the gravel.

He couldn’t reverse down the driveway fast enough.

27

THE HOLLOW ONE

The house crackled and blackened as its windows broke loose, its rooftop birthing great swells of tarry smoke into the night sky. The pale woman stood before the growing flames, the heat of the fire upon her porcelain face, the tears on her cheeks long since dried.

Like the house before her, something inside her crackled. Blackened. Broke loose. It departed her body on the swirl of her breath and she felt so much lighter for it. Flimsy.

Vacant.

Something stirred nearby. She lashed round to face it. The trees softly swayed, like tall bodies dancing in the fringes of the firelight. Her eyes darted from one to the next, to the deep pockets of shadow between them. It was nothing, of course. Just her demons getting the best of her.

She resumed watching the fire as the roof caved in with a rumble and moan, a monstrous plume of ember and ash. She took a full breath of air—a little smoke as well—and let it out nice and slow.

She didn’t feel soothed in the least.

The void had only grown more vast.

PART FOUR

HOUSES AND HOMES

28

THE APPLE TREE

Unable to bring herself to call in sick a second time in the same year—let alone in the same week—Ruth got dressed and ready for her Saturday morning shift regardless of how under the weather she still felt. At the very least, she wore a face mask to try and prevent getting anyone else sick, to which her boss Judy exclaimed, “What an excellent compromise!”

She repeated this practice Sunday evening, then again Monday morning, though by then she was feeling mostly herself. Her sore throat was gone, her usual energy levels were back. All she was really left with was the slightest runny nose, which she knocked out with some non-drowsy cold medicine that dried her up like a raisin.

As soon as she clocked out Monday afternoon she headed straight to Zachary Holcomb’s office, where she parked, grabbed the envelope from her passenger seat, and hurriedly tucked it underneath the blue Subaru’s windshield wiper.

With the letter delivered, she raced back to her car and all but peeled out of the parking lot, giddy with anticipation.

She texted her mother: Here.

Five minutes later, her mother emerged from her apartment complex with an animal carrier in one hand. Ruth reached to open the passenger door for her, but her mother went for the backseat instead. She slid into the car, placed the carrier on the seat behind Ruth’s, and then proceeded to buckle in.

“You’re sitting back there?” Ruth said.

“I want to sit with Buster,” her mother said. “There’s not room for him up front, is there?”

Ruth let it go.

“Okay, but you’ll have to give me directions to the place,” Ruth said. “I tried looking it up, but I think I must have gotten the name wrong…”

From the backseat, her mother shouted and pointed at the various turns they were to take, and remained mostly quiet otherwise. This was uncharacteristic for Ruth’s mother. Normally she had a plethora of things to say, talking Ruth’s ear off about the noisy neighbors next door, or the ghastly state of the world according to her Facebook algorithm. But of course, this was an uncharacteristic day: Buster’s last.

Ruth accompanied her mother into the vet’s office, where they waited patiently in the lobby for about ten minutes, one other client seated across from them holding a carrier of their own. The cat in that carrier—fluffy and white—growled incessantly, staring at the carrier in Ruth’s mother’s arms. Buster on the other hand—a scrawny brown tabby, in his old age—reacted not at all, instead blinking slowly with his little paws curled under his body.

Eventually it was their turn. Ruth followed her mother and Buster into one of the back rooms. There they waited possibly another five or so minutes, saying nothing. Her mother opened the carrier door, but Buster was perfectly content to remain inside. She murmured and cooed to the cat. Again, Buster made no reply, and appeared ready to shuffle off this mortal coil at a moment’s notice. Soon the vet and her assistant entered the room. She explained the process, with which Ruth’s mother was already well familiar, having owned many cats over the years.

This didn’t stop Ruth’s mother from becoming a complete wreck when the time came.

Once the euthanasia was complete, the needle removed, the cat lying flat and still, Ruth’s mother clung to her and sobbed more violently than Ruth had ever seen her sob before.

Ruth distinctly recalled how little her mother had cried when her father had been let go—his plug pulled, so to speak. She couldn’t help remembering this in vivid detail now, as her mother groped at the back of her shirt, weeping loudly in her ear.

Eyeing the deceased Buster from the corner of her eye, Ruth rubbed her mother’s back comfortingly.

Everyone copes with grief in their own way, she reminded herself.

Her mother sat in the passenger seat on the way home, the empty cat carrier on the floor by her feet. She was no more talkative now than before. Besides the radio playing at a low volume between them, they drove in complete silence. When Ruth pulled up alongside the curb, they sat for a time, still not saying anything, her mother not in any hurry to return to her other cats inside.

There was a question on the tip of Ruth’s tongue, something she’d been wanting to ask her mother for weeks now. The only problem was that the topic was a sensitive one, and Ruth wasn’t certain she could get a reliable answer, predicting her mother would avoid the topic outright.

“Ruth…”

“Can I ask you something?” Ruth blurted, interrupting by accident. “Oh, sorry. What were you going to say?”

“No, go ahead,” her mother said, only looking slightly inconvenienced. “I’m sure your question is more interesting than anything I have to say.”

Ruth hesitated. Her mother loved a guilt trip. Nothing to be done about that…

“I just wanted to ask,” Ruth continued. “Did dad ever say anything to you about⁠—”

“Oh, Ruth,” her mother said, stopping her. “I don’t wanna talk about him right now…”

“Please. It’s just one question.”

Her mother threw her hands in the air dramatically, letting them fall with a slap upon her legs.

“Sure. Fine. Go ahead.”

Ruth chewed her lip. “Did dad ever talk to you about having any estranged siblings? Or like… I don’t know, a half brother that he never got to meet?”

“Oh.” Her mother inhaled slowly, as if this were the last thing she wanted to talk about. She let it out in an irritable sigh. “That whole thing…”

“What whole thing? What do you mean?”

“Your dad never told you about it?” her mother said, like it was the most common story he’d ever told. “He did one of those DNA things. You know what I’m talking about.”

“An ancestry test.”

“Sure. One of those. I can’t remember which one, but… I guess it came back with a close match. Some guy in Nashville? Your dad tried to reach out, but apparently this person had changed his mind about the whole thing and wanted nothing to do with him. Basically told him never to contact him again.”

Ruth was disheartened to hear this.

“Dad never told me about that,” she said.

“Well, he was pretty crushed, I remember. That was only a couple years before he kicked the bucket.”

Kicked the bucket, Ruth thought. These words jarred her. She wondered how her mother could speak so coldly of his death. After grieving over a damned cat like she just had? Ruth tried to push these thoughts aside, to remind herself once more that everyone copes with grief differently, but this time she couldn’t dismiss them so easily. She glanced at the gray plastic animal carrier at her mother’s feet and a hot spark formed in the pit of her belly, her sweaty hands writhing nervously in her lap.

Everyone copes with grief in their own way.

“You know…” As soon as she began to say it, the less she was able to stop herself, the words bubbling up like a boiling hot spring. “It’s not dad’s fault he died.”

Ruth’s mother looked at her curiously, as if to say ‘where is this coming from?’

“What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know, it just seems like… like you hate him for dying or something. As if he could have helped it.”

Her mother scoffed. “That’s not why I hate your father.”

“Well then what is it? You loved him before, didn’t you? Before he was sick?” Ruth waited, her mother appearing on the verge of answering, biting her tongue. “Just tell me.”

“I didn’t want to tell you this because I thought you deserved to have good memories.”

That heat in the pit of her stomach was snuffed with an icy chill. All at once Ruth felt herself mentally scrambling—like she’d made a mistake, that she shouldn’t have mentioned it, that she wasn’t ready to hear whatever was about to come out of her mother’s mouth.

“But if you insist,” her mother went on. “After your father first slipped into his coma, this woman showed up at the hospital. I’d never met her before, had never even seen her. But apparently she’d come to express her condolences, so I asked her who she was, and she told me she was ‘a close friend.’ I knew right away what she was. The other woman. Do you know what that means, Ruth?”

Ruth’s heart was pounding. She wished she could rewind time by about five minutes and never broach the subject.

“Yeah, I know what it means,” she said.

“I ended up looking through your father’s emails to confirm my suspicions. Turns out our entire marriage might as well have been a lie. I never even got to tell him how angry I was. Not really. I told him anyway, of course, whether or not he could hear me. I think he must have, though, which is why he finally gave up—took the coward’s way out so he wouldn’t have to actually face what he’d done…”

Ruth’s mother trailed off, staring down the street with narrowed eyes, reliving those days all over again.

“If I’m being totally honest with you, Ruth, I was beginning to hate you a little, too. For being able to love him when I couldn’t. But now you know! The truth will set you free, as Jesus said. And that’s the truth about your amazing dad.”

She sniffed, an idle sound of indifference, like a shrug.

“I… I had no idea,” Ruth said.

“Yeah, well, there you have it.” Her mother collected the animal carrier from the floor. “You know, it feels good to finally get that off my chest, actually. Thank you, Ruth. And it’s funny—you asking me about this whole long-lost brother situation. Apparently your grandfather—your dad’s dad—had some women on the side, too, which would certainly explain all of that. As they say, the apple never falls far from the tree. Hmm. Anyway, thanks for driving me to put down my cat.”

Ruth’s mother stepped out of the car. Ruth was too stunned to say goodbye or anything at all for that matter. Her mother slammed the door and started up the sidewalk to the entrance, where she stepped inside without a second glance and was gone.

29

CRAVINGS

Dario arrived back at the motel anxious and alone Saturday night, yearning to climb into bed and put the horrors of Carissa’s family reunion behind him.

Only, sleep wouldn’t come.

He repeatedly reached for his nightstand, for a glass vial that wasn’t there. Carissa hadn’t paid him. Not in blood or cash. He knew he shouldn’t bother her about it right away, or rather that he couldn’t—he’d already watched her break two necks, and he didn’t intend to be the third.

Without rest, Dario was unmotivated to do much with himself on Sunday, leaving only to grab food and bring it back to the motel, where he wasted away in bed scrolling headlines on the news. He happened upon an article that afternoon about a terrible house fire in Kingsley killing three, cause currently unknown. Dario chewed his nails down to their quicks as he read the article again and again.

I shot and killed a man.

If Paul’s body had been set aflame, would the bullets in his chest be recovered? Had Carissa considered that? Did she even care?

Did she lie to me again?

Dario found it hard to believe that she’d only ever intended to speak with her father. Of course, Kimberly had disrupted things, blowing her sister’s head off like she did. But with their mother’s exhumed corpse sitting at her kitchen table, could Dario blame her? All things considered, there had never been any hope of an agreeable outcome.

Carissa made no appearances Sunday night. Once again, Dario was reluctant to pay her room a visit, if she was even at the motel. Without the aid of her blood, he settled in for another rough night.

He woke with excruciating stomach aches. The pain was so terrible, he curled into the fetal position to withstand it. He visited the bathroom once, hoping that maybe it was something he’d eaten the previous day, but that wasn’t the case. He crawled back into bed and squirmed until morning.

Eventually, when the sun’s first light appeared in the window, the pain subsided. Dario lay in a miserable pile of splayed limbs. The thoughts circulating his sleepless mind made little sense to him, but now and again one came through with crystal clarity.

I shot and killed a man.

Dario rolled out of bed. He opened the drawer to his nightstand, where he’d since stashed the handgun. Just the sight of it sent his stomach churning, and yet he could hardly look away.

He’d wanted to see RiRi today, to gift his sister her new sneakers, but wasn’t sure he could look her in the eye and smile like nothing was wrong.

Like I didn’t shoot and kill a man.

Perhaps their father had been right, he thought. Perhaps RiRi was better off without him after all.

Perhaps…

“Fuck…”

Dario shoved the drawer shut, climbed back into bed, and buried himself in lousy, sporadic dreams.

When finally the sun dipped below the horizon and his room was overgrown with shadows, there came a knock on the door. Dario flipped on his bedside lamp to find Carissa already standing at the foot of his bed. He was getting used to this.

“Hey,” he said, sitting up.

The sight of her induced many feelings in him: surprise, fear, relief. He was surprised she’d actually come. He feared what she’d come to say. He was relieved she hadn’t abandoned him.

She was a somber statue—her gaze downcast, arms at her sides. Despite coming to him, she seemed a million miles away, as if she’d only wandered in by accident.

“Carissa? How are you feeling?”

“Hungry,” she answered listlessly. “I haven’t fed in two nights, and I don’t have the energy to go hunting. I need another favor.”

A punch in the gut.

“You mean another of my clients,” Dario said.

“Yes. Perfect. Send them to my room like last time…”

She began to leave, unlocking his door despite having already entered without the need.

“Wait,” Dario said. He wriggled onto his knees, ready to spring out of bed and stop her if that’s what it took. “About Saturday…”

“Oh. Right. I almost forgot…”

Carissa floated back to him, to the foot of his bed, pulling items from her dress as she came. Another wad of cash and a glittering glass vial which made Dario’s heart dance—and his stomach. He wasn’t entirely sure what he’d meant to ask about Saturday night, but whatever it’d been was forgotten as Carissa placed his payment into his hands.

“The money is for Saturday. The blood is for tonight,” she said, and started away again.

“Carissa,” Dario said, stopping her a second time as she reached the door. “If you wanted to talk about it… or anything…”

“I don’t need to talk, Dario. I need to eat.”

And with that, she left back to her room.

Dario didn’t count the money right away, but if he had to guess it was another $5000 bundle. He stashed it under his mattress with the rest, and placed the blood vial on the nightstand for later.

Soon.

His belly roared hungrily for it.

He snatched his phone and opened his work app. He’d received very few messages the last few days, but there were some. A couple were recent, within the last twenty-four hours. One was from earlier today, someone inquiring for the afternoon. While he’d missed their initial time frame, Dario thought perhaps he could interest them in a late-night rendezvous anyhow…

According to the man’s profile, he appeared relatively average. Tame. Dario couldn’t immediately place anything problematic about the man, nor any ‘good reason’ to choose him over anyone else. Nevertheless, eyeing the vial of blood on the nightstand, Dario sent him his message.

It read: Sorry I couldn’t reply sooner. I’m available tonight if you’re still interested.

He received a reply within ten minutes.

Within forty, the room next door was lively with screams.

And within an hour, Dario was drifting into thoughtless bliss.

30

FIRST DATE

It was only when their server returned that Ruth realized she’d been staring at the menu for five minutes without really seeing it.

Crap. That’s right. I’m on a date.

She quickly ordered the first thing she could read off the menu, pretending she’d been deciding all the while. She ordered a smothered chicken chile verde burrito. Couldn’t go wrong with that, she thought.

After handing their menus back to their waitress, Marcus leaned forward, smiling.

“You seem distracted,” he said.

Ruth feigned ignorance. “Do I?”

“Just a little.” He paused, trying not to laugh. “I mean, I did ask you something three times and you never heard me.”

Ruth flushed with embarrassment. “No you did not.”

“I did. Honest.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing much. I just asked when’s the last time you had Mexican food.”

“Oh.” Ruth’s cheeks were on fire. She forced a laugh. “Sorry. I must have been focused on the menu…”

“You’ve actually been kinda quiet since I picked you up,” Marcus said, still smiling, watching her like she were the most curious person in the world to him. “Is everything okay?”

Come on, Ruth, she told herself. Get it together.

“Well, I was pretty nervous about tonight,” she said, which wasn’t a lie, but it also wasn’t the whole truth.

The truth was, Ruth couldn’t stop thinking about the letter she’d left for Zachary Holcomb on Monday. That’d been three days ago, and she’d yet to receive a call or text or email from him, despite leaving the appropriate contacts. She worried he hadn’t gotten it somehow, that perhaps he hadn’t noticed the envelope stuck under his windshield wiper, that it’d fluttered away during his drive home. Or worse—she worried he’d received it and had promptly thrown it in the trash.

“If it makes you feel any better, I’m incredibly nervous, too,” Marcus said, then chewed the inside of his cheek, unsure what else to say.

Ruth appreciated his reassurance, and in fact did feel a little better for it.

“Well, to answer your question,” she said, “I ate Mexican… a week or so ago, I think? I love Mexican food. I love anything spicy, really. The spicier the better.”

“Ah, see, you’re tougher than me,” Marcus said. “I’m a wimp when it comes to spicy food. I like it, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t take much to make my eyes water.”

“Maybe you didn’t grow up eating a lot of spicy foods like I did,” Ruth said. “My dad was obsessed. And he loved all kinds. Mexican, Indian, Korean, Thai…”

Ruth grew quiet. With those fond memories, she was once more reminded of her conversation with her mother on Monday…

“Do you think about him a lot?” Marcus said. “Sorry, that’s a stupid question. Of course you do. He was your dad.”

There was something on the tip of Ruth’s tongue. It started her heart racing, her blood pumping—a stomach-clenching amalgamation of anxieties and doubts. She’d long believed her mother had simply been angry at him for leaving them behind, but in a way the truth was even worse.

…the truth will set you free…

She felt crushed underneath it. She wondered if her mother was right to hate him. If Ruth had known all along what her father had done, would she have grown to hate him, too?

“Ruth?”

She straightened, realizing once more she was drifting. And she would continue to drift, she thought, until she got these thoughts out of her mind, these feelings out of her chest, these words out of her mouth…

“I learned something about him recently,” she said. “And I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Oh,” Marcus said. “Well, not to toot my own horn or anything, but I’ve been told once or twice that I’m a pretty good listener, so... if you wanted to talk about it…”

Once she started, it was hard to stop. The words spilled out uncontrollably. She told Marcus everything her mother had told her, and how that knowledge now distorted everything she’d previously believed. Marcus wasn’t wrong to toot his own horn—he listened and nodded and looked surprised in all the right places, and even seemed to take a moment to process everything once she’d finished telling him.

“Well,” he said, “he might have been a shitty husband, but he’s still the same dad you remember, right?”

His response flowed so effortlessly off his tongue, Ruth was amazed that he hadn’t become as entangled in the emotions of her story as she was. She supposed some things were easier to judge from the outside looking in. His words filled her with such relief that she was overcome with the urge to leap out of her chair and throw her arms around him in gratitude.

Instead of doing something so erratic as that, she simply answered, “Yeah. You’re right.”

It was then their server reappeared, food in hand. Ruth smiled politely as her smothered burrito was placed on the table before her.

“Did your mom really say that, though?” Marcus said, his face momentarily obscured by the steam of their meals. “That she was beginning to hate you, too?”

“My mom and I have a… complicated relationship,” Ruth said. “She’s always been fairly religious, but after my dad died she sort of… got more into the church, I guess? But instead of finding comfort in it, it only seems to have made her more critical over the years. Of me. And everyone, really. I don’t know.”

“Huh.” Marcus took another bite of his enchilada. “What about the rest of your family? You have any siblings?”

“No, no siblings,” Ruth said.

“Grandparents?”

“All dead,” Ruth said. “Most of them before I was born.”

“Huh,” Marcus said again. He took a swig of water, and just as Ruth was preparing to ask him about his family, he beat her to the punch with yet another question. “What about your dad’s side? Any aunts or uncles?”

Ruth’s food fell off her fork and onto her plate. What to say to that, she wondered? In light of recent developments? She felt as though she’d already talked too much. The stories she had to tell weren’t exactly first-date conversations, were they?

“My dad grew up as an only child,” she said. She paused, considered leaving it there. “But… I think he’s got a half brother out there somewhere. But they never got to meet…”

Marcus found that most interesting, judging by the look on his face, the bright pondering in his eyes.

“Really?” he said. “That’s interesting. I wonder if there’s any way of finding him? That’d be cool, wouldn’t it?”

“It would be cool,” Ruth said, itching to say so much more.

I have found him. And he wants nothing to do with me…

“It’s almost like some part of your dad is still out there somewhere,” Marcus said. “Living another life.”

“That’s exactly how I feel,” Ruth blurted, leaning forward in her chair, still yet to take a single bite of her smothered burrito.

She couldn’t keep it in anymore. Even if Marcus thought she was entirely crazy, she needed to tell him. She needed to tell someone. Someone who wasn’t her cynical mother. Someone who might even understand, and it seemed to her that Marcus might. He was proving to be much more thoughtful than she could have guessed.

“I want to tell you something,” she said. “But you might think I’m weird. Or crazy.”

“Weird is good,” Marcus said. “I like weird. Crazy… well, I guess that depends.”

She started at the beginning, with meeting Zachary Holcomb at her work. She did her best to downplay her admittedly obsessive behavior, but let slip the fact that she followed Zachary to his workplace. She left out the part about following him to his home, and the part where she rummaged through his family’s trash, as well as the part where she caught him having an affair at some rundown motel in the middle of nowhere. Instead she simply told Marcus that she ‘managed to find him on social media’ and left the details of her stalking at that. Finally she told him about the letter, and finished by telling him the rest of what her mother had said on Monday, about how her father had apparently already tried reaching out to him.

“So what do you think?” she said, as Marcus processed her story with another mouthful of enchilada. “You think I’m crazy, don’t you.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t think you’re crazy. Not at all. I just..”

He thinks I’m crazy and doesn’t even know the half of it…

“This is obviously really important to you,” he said. “But what happens if you do talk to the guy, and he doesn’t want a relationship? Or worse, what if he turns out to be some kind of asshole? After what your mom said…”

“I don’t wanna assume anything,” Ruth said. “I’d rather hope for the best than assume something bad will happen.”

“I’m just wondering, you know… what if? What then?”

Ruth shrugged. “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, I guess.”

“Sorry, I don’t mean to come off as pessimistic. I’m just listening to your story and… well, it would suck to be disappointed, is all.”

“It always sucks to be disappointed,” Ruth said. “But that’s part of life.”

Marcus nodded, smiling with half his mouth. “Okay, so what happens next? Just waiting for him to respond, I guess?”

“Yeah, I think that’s all I can do,” she said. “And if he doesn’t respond, well… Plan B, I suppose.”

“What’s Plan B?” Marcus asked.

It was then Ruth noticed she’d hardly taken two bites of her meal while Marcus was nearly finished with his.

“I haven’t thought that far ahead, to be honest,” she lied.

Marcus dropped her off a little after 9 p.m.

Ruth stepped into the apartment entrance and waited just inside. After twenty seconds or so, she peeked outside to see that he had since driven off.

The time for Plan B was now.

She hurried to her car parked in the street, climbed in, buckled up, and started toward her second date of the night.

A date with destiny.

31

LOYALTY

Dario hadn’t seen nor spoken to RiRi in a week now. Not since he’d picked her up from softball practice the previous Thursday. The idea to message her online crossed his mind, but he feared putting her in unnecessary turmoil with their father should he find out. Maybe they could devise a better plan to stay in touch, perhaps set up some kind of schedule, a couple days every week Dario could pick her up after practice, or something like that.

First he would need to see her again in order to do that.

And he was afraid to see her again.

What if she can tell?

What if she sees it in me? That I’ve changed?

That I’m a killer…

Meanwhile, Carissa had become something of a recluse since their Saturday night outing. She came to Dario each night asking for the same favor. Each night, Dario organized what was essentially DoorDash for vampires. First Monday night, then Tuesday night, then Wednesday, and then…

Dario was seated on the floor beside his bed, admiring the brand new sneakers he’d still yet to give his sister, when there came another knock on his door. He didn’t even flinch. Nor did he glance at the door itself, but rather the corner of the room behind him where she glided from the shadows like a specter.

“The same as before,” she said, and started to leave.

“Wait a second.” Dario closed the shoebox, shoved it back under his bed, and climbed to his feet. Carissa stopped at the door but didn’t turn. “Just how long is this going to go on for?”

“How long is what going to go on for?” she grumbled.

“Me, sending you your… meals.”

Carissa peered over her shoulder.

“Is it getting to you?” she said. “Taking care of widdle ol’ me? We’ve already been over this, Dario. Those men…”

“I haven’t gotten any new messages today,” he said.

It was mostly the truth. He’d received a total of one message today.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Carissa said.

“It means nobody has contacted me asking for my services.”

“Well then, do the reaching out yourself. Is that not part of your business? You don’t just sit around waiting for all your clients to come to you, do you?”

“Well, kinda, yeah.”

“What about that regular of yours?” she said, causing Dario’s stomach to flip. “It’s been a while since he came around, hasn’t it? More than a week since I last smelled him in this room.”

Dario panicked. He needed a lie. An excuse. Anything.

“I ended things with him,” he said. “I told him I wasn’t doing sex work anymore…”

“You’re lying,” Carissa said. “Your heart is beating out of your chest.”

Dario’s mouth turned dry as dirt. He swallowed to try and wet it, but it only resulted in a loud, sticky click at the back of his throat.

“You’re protecting him because you like him so much, is that it?” she said. “Dario, the man is a user. A cheater. He doesn’t care about you, he cares only for your body. That’s all you are to him, is flesh. You must realize that.”

“It’s not that I’m trying to⁠—”

“Are you working for me or for him?”

Dario’s eyes wobbled in their sockets—an intense, tingling vibration. It’d been long enough since he’d last felt it that it surprised him now, stiffening him in place.

“If you want to go back to sleeping with dogs and collecting your measly three-hundred dollars per fuck, just say the word.”

“That’s not what I’m saying…”

“Well then? Call him. He’s a regular because he’s reliable, isn’t that right? Tell him you’ve been thinking about him. Tell him whatever you have to. Just get him here.”

Dario felt as though his insides were cinched in barbed wire. He could hardly breathe.

“Or maybe I can reach out to someone else, someone who’s online and willing to⁠—”

“No, I want him,” Carissa said. “It’s decided. Let this be a gesture of loyalty between us, hmm?”

Dario nearly jumped out of his skin as suddenly she was there right beside him, looming over him in her ripped dress smelling of mold and sour earth, her black gaze piercing him venomously.

“Just do it.”

His eyes trembled harder than ever before—a painful, electric jolt through the fibers of his optic nerves, into the tender meat of his skull. An instantaneous migraine. Before he could even consider what he was about to do, what he was actively doing, his phone was in his hands, his messages open. He clicked on the most recent—the singular message he’d received today.

Zach’s message to Dario had read: Hey, everything good? I haven’t heard from you in a bit. If you’re available tonight, let me know.

Dario had failed to respond the previous week—the first night he’d sent a client to Room Ten. He’d spared Zach then. He wished he could spare him again somehow.

How many more innocent people are gonna die while you stand by doing nothing?

Paul’s words. Another dead man. Dario’s dead man.

Just do it.

Carissa was long gone now, though her words still echoed in his mind. Dario wasn’t sure if his eyes were still vibrating or not, as it was difficult to tell through the pulsing ache. But his hands were moving. His fingers tapping. Tapping out a message to Zach. There was no getting around it. Not anymore. Not without endangering himself.

His message read: I’m free tonight if you’re still up.

He paced his room while he waited. Several times he returned to his bedside, to the empty glass vials littering his nightstand. She’d forgotten to pay him a new one. He’d have to ask for it once this was done. He needed it. He hungered for it—the only thing that could wash his worries away, every last one. And by morning, all of this would seem like a distant dream…

Headlights blazed across the window. Dario stood from his bed. He approached the window slowly, his ankles shackled with unease. He pulled the curtain aside and watched as Zach climbed out of his vehicle, as he started across the parking lot not to Dario’s room, but the next.

32

HARD TRUTHS

She was about to do the worst thing she could possibly imagine. She was well aware this could go wrong in so many ways. She was also aware that she had no options left—aside from giving up, of course, which she refused to do. Not yet. Not until she’d tried everything else.

I really am crazy, she thought. Marcus has no idea.

But also, if I suspect myself of being crazy, that has to mean something too, right? Crazy people don’t know they’re crazy.

“That’s exactly what a crazy person would tell themselves,” she muttered under her breath.

She cranked the volume on her radio for the rest of her drive, drowning out the doubts.

Thirty minutes later, she pulled over along the curb of Campfire Lane. She shut off the engine, switched off the headlights. She peered across the dark street, at the brown-and-beige brick house with red shutters. Her heart was in her throat, rattling her head, rumbling between her ears.

“This is a mistake,” she told herself. “I’ll be arrested for sure.”

She climbed out of her car anyway. She shut the door, standing opposite the house, in the dark, the surrounding neighborhood quiet and deserted on a Thursday night. She took a deep breath. Several deep breaths. She balled her hands into fists in preparation for the march across the street, taking one last breath and holding it…

…when suddenly Zachary Holcomb’s garage began to open.

Ruth darted behind her car, ducked into the gutter, where she could safely spy from across the hood. The garage door opened fully, its interior light shining onto the driveway. And there he was. Zachary climbed into his blue Subaru—parked beside a second vehicle, a white hatchback. His wife’s car, Ruth assumed. The blue Subaru’s taillights flashed to life. He pulled out of the driveway, into the street. So close. She crouched lower, fearing he might see her. He lingered for a moment and she worried he’d recognized her car. But he was only waiting for his garage door to close again before finally he pulled away.

I wonder where he’s headed at this time of night?

Ruth thought she had a pretty good idea. She climbed back into her car, fired it up, and followed Zachary as quickly and discreetly as she could. She tailed him onto the interstate, keeping a respectable distance.

Ten minutes later she was slowly winding through the wooded outskirts of Brewster, to a certain secluded roadside motel.

She shut off her headlights as she coasted to a stop along the road’s shoulder. Zachary was already in the lot, still sitting in his car, lights still on.

Am I doing this or not?

Ruth’s heart fluttered back to its perch at the top of her throat, pounding hard and fast. She opened her door. She stepped out into the twigs and gravel, the woods shrieking with insects. Zachary climbed out of his vehicle likewise.

Now or never.

She started across the street, felt his name taking shape on her tongue, too large and unruly to hold it in a moment longer.

“Zachary!”

She almost felt bad, the way he visibly startled, spinning on his heel, his long face drawn taut with fear as he scanned the dark parking lot. But it was only her. She thought he must have been relieved to realize that, and for a very brief moment it appeared that he was. A wide array of emotions flickered across his face—from panic to recognition to relief to dread to… anger? It was the final emotion that stuck. His mouth opened and closed, baffled to see her here, until finally he shook his head.

“No. No, no, no…”

“Did you get my letter?”

“I’m not doing this with you,” he said, still shaking his head, back and forth, back and forth, staggering from the brink of madness. “Not now. Not here…”

“Then when?” Ruth said. “Where? I gave you that letter on Monday.”

“Jesus fucking Christ!” he exploded. “I already told you once, you fucking psycho! I told you to stay away from me and my family⁠—”

“I am your family!” Ruth shouted back at him. She hadn’t expected to shout. Her words simply came out that way, pleading, desperate to be heard and matching his volume if that’s what it took.

“No! You’re not hearing what I’m saying…” Zachary ran his hands through his salt-and-pepper hair. “Listen to me very carefully, because I’m only going to explain this once. I already have a family, and you’re not in it. I don’t care who you are, I don’t care who you think you are, or where you came from. You’re a stranger to me and I’d like to keep it that way.”

He glanced at the door he’d been headed toward. Room Ten. Was that where his lover waited, Ruth wondered? Was it the same young man as before, or a new one? Next he peered toward the road, as though there might be witnesses to their confrontation. Only the wildlife-infested woods waited there, dark and uninviting. And he didn’t need to worry about other guests at the motel. As far as Ruth could tell, there were none.

“I can’t do this right now,” Zachary said. He started back to his car, pulling his keys from his pocket.

“I just want to talk,” Ruth said, stepping toward him. “Please, just give me a few minutes of your⁠—”

“And I just want you to leave me alone,” he interjected, pointing an accusing finger in her direction. A warning. Not one step closer. “Whatever story you’ve imagined in that little head of yours? It’s not real. This thing, whatever it is you think you want from me, it doesn’t have a fairy tale ending, all right? So drop it. Go back to whatever dark little corner of the world you crawled out of and leave me the fuck alone.”

“Did you even read it?” she said, her voice growing small, tremulous. “Did you see the pictures? In the envelope, I… I included photographs so you could see the resemblance for yourself. You… you’re practically his spitting⁠—”

“Stop,” Zachary said, pausing with his hand on his Subaru’s door handle. “Just… stop. Okay?” He took a deep breath to calm himself. “I have every reason to go to the police, but I’m giving you one last chance—one last chance to stop, and think about what you’re doing. Do you understand? After this, I’m not playing Mr. Nice Guy anymore.”

It was then something in Ruth began to snap. Or perhaps it’d been snapping for a while, just now reaching its breaking point. Her breaking point. An elastic band pulled too tight. A membrane stretched too thin. It had snuck up on her. But she felt it now—felt the weight of something tremendous pushing through the pliable net of her mind, trickling hot and scalding into her mouth. She couldn’t decide whether or not she liked the taste.

“Mr. Nice Guy,” she repeated. She was shaking now. Her legs felt like jelly. Her eyes burned hot with whatever she felt spilling off her tongue. “Is that what you are? Is that why you’re here? Because you’re such a nice guy? I’m curious what you told your wife.”

Even under the gloom of a moonless night, Ruth believed she saw Zachary’s face blanch at her words. His hand fell away from the handle of his car.

“Wait a second,” he said, taking a step toward Ruth now as she turned for the street. “Hey, wait a second!”

“What?” Ruth wheeled on him, her foal-legged fury finding its footing at last, the hot coals behind her eyes nearly blinding her. “Now you want to talk?”

“Please,” Zachary said. “Don’t do anything crazy…”

He’d sure changed in a hurry—suddenly hunched, slack-shouldered, so small and sorry he looked ready to be picked up by the slightest breeze. Ruth didn’t have it in her to stay upset with him for long, as her blazing temper cooled with a chilly helping of guilt at the sight of him.

“It’s a shame you never met my dad,” she said. “I think you two would have had a lot in common, actually…”

She turned for the street once more. Zachary’s footsteps briefly followed, scuffing across the asphalt as he called after her.

“So you’re not gonna say anything?”

Ruth didn’t give him the relief of an answer.

She drove home in a precarious state—balancing on a tightrope of anger and despair. She held the wheel in both hands, clenched so tightly she might have torn the whole thing from the steering column with a bit more muscle on her bones. Her eyes burned with tears she wouldn’t allow to fall, even as the road shimmered in her vision.

She couldn’t let him see her like this, watching over her like he was, studying her life from some other plane, wherever he might be, because he couldn’t be here with her like any normal father should be. She needed to remain strong. Resilient. Happy. She wanted him to see her thriving, carrying herself the way he would have wanted her to. Not falling apart, flailing, helpless.

I’m okay, dad. See? I’m okay. You did a good job. I’m the daughter you raised. I’m strong. I’m happy.

But there was anger and sadness and disappointment tearing her to pieces inside and she wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep herself together.

What if I’m not strong enough? What if I’m not happy enough?

She had to force these thoughts aside. Ignore them. Sweep them back into whatever dark little corner of her mind they crawled out of…

Asshole.

Zachary Holcomb hated her and she thought she might hate him, too. But if she hated him for what he was, what did that make her father? It was true, they had a lot in common.

Everyone makes mistakes. Who am I to judge? People are complicated. He has a right to his privacy. He has the right to refuse me. He doesn’t owe me anything. I’m just a stranger to him. I’m nothing to him. I don’t know him half as well as I think I do.

She arrived outside her apartment complex. She removed the keys from the ignition, killed the headlights, and sat in the stuffy dark, her head pounding with tears, a lump in her throat. She waited for the symptoms to settle, but they wouldn’t. Not fast enough, anyway. She couldn’t head inside until they did. She didn’t want Shaylee to see her upset, either. She would want to know why, what’s wrong, what’s the matter, and Ruth could never tell her.

The man I’ve been stalking these last couple weeks wants nothing to do with me and now… I’m upset?

She clenched her jaw, her fists, her eyes, as she wrestled those base emotions back into their boxes, their corners.

I’m better than this. Better than being angry. Better than feeling sorry for myself.

She swallowed down the lump in her throat and climbed out of her car. It was eerily quiet tonight. Her footsteps scuffed and echoed noisily off the cement walkway toward her apartment entrance. Halfway there, something caught her attention.

She glanced in its direction as she walked—had she seen it, or just sensed it?—then performed a double-take as the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

It was in the alley, between her apartment building and the house next door. A towering shadow of a thing. Motionless. Featureless. Its presence stole the oxygen from Ruth’s lungs, the thoughts from her head. She made out the shape of its shoulders, its head between them. Despite being much too dark to see its face, she knew it was looking back. Watching.

She was reminded of something unexpected then—a sickening story she thought she’d successfully forced from her mind forever, because she hated reflecting on such things. But it reoccurred to her now—those murders in Brewster, the ones Shaylee had been so keen to follow as the investigation was still unfolding. Whatever happened with that, she wondered? Was the culprit ever caught?

This isn’t that. Don’t be stupid.

She was almost tempted to say something, to greet the figure in the alley as she was certain she had their full attention. But the words wouldn’t come. She could barely convince her lungs to keep breathing, let alone convince her mouth to speak.

Get out of here.

That urge overwhelmed everything else. She bolted up the walkway and through the entrance. She beelined for the stairs. The doors slammed noisily behind her as she started up, racing to the top floor. The third floor. She only stopped at the second-to-last step, holding the railing for a moment, catching her breath, and realized just how silly she was. Childish. Jumping at literal shadows.

What are you really running from, huh?

Standing in the stairwell’s silence, her previous concerns caught up with a vengeance. The correlating emotions didn’t skip a beat, either, as the pressure behind her skull returned with urgent immediacy.

Get a hold of yourself, for crying out loud.

She climbed the last step and came to stand just outside her apartment door. She juggled her keys into her hands. Before she knew it, her eyes were full of tears again.

Find the silver lining. That’s what I need.

What would a silver lining look like in this situation, she wondered? Zachary Holcomb had rejected her. Was the silver lining that she no longer needed to obsess? Was it that she could finally move on, redirect her efforts elsewhere?

“Damn it,” she muttered as she dropped her keys to the floor.

She snatched them up with a growl in the back of her throat. She jammed the key into the lock, twisted it, pushed inside. She was greeted by television noise. Shaylee was in the living room watching her usual morbid nonsense. She looked Ruth’s way as she passed through, as Ruth did everything in her power to hide herself.

“Hey!” Shaylee said. “How was your date with Marcus?”

Ruth couldn’t speak. The lump had returned. Instead she simply mustered the closest thing to a smile she could manage and hurried into the hall, into her bedroom, where she closed the door and stood frozen, eyes blurring with tears. She blinked them away. Some spilled down her face. She couldn’t breathe. Her pounding head felt ready to split open any second.

It’s okay. Everything’s okay.

She peered around her room, at the laptop on her bed, at the crumpled up scrap paper filling her tiny trashcan under her desk, at the shelf lined with shiny model cars.

It’s not okay. I’m not okay. Nothing is okay.

Like a teething mouth, her clenched fists craved something to squeeze other than themselves.

…the truth will set you free…

…and that’s the truth about your amazing dad…

She hated them. All of them. Her mom, her dad, Zachary Holcomb. She hated herself, too, for being so naive, for taking everything at face value, for believing that people were inherently good and giving them the benefit of the doubt when all along nothing anyone ever said was true, was ever genuine, and she was just as fake as the rest of them⁠—

It happened in a blur, literally and figuratively, her eyes full of tears, her mind full of vaporous rage. Suddenly she was standing at her desk, her hands full of cars. She gripped them painfully tight, her body wired with electricity.

Let it go.

Let them all go.

To hell with it.

To hell with them.

To hell with me.

She hurled them across the room, one after the other. They struck the wall beside her bed, crunching, thumping, raining to the floor in plastic and metal shrapnel. She replaced each car she threw with another until the shelf was empty and the floor was covered in broken parts, her clenched hands sore from gripping them so tight. Shaylee opened her door, peering in bewildered and frightened.

“Ruth?”

Her vision flooded. She couldn’t stop them any longer. Her body, previously trembling with so much anger, now felt entirely spent, tottery, weak. She could hardly stand. It was difficult to even continue holding her head up. She leaned against the edge of her desk, let her chin fall toward her chest, and began to sob.

“He’s never coming back…”

“Oh my god,” Shaylee said, coming to stand beside her. “What happened? Was it Marcus? What did he do?”

“He’s gone,” Ruth choked. “He’s gone and he’s never coming back!”

33

FALLING OUT

Dario hadn’t the faintest clue what was happening. A strange young woman appeared from the road, shouting Zach’s name. For a moment or two Dario feared Zach had been followed by his wife.

He stood at the window, peeking through the edge of the curtain as he listened to their confrontation unfold. Something about a letter. Something about⁠—

“I am your family!” the young woman shouted.

With his eyes glued to them out there, Dario felt her presence as well. She must have also been watching, he thought, wondering why her meal delivery was taking so long.

Eventually the young woman stormed back in the direction from whence she came, where her car headlights blossomed in the dark and she sped off around the bend. Zach stood, head bowed slightly, his thumb and middle finger upon the bridge of his nose as he contemplated whatever the hell just happened. Then, like the young woman before him, he climbed back into his vehicle and departed in a hurry, vanishing into the night.

“What the hell was that?” Carissa said, standing beside Dario at the window.

“I… I don’t know,” Dario said. He released the curtain and faced her. “But he’s gone.”

“Yes, I can see that.” Carissa paced the floor at the foot of Dario’s bed, her hands on the small of her back. “Who was that girl, anyway?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen her before.”

“I have,” Carissa said, still pacing. “She was out there once before. The last time you had him over here.”

“What? You never mentioned that to me.

Carissa stopped with a shake of her head, a wave of her hand.

“It doesn’t matter. We’ll find someone else, right? And fast.” She took a seat on the edge of Dario’s bed, holding her head in both hands. “I’m not myself when I’m hungry…”

Dario was tempted to ask her why she didn’t just go find someone on her own. There were plenty of unsuspecting victims out there in the night, plenty of hapless folks no one would ever notice were⁠—

“Because I’m not in the mood to go hunting tonight, that’s why,” Carissa snapped, jumping once more to her feet. Her black eyes seethed. “I shouldn’t have to explain myself to you. I asked you for a favor. Do you want to continue being paid or not?”

An unsettling terror rose up in Dario, a dull flood of realization.

“How did you… how did you know…”

“What you were thinking?” Carissa said mockingly. She snatched his phone up from the nightstand and brought it to him, forced it flat against his chest so that he would take it. “I don’t care how you do it. Find me another. Now.”

She marched out of his room. Dario held his phone in both hands. They were shaking terribly. Had she truly just read his mind? Had she always been able?

He regarded the empty vials across the room on his nightstand, twinkling prettily. He felt the faintest tremor in his eyes, twitching beneath the soft fold of his eyelids.

He began scrolling through his most recent messages again. Skipping over Zach’s, he proceeded to reply to each and every message he’d received in the last week, announcing that he was free tonight if any of them might be interested. He prayed he would get at least one bite.

And he did. A profile by the name of kirk1234. Presumably, the man’s name was Kirk.

He replied to Dario’s message: I can come over if it’s in the next twenty minutes?

To which Dario replied: perfect.

His window glowed as another car pulled up outside. He pulled back the curtain to see an average thirty-something-year-old man stepping out of a tan sedan, dressed in a white button-up and slacks as though he’d just come from the office, like Zach often did. The man called Kirk crossed the parking lot to the next room, at which point Dario quickly retreated to his bed. He lay back and pulled his pillow around his ears, muffling the noise that would soon follow.

It wasn’t enough to completely mask the sounds of Kirk’s demise, but it helped.

A few minutes later, Dario sat up and listened, just to be sure. He waited another few minutes, hoping Carissa would remember to come pay him. He really didn’t want to have to remind her.

He was going to have to remind her.

Agitation and fear were a toxic combination. Dario made his way outside, the night air nauseatingly thick. He knocked on Carissa’s door. A few seconds later the door opened, but only a few inches before it stopped against something on the other side. In the dark, Dario glimpsed a dead man’s hand. Carissa cursed under her breath, pushed the body aside with her foot, just enough to open the door a bit wider.

“Yes, Dario?” she said, pressing herself into the opening. She smiled but it didn’t reach her black eyes.

“You didn’t pay me,” Dario said, hoping to get this interaction over with as soon as possible.

“Oh. Right. Right you are…” Carissa turned back into the darkness. She reappeared a moment later, and held out her fist. “Take it.”

Dario cupped both his hands to accept it, as she dropped the glass vial into them. The vial was wet. Sticky. So were Carissa’s hands. Dario stood that way for a moment, observing the fresh blood on his own palms. Kirk’s blood.

“Will that be all?” Carissa said, snapping him out of his thoughts.

“And the keys,” Dario said. “So I can get rid of the car in the morning.”

Carissa vanished again. Dario waited, the sensation of the glass slick with Kirk’s blood against his skin, and resisted squirming in disgust. He shoved the vial into his pocket. Carissa returned to the door empty-handed.

“His keys aren’t on him.”

“Of course they are. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Would you like to come in and search for yourself?”

Dario most certainly did not want to do that. He regarded the tan sedan parked close by. Had Kirk left his keys in the car? Dario headed that way, praying it wasn’t the case, or at the very least that Kirk hadn’t managed to lock himself out of his own car.

Halfway there, Dario heard the low purr of its engine, the vehicle left idling all the while. He continued toward it, slowing with confusion. Closer still, Dario caught movement inside.

Oh shit. Oh god, no…

Dario felt the blood drain from his face. There was someone in the backseat. Not just someone, but…

“Oh fuck.” He turned away, unable to look, to see what awaited him inside. He faced the black woods at the edge of the property, his breath caught in his throat.

“What is it?” Carissa called from her doorway. “Dario?”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck…”

Carissa was standing beside him in an instant, before turning her attention on the sedan and seeing for herself.

“Oh my.” She made a sound—a tsk, tsk. “What kind of father brings his child to a place like this? At this hour?”

“What do we do?” Dario said, turning on his heel reluctantly to face the problem at hand. “What do we do?”

With the streetlight still broken, Dario could still make out the little blonde girl’s face through the window, her mouth forming a perplexed ‘o’ as she peered back from behind the glass. She must have been about four or five years old. Carissa took a step closer to the car, bending down slightly to see the small child. She gave the little girl a friendly wave.

“Two for one, I guess,” Carissa said. “I don’t normally go for children, but their blood is undeniably sweet…”

“No,” Dario said. He stepped toward the car, toward Carissa. “Don’t.”

Carissa straightened, a devilish smirk.

“And what else do you propose we do about this?”

“I don’t know. I’ll take care of it. Just… don’t touch her.”

“All right, Dario,” Carissa said. She laughed cruelly as she passed him, heading back toward her room. “Whatever you say…”

“Give me his wallet,” Dario said. “If he’s got it on him.”

Dario struggled to peel his eyes from the little girl in the car as he followed Carissa back to her room. Carissa stepped inside. Dario listened as she rummaged through the pockets of the dead man behind her door. She handed Kirk’s wallet over. It was especially slick with blood, much more so than Carissa’s hands. Dario couldn’t help but wonder what all she’d done to him.

“Sorry about the mess,” Carissa said. “I get carried away when I’m grumpy. Anyway, is that all you needed?”

Dario steeled himself against his own revulsion.

“Yeah. That’s it.”

Carissa offered him another cold smile and shut the door. Dario turned in place, peering dreadfully toward the car, toward the little girl waiting inside—waiting for her father.

You’re never going to see him again.

Dario hurried back to his room. He put on his shoes, stuffed his phone into his pocket.

What the hell am I even doing?

No amount of money could be worth this, he thought, as he stood observing his little motel room. His little prison cell. If he didn’t snap out of his complacency, he’d be seeing the inside of a real one soon.

The little girl watched him as he made his way to the car again. He hadn’t the slightest idea what he would tell her, if anything. He climbed behind the wheel and shut the door. Music played softly from the speakers—the soundtrack to some children’s musical, by the sounds of it. Kirk’s phone rested in the center console. Another reminder, another gut punch. A person’s last known whereabouts could be traced via their phone’s location tracking, Dario knew. It was only a matter of time before Carissa’s appetite drew unwanted attention to the motel.

I need to be gone before that happens, he thought.

“Where’s my daddy?”

Dario met her gaze in the rearview mirror.

“Your daddy’s busy helping a friend right now. He asked if I’d take you home, and I said I would.”

The little girl was silent. Not good silent. Puzzled silent. I don’t believe you silent.

Dario opened Kirk’s wallet and examined his ID. He plugged the home address into his phone’s GPS. The car was already running, so all there was to do was go. He looked into the rearview again and once more met the little girl’s eyes.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry…

He pulled out of the parking lot and they were on their way.

They were nearly to the interstate when the little girl asked a very important question.

“Are you taking me to my mommy’s?”

Dario pulled the car over to the side of the road. He craned his neck to peer into the backseat, observing the girl with her wiry mess of blonde hair.

“Do your mom and dad live in different houses?” he asked. The little girl gave him a big nod. Dario’s heart sank. “Is there anyone else at your dad’s place? Or is it just you?”

“Just daddy,” the girl said.

“Shit…”

Of course. Why else would Kirk bring his daughter with him? Because he didn’t want to leave her home alone, naturally. Dario lifted his phone, studying what remained of his navigation. They were halfway there already. It wasn’t far. But he couldn’t just leave her alone all by herself, either.

“Do you know where your mommy lives?”

The little girl took a great, big breath of air. “Seventeen thirty-six north Sterling Road,” she said, her eyes skyward as she recalled the address perfectly from memory. “Bakersfield, Tennessee…”

Dario had started punching the address into his navigation when he stopped. He didn’t need navigation. He knew that area quite well, actually.

Like the back of his hand, one might say.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay, okay…”

“Are you daddy’s friend, too?” the little girl asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m your dad’s friend…”

Checking his mirrors, he pulled them around and started in the complete opposite direction. But that was all right. That was better, actually. Her mother’s address wasn’t too far, either. And better still…

Don’t even think about it, Dario.

He put it out of his mind. For now.

Not much longer, not much farther, Dario drove them onto Sterling Road, where many identical suburban houses were built far too closely together. He found the one whose mailbox was marked with ’1736 N.’ and pulled into the driveway.

“Is this your mom’s house?” he asked the little girl, which she answered yes.

Without another word, without a goodbye, Dario pulled the collar of his shirt up over his face, climbed out of the car, made his way up the walkway toward the front door, and rang the doorbell several times in quick succession. He fled back down the walkway. He noticed the little girl turning in the backseat to watch him go. He fled down the length of the driveway and onto the sidewalk, getting away as quickly as he could. He was trembling all over. Short of breath. He turned the next corner onto a neighboring street, along a stretch of wooden-plank fence. He stopped there in the fence’s shadow, where he leaned and pulled his shirt down from his face, taking deep lungfuls of air.

I can’t do this anymore. I’ve already done too much.

His entire body seized with one long, enduring cramp, until the knot in his belly promptly unspooled. It rose into his throat, hot, sour, ghastly. He pressed off the fence toward the grass strip and retched. However much he was trembling before, he was near convulsing now, barely able to keep standing. He spat the last of his sick onto the ground, the taste of it still in his mouth.

“Oh god,” he groaned.

He looked around himself, at the moon-stained street, the unlit windows and the deep wells of shadow between the houses. The sidewalks were deserted. It was only him.

Tired and wobbling, he took a seat on the curb, head bowed. He spat again into the gutter but the bitter taste wouldn’t leave him.

Deep breaths. Deep breaths…

“I’m sorry, Dario.”

His sneakers scuffed the asphalt as he jumped and twirled to see her standing behind him in the fence’s shadow. Carissa watched him with her hands clasped reverently, head tilted.

“I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Yeah fucking right, Dario thought.

“How? How are you here?”

“Are you going to ask me that every time?”

Dario turned and wandered aimlessly into the street, down the street, anywhere to be away from her. But she was relentless. She followed at his heels, her bare feet padding silently.

“You’re upset with me. I understand. I haven’t been myself these last few days.”

“Haven’t you?” Dario said, not stopping, not turning to see her reaction. His stomach was knotted up again. He feared it would unknot itself any second.

“What do you mean by that?” Carissa said.

“You’re so quick to point out how all my clients are liars, cheaters, users. But isn’t that what you’re doing? Using me? Manipulating me?”

“I think of you as a friend, Dario.”

“Bullshit.”

Dario stopped then. He faced her, standing several paces apart in the middle of the street, the entire neighborhood their potential audience if they didn’t keep their voices down. But suddenly Dario wasn’t interested in keeping his voice down. What did it matter at this point?

“Friends don’t demand ‘gestures of loyalty.’ Friends don’t ask you to help dispose of bodies into rivers, or bleed yourself in a stranger’s home, or be an accomplice to…”

He hunched in the street, a hand to his stomach as his empty insides threatened to heave. The nearby streetlights sparkled in his vision. When the upset didn’t come, he stood straight, an arm wrapped across his middle, the other swiping sweat and tears from his face.

“I know,” Carissa said. “I’ve asked a lot of you…”

“I killed a man last week,” Dario said, the woman beside him little more than a warped shadow between the wet shimmer of lampposts. “I pulled the trigger myself. No amount of money will make me forget that… or any of the others… I might as well have killed them all with my own hands…”

“Dario, you’re being ridiculous.”

“I’m done!” His words echoed along the street, bouncing from fence to fence, from house to house. “I don’t wanna do this anymore. The money… the, the…”

The blood was what he wanted to say, but even thinking about it sent his body aching. Craving. It made him sick. A different kind of sick. Sick with himself. He reached into his pocket and grabbed the glass vial, Kirk’s blood since dried and flaking as Dario pulled it loose. In a fit of rage, he dropped the vial onto the pavement and stomped it under the heel of his sneaker, breaking it open. He stumbled as he did it, his body still quivering. Carissa reached for him, barely helped to keep him steady, keep him standing.

“Don’t touch me!” he screamed.

Carissa peered nervously at the sleeping houses. But what did she have to be nervous about, Dario wondered? She could come and go as she pleased, vanish without a trace.

“Dario, you’re going to draw attention to yourself...”

“So what?” he said. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters anymore. Not for me…”

Dario squeezed his eyes shut and was accosted by visions he didn’t wish to see—a young woman struggling to breathe at the bottom of an open grave, Paul’s body at the foot of the porch steps, a lifeless hand behind a motel room door.

“That’s why you’re able to use me, isn’t it?” Dario said. “Just like Ned…”

Carissa sighed with impatience. “Now what are you on about?”

“I’ve no love in my life. Isn’t that the difference? Between me and the rest? Between a house and a home…”

“Dario…”

“Just leave me alone, Carissa. Please.”

He continued up the street, out of the light and into the shadows, out of the shadows and into the light.

“And where are you planning to go?” she said, still following. “Are you going to walk all the way back to the motel?”

“It doesn’t matter where I’m going. Just get away from me, please. Or kill me if that’s what you have to do. I mean it.”

Carissa had no response, though her footsteps continued to trail him, soft and whispering. She came up behind him, close enough to step on his heels at any moment. Or worse. Dario suspected she was preparing to take him up on his suggestion, if that’s what she had to do. He braced for it—hands around his head, a snap of his neck. She liked snapping necks, didn’t she? He felt her breath down the nape of his now, cold and panting.

Do it, then. Just do it. Get it over with. Finish me off once and for all. Just do it already!

Unable to bear the anticipation, he checked over his shoulder and was stunned to find she was gone.

Dario knew exactly where he was going. He knew this area like the back of his hand, after all. Twenty minutes brought him to his destination. He stood in the gutter before his childhood home, observing it in the dark. Quiet and forbidden.

He made his way around back, climbing the fence and dropping into the deeper shadows there. The backyard was always a lovely view, bordered with shapely, flowering shrubs and a great willow tree in the corner, with a picturesque little hammock underneath.

Coming to stand in the middle of the yard, Dario peered towards the upstairs windows, towards one in particular. That would be RiRi’s room, he knew. Dark. Sleeping. The urge to toss pebbles was strong, but this wasn’t the time. Nor the place, really. But he couldn’t go back to the motel. Not tonight. Maybe not ever.

It was warm enough, Dario simply climbed into the hammock under the willow. There, without the aid of vampire blood, he fell asleep to the noise of crickets and soft summer breezes.

34

CHECKING OUT

“Dario?”

Dario opened his sleepy eyes and was greeted by early morning light, as well as a slender silhouette looming over him. He nearly tangled himself in the hammock when he remembered where he was—a place he absolutely wasn’t supposed to be.

“It’s okay! It’s me.”

Dario clambered upright, the hammock twisted behind him. It was RiRi who greeted him, a backpack slung over her shoulder, a pillow hugged under her arm.

“What are you doing out here?” Dario said.

“What are you doing out here?” she shot back, keeping her voice barely above a whisper. “You know what would happen if mom or dad saw you?”

“I had nowhere else to go.” Dario studied the pillow under her arm. “Where are you headed?”

“Nowhere, I’m just getting home. I spent the night at a friend’s.”

“Why are you coming through the backyard?”

“Because my room’s in the basement now,” RiRi said, and pointed to the cement stairway that led to the basement entry. “You should come inside.”

“You just said ‘what if mom and dad see me.’”

“Yeah, so be quiet.”

Dario followed his sister down the stairway, where she produced a key from her backpack and used it to get into the house. The basement was dark and quiet and cool. Last Dario had lived here, it had been unfinished. Now it was whole, with a fresh coat of paint and plush carpet and furnished into a kind of living room, with two sofas and a giant TV on the wall. RiRi led them to the first door on the right. Her new bedroom, apparently.

“What the hell,” Dario said. “I can’t believe mom and dad let you have a room in the basement with your own entrance.”

“Yeah…”

RiRi shut the door, then dumped her backpack onto the floor, tossed her pillow onto her unmade bed. Two walls were painted cherry red, the other two a pinkish-white. An ultra-colorful tapestry hung from floor to ceiling behind her headboard. She had her own desk, covered in bobbleheads and sticker-covered notebooks. Dario flushed with jealousy. He couldn’t hold it against his sister—that their parents were less strict with her than they’d been with him.

That they loved her more.

“So what’s the deal?” RiRi said, sitting on her bed. “You said you had nowhere else to go? What’s going on?”

Dario was still processing her bedroom and the various emotions it conjured in him. His stomach ached and he wasn’t sure if it was withdrawals from a lack of Carissa’s blood, or if he was simply homesick.

“You okay?” RiRi asked.

“I’m fine,” Dario said. “Well, obviously I’m not fine, but… I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you.”

His sister stared at him with the most deadpan, unimpressed expression he’d ever seen on a face.

“Obviously you’re gonna,” she said. “So just spit it out.”

He wasn’t sure he could stay composed long enough for a full retelling. But he did want to tell her. The secrets he kept—the guilt tearing him apart inside—were too great for one soul. But there was a good chance his sister would never look at him the same if he shared them.

“I’m waiting,” she said.

He’d needed to sit in order to tell his sister what had transpired the last few weeks—most of what had transpired, anyway, as he couldn’t bring himself to share that he’d killed a man by his own hand, as if that was so much worse than sending the others to their demises.

Ending with last night’s ordeal involving the little girl and her dead father, Dario buried his face into his hands, dreading his sister’s response. But only silence followed. At least for a minute or two.

Dario tensed as the bed moved. As she moved. She came to sit beside him, right beside him, and placed a comforting hand upon his back. That small gesture alone was more than Dario could have hoped for. Then RiRi took a breath, preparing to say something, when the ceiling overhead creaked with heavy footsteps.

Both Dario and his sister stiffened, lifting their gazes as they tracked those footsteps across the ceiling, toward the place they both knew was the head of the basement stairs.

“Hide,” RiRi said.

Those footsteps pounded their way down. RiRi pointed to her closet and ushered Dario inside, shutting the doors just as there came a knock on the bedroom door. Their mother’s muffled voice came through.

“Ari?” she called. “Your father and I are running some errands, we’re gonna stop at Primo’s Pastries. Do you want anything?”

Dario’s sister had to think about it.

“Can you get me two of those custard-filled things? You know what I’m talking about?”

Their mother answered that she did. Once she was gone, RiRi pulled the closet doors open.

“Primo’s Pastries?” Dario said.

“It’s this little bakery that opened up a few months ago. Remember where that rodeo-themed cafe used to be?”

Dario did remember. He remembered a lot of things from this part of his life—another time, before everything was turned upside-down for no reason.

That’s not true. You know the reason.

“I want to see it,” RiRi told him.

“See what?” Dario said, still standing in her closet, his mind far away.

She leveled her eyes on him gravely. “The motel.”

Once their parents had gone, Dario ordered them an Uber back to the Silver Lining Motel. It was the last place he wanted to be, but he was reassured by the knowledge that it would be relatively safe during the day. Or at least he assumed as much, with Carissa sleeping.

Their Uber dropped them off in the middle of the crumbling parking lot, Dario’s car waiting there all by its lonesome. The nearby woods screamed with cicadas. Dario led them to his door.

“So that’s her room?” RiRi said, looking at the room next door.

Her open-mindedness astounded Dario—that she’d simply absorbed his story and reserved judgement until she could see it for herself. He was both proud of her and grateful for her.

“That’s her room,” he said. “Come on. I wanna grab as much of my stuff as I can and load it into my car.”

After spending the night elsewhere, Dario was immediately hit by the stale odor of the motel as he let them inside, the scent of so many previous guests and their fluids and vapors soaked into the very carpet, the paint. After so long, he’d apparently grown accustomed to it.

“Is this really where you’ve been staying?” RiRi said with a pitying furrow of her brow. “Dario…”

“It’s fine. Just help me.”

They made quick work of loading his bags into the trunk of his car. Dario also discreetly dragged his gift for RiRi out from under the bed—the new sneakers he’d bought for her—and stuffed it into one of the other shopping bags. He would hold onto them for now, he decided, as it didn’t seem like an appropriate time for gifts.

Not wanting to miss anything, Dario opened the nightstand drawer and nearly gasped at the sight of the handgun he’d all but forgotten storing inside.

“Is that the blood you told me about?”

He quickly shut the drawer as RiRi came to stand beside him. She took one of the glass vials, studied it up close, turning it around to see the blood residue at the bottom.

“That’s it,” Dario said. Then in an attempt to draw her attention elsewhere he reached under his mattress and pulled out the cash he’d been paid. “And this is what she’s paid me so far.”

So far. As though he had any plans of getting more.

“Oh my god,” RiRi said. “How much is that?”

“About sixteen-thousand.”

“In less than a month?”

Her marveling eyes gave the impression that she would have liked to hold those wads of cash in her own hands. Dario stuffed them into his laptop bag, which he slung over his shoulder before picking up the remaining shopping bags.

“I think that’s it,” he said.

He threw the last of his things into the trunk of his car and slammed it shut.

“Now to check out,” he said.

The bell jingled as they entered the main office. Ned wasn’t behind his desk, so Dario gave the little countertop bell a few dings. The air was especially warm today, he noticed, as fresh sweat prickled along his forehead.

Ned emerged from the back with a wide-eyed expression, as though fearing whom he’d find waiting. His eyes were ringed with dark circles, the rest of his face sallow and shiny.

“Oh, Dario,” he said, and softened with visible relief. “Good morning.”

“Morning, Ned…” It was an awkward thing he realized, his leaving. Perhaps because it was so abrupt. Unexplained. More of an escape than a proper departure. “I just wanted to come turn in my key. And I think I still owe you for this week, actually…”

“Oh.” Ned’s face first grew long, and then for a moment inscrutable. Expressionless. “I see. You’re checking out, then? Is everything all right?”

Well no, Ned, nothing is all right.

“Everything’s fine,” Dario said. “I’m just… in need of a change, is all.”

Ned nodded like he understood, but his eyes remained doleful. Hurt. “All righty, then. And who’s this?”

“Oh, this is my sister, Arianna,” Dario said. “RiRi, this is Ned, the owner.”

“Hi,” RiRi said, trying to appear friendly as her eyes brimmed with everything Dario had already told her about this place.

Ned offered RiRi a hospitable nod. “Well, then. Let’s get you checked out, shall we?”

Ned opened his laptop. He stared at the screen for a moment, eyes twinkling with its light. Then he froze that way for a time, as if distracted or unsure what he was doing.

“Actually…” He shut the lid suddenly. “How about we just call it even?”

“Call it even?” Dario said, puzzled. “Don’t I still owe you for this week?”

“Not if I say you don’t,” Ned said, smiling warmly. “Besides, what’s one week?”

Dario didn’t know what to say. “I… I have money, Ned, I can…”

“Consider it my thanks,” Ned said. “For being such a reliable guest all these months.”

Dario wasn’t sure he deserved this kindness. Or any kindness for that matter. It was difficult to accept.

“Well… thanks, Ned,” he said. “For everything.”

Ned’s smile quirked, quivered, but held strong.

“You’re welcome back any time, of course.” He paused with something more he wished to say. “But maybe it’s for the best. Things… aren’t what they used to be around here, are they?”

They shared a quiet moment, half-smiling, half-meeting each other’s gazes, itching to look anywhere but.

“Take care of yourself, Dario,” Ned said. “And be safe.”

“Yeah, man. You too.”

“Nice meeting you, Arianna,” Ned said, and offered them one last grin before returning into the back.

The door jingled once more as they left. However warm it was in the office, outside was smothering, the air almost too wet to breathe.

“Well, he seemed… nice,” RiRi said.

“Before all this shit started,” Dario said, “Ned was one of the happiest people I ever met. Like, annoyingly happy. One of those people who doesn’t let anything get them down.”

They crossed the parking lot back to Dario’s car.

“Where are you planning to go now?” RiRi asked.

“I don’t know yet.”

“You don’t think she’ll come find you?”

“Not if she keeps her word.”

RiRi stopped at the passenger door. She peered toward the end of the motel, toward Dario’s room and the room next to it.

“You think she’s in there right now?” RiRi said. “Sleeping?”

“Probably.”

Dario opened his door and was about to swing himself into the driver’s seat when RiRi left him there, starting toward the motel again. Toward Room Ten.

“RiRi,” Dario said, but she didn’t listen. “Arianna, stop.”

She didn’t stop. Dario followed after her, as his sister stood before Room Ten, where she put her ear up to the door and listened. Then, to Dario’s horror, she tried the doorknob but found it was locked.

“What are you doing?” he said. “Get away from the door.”

RiRi regarded Dario with a sort of wonder, like she was surprised by his agitation. She didn’t understand how serious this was, he knew. Despite the tales of horrific bloodshed he’d shared, they would only be that until she saw the horror for herself—just tales.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

“You really don’t know where you’re going after this?”

RiRi asked him this on the way back to their parents’, where Dario intended to drop her off and be on his way, wherever that might be. He hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. Some part of him simply assumed he’d find another motel, at least for a few nights until he could find something more permanent.

“I don’t know, another motel, probably. I was thinking maybe someplace in Murfreesboro. Or I even thought about heading farther south to Chattanooga. Just for a while…”

RiRi grew quiet the rest of their short drive. It wasn’t until Dario pulled over a block away from their parents’ house that she spoke again.

“You should stay with me,” RiRi said. “At least one more night.”

“I can’t,” Dario said. “We both know that.”

“I’m not worried about them, Dario, I’m worried about you. If everything you told me is true…”

“It is,” Dario said.

“If it’s true, then you’d be safer at home with me, at least, wouldn’t you? Safer than in another motel, anyway.”

“Maybe. Or maybe I’m putting you in danger by coming here in the first place. For all I know, she already followed me.”

“You’re staying here,” RiRi said, not a question but a demand. “At least one more night. Please?”

“And what, sleep on your bedroom floor?”

“At least my bedroom is cockroach free,” she said. “And we can spend the rest of the day together and⁠—”

“Have a slumber party tonight, just the two of us?” Dario finished sarcastically.

“Does that really sound so bad?” RiRi said. “You’re always saying you want to spend more time together. Besides, it would make me feel better, at least, knowing you’re here, and not… out there, somewhere.”

She gestured to the world at large. Dario had to admit, it’d become a scary place as of late. And if it made his sister feel better… well, that wasn’t nothing.

“Okay,” he said, relenting. “But just for tonight.”

35

LET THEM IN

She started to stand out of bed when she stepped on something jagged and hard. She peered down between her feet, where she found little pieces of blue plastic. Tucked between her bed and nightstand, she pulled out the bulk of it—the blue model car she’d hurled at the wall the previous night. She’d thrown them all, actually. Every last one. The rest of the evening was a blur to her now—a hurricane of emotion. Mostly she remembered sitting with Shaylee, the angel that she was, doing her best to comfort Ruth when Ruth refused to be comforted.

She didn’t think she could face her this morning. Not after the way she’d behaved. But unless she planned on hiding in her bedroom all day, she’d eventually have to face that music, one way or another.

She made her way into the hall, where she quickly darted into the bathroom. She took an ibuprofen and swallowed it with a couple handfuls of water from the faucet. When she stepped out, Shaylee was already waiting for her.

“Morning,” Shaylee said, leaning at the end of the hall near the living room, arms folded. “How’re you feeling?”

Ruth shrugged. “I’m all right, I guess.”

Shaylee nodded, though they both knew perfectly well that Ruth was not feeling all right, and it seemed Shaylee was waiting for her to admit it. When neither of them said anything more, standing awkwardly at either end of the hall, Ruth moved back toward her bedroom, hoping to retreat there.

“You want to talk about last night?” Shaylee said, not about to let Ruth sweep what had happened under the rug.

“Oh…” Anything but that, her mind screamed. Anything but that. “I don’t know. Maybe later. I’m not really⁠—”

“You really exploded,” Shaylee said, concerned.

“I know. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again, I promise.”

“That’s…” Shaylee paused. “I’m not bothered, Ruth. I’m worried about you.”

Worried about me, Ruth repeated, the mere idea sounding completely alien to her.

“That’s what happens when you stay bottled up all the time, you know. Pretending everything’s good when it’s not. Eventually you explode.”

Ruth’s shame reached new heights. She wanted nothing more than to return to her bedroom, like a hermit crab sliding back into its shell. More unexpectedly, she found herself prickling at her roommate’s words—that she believed it was her place to lecture Ruth on what she was or wasn’t feeling.

“It wasn’t like that,” Ruth said. “I just had a really weird night. That’s all.”

Shaylee sighed defeatedly. “If you don’t want to talk about it with me, that’s fine, I get it, but you should talk about it with someone, at least. You owe it to yourself.”

…I already told you once, you fucking psycho…

Zachary Holcomb’s words bit her again, hours later. She feared Shaylee would agree with him if she knew the whole truth.

“Anyway, if you ever do wanna talk,” Shaylee said. “I’m always here. Seriously.”

Ruth nodded. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll think about it.”

Shaylee gave her a look of skepticism, and once again Ruth was overcome with the feeling of being seen through, of being read like a book. She wasn’t nearly as convincing as she liked to fancy herself.

“One more thing,” Shaylee said, as Ruth started for her door again. “I’m having a couple friends over tonight to watch a movie. I was thinking it’d be fun if you joined us. Marcus could come over, too.”

Ruth’s belly fluttered nervously. Her knee-jerk reaction was to decline, but after declining to talk to Shaylee about last night, she felt pressured to accept, not wanting to sound like a broken record of negativity. No, no, no…

“What kind of movie?” Ruth asked.

“A horror movie,” Shaylee said, her eyes darkening with mischief. “What else?”

Ruth forced her best attempt at a smile and said, “Sure. That sounds fun.”

Ruth was ready and waiting when Shaylee got home that evening. She sprang to her feet from the kitchen table, anticipating her. Shaylee’s eyes were drawn first to Ruth, then the table behind her, where Ruth had laid out all the things she’d gone shopping for this morning after Shaylee left for the day.

“What’s this?” Shaylee said.

“I picked up some things for the party. Or the movie, or whatever,” Ruth said.

On the table were a few bags of chips, a couple different containers of dips, as well as a bottle of Shaylee’s favorite gin and a couple bottles of the tonic she seemed to like best, as she usually kept one on hand for her parties.

“Oh,” Shaylee said, appearing surprised. “Ruth, you didn’t need to get all⁠—”

“I wanted to,” Ruth said. “Not just for the party, but… well, to say thanks. For being such a good friend to me lately.”

Calling Shaylee her friend felt strange, like maybe she was being presumptuous using the title at all. Ruth never had many friends growing up, even less now she was grown. She wasn’t altogether sure how to be. What was an appropriate show of gratitude? How much was too much? It was all new territory for the most part.

Shaylee’s eyes sparkled with appreciation as she gave Ruth a hug around the shoulders. Such a simple show of affection was enough to make Ruth’s stomach flutter nervously again.

Thanks for including me, she wanted to say but resisted. She realized this wasn’t the first time Shaylee had extended an invitation.

This was simply the first time Ruth had allowed herself to accept it.

The movie was 30 Days of Night, which Shaylee claimed to have seen three times in theaters at the age of thirteen. Ruth couldn’t imagine voluntarily watching such a movie at such a young age, let alone three times. The hopelessness, the suspense, the grotesquerie—Ruth could hardly handle it once, and found herself clinging to Marcus like a signpost in the middle of a tornado anytime anything remotely frightening occurred on screen.

“I bet you’re glad that’s over,” Marcus whispered in her ear once the movie had ended, as the others discussed it amongst themselves.

“I actually liked it,” Ruth said, “I’ve just never handled horror stuff very well.”

“I think you handled it fine,” Marcus said.

“I think your left arm would disagree.”

Marcus rolled his shoulder then, like it was sore.

“Yeah, actually, I think maybe you’re right. You’ve got some super-human strength yourself. Is there something you’re not telling me?”

“Oh, god…” Ruth said.

Marcus laughed, delighted by her squirming as he teased her.

It was then Shaylee announced she had another movie picked out, if they were up for a second one. Ruth felt no guilt whatsoever declining this time around.

“I think I’m horror-movie’d out,” she said.

“Wanna go for a walk?” Marcus asked her. “Then we can talk just the two of us?”

Ruth peered toward the kitchen, where she could see the clock on the wall. It was a little after 10 p.m. After her little episode the previous night—jumping at shadows in alleyways—she couldn’t help but think twice about a late night stroll.

“Isn’t it a bit late?” she said. “Why don’t we hang out in my room for a bit instead?”

Shaylee and the others giggled and murmured teasingly in response to this.

“To talk,” Ruth added, as if specifying made any difference.

“Okay, sure,” Marcus said.

He stood up from the sofa and offered Ruth his hand to pull her up alongside him. Shaylee called after them as they started for Ruth’s room, but Ruth did everything she could to tune out whatever she’d said. Ruth closed the door behind them.

“Oh no,” Marcus said. “What happened here?”

Not five seconds and he’d somehow noticed the model cars, which Ruth had since picked up off the floor and returned to their shelf, albeit in their damaged states.

“Oh, that was an accident,” Ruth lied.

She was doing that a lot lately, she realized. Lying. She didn’t used to be such a liar, did she? She also didn’t used to be the kind of person who followed people home from work, dug around in their trash, and stalked them on social media. These were all new facets of herself she’d never known before. In light of it all coming to a terrible end, she was left only with self-loathing, for stooping so low to begin with.

“Actually, no. It wasn’t an accident,” she said. Admitted. Her insides stirred with butterflies. “I did that.”

Marcus looked over his shoulder, a quizzical look. “You did this?”

“Last night. I threw them all in a… fit of rage, I suppose.”

“Last night?” Marcus said. “After our date?”

Ruth paced to her bed and took a seat there.

“Remember that stuff I told you about? Plan B? Well, after you dropped me off I sorta decided to work on that.”

Marcus sat next to her, hip to hip.

“You mean with that guy you wrote the letter to?”

“I knew he wasn’t going to reach out, so I took matters into my own hands…” Ruth sighed, as the weight of her secrets pressed upon her, as her conscience begged to be alleviated of the burden. “I drove to his house last night.”

“Oh, shit,” Marcus said.

Marcus’ body language was all wrong. He was leaning away from Ruth, perhaps to better see her beside him, but also perhaps because he was one secret away from bolting from the room and dodging her like the bullet she was. The image was almost enough to make Ruth laugh, incredibly enough. If he thought this was bad, she couldn’t imagine what he’d think about all the omissions from her story. Part of her wanted to come clean about it all. To tell another soul and finally stop pretending. If Marcus rejected her, that was just as well, she thought. One less thing to worry about. One less person to pretend for.

“Oh god…” Ruth said, dreading what she was about to do.

“What is it?” Marcus said. “What happened?”

“Marcus…” She shook her head. “There’s a lot of stuff I haven’t told you.”

“About what?”

She chewed her lip, wondering where to begin—where to start patching up the holes first.

“Do you remember when I said I was worried you’d think I was crazy? Well, I was. Worried, I mean. Which is why I left out so much. I did a lot more than just follow this guy to work…”

Marcus became quiet. It was the worst kind of quiet.

Screw it, Ruth thought. Rip off the Band-Aid. Let that freak flag fly.

She told him everything again, from the beginning. This time she left nothing out. She told him about following Zachary Holcomb home from work, about stealing mail from his garbage.

“I just needed to learn his name,” she explained. “That was the only way I knew how to find him online.”

She went on to describe their confrontation outside her work, where Zachary Holcomb told her to stay away from his family, and threatened to report her to the police if she didn’t. She told Marcus about following him to the motel, where she discovered he was cheating on his wife with other men.

At this point in her story, Marcus uttered under his breath, “Jesus…” which oddly comforted Ruth—that he was still present, still listening, and not simply waiting for his moment to flee. Ruth also noticed their thighs were still touching, seated side by side.

She repeated everything her mother had revealed to her—about her father’s infidelity and his failed attempt to connect with Zachary Holcomb in the past—and how those things had affected Ruth’s opinion of them both. She finished by detailing what her Plan B had been, and how it had ended with hers and Zachary’s second and final confrontation in the motel parking lot.

“And then I came home and…” She gestured to the shelf of model cars. “…did that. Because I guess he was right about me.”

She cringed as Marcus spoke, expecting the worst, and it wasn’t until a moment or so after he’d spoken that she truly heard him.

“You’re not a psycho, Ruth. At least, I don’t feel like I’m listening to one.”

She met his gaze. Marcus held hers unflinchingly.

“Can I be honest?” he said, to which Ruth could only shrug exasperatedly. After everything she’d just dumped on him, his honesty only seemed fair. “You sound more like someone who hasn’t fully processed their loss. At least… not in a healthy way. Pardon the psychobabble—I know I’m not a psychologist, but I’ve spent the better part of my life in therapy, so I’d like to think I’ve learned a thing or two…”

“You were in therapy?” Ruth said.

“Yeah. I still go, actually. Once a month. Used to be once a week, though, for many years.”

Ruth was blown away by that. “Wow.”

“Anyway, what I’m getting at is, we all cope with loss differently, right? Like I said, it’s not really my place to analyze, but… as far as this Zachary guy goes, it sounds to me like maybe running into him brought up a lot of old feelings. Stuff you never processed about your dad, I mean. And yeah, maybe stalking the guy wasn’t the best course of action, but it wasn’t with ill intent. It wasn’t so much about him as it was about something he reminds you of. Right?”

Ruth was still caught up in the fact that Marcus wasn’t running for the door. But he spoke so eloquently, she was confident there must have been some truth in whatever he’d just said, so she nodded like she followed along perfectly.

“And this is just me talking, of course,” Marcus continued, “but obviously you loved your dad more than anything in the world. And he must have loved you a lot, too, to leave such an impression. You don’t need some estranged uncle to know that.”

Ruth wanted to kiss him. She also wanted to cry—terribly—but decided she’d done enough of that already. She needed something more than a shoulder to cry on.

“Can I kiss you?”

The words tripped off her tongue faster than her anxious mind could stop them. Marcus appeared like he hadn’t heard her right. Totally dumbfounded. When he realized he had, his face burned red, which only made Ruth want to kiss him that much more. Without a word—with only the ghost of a smile teasing the corner of his mouth—Marcus nodded that she could.

36

FAMILY NIGHT

They spent their day playing video games, eating snacks, and streaming Parks and Recreation episodes on RiRi’s laptop, sprawled side by side on her bed.

Dario had greatly missed times like this, spent with his little sister. It was truly wonderful. Not even their parents returning home could sour it.

Being in the basement, RiRi’s bedroom didn’t get especially bright throughout the day, and the approach of nightfall was so gradual that it was only when their mother came to tell RiRi dinner was ready that Dario realized just how late it was.

“I’ll be up in a second,” RiRi told their mother through the door. Then to Dario she said, “I’ll sneak something down for you, okay?”

Dario sat on his sister’s bed and listened to their chatter from above, traveling through the ceiling vents, their words indistinguishable but their voices clear. He heard their parents’ laughter, and the sound opened in him a chasm of longing, of jealousy, of resentment. Not for RiRi, but for them—those people who were sworn to love them both unconditionally.

Dario’s stomach spasmed with hunger. A dizzying ache. Was it food he was hungry for, he wondered? Or something else…

Eventually things upstairs grew quiet. Dario became antsy. He stood and paced, then returned to RiRi’s bed. When he heard footsteps coming down the basement stairs he darted into the closet, just to be safe. The bedroom door clicked open.

“Dario?”

It was RiRi. He stepped out, and found his sister standing with a steaming plate of their mother’s acclaimed risotto. She gestured for Dario to sit, then handed it over. The hunger in his belly roared then, eager and fierce. He regarded the food for a moment, so many memories crashing over him. The first bite he took conjured hot tears into his eyes. He had difficulty swallowing despite how delicious it was. Of course it was delicious, he thought. It always had been.

“You want to know something funny?” RiRi said, taking a seat beside him while he ate. “Your room upstairs is exactly how you left it three years ago. Exactly. Mom won’t let dad touch it. It’s like she’s been waiting for you to come back all this time.”

“We both know that’s not happening any time soon,” Dario said, his mouth full of risotto.

“I don’t know,” RiRi said. “If you just told them you weren’t doing the sex work stuff…”

“That’s not the issue. You and I both know that.”

“Dad will come around eventually. I know he will. Mom will see to that. Seriously, Dario. She misses you…”

Dario had to stop eating as his sister’s words got the better of him. He set down his fork, his plate in his lap.

“She’s not the one in control of this house,” he said. “And dad runs his fortress with an iron fist. Trust me, I know…”

It was at that moment there came a knock on RiRi’s bedroom door. Dario nearly fumbled his plate onto the floor. He hadn’t heard anyone coming—no footsteps down the basement stairs. His chest was a stampede. Before either of them could react—before RiRi could answer, before Dario could take cover in RiRi’s closet—the door opened.

Their mother entered the room with scanning eyes, already knowing exactly what she’d come looking for, and as she happened upon Dario those eyes brightened with surprise and confirmation.

“I thought so,” she said.

Dario finally gathered his wits, setting his plate aside and climbing to his feet.

“Wait,” their mother said. “Don’t go, Dario. Please.”

His mother looked him over, from head to toe, lingering on his face. He hadn’t seen hers, either, in such a long time. He could only stand rigidly in place as she stepped closer, until finally she placed her hands on both sides of his face, holding him delicately like she needed to be certain he was real. All at once Dario crumbled. He could hardly hold his head up. She pulled him close, squeezed him, his head heavy on her shoulder.

Dario wasn’t sure how many minutes passed. He listened as his sister sniffled nearby, watching from the sidelines. Eventually he couldn’t cry anymore. An immense calm settled over him. Relief. The resulting quiet was unlike any he’d heard. His mother held him at arm’s length, getting another good look at him.

“There’s more food upstairs,” she said. “And dessert.”

And then, as if reading his mind, his mother added, “Your dad is already fast asleep.”

Dario and his mother sat on stools at the kitchen counter, RiRi leaning against the granite countertop across from them as they chatted at a low volume, in the low light of the dimmed ceiling lights. Dario helped himself to a slice of chocolate cream pie, another of his mother’s classics.

She had many questions, most of which Dario didn’t have satisfying answers for, such as those about his current living situation, as well as his current employment.

“I’m sort of between jobs at the moment,” Dario admitted vaguely.

His mother nodded understandingly, though Dario could tell there were other questions brewing, questions she would never ask, about all the disparaging things his father had probably told her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve been a terrible mother.”

Dario faltered. He could lie and tell her it was fine. He could lie and tell her that he understood. But the truth was that it wasn’t fine, and he didn’t understand. He’d spent the last few years knowing his mother had chosen their father over him, despite whatever disagreements they might have had behind closed doors.

“I’m sorry I didn’t support you sooner.” She placed a hand over his on the countertop. “That was a mistake. I know that. I know I should have done better. Your father has a much harder time with these things, and that’s no excuse, I know. I shouldn’t have let his… issues, influence my responsibility as your mother. But I did. And I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Dario.”

Dario hated seeing her become emotional, whatever resentments he still had. He placed his other hand over hers, sandwiching it between his own.

“It’s okay, mom.”

Did he believe that? He wasn’t sure. But as he voiced it, he felt it could be true. If he allowed it to be. And god, did he want it to be true.

“I’ve missed you so much,” she said, her voice thickening.

Now it was his turn. Dario’s stool squeaked slightly against the floor as he stood and embraced her once again. When they finished, he caught his sister wiping more tears from her own cheeks. He shook his head disappointedly at her.

“What?” she said, and laughed as she finished wiping her eyes dry.

“So,” his mother said. “Are you seeing anyone? Anyone special, I mean?”

Dario wanted to laugh. He wasn’t sure why. It was strange to suddenly be met with the acceptance he’d craved for so long. It felt a little forced, a bit cheesy, and he knew there likely wasn’t any way around those feelings. They had to start somewhere, didn’t they? These were growing pains.

“No,” he said. “Not at the moment.”

“Ah.” His mother considered his answer, studying him, her eyes darting all around his face. “I’m surprised.”

“You’re surprised?”

“You’re so handsome!” she said, her giddy voice spurring Dario to glance worriedly about the kitchen. “I would have thought…”

“Okay, all right,” Dario said, shrinking under the attention.

“You know something?” his mother said, leaning in close. “I’ve watched every season of Queer Eye I could find…”

“Oh, mom,” Dario said, and now he couldn’t help but laugh.

“It’s true. I watched it every night after your father went to bed, you know…”

“Mom,” RiRi said, snorting on her side of the counter.

“It’s a good show! Everyone should watch it. All the different people and their stories… It’s just so heartwarming, don’t you think?”

The kitchen lights turned bright and all three of them gasped. RiRi straightened where she’d previously been leaning. Dario stiffened, followed her gaze to the kitchen doorway where their father stood, his hand still resting against the light switch.

“What the hell is this?” he said, not looking once at Dario, but instead back and forth between RiRi and their mother. “What is he doing here? What the hell is he doing in my house?”

Dario’s father advanced on the three of them, jabbing his finger in Dario’s direction while his eyes continued to avoid him entirely. Fed up, Dario’s mother stood abruptly from her chair, hands balled at her sides.

“This is my house, too, Alberto!” she said, her anger as sharp as his. “I am tired of this! Tired of it!”

Realizing there was nothing to be gained addressing their mother, Dario’s father stormed around her, shaking his head as he came.

“Dad,” RiRi said.

Dario didn’t know what to expect. Except that wasn’t entirely true, was it? He did have some idea. That’s why his hands lifted of their own accord, palms defensively outward as he braced for what might happen next. His father grabbed him roughly by the front of his shirt, jerked him from off his stool. Dario barely got his feet under him, stumbling as his father wheeled him around, hands on his shoulders, pushing him toward the kitchen doorway. The others’ cries did nothing to get his father’s attention.

“Get off of me…” Dario dug in his heels, sneakers squealing on the hardwood. “Get your fucking hands off of me!”

He spun, brandished his forearm against his father’s hands to sweep them away. He met his father’s gaze then. Unavoidable. He looked like a bull, his lips mashed firmly together, nostrils flared. Dario felt the heat radiating from him. Volcanic.

“Out!” his father screamed, and jabbed his meaty finger toward the door. “You have no place in this house!”

Dario puffed his chest, if only to make more room for the air he could hardly breathe.

“Yeah?” he said. “Is that so? Because I heard my bedroom is just the way I left it.”

“So I can remember the son I once had,” his father retorted.

Dario scoffed. “Do you hear yourself? Do you actually hear yourself? Do you even understand why you hate me?”

“I know what you are,” his father said. “And no son of mine⁠—”

“What I am…” Dario wanted to laugh, to make his father feel like the fool he was, but his emotions had other ideas. His eyes watered. His throat closed up. More than anything else, he couldn’t allow his father to see him cry. Not now. Not here. “I’m still her son. I’m still RiRi’s brother. You don’t own them, as much as I know you’d love to believe you do.”

“No more out of you.”

His father reached for him again, grabbed for his shoulder. Dario batted his father’s hand away once again.

“Don’t touch me, you fucking pig.”

The volcano blew its lid.

A flash of bared teeth. A flash of knuckles. A grisly crunch of cartilage. Dario’s head rocked back. He began seeing stars before he’d even hit the floor, which he landed hard upon, right on his tailbone. His father followed him down, striking again before Dario could even get his hands up to defend himself. His father pummeled him with a second and third strike, wetting his knuckles against Dario’s nose. His mother and sister were screaming. They appeared there, their blurry forms wrapping themselves around either of Alberto’s shoulders, pulling him away, pulling him off, or trying to. Dario’s senses were scattered. It was all he could do to pedal out from under his father’s straddling legs. He turned onto his hands and knees, promptly choked on his own coppery blood down the back of his throat. It dripped, dripped, dripped onto the hardwood between his hands.

Drip, drip, drip…

He spat. His face was both numb and on fire.

Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip…

Behind him, Dario’s family continued to fight and shout amongst themselves as he watched his own blood puddling on the floor. From a puddle to a pool. From a drip… to a stream… to a gushing faucet.

His nose geysered hard enough to splash, speckling his hands. He couldn’t bring himself to move, paralyzed by the sting of it. The pool spread around his hands, outward, outward, thick and relentless.

Then, as if a valve was turned inside his head, the flow was stanched. His nose dripped once, twice… and then nothing.

His father must have broken free of the others. He rolled Dario onto his back, exhausted and sucking for air. His father crouched over him. He grabbed a fistful of Dario’s shirt, pulled him slightly up off the floor, his fist cocked behind his head. Dario raised his hands in another feeble attempt to guard himself, felt the frigid chill of the air conditioning on his sticky fingertips. But the wallop he anticipated never came.

Alberto’s gaze had locked onto something else—to the pool of blood beside them, which had begun to ripple. Judder. Rise.

Dario turned to see those glistening red strands dancing beautifully into the air, silently spiraling, entwining. A hush fell over the room—the sound of hold-your-breath awe.

The blood congealed into what could only be described as a slender woman. Then it dried. Hardened. It took on the color of cream. In another moment, she stood before them in all her naked glory. She looked upon Dario and smiled like a friend.

Dario’s father started to shout when she kicked him off his feet, onto his back, sliding. She advanced. Dario sat up, barely lifting his delirious head in time to see his father kicked down again, forced flat with a foot upon his chest.

“Why must you all be so disappointing?” she asked him, and lifted her foot.

“Carissa, don’t⁠—”

That was all Dario managed before she staved his father’s head in, bursting like a melon across the kitchen floor.

His mother’s and sister’s screams raked the still, chilled air. Dario could hardly hear them for the dull drone of blood pulsing between his ears. The floor beneath him gave way—floating in unreality as RiRi and their mother fled and Carissa gave chase.

No. This can’t be happening.

Despite lacking bodily sensation, Dario found himself climbing to his feet. On his feet. Standing straight. Swaying.

From the next room, their mother let out a wounded squawk.

“Let go of her!” RiRi screamed.

He was swimming. Through the kitchen, through his own ringing mind. His broken nose flared with stinging pain. He stumbled over his father’s body, nearly slipped in his gore, caught himself against the kitchen counter. There beside him, Dario glimpsed the wooden block full of black handles. He grasped one, pulled it out. A wide silver blade.

The others’ screams rose sharply in pitch as something ripped the next room over. Fabric and more. Grunts and gasps and thumping feet. Dario hurried dizzily after them, his own tacky feet peeling off the hardwood with each step. He staggered into the living room. More screams from RiRi. Up above. Dario darted for the stairs. He slid along something warm and wet and tripped onto the stairway, the knife in his hand scraping the wooden step, the spatter of blood between his hands revealing some horrendous truth he couldn’t compute. Not yet. He climbed the stairs on his hands and knees like he did when he was a little boy—up, up, up each stair in quick succession, until he crawled over someone’s arm. Just the arm. Still wearing the torn sleeve of a blouse.

Dario drew back at the sight of it, pulling away, pulling apart. Unhinging. The stairs were covered in blood. He scrambled onward, to the top of the stairs, into the upstairs hallway where he discovered the rest of her slumped against the wall, her open-mouthed face lolling lifelessly against the drenched socket of her shoulder.

Farther down the hall, in the bedroom on the left, RiRi continued to scream.

Dario started that way, knife in hand. He arrived in the bedroom doorway. He stepped inside, flipped on the light, and⁠—

“Carissa, stop!” he howled.

RiRi cowered in the corner of Dario’s childhood bedroom, pressing herself there. Carissa loomed, barely acknowledging Dario, her eyes focused entirely on her cornered prey.

“These people don’t deserve you, Dario. They don’t love you. Not really. Not the real you.”

She stepped toward RiRi, who tried becoming one with the wall, scrambling and writhing against it in thoughtless horror with nowhere left to go. Dario lunged. He stuck the knife somewhere between her ribs, where the blade sank smooth and deep into the meat of her, to the handle. Carissa twisted, batted him clean across the room with the back of her arm. Dario was airborne for a moment. He hit the dresser by his bed, collapsed onto the floor as a myriad of childish things rained down on top of him—a cup of polished rocks, several plastic Pokémon figurines, a ball of colorful, stretched rubber bands.

Carissa pulled the knife free. She studied it, her dark blood along its blade. Dario’s eyes wobbled in his skull. His stomach yearned for it, rumbling hungrily. Leaving RiRi whimpering in the fetal position, Carissa stooped over Dario, knife in hand.

“You would turn on me, after everything I’ve done for you?” she said. “You would stab me in the back to protect those who turned their backs on you so long ago?”

“They’re my family,” Dario said.

Were, he thought. They were my family.

“Family,” Carissa said, trying the word on for size. “What is family, Dario? Sharing blood in your veins? My blood runs through your veins, too. Does that make us family?”

Dario’s head was spinning. Throbbing. Murky. His thoughts only stitched themselves together as Carissa extended the knife toward him, her gluey blood dripping from the tip of its blade. His every thought zeroed in, singularly centered.

“Have some,” Carissa said. “It’ll make you feel better.”

Dario tried not to look at it, glimmering and sweet. He focused instead on his sister, huddled in the corner.

“Just a taste,” Carissa said. “Then I’ll carry you home in my arms. We’ll put this chapter of our lives behind us. We’ll start a new chapter. Just you and me.”

“I told you to leave me alone,” Dario said. “You said you would. You lied to me…”

Carissa sighed disappointedly. She started for RiRi again. Dario straightened slightly, pushing himself against the dresser at his back.

“Leave her alone,” he said.

“Taste this, and I will.”

She turned the knife in her grasp, her wet blood sliding to and fro along the blade. She wasn’t giving him a choice. Not if he wanted to protect RiRi. Not if he wanted to spare her. Carissa returned to him, padding across his bedroom on her black-bottomed feet. She extended the knife’s blade to him again, its sharpened edge toward the ceiling.

“Go on, then,” she said, already knowing he’d made up his mind.

He craned his neck, stuck out his tongue, and swabbed the knife’s blunt edge. He tasted her in an explosion of flavor—a sugar-coated metallic tang. His mind bloomed with that familiar ecstasy, rolling through him like a storm.

“That’s it…”

Dario tried to keep upright as his muscles relaxed, keen on spilling flat across the floor. As he loosened into a puddle of flesh and bone, Carissa scooped him into her arms like he was nothing.

“I’ve got a surprise for you at home,” she said.

Then everything dwindled into a sleepy haze.

He woke fleetingly, jostled in Carissa’s arms as she carried him for miles under the moonlight. He opened his eyes to the hushed roar of traffic in the distance. Then he blinked and was gone. The hooting of owls in the trees. Gone again.

He woke and saw the starry black, as well as the glow of red neon against Carissa’s pale face, and knew in an instant they were back. Her bare feet slapped and scuffed the blacktop.

Back to Room Ten.

She carried him into the swallowing dark, laid him upon her bed, his head on the pillow. She shut the door and rendered the room a sightless tomb. The sour-sweet stench of decay teased Dario’s nostrils as he squirmed in place. Too heavy to move. Too tired to try very hard.

“It’s okay,” she said, her cold breath in his ear. “Everything is going to be okay. This will only hurt for a minute.”

The mattress whined as she sat beside him. She cupped the back of his head, lifted him from the pillow, cradling him. He winced as she bit into the thick cord of his neck. She bit deep, latching there. Her cold, fat, earthworm tongue pressed to him as his warm blood flowed. She sucked. Her body heaved. Machine-like. Pumping him dry. He felt himself grow colder as she drained him. His toes turned numb. His fingertips. A tingling in his ears. He was fading again. He felt light, hovering, his body singing a melody only his mind could hear. A deep hum.

Finally her teeth slipped from his flesh with a breathless sigh.

“Now your turn.”

Vaguely, he heard the pinch of broken flesh as she opened herself. Then she placed her dripping wound to his mouth, and with the quickening beat of his heart, Dario fastened himself to her, nursing on her wrist like a hungry babe.

“Drink, Dario,” she said. “Drink like your life depends on it.”

The rush of dark heaven was unlike any high he’d experienced yet. An all-encompassing flood.

In the nearby dark, someone sobbed. Begged. Despaired.

37

MISSED CALLS

Ruth barely woke in time to reach for her phone as it vibrated toward the edge of her nightstand. She couldn’t quite make it, however, as something locked her in place. An arm around her belly—Marcus’ arm, around her very naked belly. She reached again, pulling slightly away from him, and grabbed her phone. It was her boss calling. Judy.

Oh my god…

It was almost noon. She’d needed to be to work at 11:30. Ruth never slept in this late. She quickly answered her boss’ call, speaking softly so as not to wake Marcus.

“I’m so sorry,” she breathed into the phone. “I didn’t realize… I accidentally slept in and…”

“Ruth, I need you here now. Max was a no-show this morning and I can’t get ahold of him.”

“Yeah, I’m on my way,” Ruth fibbed. “Sorry!”

She climbed out of bed. Marcus rubbed his tired eyes as she scrambled for clothes.

“What time is it?” he said.

“Time for work. I’m already late.”

“Oh, shit…”

Ruth pulled on one of her work-approved shirts then began hurriedly buttoning up her pants.

“You can stay as long as you want,” she told Marcus. “But I have to go.”

She pulled on socks, grabbed her phone and wallet, shoved them into her pockets. Marcus simply lay watching, smiling. Ruth briefly flushed with all manner of feelings seeing him there—a handsome, very naked man lying in her bed?—but didn’t have time to share those feelings with him. Not now.

“I’ll see you later,” she said, and darted out of her bedroom door.

After an incredibly hectic morning—as the only cashier during the midday rush—Ruth took her fifteen-minute break. She was enjoying a peanut-butter granola bar in the stockroom when she received a call from an unknown number. She eyed that number for a moment or two, recognizing it as a Tennessee number, though that didn’t mean much these days, in a world full of scammers. Nevertheless she felt oddly compelled to answer.

“Hello?”

From the other end, a nervous voice said, “Ruth?”

Ruth paused. “This is she. Who is this?”

“This is Marjorie Holcomb. Zachary’s wife.”

Ruth’s stomach plummeted fifty feet. The line filled with empty static until Marjorie Holcomb decided to continue.

“I don’t mean to bother you…” Ruth found this particularly funny, coming from the wife of the man she’d been stalking for the better part of a month now. “I got your number from the letter you wrote to my husband. I just wanted to start off by saying… I don’t hold anything against you. I understand what you were doing… where you were coming from, I mean.” The line hissed as Marjorie took a deep breath to settle her nerves. “I wouldn’t be calling like this if it wasn’t an emergency.”

“Emergency?” Ruth said.

“Without going into too much detail… my husband and I had a bit of a disagreement the other night… after he came home late from God knows where…” Another self-soothing sigh. “Anyway, we haven’t really been talking since, and… he never came home from work last night. He’s not returning any of my calls or texts and… well, I didn’t know who else to turn to. I thought maybe you’d know something. Just… where he might be? I know all about the cheating, it’s not that I’m worried about. Not now, anyway. I just want to know where he is, Ruth. Do you know? Do you know anything at all?”

Zachary Holcomb’s wife was obviously distressed. Ruth felt her anxiety emanating from her phone. Did some part of Marjorie worry that Ruth was somehow responsible for her husband never coming home? Surely not.

“The Silver Lining Motel,” Ruth said, her own heart thumping. “That’s where he goes. I don’t know anything else beyond that, I just know… that’s where he goes.”

“The Silver Lining Motel?” Marjorie repeated. There was a pause, and Ruth could tell she was writing the name down. “That’s where he’s been meeting them, then?”

“I don’t know anything else,” Ruth repeated, afraid to blow up Zachary’s life more than she already had. “I’m sorry for any trouble I’ve caused. I never… I know what I did was inappropriate. It was never my intention to scare either of you, or⁠—”

“It’s fine,” Marjorie interrupted. “Thank you for telling me what you know.”

Just like that, the call ended.

“Ruth?”

Judy came around the corner then, peeking around the mountains of unopened product to see her at the break table.

“Shouldn’t your break have been over by now?” she said. “I need you on register again, please. We’ve got another rush.”

“Yeah, I’ll be right there,” Ruth said, stuffing her phone back into her pocket and the rest of her granola bar into her mouth.

She clocked out at exactly 8 p.m. and hurried to her car before anyone could try to slow her down. Her phone had gone off again during the evening rush and she’d been unable to answer. Now, sitting in her car, she discovered she’d received a handful of unread texts from Marcus, as well as a new voicemail from Marjorie Holcomb. She played the voicemail with her phone clamped flat against the side of her head.

It was twenty-six seconds of dead air.

She played it again as soon as it ended, listening more carefully. The message hummed with a faint static. And something else. The whisper of fabric. Clothes. Someone moving around, perhaps? Pacing? Perhaps it’d been a butt dial, she thought.

Then, barely audible, an indistinguishable murmur in the background.

Ruth started it over a third time. Dead air. Shuffling. A murmur. A voice. The words weren’t clear, but it was definitely a voice. She listened a fourth time just to be sure.

Maybe she’d called Ruth by mistake, maybe not. Ruth called her back. The phone rang. And rang. There was no answer.

A strange feeling came over her then. Maybe she was getting ahead of herself. Maybe she’d allowed her roommate’s obsessions to seep into her—all that True Crime had to make a person paranoid, she thought.

Or maybe she felt this way because there was something off about those noises—about that voice—that told her this wasn’t just your average butt dial.

The sky was a wash of pink clouds by the time she arrived at the motel.

There were two cars in the parking lot—one she recognized as being there before, likely the owner’s car, and a new one. A white hatchback. Ruth recognized that car, too. It was Marjorie’s car. She’d seen it parked inside their garage that night she’d followed Zachary and confronted him. It seemed his wife had followed her suggestion. Except now the white hatchback was empty, and Zachary’s car wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

Ruth parked and killed the engine. She studied the various motel rooms. That first night she’d followed him here, Zachary had mistakenly gone to Room Four. His beau had actually been in Room Nine. Most recently, however, Ruth had watched Zachary head toward the very last room. Room Ten.

But again, his car wasn’t even here. So where was Marjorie?

Ruth pulled out her phone. No new calls. She still hadn’t read Marcus’ messages. She opened them now, skimming.

Hope you’re having a good day at work!

I really enjoyed our time together last night.

We should grab dinner again sometime soon.

Thoughts on breakfast for dinner?

Her belly stirred with a familiar, nervous warmth. She couldn’t concentrate on responding yet. She needed to handle this situation first.

Handle it how?

She called Marjorie’s number one last time. She listened to it ring for a while before it spat her to voicemail.

That settles it.

She climbed out of her car and started for the main office. The door jingled its bell loudly as she entered. The small lobby was dim and mostly empty, both in furnishings and attendants. The curtains over the windows were drawn shut. The only light source was the lamp on the desk which illuminated the empty chair behind it. Ruth was about to ring the bell when she noticed voices nearby. Or a singular voice, rather.

Behind the desk, a door stood slightly cracked. It appeared dark inside. Ruth could see nothing through the gap, but she heard his voice. A man, gently sobbing.

Ruth’s hand hovered over the bell, reluctant to interrupt. That strange feeling which had led her here magnified.

This isn’t right at all.

She tapped the bell once, the resulting ding sharp and brief.

“Hello?” she said.

The crying ceased. A moment of silence. She thought maybe she could feign ignorance if she was polite enough. Bubbly enough. Like she hadn’t heard him sobbing at all. She heard movement, before the door pulled open and a tall, wiry man stepped out into the lamplight. At first Ruth thought the shadows across his face were all wrong, as if the lamp’s light wasn’t touching him how it should, until she realized those weren’t shadows, but dark circles under his eyes. His cheeks were still damp.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and trembled over to the desk. “I didn’t think…”

“That’s okay,” Ruth said. “No need to apologize. Is everything all right?”

The man regarded Ruth like he hadn’t heard her right, or couldn’t trust his ears, or was simply caught off guard by the nicety of a stranger.

“I’m okay,” he said, and forced a smile.

His smile was especially unnerving beneath his damp cheeks and dark-ringed eyes.

“Are you interested in a room?” As soon as he said it, his expression crinkled up miserably, like he’d just remembered something he shouldn’t have forgotten. “Oh, unfortunately we’re short on rooms at the moment. We’re undergoing some renovations, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, no, that’s fine. I’m actually looking for someone.”

The man’s expression softened, all but his eyes which remained narrowed. Skeptical.

“I was wondering if maybe you’d seen the woman driving that white hatchback parked outside? I was hoping to meet her.”

“The woman in the white hatchback,” the man said, peering toward the windows, whose curtains blocked all view. He shook his head. “I haven’t seen anyone. Sorry.”

“She didn’t come inside, or…”

“No one’s come inside, I’m afraid. You’re the first all evening.”

“Oh. Okay, well…” Ruth studied him briefly, the way he pressed his thin lips apologetically. “Maybe she’s visiting someone else in one of your rooms.”

The owner’s face drew long with realization.

“Oh, perhaps,” he said. “That’s possible as well.”

Everything about this place was wrong. Something in the air, a toxic fume rendering everything askew. Ruth needed to get out, to escape into the fresh air of the parking lot.

“Alrighty,” she said. “Well, thanks anyway.”

She quickly excused herself outside. She hurried back to her car. The evening was sinking further into dusk, the pink underbellies of the clouds since turning a burnt orange. It would be dark soon.

She paused next to her white sedan, once more observing the white hatchback beside her. Marjorie had to be in one of these rooms, Ruth thought. Maybe she’d think Ruth was crazy for coming here, but wasn’t it better to be safe than sorry?

She approached Room Nine—the door she’d seen Zachary enter that first night. She knocked. She glanced toward the main office, scanning the curtained windows to see if the owner was watching. No one answered the door. She moved to the next room instead. Room Ten. Zachary had been heading there last time, before she’d interrupted him. She knocked and waited once more. She peered toward the darkening sky, then the main office windows once again, then the ground at her feet.

There was blood on the doormat. A dark, brownish-red spatter on the tan carpet.

It was on the door, too, Ruth now noticed. A light sprinkle of rusty red along the bottom, a little on the door frame. Ruth glanced toward the main office yet again, her heart playing hopscotch across her ribs. She glanced toward the dark woods at the edge of the property, full of shadow and the last shreds of daylight.

Her blood froze solid at what she saw there.

Through the trees, shiny and blue. Terror skittered across her mind like insect legs. Scratchy. Unshakeable. She squinted, hoping to realize she was wrong. She stepped away from the blood-spattered door, toward the woods, toward that glint of blue hidden therein. She had to be mistaken, she thought.

But she wasn’t.

Stashed in the brush like a half-buried secret was Zachary Holcomb’s Subaru.

38

BECOMING

He hurt. Badly. He writhed in the dark as his stomach clenched, sweating his bedcovers wet as the room’s stale air stung him like ice. Carissa petted him lovingly, stroking his face.

“What’s wrong with me?” Dario cried.

“Nothing is wrong with you. Go back to sleep.”

“Make it stop…”

“It’s only three nights,” she said. “That’s it. Then you’re free. We’ll have ourselves a little feast to celebrate. The first meal of the rest of your life…”

Dario balled himself up, taking half-breaths as the pain ebbed and flowed, seized him and released.

Eventually he exhausted himself into a restless sleep.

He was in his underwear and nothing more, fine slivers of light peeking through the window curtains.

He fought to move. His muscles were unresponsive. Quivering. He felt emptied, like he hadn’t eaten for days. Weeks. His poor belly wasn’t just flat, it was hollowed.

Carissa was no longer in bed with him.

He hauled himself onto his feet, which he proceeded to drag across the carpet, barely able to lift them as he shuffled toward the bathroom door. It was locked. She must have been in there, he thought. Sleeping in the bathtub, perhaps?

There was movement beyond the door. Scraping.

“Hello?” someone whispered from the other side.

Dario believed he recognized that voice.

“Zach?”

“Dario? Let me out of here. Please…”

“I can’t. The door’s locked.”

“I’m… I’m tied up,” Zach said. “She’s in here with me. But she’s…”

Zach never finished the thought. He sounded weak, too.

“I’m getting help,” Dario said.

He shuffled to the front door next. The carpet crunched underfoot, stiff with something that had once been wet. He unlocked the door, pulled it open, and as the daylight fell through Dario experienced an agony unlike anything he’d endured in his life.

His whole body reacted to it—the outside. His tired muscles seized, a simultaneous head-to-toe spasm that dropped him to his knees in the doorway. His fingers splayed of their own accord, hooked into claws. He felt what could only be described as his blood expanding in his veins, every inch of him swelling, his skin tight, on the brink of bursting like a human bomb. He pushed himself off the doorframe and onto the floor with a pitiful whine, kicked the door with his feet. It slammed shut, taking the daylight with it. The pain swept out of him like a plug had been pulled, sweet, cool relief flooding in its place.

He lay in the dark, chest heaving, staring at the ceiling as a grim understanding took hold of him.

I’m like her now.

At the very least, he was becoming like her. It was a three-night process, she’d said. Did that mean it could be interrupted? Reversed? If only he could escape her clutches…

He lay and breathed. And dwelled. And dreaded.

From beyond the bathroom door, Zach said something but Dario couldn’t hear a word for the hopelessness roaring in his ears.

He lay for what must have been hours, regaining not an ounce of strength all the while. It was as much a struggle to move now as it’d ever been. Perhaps more so. The light of day had hardened him. Made him heavy. Sluggish.

Not even the sound of knuckles on the door could fully rouse him.

He glanced that way. Part of him wondered if he’d actually heard anything or if he’d imagined it. He waited for another knock to come but it didn’t.

He heard voices. A woman’s? Just outside, speaking to someone out of earshot. Her voice faded with distance, walking away.

39

PITCH BLACK

“Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Ruth gasped as she spun to face him. He stood several paces away, his hands held politely before him. He smiled, but not even the fading light of dusk could rid his face of those shadows.

Haunted, Ruth thought. That’s what he was. What he looked like. Was he responsible for the blood on the doormat, she wondered?Was he responsible for pushing Zachary Holcomb’s car into the weeds at the side of his motel?

“I’m just looking for someone,” Ruth answered. She smiled back and prayed it was convincing.

The man nodded like he understood.

“Unfortunately, it’s not my place to share any information about those staying at my motel,” he said. “You see, I value my guests’ privacy above all else. You understand.”

“Yeah, definitely. I understand.” Ruth forced her smile bigger, forced it to reach her eyes despite that dreadful feeling in the pit of her guts urging her to abandon this conversation, to abandon this entire place and get the hell out of here now. “I don’t think I’m going to find them here, anyway, so… I guess I’ll just be on my way.”

Ruth started in the direction of her car, but faltered as the owner took two steps farther between them, cutting her off in the most deliberate fashion.

“I’m sorry,” he said. His politeness withered, the corners of his mouth struggling to hold themselves up. A pained grimace.

“You don’t need to be sorry,” Ruth said.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, and his voice turned hoarse with emotion. He blinked and Ruth glimpsed the wet jewels that spilled down his face.

“Why are you sorry?” she said, her heart clocking into overdrive.

He hitched with a sob. A shiver ignited along the back of Ruth’s neck despite the clinging evening heat.

“She makes me do it.” He bit his lower lip, hard, trying to keep it together. “It’s like… it’s like…” He unclasped his hands and regarded them in the failing daylight. “It’s like my body isn’t…”

He clapped his hands against his face and began to weep. Distraught.

“It’s okay,” Ruth said. “I’m just gonna get back in my car and be on my way. That’s it. All right? Easy.”

With his face still buried in his hands, the man moaned, “But I can’t let you leave…”

“Sure you can,” Ruth said, not skipping a beat. “I came here to find someone, but they’re not here. Now I’m leaving. Simple as that. Nothing more.”

“But you saw the car in the woods,” the owner said, sniffling. “And you saw the blood on the door…”

“I didn’t see anything⁠—”

He smacked the side of his head with a closed fist. “I made a mental note to clean it up after I noticed it was there, but… I’m so forgetful anymore. My thoughts are just…”

“What’s your name?” Ruth asked, trying to buy herself some time. Some space. Some breathing room, perhaps. Obviously this man wasn’t right in the head. Perhaps there was a way to use that, she thought, to convince him that she wasn’t a threat—that she wouldn’t go to the police as soon as she left this place.

“Ned,” the man said. “My name’s Ned…”

“Okay, Ned. It’s nice to meet⁠—”

“I didn’t mean to kill her!” he blurted out. He crouched, his shoes gritting against the gravely blacktop, still holding his sorry head in his hands. “I swear I didn’t! But she just… she wouldn’t stop fighting, and I tried to calm her down, and…” His shoulders jerked as he wept, borderline howling through his tears. “I never killed anyone before in my life…”

Ruth was about to continue making her way to her car in secret, when all at once he forced himself straight, swiped both his cheeks with the palm of his hand. He took a great big shuddery breath to settle whatever tears were left in those dark-ringed eyes of his. He leveled them on her gravely.

“Please don’t fight me,” he said.

Ruth bolted. Not for her car, but for the road. Her feet scraped the rocky pavement as she dodged numerous cracks and potholes along the way. Ned’s feet slapped in close pursuit. She was nearly to the edge of the parking lot when suddenly he wrapped his arms around her waist, lifted her right off her kicking feet as she screamed at the top of her lungs but of course there was nobody there to hear her. She struggled as he carried her toward the building, her legs scissoring the air, body bucking against his. She reached behind her head for his face, searching for any part of him she might scratch and claw. She found his eye with her index finger—felt her fingertip catch the slippery underside of his eyelid. Ned screamed and dropped her. She fell to the pavement, onto her knees. He followed her down and squashed her flat. She rolled underneath him, between his straddling legs. The moment she flipped onto her back, Ned’s fist connected with the side of her face.

“I’m sorry!” he cried. “I’m sorry!”

Ruth tried to fend him off, grabbing at the incoming fists. Then he took her by the shoulders and rocked her hard against the pavement. Night had yet to fall, but Ruth saw stars then, blinking across the darkening clouds over Ned’s head. He sprang to his feet. He dragged her across the parking lot, the heels of her sneakers growling along the asphalt. The bell over the main office entrance dinged as he pulled her inside.

No. Stop. Gotta stop… gotta…

Her head throbbed. Her mind floundered. Difficult to think, to react, as the dizziness floated up in her like bubbles in a soda can. Ned lugged her around the front desk, into the back room beyond. Darkness there. It was only as he flipped her onto her stomach that she regained some composure. She pushed against the carpet in a halfhearted attempt to pick herself up as Ned forced her flat again. He gathered her hands behind her back. She felt the loose rope around her wrists.

“No,” she said. “No, no…”

Ned held her in place with his knee as he wrapped and pulled and knotted the rope, and within seconds she was tied. Trapped.

The light flipped on. With her face against the carpet, Ruth stared into the lifeless gaze of the woman beside her.

Marjorie Holcomb. Dead as a doornail. Dark, purple bruises around her throat where she’d been strangled. Suddenly everything made sense. The voicemail. Listening to Ned pace and mutter to himself in the background after the deed had been done.

“I’m really sorry about this,” he said, as he knelt beside her and cut the remaining rope with a knife. He reached into her pockets and pulled out her phone, her wallet, her keys. He took them out into the lobby. Ruth turned to watch him there through the doorway—anything to look away from the dead Mrs. Holcomb. He paced back and forth along the length of his desk outside.

“She’ll be here soon,” he murmured. “Any minute…”

Only now did Ned’s words in the parking lot register in Ruth’s mind. He was waiting for someone. Someone who ‘made him do’ things. They were coming. He was nervous about that. Anticipating. Dreading. He didn’t strike Ruth as being a cold-blooded killer, despite what he’d done. He was sick.

He’s afraid.

“Ned,” she said, her face still smushed against the carpet. “Ned?”

He stopped pacing. He stood in the doorway, looking down at her where she lay, his brows knitted anxiously. Out of all other options, Ruth tried the last weapon in her arsenal.

“I like your motel,” she said, and watched as those brows softened. He blinked, looking not at her but something else, someplace far, far away. “I like the name. Did you come up with that?”

He blinked again. His lips parted slightly as he considered the question. Before he could answer, the bell over the front entrance gave its tiny ding-a-ling as someone came through the door. Ned flinched in its direction. Soft footsteps traveled toward them, coming to meet Ned in the bedroom doorway.

A pale ghost of a woman in a tattered black dress arrived by Ned’s side. Ruth had seen her before, she was sure. The woman happened upon Ruth as she stopped in the doorway, at which point a smile broadened across her face.

“Interesting,” she said, stepping into the room. Her feet were bare, covered in dirt and grime. She crouched just beside Ruth. “Wherever he goes, there you are…”

The woman’s eyes were unnatural. Ruth hadn’t noticed that first night they’d met, out in the street when Ruth had first followed Zachary to this motel. But she noticed now—the way her pupils and irises were indistinguishable, and more notably the way they moved like spreading puddles, retracting, pulsing. The woman smiled again, and it was then Ruth noticed her teeth up close. The exaggeratedly pointy ones, anyway.

Impossible.

“I tried to procure the other woman as well,” Ned said, his tone miserable and ashamed. “But… things got out of hand.”

“That’s fine,” the woman said, never taking her eyes off of Ruth. “This one will do. Bring her to my room.”

The woman stood and left into the main office again. She grabbed something from Ned’s desk—the remaining rope he’d cut after he’d finished tying Ruth—then left for the door as Ned grabbed hold of Ruth and helped her to her feet.

“Up you go now,” he said.

He escorted her through the door by her bicep, into the office, around the desk and toward the front entrance.

“Ned, please,” Ruth said. “You don’t have to do this. Whoever she is… whatever she’s told you…”

“I wish it were that easy,” Ned whispered. He opened the door for them both, keeping a firm grip on Ruth’s arm. “She isn’t like us, you know.”

He ushered her into the smothering night. A single car drove past, headlights cutting the dark road, tires humming, engine purring. Ruth was tempted to scream if not for knowing they wouldn’t hear her in any case. They were already gone. Ned walked her to the final room on the ground floor. Room Ten, with the blood on the doormat. The door itself stood open now, a rectangle of shadow. The woman waited beside it, grinning amusedly as they came as though she relished Ruth’s misfortune. Ned walked her through the doorway and into the darkness beyond.

“On the floor there,” the woman said, following them inside. “That’s where I want her.”

Ruth glimpsed someone else in the room—a half-naked body slumped against the side of the bed. A young man.

Him, Ruth thought.

He’d been here that first night as well. Zachary’s late-night rendezvous. The young man tracked them dreamily through the dark toward the foot of the bed where Ned told Ruth to sit.

“Ned…”

“I’m sorry,” Ned said.

Ruth was beginning to hate those words. He forced her to sit, shoving her down by the shoulders. She clipped her back painfully against the end of the bed on the way down. The woman handed Ned the remainder of the rope, which Ned used to tie Ruth’s bound wrists to the corner of the bed frame.

“Ned, please,” she said. “Don’t leave me here.”

She could have sworn she saw something in his eyes—the desire to do something more, something good. However, she wasn’t the only one with her hands tied, so to speak, although she couldn’t rightly understand it.

Ned left the room without another word. The woman followed him outside, where she instructed him to take care of the vehicles in the parking lot. She returned just inside the doorway, watching Ruth as she pulled the door shut behind her. Whatever meager light the night had provided vanished as the door clicked shut. Ruth was effectively blind.

“People know I’m here,” Ruth lied. “They’ll come looking for me.”

The woman’s feet whispered over the carpet as she came, looming in the pitch black. Ruth caught a whiff of her then—foul, deathly, what she imagined the inside of a crocodile’s maw must smell like.

“Good. Let them come. I do love a meal that delivers itself… Dario, what are you doing on the floor?”

The woman moved away. Ruth listened as she picked the young man up and placed him onto the bed.

“Carissa,” he moaned. “Let me go...”

The woman—Carissa?—laughed softly in reply.

“That wasn’t our deal, remember?”

“I can’t do this…”

“It’s not so bad, Dario. I’ll teach you everything you need to know…”

The mattress faintly squeaked as the woman climbed onto the bed. The young man cried out suddenly. Wounded. He continued to moan as the woman began moaning likewise, their noises on top of one another but worlds apart. Whereas the young man—Dario?—was clearly in pain, Carissa sounded as though she were savoring the most delicious meal.

It was a moment before Ruth realized what she was listening to.

This can’t be happening. This isn’t real. None of this is real!

“Now your turn,” Carissa said.

In the dark, Dario hummed with hunger, slurping, smacking. Their noises were revolting, and in any other context Ruth might have believed she were listening to two young adults in the throes of sex, but obviously this wasn’t that.

“That’s it,” Carissa said. “Drink up, nice and slow…”

It was another minute or so before Dario was finished, at which point Carissa soothed him back to sleep. And then the room grew quiet. And quieter still. Ruth struggled in her restraints, her knotted wrists bound tightly against the heavy wooden bed frame at her back. Her shoulders were already beginning to ache. Her best option was to lean against the foot of the bed, her head tilted back over the edge of the mattress.

That was as comfortable as this night would get, she thought.

From the nearby dark, someone said, “Hello?”

Ruth perked up a bit, gazing blindly in the voice’s direction, unsure if she should trust her own ears.

“Hello?” the voice repeated.

His voice was muffled, as though through a closed door, but she recognized him in an instant. She brightened with relief just to know he wasn’t dead… and shortly darkened with the knowledge that his wife wasn’t so lucky.

“Hi, Zachary,” she said.

He paused. “How do you know my name?”

“It’s me,” she said. “Ruth.”

The silence that followed was rife with disappointment.

“Your wife called me,” she continued. “She said you hadn’t come home and wanted to know if I knew where you might be…”

“My wife…” Zachary went quiet again, connecting the dots. “Please tell me you didn’t send her here.”

Ruth hesitated. How to answer that? They were already in such a precarious situation. Would it do Zachary any good to know the truth? The whole truth? Wasn’t it better to have hope, Ruth thought? Even the slimmest amount? For now, anyway.

“Ruth?” he said. “Did she come here?”

Ruth was just about to reply when another voice interjected, startling her.

“Enough,” Carissa said from the bed. “Before I rip your tongues out, the both of you.”

Ruth obeyed. Zachary obeyed too, for the most part. From beyond the closed door, Ruth heard his soft cries in the dark. With or without an answer, he must have known the truth, she thought.

The truth will set you free.

It was going to be a long, long night.

PART FIVE

SANGUINE SUMMER

40

THE BITE

He woke to the faintest trace of morning light. Carissa was no longer in bed with him, returning once more to her own makeshift tomb in the bathtub. Dario tried to sit up and was immediately besieged by painful cramps. Not just in his belly, but all over. Everything hurt. A full-body charley horse. He had no choice but to endure it. When finally it released him, he could hardly move regardless.

From the end of the bed, someone said, “Dario?”

He listened, but couldn’t muster the strength to reply. Instead he uttered a single tired exhalation of acknowledgment.

“Dario?”

He opened his mouth, worked his parched tongue to no avail. He groaned again. Apparently that was enough, because the voice at the end of the bed continued.

“If you can hear me, my name is Ruth. I want to help you, but… I need your help first.”

Who was she kidding? He couldn’t help her. He couldn’t even help himself. He couldn’t lift his damned head off the pillow. He opened his mouth again, tried to find his voice to form the words, but…

Dario screamed—a high-pitched yelp, like that of a frightened dog—as his mouth erupted in what felt like knives searing through his gums. He clenched his aching jaw. An excruciating jolt shot through him, through the base of his skull, through the channels of his ears, to the hollows of his cheeks, to the roots of his very teeth. He needed to bite down on something, something tough, something he could really sink his teeth into.

In a blind, thoughtless effort to ease his pain, Dario set his teeth upon his own arm. He tasted himself, a flood of blood into his mouth. Slowly, the pain ebbed. He held his bitten arm before his eyes, regarded the wounds he’d inflicted, and felt a tremor of panic take the place of his pain.

The marks of his teeth. Two punctures.

As he lay frozen, he watched as those dripping holes in his flesh began to close, sealing themselves up good as new.

All at once, Dario succumbed to his exhaustion and lost consciousness.

41

CAPTIVE AUDIENCE

She could only listen as he flopped and squirmed on the bed, in the throes of some unbearable torture. Then, as quickly as it’d started, the young man went quiet again.

“Dario?” she said. “Dario?”

No response. Not even another moan or whimper.

Ruth could do nothing for them but sit and wait. And think.

She thought about work. She was currently missing her Sunday morning shift. Judy had probably already called her three, maybe four times to tell her she was late, to tell her how badly she needed her today of all days just like every other day.

Had Shaylee called looking for her, she wondered? Surely she’d noticed Ruth never returned home last night. Had Marcus called, wondering why she hadn’t replied to any of his texts?

At some point—maybe it was late morning, maybe it was early afternoon—Ruth glimpsed a shadow at the window, just the briefest interruption of light as someone passed by. She screamed for help. Faintly, she heard what sounded like someone scratching at the door. A steady friction along the bottom. And then it dawned on her.

“Ned!” she screamed. “Ned! Please!”

The scrubbing stopped. For a second or two. Then it resumed like she hadn’t screamed at all. After Ned finished washing the blood from the door, the light at the edge of the window strobed again in his departure.

“He won’t help us,” Zachary said from beyond the bathroom door. “He’s under her spell.”

“What do you know about her?” Ruth said.

“She’s not human,” Zachary said. “I know that much.”

Ruth couldn’t bring herself to even think the word. It just seemed so silly. Impossible. Normally she liked to believe in things, in fantastical possibilities, but this…

“Did my wife come here?” Zachary asked, cutting right to the heart of his anxiety. “Tell me, Ruth.”

It was strange hearing him speak her name, acknowledging her as something beyond that of a ‘psycho stalker.’

“I don’t know,” she lied.

She hated to lie, but it felt like a good one. Necessary. What if they were to die in this place? She tried to remain optimistic, but what if the worst should happen? Did Zachary deserve that grief in his final moments? Maybe he did. Marjorie never would have come looking for him if he hadn’t been sneaking around in the first place, after all. But that was beside the point. Shitty husband or not, Ruth wanted to spare him that pain.

“Can you move at all?” Ruth asked.

“She’s got me tied to the towel rack,” he said. “I’ve practically got a noose around my neck.”

“I’m tied to the end of the bed,” Ruth said. “And your… lover… is asleep, I think. He’s in a lot of pain.”

“He’s not my lover,” Zachary said, offended.

“Oh. Okay…”

“I love my wife.”

He was going to be utterly gutted when he learned the truth, she thought. She was making the right decision, not telling him.

“I know you do,” she said.

“No, you don’t,” he said. “You don’t know the first thing about me, Ruth.”

To that, Ruth had nothing more to say.

Except that he was probably right.

She fiddled with her knots but made no progress untying them. In a moment of desperation she even tried to lift the bed, thinking she might slip her bindings underneath the bed post, but of course the wooden frame was a great deal heavier than she could lift. It was useless.

She watched as the daylight in the window shifted over the course of the afternoon, little by little, until eventually the light faded altogether and the room sank into a pool of purple-black murk through which Ruth couldn’t decipher a thing. Her mind’s eye played tricks on her, thinking she saw movement where there wasn’t any. Then the purple faded, too, and all that was left was black.

There came a shrill hiss from the bathroom as the shower curtain was briskly dragged along its rod. Footsteps. Zachary gave a shout, followed by a cruel giggle of sorts.

“Just making sure,” the woman said.

The bathroom door unlocked, opened. Despite the dark, Ruth saw the tiniest glimmer of moist eyes looking back, catching light from some unknown place, or perhaps glowing themselves, it was hard to say.

“I hope you’ve enjoyed your stay thus far,” Carissa said, passing by on her way to the bed. “…at the Silver Lining Motel.”

Ruth didn’t bother replying. She knew she couldn’t talk her way out of this. This woman—this creature—exuded indifference. Callousness. There would be no convincing her of anything she hadn’t already decided.

The mattress whined as she climbed onto the bed. Ruth listened to what sounded like gentle claps in the dark—Carissa slapping Dario’s cheeks to rouse him. When that failed, Carissa climbed across the bed and flipped on the lamp there, filling the room with its low light.

It was the first time Ruth really got to see the room in all its gruesome detail.

The carpet was so thoroughly stained with blood that it almost could have been dismissed as an intentional style, the dark beige marbled and strung with rusty crimson. Ruth pulled her feet in to avoid it, a reflexive measure.

“Come on, Dario,” Carissa said, continuing to pat his cheeks. “It’s time to wake up. We’re in the home stretch now.”

Dario stirred. Croaked. He sounded ill.

“Just one last time,” Carissa told him. “Then you’ll nap some more, just for an hour or so. And then when you wake, we’ll have ourselves a little feast…”

“No,” Dario said. The only thing he seemed able to utter.

“Yes,” Carissa said. “It’ll be over soon. I promise.”

Ruth listened as Carissa proceeded to feed on him again like the previous night. She imagined him like one of those Capri Sun bags her parents used to give her as a child, the kind you pierced with a straw and sucked dry until the bag was deflated and flat.

Soon Carissa announced that it was Dario’s turn, before she gasped in surprise.

“Oh my,” she said. “Would you look at that. You’ve already got your own set. It wasn’t until the third night for me. All right, Dario. You can do it yourself now. Try it. Bite me.”

Dario groaned in response.

“Do as I say,” Carissa demanded, followed by a slight pause. “Hmm. Interesting. Stubborn tonight, are we?”

Ruth twisted where she sat, curious. She craned her neck to see them, side by side, as Carissa bit into her own flesh and put her bleeding wrist to Dario’s mouth. She smeared him as he resisted, before finally he opened his mouth and accepted her. Carissa glanced in Ruth’s direction and caught her watching.

“Like what you see, sweetheart?” she said. “Your turn’s coming up, don’t you worry.”

Ruth looked away. She peered toward the bathroom, where she only now realized the door was left open. She had a clear view of Zachary inside, sitting half-naked against the wall beneath the towel rack just like he’d said, a rope around his neck. Then their gazes met and he promptly looked away.

Probably he didn’t wish to be seen this way. Vulnerable. Weak. Afraid.

In this regard, Ruth thought they were two peas in a pod.

42

CLOSING TIME

Ned Phillips was no stranger to loneliness. He’d spent most of his life in one state of it or another, and while it wasn’t necessarily what he preferred, he’d learned to cope with the feeling. Friends had never come easily to him. Family was a foreign concept. That was precisely why he enjoyed his public-facing job, and why he’d started this business in the first place.

People came and went like the weather. No strings attached. No threat of heartbreak or rejection. Just interesting faces, interesting personalities, and the briefest glimmers of understanding between them.

We’re all lonely here.

But Ned had never felt a loneliness like this before. Not this breed. This was something new.

This was sheer helplessness.

Sitting at the front desk, Ned opened his laptop, then opened his Rooms and Scheduling chart. According to his program, every room in the motel was vacant—not one soul checked in at the Silver Lining Motel.

This was by design, of course. Not only did he turn away walk-ins—of which there were already so few—he’d even taken down the online booking options on his website.

New guests were strictly prohibited.

He felt sick inside. With himself.

He swiveled in his chair, toward the doorway where the body still lay on his bedroom floor. He couldn’t bring himself to touch her again. He could still feel her in his hands, feel the life he’d squeezed out until there’d been nothing left.

He also couldn’t bring himself to remove the vehicles from the parking lot like she’d asked. Instead he’d washed the blood off the door, hoping that would stir up some motivation, but it’d only made him feel sicker. Lonelier. More helpless.

The most he could do now was sit at his desk and admire the handgun in his lap. He’d discovered it in the nightstand of Room Nine, after Dario had checked out. Goodness, how awful that had been. His one familiar constant these past few weeks—his one reminder of normalcy—had abandoned him in the end, leaving him alone with her.

Lonely.

Except now Dario was back, only not himself. Just like Ned wasn’t himself. He hadn’t felt like himself for some time. Weeks, maybe. It was hard to remember. How long had it been since she arrived, he wondered?

He studied the gun in his lap with a hiccup of fear in his chest. It was an attractive thing. Gleaming and black, like a certain woman’s eyes. He thought he’d like to be rid of those eyes. The problem was he couldn’t stand up to her on his own. She had a power over him. A power he could no more understand than he could resist. But there was another way to be rid of her, he knew. There was a way to be rid of all of this—the motel and what it had become, what he had become.

The handgun had answers.

He could put all his guilt and fear and loneliness to rest in one fell swoop. There was only one catch, really. A stubborn little idea that gave him pause. He would be leaving this place to her in his stead. She didn’t deserve it any more than he did. She’d twisted things. Twisted him. He loathed the idea of leaving his motel in such a shadow, when it was once such a beacon—in his mind, anyway.

He thought of the young woman. Ruth Sheridan, according to the ID in her wallet. Despite everything he’d done, everything he was doing, she’d tried to reach through to him, hadn’t she? What a remarkable gesture that had been. He admired it. Admired her. If he could be half as resilient as that, half as kind as that…

I was kind once, wasn’t I?

Turning the gun over in his hands, Ned believed that there was still kindness in him. It was an enduring quality, wasn’t it? Genuine kindness? Perhaps there was still something he could do. One final kindness for the guests of the Silver Lining Motel.

Before it came time to check out for good.

43

A LUST FOR LIFE

Dario fell into another whirlwind high, dark waves of sleep crashing up to meet him. He dreamed of them. Of that night. Of his parents’ gruesome demise. Except in the dream Dario found himself insatiably hungry at the sight of his father’s broken skull. He crouched and scooped his father into his hands and gorged himself on rare meat, chewy and tangy and full of iron.

It wasn’t enough.

He climbed the stairs and gnawed upon his mother’s arm like a drumstick on his way to his bedroom, where he once more found his sister cowering in the corner like before, only this time Carissa wasn’t anywhere to be seen. It was just the two of them. Dario and RiRi, making herself small, frightened of him because it was his fault, wasn’t it? He’d brought evil into their lives, hadn’t he? He was exactly what his father had accused him of being all along.

Wicked. Degenerate. Poisonous.

The difference between a house and a home.

They never stood a chance.

She turned to see him, and just as Dario believed she recognized him, she started to scream. He stifled it, his hand cupped over her mouth. Her voice pressed against his palm, threatening to break through. He pressed harder. Her eyes grew big, the blood vessels in them swelling red. Her throat swelled likewise, full of her scream, and Dario saw the bulging cords of her muscles and arteries, so full of terror and life. His hunger flared, and her vision flared with recognition at last. Not for Dario, but for what he was. The scream in her throat took shape. Dario felt it pressing against his hand, felt the word striking him like a battering ram.

MONSTER.

He buried his teeth into his sister’s flesh. He drank. He chewed.

He ate the horrid word right out of her.

He woke in yet another cold sweat. Carissa was already there, his face in her hands, her gaze penetrating his, studying him close. She appeared to find what she was looking for, in his eyes. She smiled with relief. It was then Dario knew what she saw—that their gazes were one and the same.

“It’s done,” she said, dealing a crushing blow to Dario’s heart, or what was left of it. “Now we eat. For real.”

Dario could hardly lift his head to watch as she all but skipped to the bathroom. She reemerged with company. She dragged a shirtless Zach by his bound wrists, his bound ankles and feet trailing across the carpet behind them. She brought him to the bed, where she heaved him onto the bedcovers at Dario’s feet. Dario’s hunger ignited in the worst way. It energized him, that hunger, enough to push himself up against the headboard.

“Your stomach was growling something fierce while you slept,” Carissa said. “So I know you’re hungry.”

She proceeded to haul Zach right beside Dario, leaned awkwardly against the headboard with his hands behind his back, his head resting to one side. His eyes were full of sleepless tears, his mouth hanging open with exhaustion. His bare chest heaved breathlessly. Carissa joined them on the bed, snuggled up against Zach from behind. She playfully traced a finger along the length of his exposed neck, flashing a sinister smirk as Dario followed her movements unblinkingly, his lip softly bitten beneath his new set of teeth.

“You want him, don’t you?” she said. “Well you can have him…”

Dario could hear himself panting, his own stomach bellowing. He regarded the half-naked man beside him, looking solid and soft at the same time in the warm lamplight, skin glowing under a sheen of sweat. His nightmare resurfaced—feeding upon his own screaming sister—and it was almost enough to sour his appetite.

Almost.

“Come on, Dario,” Carissa said. “I’ll even help get things started…”

Zach let out a quiet gasp as Carissa set her fangs into the thick ropes of his throat. The resulting wounds beaded up like glistening rubies, spilling fast and long down his neck, across his collarbone. Dario’s hunger somersaulted. He realized just how dry his mouth was. How thirsty he was…

“Please…” Zach said.

Despite his belly encouraging him to take what was offered, Dario shook his head no. He closed his eyes, finding it impossible to tear his gaze away from those streaks of crimson running down Zach’s chest. But he could smell it, too. And something else. Something more than his blood, more than his sweat. A sharp, medicinal bite which Dario didn’t altogether dislike.

His fear. That’s fear I’m smelling.

When Dario opened his eyes again, he was startled to find himself much closer. He leaned in, his thoughts screaming NO as his stomach screamed YES. His lips parted. He felt the air against his new teeth, tasted the coppery sweetness of Zach’s warm life on his breath.

“That’s it,” Carissa said.

Dario extended his face near Zach’s throat, felt the warmth radiating against his own cool skin, overcome with the urge to taste and nuzzle him both.

“That’s it, Dario. It’s the only way to get your strength up…”

Carissa placed her hand behind Dario’s head and guided him closer, guided his mouth to Zach’s trickling wounds as Zach proceeded to wiggle and scream between them.

44

BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

There was nothing Ruth could do. She pulled and squirmed against her bindings, sought the many knots her fingers couldn’t reach. Zachary screamed from the bed. She peered over her shoulder along the rumpled bedcovers where their bodies lay in a row across the length of the headboard, Zachary tied and begging as the woman pulled the young man’s yawning mouth toward his throat.

And then the walls began to strobe with colored lights.

Ruth whipped around fast enough to crick her neck. The window flashed with red and blue. Behind her, the others fell quiet. Even Zachary’s whimpering tapered into nothing.

“Everyone shut the hell up,” Carissa snapped.

Her words were shortly followed by a knock on the door. Three heavy raps. Carissa sprang to her feet, starting toward the door. She paused there, glancing back at the rest of them.

“Either of you make so much as a peep, and I’ll feed you your own fucking toes, do you understand?”

They knocked again. Another three raps. Carissa’s shoulders hunched on either side of her neck, bristling with irritation. She took a deep breath, then cracked the door just enough to put her face into the gap. Ruth could see nothing, but she heard the officer’s voice just outside.

“Sorry to bother you miss,” he said. “We’re following up on a report of a disturbance. Mind if we take a quick look inside?”

“A disturbance?” Carissa said. “I don’t know where⁠—”

It was at that point Ruth screamed her goddamn head off, because who the hell cared what the consequences were if they ended up dead either way?

“Help us!” she shrieked. “Help us!”

“You fucking twit!” Carissa barked.

The officers outside—there had to be at least two, Ruth thought—shouted in unison as Carissa threw herself through door, flying into the night against them and their resulting gunfire.

Pop, pop.

Pop, pop, pop.

Ruth flinched with each gunshot. Was this really happening? She looked about herself, at the bloody carpet, her worn sneakers, her sad grungy clothes, and all at once she knew her window of opportunity was limited. She twisted toward the bed, toward Dario and Zachary still lying against the headboard.

“Dario,” Ruth pleaded, speaking loudly over the commotion outside. “Dario!”

He regarded her at last, his pitiful face the epitome of broken.

“You have to untie us. Now.”

He looked lost. Disoriented. Then, as some part of him seemed to understand, he crawled over Zachary with the grace of a three-legged dog in order to get at his bindings. The gunfire had ceased, but the officers’ voices persisted, punctuated by the electronic beeps and bloops of their radios. Had they actually managed to stop her?

“Help us!” Ruth shouted. “We’re in here!”

The door opened. A stocky, uniformed officer entered the room, gun drawn but lowered.

“Sir?” the officer said, speaking to Dario who was still trying to untie Zachary. “Hands up!”

“He’s one of us!” Ruth said. She searched for something more, some reassurance, some explanation that wasn’t the whole truth because the whole truth was wholly unbelievable. “He’s been drugged!”

The officer’s eyes darted between Ruth and the others, to the open bathroom doorway, back to Ruth, back to Dario who was still trying to untie Zachary’s knots.

“Please,” Ruth said. “Cut us loose…”

The officer was clearly shaken, adrenaline still coursing through him, but at last he holstered his gun and pulled what looked to be a multi-tool from his pocket. He crouched beside Ruth and his thick cologne was a breath of fresh air compared to what she’d been breathing these last two nights. He flicked open the small blade from his multi-tool and cut the ropes from her wrists in seconds. Her shoulders rejoiced as she brought her hands from around her back.

“Move aside,” the officer told Dario, going to Zachary on the bed next.

Dario stumbled to his feet as the officer brushed past him, cutting Zachary’s binds just the same.

“Is it just the three of you?” the officer said.

Before anyone could answer, the second officer called from outside, “Hey, Jennings?”

The first officer returned to the doorway. “What’s up?”

Ruth used the bed to pick herself up. She felt shaky, lightheaded. Zachary also tried to stand but stopped short, sitting on the edge of the bed. He put his hand to his neck where Carissa had bitten him.

“You okay?” Ruth said.

Zachary didn’t reply. He pushed himself upright, making a visible effort not to wobble in place. He steadied himself against the bed.

“Shit…” he said.

“Come on,” Ruth said, putting an arm around him. “Let’s get out of here.”

She assisted him across the room as Dario followed, through the doorway outside, where they promptly came to a stop. On the walkway, lying facedown in front of the idling police cruiser, Carissa’s bleeding body lay shivering as though seized by an electrical current. Dario pushed past them to see for himself.

“She’s not dead,” he said, his tired voice rising with urgency. “She’s not dead!”

Carissa pushed herself onto her hands, as her forehead extruded a bullet which fell jingling to the cement. Ruth knew little of police training or protocol, but she doubted there was any mention of reanimated corpses. In any case, Officer Jennings’ nerves got the better of him as he opened fire, plugging Carissa’s chest and head with another volley of bullets. She dropped in an instant, hitting the pavement with a sickening smack.

“What the fuck,” the officer muttered, his face contorted with bewilderment.

“Get us out of here!” Ruth said. “Please, just get us out of here!”

Officer Jennings kept his gun trained on Carissa’s body as the second officer waved for them to come. He opened the back door of the cruiser and instructed them to climb inside. Dario hopped in first. Ruth tried to lead Zachary that way, but suddenly he wouldn’t budge.

“That’s my wife’s car,” he said. “Oh my god, that’s my wife’s car!”

“Zachary!” Ruth shouted as he bolted across the parking lot.

She whiplashed as another gunshot clapped the night. Officer Jennings let loose howling. He was on the ground now, Carissa’s face buried into the crook of his throat. The second officer opened fire. Carissa jerked upright, meat dangling from between her teeth. The bullets in her chest did little to stop her as she pounced, dragging the second officer to the pavement.

Ruth was momentarily transfixed by the chaos.

You need to do something, said the tiny voice in her head. Now.

The police cruiser’s engine purred beside them, idling all the while.

Now, Ruth. It’s your only chance.

She hurried to the car, swung herself behind the wheel. The second officer’s screams cut short. She grabbed the shifter and prepared to throw it into Reverse, when someone appeared before her—Officer Jennings, climbing to his feet against the hood of the car. His throat was open, blood cascading down the front of his uniform. His snow-white face appeared in a daze.

“Get us out of here!” Dario shouted from the backseat.

Ruth flinched as Officer Jennings went facedown onto the car. Standing over him, Carissa punched a hole straight through him, her fist meeting the hood with a metallic bang underneath. She pulled her hand free, dripping red.

Perhaps making the smartest or dumbest decision of her life, Ruth shifted the car into Drive instead.

“Hold on.”

She floored the gas. The car lunged forward. Thrown back against her seat, Ruth briefly met Carissa’s wide-eyed gaze as she carried her fast and hard against the motel. Metal smashed against brick. Carissa’s body crunched in between. The tires squealed as they continued to spin underneath. Ruth let off the gas, parked, and pulled the handbrake for good measure.

“Holy shit,” Dario said from the backseat.

They each stepped out of the car, swaying dizzily as the vampire wriggled and bucked her broken body to no avail. She was trapped. For now.

There came a scrape of metal as Dario snatched up one of the officers’ pistols from the ground. He took three strides toward the hood of the car, where Carissa continued struggling to free herself.

“Dario, I swear to⁠—”

He pulled the trigger, firing another bullet into her skull. She slumped forward onto the cruiser’s hood with a hollow thump.

“It won’t last,” Dario said. “Find Zach and let’s get the fuck out of here.”

He leaned against the side of the police cruiser, barely able to keep standing. Ruth nodded and hurried in the direction of the main office. Her white sedan remained parked beside Marjorie’s white hatchback just the same as yesterday. Zachary wasn’t anywhere to be seen. She jogged to the entrance, the delightful bell overhead announcing her.

“Zachary? Are you⁠—”

Her words died on her tongue. Sitting behind the front desk, with an arm hanging slack over the side of his chair and a brilliant spray of blood on the wall behind him, was the owner. Ruth approached on stiff legs. A pistol lay on the ground under his limp hand. The corded landline was positioned on the desk before him. He must have called the police before finishing himself off, Ruth thought.

She found her things sitting neatly arranged beside the telephone—her phone, her wallet, her keys. She quickly stuffed them into her pockets.

From the next room, a heartbroken moan.

Ruth moved into the doorway, where she found Zachary on his knees, his dead wife cradled in his lap. Her mouth flooded with everything she wished to say to him then.

I’m sorry.

I’m so, so sorry.

I didn’t know.

Actually I did know, but…

“Zachary,” she said, keeping her voice soft, quiet, unimposing.

Outside, there came the sound of another gunshot.

“Zachary, we have to go.”

“How did this happen,” he said, his words strangled. “This is my fault. I did this…”

“I’m sorry,” Ruth said, stepping closer. “I really am, but we need to go before⁠—”

“You said you didn’t know.” Zachary turned his raw gaze upon her. “You said…”

“I know what I said, but that’s really the least of our concerns right now. We can’t stay here.”

“I can’t just leave her like this,” he said, studying the dead woman in his arms.

Another gunshot. So soon after the first. That was troubling, Ruth thought.

“We don’t have another choice right now, unless we wanna end up in the same boat.” She grabbed Zachary by the arm, and prayed that he wouldn’t fight her. “Come on, Zachary. Please. We have to go.”

To her immense relief, she was able to haul him onto his feet with little resistance, leaving Marjorie where she lay. She directed Zachary back through the lobby, out into the parking lot, where Dario fired off another shot.

“It’s not working anymore!” he cried.

Carissa was already pushing herself upright, at least two visible gunshot wounds to her head, already forcing their respective bullets out onto the hood of the car.

“Come on!” Ruth said, jingling her keys as she led Zachary toward her white sedan. Dario ran to meet them. “Here, take him from me, will you?”

Ruth handed him off to Dario, who could barely stand on his own two feet as it was. She unlocked the driver’s side door, pulled it open, hit the button to unlock all the rest. She opened the back door for Dario as he assisted Zachary into the backseat before joining him there. Ruth climbed behind the wheel. She stuck the key into the ignition, heart pounding, and for a moment worried it might not start. Wasn’t that usually what happened in moments like this, she thought? At least in the movies her roommate liked so much.

The engine fired to life. As the woman called Carissa continued to thrash against the police cruiser, Ruth pulled them around in a tight circle and rattled them onto the empty road, leaving the Silver Lining Motel behind them for good.

45

CROSS-EYED

Dario’s stomach growled noisily in the backseat. He worried Zach could hear it, considering he’d been fighting the urge to sink his teeth into the man’s neck only a few minutes ago. But now Zach was practically catatonic, as he watched the black night fly by outside his window. Dario seemed the least of his concerns.

“Where are we going?” Dario asked, leaning forward, eyes on the road ahead.

“I don’t know,” Ruth answered. “I was thinking the police station, but…”

“We won’t be any safer there,” Dario said, and felt a pang of guilt. “It’s me she wants, and she won’t stop coming until…”

“Well, we’re not letting her have you,” Ruth answered.

Dario met her gaze in the rearview mirror, surprised by the tone of her determination. He had no idea who she was—only that she’d followed Zach to the motel the other night. He was tempted to ask about that, but now hardly seemed the time for sharing stories. Not to mention, she likely had more questions than he did, such as: Who the hell is that woman? Is she what I think she is? Are you what I think you are?

Dario tongued his new teeth—a cold reminder that everything was different now, and nothing would ever be the same again. Not for him, not for them…

I’m sorry, RiRi…

His stomach spasmed painfully. He doubled over, unable to stop the grunt that came out of him as he withered into himself.

“You okay?” Ruth asked.

The pain receded, only slightly. A numb ache. Dario lay back against the seat, breathing heavily.

“I need to eat,” he said. “Or… my body wants me to eat, anyway.”

“You mean blood,” Ruth said, unafraid to broach the subject.

Dario’s lack of an answer was answer enough. Not even he could make heads or tails of what this was, or how to deal with it. He studied Zach from the corner of his eye. He was sobbing now, quietly. Dario wanted to reach for him, to comfort him, to say anything, but refrained from doing so as his appetite flared worrisomely at the sight of him.

“His wife was killed,” Ruth said, glancing at them both from the rearview mirror. “By the owner of the motel.”

“What?” Dario said, in disbelief. “You mean… Ned…”

“He’s dead, too.”

Her words punched Dario straight in the gut, his breath soaring out of him.

“I’m pretty sure he called the police before he…” She paused. “…before he took his own life.”

“Fuck,” Dario said.

“There has to be some way to stop her,” Ruth said. “I mean, what is it usually? A wooden stake through the heart?”

Dario couldn’t help but imagine what it would feel like to have a wooden stake driven through his own. Was this really happening to him?

“Maybe,” he said, his mind splintering in so many directions. “It’s a gamble if any of the old myths are true.”

“I just watched a movie the other night,” Ruth said. “Where apparently cutting off the head did the trick.”

“Carissa’s nearly had her head blown clean off and survived it,” Dario said, remembering that horrific night—one of many. He considered something else. “I know the thing about sunlight is true, at least. I experienced it myself…”

Up front, Ruth made a sound of frustration.

“We should have staked her while she was trapped,” she said. “Or set her on fire. Or something…”

“Maybe,” Dario said. “We didn’t have time to figure that out.”

Ruth nodded silently in agreement. Then Dario remembered something else.

“I know she’s weak to crosses, too. A little, anyway.”

“Crosses? Like… holy crosses?”

“Yeah.” Dario could still picture it, the steam rising from Carissa’s sister’s necklace on the kitchen floor, rising from Carissa’s hand likewise. “I don’t know how weak she is, exactly, but⁠—”

“I think I know where we can go,” Ruth interrupted. “I was thinking about maybe heading to my apartment, but this is closer…”

“And where is this?” Dario asked, meeting her frightened-but-steadfast stare in the rearview mirror.

“A place with a lot of crosses.”

Dario expected a church. Instead they pulled up outside of a shabby apartment building nestled between many bigger, shabbier apartment buildings, the faces of each complex drowned in shadows and dotted with watchful, illuminated eyes. Ruth killed the engine.

“Where are we?” Dario said.

“This is my mom’s place,” Ruth said. She gazed toward the building in question, looking not at all confident in her choice. “Fair warning, she’ll probably be ornery about me bringing y’all here in the middle of the night. Also…” Ruth turned in her seat, then gawped as she’d clearly forgotten the state of them both—Dario in his underwear, Zach shirtless in his jeans, not to mention the blood. “…she’s pretty intense about Jesus.”

“Thanks for the heads up,” Dario said. “If we’re heading inside, we should do it fast. Carissa has a way of catching up with me.”

“Zachary? You ready?”

Zach’s swollen eyes drifted from Ruth to Dario, back to Ruth again, barely aware.

“Help me with him, will you?” Ruth said as she climbed out of the car.

Dario wasn’t sure how he would manage that, considering he barely felt strong enough to stand himself. Nevertheless, as Ruth opened the back door and guided Zach up and out of the car, Dario followed right behind, putting an arm around him.

They hobbled up the walkway together. The night thrummed all around them, a constant, low buzz—what almost sounded like a power station humming someplace nearby. Ruth led them through the front door. They moved past the stairwell toward the elevator on the opposite side of the lobby. Ruth jammed her finger on the button. They shuffled in. She punched the button for the second floor. As the elevator carried them up, Zach took the opportunity to shrug them off, as he seemed to decide he could stand on his own.

“Where are we?” he said, breaking the quiet.

“My mom’s,” Ruth answered.

Zach must have missed everything they’d discussed since the motel. Personally, Dario didn’t care where they were headed, so long as it was safe. Ruth’s mother’s apartment sounded as good a place as any.

The elevator stopped. Opened. Ruth stepped into the hallway first, Zach second, Dario bringing up the rear feeling awkward as hell walking through the building in his underwear. Luckily it was the middle of the night.

They followed Ruth to Apartment 9, where she pressed the doorbell about five times. After about twenty seconds, she rang another five times and pounded.

Footsteps approached. Stopped. A hushed moment. Dario felt eyes peering through the peephole in the door, scanning them. The door unlocked, jerked open ajar. A gray-haired woman stood in the crack, eyes darting between them, bobbing up and down each of Dario’s and Zach’s half-naked bodies.

“Ruth?” the woman said. “It’s the middle of the night, what on earth…”

“I’m sorry,” Ruth said. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important…”

Dario couldn’t help noticing the way her mother didn’t open the door even after realizing it was her daughter. He supposed he couldn’t blame her, judging by the company she was with.

“Who are these men, and what happened to their clothes?”

“I know how it looks, but we need your help. Are you gonna open the door or not?”

Her mother reflexively stood aside as Ruth gently moved past, pushing her way into the apartment. Zachary eagerly followed her in. Dario started to do the same and hesitated.

“Ruth, tell me what’s going on!” her mother said, trailing her daughter deeper into the apartment.

Dario watched them go, the door left open as he stood rooted at the entrance. Cautiously, uncertainly, he took another step, followed by another, and walked himself inside. His cold heart plunged into the icy depths of his guts.

I wasn’t invited…

He observed the doorway behind him, stunned.

…and yet here I am.

“Dario,” Ruth called from the other end of the hall, their bodies crowded under the light there. “Shut the door.”

“I’m…” He glanced between Ruth and her mother, as a chilly understanding washed over him.

“What’s wrong with him?” her mother asked. “Why is he in his underwear? For crying out loud, Ruth, who are these men you’ve brought into my house?”

“They’re friends, mom…” Ruth shimmied between her mother and Zach on her way back to Dario. “Dario, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t think we should have come here,” he said.

“Why? What do you mean?”

Dario peeked out into the corridor, then turned to meet Ruth’s perplexed stare. “I wasn’t invited inside.”

“Oh. What does that mean?”

“Ruth!” her mother shouted, stomping in their direction. “Answer me already. What is this nonsense you’ve dragged me into?”

“What does it mean?” Ruth asked again.

Dario looked between Ruth and her mother once more, her mother’s face darkening as she grimaced over her daughter’s shoulder.

“I hope you didn’t come all this way planning to spend the night,” her mother told them. “I don’t even have a spare bed, let alone room for these people…”

Dario had assumed Ruth’s mother meant family. He’d assumed family meant home. He’d assumed…

“It means we’re not safe here,” he said.

Ruth considered this, then briskly started back down the hall. She took a hard left down the adjoining hall, out of sight. Her mother followed at her heels. Zach, standing quietly all the while, glanced nervously between them.

“What are you doing?” her mother said. “Leave my things alone!”

Dario shut the front door, locking it. He hurried into the second hallway where he was faced with countless portraits of Jesus and crucifixes hanging all along the hallway’s length. Ruth unhooked one of the crucifixes from the wall. She brought it to Dario.

“Care to test it?” she said, a grave look in her eyes.

She presented it to him, held limply in her hand. Dario reached for it. Slowly. At first he thought he felt something. A heat? He reached closer, closer…

“What is this?” Ruth’s mother said, hovering, eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?”

Dario reached within an inch of the thing before he realized he felt nothing at all. No heat. No pain. He touched it, three fingertips along the top post.

“Nothing?” Ruth said, clearly disappointed.

“No,” Dario said. “Nothing.”

“Give me that.” Ruth’s mother snatched the crucifix from her daughter’s grasp.

“Hey, guys?” Zach said. “I think someone’s at the door.”

Everyone held their collective breath, listening, when suddenly Zach spun to face the doorway at his back.

“Never mind,” he said. “It’s over here now.”

Dario squeezed past Ruth and her mother, approaching the doorway in question. It was the kitchen, dark and empty. The slightest breeze reached him, warm and fragrant with summer night air. Dario stepped onto the waxy white linoleum, where he noticed the window over the kitchen sink was open, the curtains gently billowing.

On his right, the linoleum transitioned to beige carpet where the kitchen butted up against the living room. Something stirred there, in the shadows. A choir of low, guttural growls. He saw them all—green eyes alight in the dark.

Numerous cats tore from the room without warning, through the other doorway into the main hall. Ruth’s mother cried out, calling after each of them as their paws scattered through the apartment.

In the deeper gloom of the living room, one remained. A watchful presence with whom Dario was well acquainted.

“Stop running, Dario.”

Carissa’s black eyes twinkled in the dark much like the cats’ had. Did Dario’s now do the same?

“Leave them alone,” he said. “And I will.”

“You do know you’ll have to hurt someone sooner or later. That’s just the way of things.”

Dario flinched as the kitchen light flipped on. Ruth’s mother was there beside him, her hand to the switch. The light bled across the living room, revealing Carissa standing muted in the shadows.

“Who are you?” Ruth’s mother interjected. “What are you doing in my house?”

“Mom,” Ruth said, joining them in the kitchen. “Don’t go near her…”

“I’m not hiding in my own house!” her mother barked, practically vibrating with anger.

“I can see now where the girl gets it from,” Carissa said, twirling her finger around her ear. She gave a breathy little laugh. “How cute. It’s a shame everyone here has to die.”

Ruth’s mother put a hand over her heart, appalled. Dario advanced two steps, placing himself between them.

“These people mean nothing to you. Leave them alone.”

“Or what, Dario?” Carissa advanced closer as well, where Dario got a better look at the dried blood down her throat and chest. “You think you can stop me? The fact you’re even standing is a miracle. You still haven’t eaten, poor thing…”

“I won’t let you touch them,” he said, and the confidence in his voice was such that he almost believed it.

If only he could have stood between her and his father, his mother. And that was just it, he knew—there wasn’t a chance in hell she’d leave his sister alone when all was said and done. This had to end here. Now. Before she could destroy what little remained of his world.

The kitchen light flickered, eliciting a wave of gasps from the others, and suddenly Carissa was standing right there, eye to eye.

“We’ll see about that,” she said.

She attempted to brush him aside on her way to the woman beside him. Dario grabbed hold of Carissa as she did, pulled her right along with him, spinning foot over foot until he released her staggering against the rocking chair in the middle of the room. She caught herself against it. She regarded Dario from the corner of her eye, sharp with malice.

“Have it your way, then.”

She came at him claws splayed, fangs bared. Dario caught her as she forced him against the living room wall with a crunch of plaster. He forced her back, each of them trying to swing the other as their sidestepping feet danced in a sloppy circle from the living room into the kitchen. Carissa was stronger than he was. She hurled him onto the kitchen counter, smashed him across the drying rack full of plates and teacups. There came a shout and suddenly Ruth was there on Carissa’s back. Carissa whirled, reached over her head, grabbed a fistful of Ruth’s hair. She flung her over her shoulder onto the hard linoleum. Ruth cried out, wheezing. Carissa briefly swayed, disoriented, then raised her foot over Ruth’s head.

A flash of déjà vu.

Before she could bring her heel down on Ruth’s skull, Dario lunged and tackled Carissa to the floor. He swung himself on top of her, before she used his own momentum against him and rolled him over, straddled him in turn. She raked her clawed fingertips across his face. She found his throat in both hands and began to squeeze. Dario groped at her uselessly.

Another flash of déjà vu.

Someone else joined the fray. Dario saw her coming through squinted eyes, a knife raised over her head. She brought it down with a gravelly grunt. Dario heard it—a sticky pop—and suddenly Carissa stiffened like a board in his grasp.

A banshee’s howl filled the apartment. Carissa sprang to her feet, and there Dario saw what Ruth’s mother had done. It wasn’t a knife that sprouted from Carissa’s eye, but a wooden crucifix, planted deep into the socket. Her flesh smoldered, crackled, her face blackening to a crisp all around the embedded wood as a dark ribbon of smoke curled toward the ceiling. She grabbed hold of the cross, her pale hand sizzling, and plucked it free. She tossed it clattering across the linoleum. Then, as her flesh continued to char, she promptly threw herself through the open kitchen window and into the night.

“What the hell was that?” Ruth said, sitting up off the floor.

Her mother shuffled across the kitchen and snatched up the discarded cross. She observed the string of blackened skin hanging from its tip. She glanced at the rest of them, her cheeks burning red.

“All of you,” she said, “are to leave my house this instant.”

“But mom⁠—”

“I said out!” she screamed. “Out! I want you out!”

Dario picked himself up, wincing with the effort.

“Mom,” Ruth said. “Listen to me…”

“How dare you!” her mother said, on the verge of tears. “How dare you bring evil into my home!”

“Listen to me!” Ruth pleaded. “It isn’t safe here. You should come with us, in case she comes back⁠—”

“I’m not going anywhere with you!” Her mother clutched the cross to her bosom. “I don’t know what sort of company you’re consorting with these days, Ruth, but I’ve come too far to begin allowing such wickedness in my life, do you understand? You need to go…”

“Mom, please…”

“Just go!” she hollered. “Go! Get out of my house!”

She buried her face into her hands, bursting into tears. Ruth could only regard her mother helplessly, struggling to remove herself from the situation, from this place they weren’t welcome. Finally she turned with a shake of her head.

“Okay, well… I’m taking these with me!”

She grabbed several crosses from her mother’s hallway, then proceeded out into the apartment corridor. Zach followed close behind. Dario hurried after them, but paused as he heard a meek little mew from the next room.

“Oh, Jules,” Ruth’s mother said. “It’s okay, baby. Everything’s going to be okay. You didn’t do anything wrong…”

At last, Dario stepped out of the apartment and shut the door behind him.

46

DEAD WEIGHT

Ruth carried the crucifixes all the way back to her car, where she struggled to remove her keys from her pocket with her arms so full. Her eyes welled with tears.

“You need help?” Dario said, standing with Zach on the other side waiting to be let in.

“I got it,” Ruth said.

She finally managed to pull her keys loose, only to immediately drop them. A thorn of rage sparked across her shimmering vision.

“Goddammit!”

She threw the crucifixes at her feet and gave them a swift kick across the asphalt, rattling like hollow bones in the night. She grabbed her keys, unlocked her car, and dumped herself behind the wheel with a huff. Zach climbed into the passenger seat, Dario in the back. She hesitated with the key in the ignition.

She opened her door and, stretching, managed to grab the only crucifix she hadn’t kicked out of arm’s reach. She placed it in Zach’s lap beside her.

“There,” she said. “One should be enough.”

She wiped tears from her eyes and started the car, heading in the uncertain direction of nowhere.

“Your apartment, then?” Dario said.

Ruth set her gaze into the rearview, meeting Dario’s in the backseat. She flared with resentment. Only for an instant. This wasn’t his fault, she knew. He hadn’t gotten them into this mess. This had been a joint effort, that woman at the center of it all.

“What did you mean before?” she asked Dario. “About not being invited inside? You said it wasn’t safe…”

“It’s the difference between a house and a home,” he said. “What keeps a vampire at bay.”

“And what’s the difference?”

She was met with a pregnant pause.

“Dario?”

“I, uh…” Dario considered his words. “I noticed you and your mom don’t seem very close.”

Ruth realized she was squeezing the steering wheel harder than she should. She took a deep breath, letting some steam back out.

“It’s complicated,” she said.

She replayed what her mother had said before kicking them to the curb—accusing her of bringing evil into her home, of consorting with wickedness. She eyed the crucifix in Zachary’s lap. Why hadn’t it affected Dario like Carissa? Was it him? Or was Ruth a faulty wielder? Because she was wicked, like her mother said? She simmered with guilt, for putting her mother in undue danger. She was probably right to kick them out like she had, Ruth thought.

It wasn’t long before they arrived outside Ruth’s apartment complex. It stood dark and lonesome, the alleys on either side even darker, reaching toward the street with their shadows.

“We’re here,” she said. She turned to Zachary beside her, his eyelids fluttering dreamily like he was only an inch away from sleep—or worse. She took the crucifix from his lap, then turned to Dario in the back. “You ready?”

They climbed out of the car. Zachary took a spill in the gutter as he climbed out, falling to one knee. Dario helped him up. Like before, Ruth and Dario both assisted him up the walkway to the entrance, where Ruth held the door open for them both.

“This way,” she said, and led them to the stairs.

“No elevator?” Dario asked, stumbling with his arm around Zachary who appeared even less capable of climbing several flights of stairs.

“No elevator,” Ruth said.

“And which floor are you?”

“The third…”

Ruth stuffed the bulk of the crucifix into her back pocket, then took Zachary’s arm around her shoulders, as he seemed to struggle even lifting his feet.

“How you feeling, Zach?” Dario said as they managed to reach the first landing.

Under his breath, Zachary muttered, “…like I’m gonna pass out.”

“Come on,” Ruth said. “It’s not much farther.”

They climbed another flight, to the second floor. Then another, to the next landing. Only one more flight to go. Even Ruth was shaking at that point, struggling under Zachary’s weight as he seemed less and less capable of carrying himself. His foot slipped off the very next step and he crumbled to his hands and knees.

“Come on, Zach,” Dario said. “We’re almost there.”

Zachary stared vacantly into the mashed carpeting under their feet. In his own little world. Hanging on by a thread.

From down below, there came the sound of the front doors swinging open and banging shut. Someone else was here. Somehow, Ruth knew it wasn’t anyone they’d be relieved to see.

“Go,” Dario said. “Take him.”

“Take him?” Ruth asked, clueless how she’d manage it on her own.

“I’ll hold her off as long as I can.”

“But Dario, you’re not⁠—”

“Go, Ruth. Please.”

He gave her one fleeting glance as he started back down, toward whomever was coming up to meet them.

Shit, Ruth thought.

“Come on, Zachary,” she said. “Just a little bit farther.”

Zachary’s legs visibly quaked as he fought to get his feet under him again. Ruth hauled him up with all the remaining strength she had left. It was barely enough. He staggered upright.

One step, two steps, quivering all the way.

47

WHERE THE HEART IS

He couldn’t run forever. She’d keep coming for him in the end, and anyone who dared share his company would be in grave danger by association alone. He had to face her head-on—even if it meant surrendering. At least for now. For a while perhaps.

He found Carissa standing at the bottom of the stairs, leaning there like she’d always known he’d come to meet her. Her eye had healed up nicely, though the rest of her face was blackened with ash.

“How long must we do this?” she said, cocking her head to see him. “You know the sun is on its way up…”

“And yet you’re still here,” Dario said, stopping in the middle of the stairway. “Taking the same risk.”

“Don’t you realize what an incredible life we could have together?” she said. “We’re the same, Dario. Two loveless creatures of the night. We’re bonded forever now. We’re practically family…”

“No, I had a family,” Dario said. “Until you took them from me.”

Maybe it was the lack of sleep, or the lack of food, or some combination of the two, but Dario felt his fear crumbling up inside himself, cooked dry by something hotter underneath. He took another step down, only a few stairs left between them.

“You destroyed everything of yours,” he said. “And now you want to destroy everything of mine, until we really are the same. That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? That’s why you want me so badly. Because you have no one else.”

“I don’t need anyone else,” she said, standing straight. “I’m free, Dario. That’s what it is to be alone. Freedom. I thought after the life you’ve lived, you’d want the same.”

“To be alone with you?” Dario said. “I can’t think of anything worse.”

Carissa took a step toward him, onto the first stair. She reached for his hand. Dario pulled back.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Oh, Dario,” she said, climbing to the second stair. “You’re so cute when you’re angry…”

She reached for him again, taking his hand in hers, which he promptly tore from her grasp.

“I said don’t touch me.” That bitter heat swelled, his undead heart igniting with it. “I should fucking kill you for what you’ve done.”

Carissa stopped, peering up into his face with something between venom and admiration.

“I would love to see you try,” she said, the corner of her mouth quirking with amusement.

She reached for him a third time. Dario swept her hand aside and shoved her. Hard. She stumbled back, stumbled down both steps where she barely caught herself at the foot of the stairs. The smile melted from her mouth.

“This isn’t a battle you can win,” she said.

“Then I guess we both lose,” Dario replied.

“And where do you plan to go without me, exactly?” she said. “Your own family didn’t accept you before. No one will accept you now. You’re not one of them anymore, Dario.”

“I’m not you, either. You’re not just alone, Carissa, you’re empty. You’re a bottomless pit. Nothing will ever make you whole because…” Dario paused. “…you’re not just loveless, you’re unlovable.”

He saw it in her, too, then—white-hot wrath. She grabbed him, her delicate hands crushing his biceps, and hurled him over herself, down the stairs, where he hit the floor and rolled like a dog out of the back of a moving truck. Before he could even get to one knee she was there again, grabbing him by the roots of his hair. She pulled him up off the floor.

“Let’s not wake the building, hmm?”

Dario cried out as she dragged him across the lobby, back to the entrance where she threw open the doors and pulled him outside, his naked body scraping across the cement walkway. He grabbed her in kind, tried to peel her hand from his scalp. Her grasp was infinitely stronger than his. She pulled him down the steps, onto the dark lawn. She released him in an aching pile.

“You really should have eaten.” She kicked him full force, her bare foot against his bare side. Dario screamed—a shrill, wind through a keyhole sound. “Maybe then you’d have stood a chance.”

She kicked him again. Dario felt his ribs crack, snap, pushing into his organs under the immense pressure of her foot. He fell onto his back, the grass beneath him moist and cool. Carissa stood over him, a dirty foot on either side, and stomped squarely upon his chest.

“Gah!”

His sternum crunched under her heel, each connected rib breaking loose across his lungs. Carissa dropped to her knees. Gritting her teeth, she pierced his flesh with her fingernails, pressing harder, the rest of her hand slipping through the rise of blood that followed. She reached into him, both hands plunging up to her bloodied wrists, and proceeded to pull his chest wide open on the lawn.

“You want to know how it’s done?” she asked him breathlessly. “It’s all in the heart, Dario.”

His wasn’t beating anymore—hadn’t been since he last woke—but he still felt her frigid hands inside him. He felt himself exposed, the sharp early-morning air against his bones. He stared into the sky, immobilized, as Carissa navigated him, folded him, swept the broken parts aside to reveal what lay underneath. She put her fist around him, as if to squeeze the life out of that which was already dead.

Overhead, the sky was no longer black, but blue.

Growing bluer by the minute.

48

BRIEF RESPITE

“Almost there…”

With Zachary leaned against her, Ruth assisted him in taking the final stair onto the third floor landing, her apartment now within reach. She felt him wanting to collapse, to break away like a sliding piece of glacier as they shuffled up to her door. Once again she struggled with her keys in her pocket—a tale as old as time. She couldn’t hear anyone coming. Not Dario. No one. But time was still of the essence. Zachary was in bad shape. She knew he belonged at a hospital, not her dingy third-floor apartment, but that was currently out of the question. At least for now. Perhaps when the sun was solidly risen they would take that chance.

She managed to stick her apartment key into the door without dropping it. The lock clicked. She opened the door, pushed into the dark calm within, Zachary all but dragging his feet alongside her.

“Just over here…”

She led him to the kitchen table in the dark, where she eased him down into one of the chairs. She flipped on the light, then fetched a cup from the cabinet and filled it with tap water. She brought it to Zachary, barely staying reclined on his seat as his tired body threatened to spill under the table.

“Here,” she said, and gently held the cup to his lips, tipping the water slowly. “Just a little to start…”

She’d read somewhere that drinking too much water when you were dying of thirst would make you sick. Or maybe she’d seen it in a movie. Either way, she allowed Zachary only a few sips before she took the cup away. Already he was panting for more.

“Let it sit for a second…”

It was then a body emerged from the living room. Much to Ruth’s weak and startled heart, it wasn’t Shaylee. A man entered the kitchen, his hair smushed wild about his head, rubbing sleep from his squinting eyes.

“Oh my god, Ruth? You’re alive.”

Ruth froze as Marcus threw his arms around her. He released her, then studied her with concern in his eyes.

“Oh my god, your face,” he said, noticing the bruises where Ned had struck her. Then, before Ruth could utter a word, he finally noticed the half-naked man seated at the kitchen table. “Oh, shit.”

It was a reasonable reaction, given Zachary’s appearance—the bruises, the blood, the way his dehydrated face was sucked tight against his skull. Ruth returned to him, tipping the water into his mouth once more.

“What the hell happened?” Marcus said. “Shaylee and I… we were so worried you were…” He trailed off. “We even called your mom and she had no idea where you were.”

“You did?” Ruth said, surprised to hear it considering her mother had given no indication she was aware that her daughter was missing.

“We reported you missing yesterday morning. What happened?”

“It’s a long story,” Ruth said. She allowed Zachary three more gulps of water before she stole it away again. She turned to Marcus, finally having a moment to appreciate his concern. He looked sick with it. Mostly he looked like he hadn’t slept. “This is Zachary Holcomb.”

Marcus brightened with recognition, from everything Ruth had told him previously. Zachary flashed the palm of his hand in a halfhearted wave, still breathing heavily as a bear, struggling to hold his head high.

“What happened to him?” Marcus said. “What happened to you?”

They were interrupted by a fourth body emerging from the living room. It was Shaylee, shielding her eyes from the harsh kitchen light. That was, until she saw Ruth.

“Ruth!” She threw her arms around her just as Marcus had done. Ruth stiffened again, unsure how to be, how to feel. “I thought you were dead.”

Despite everything that had happened—events neither Shaylee nor Marcus had any reason to suspect were possible—Ruth was amazed that either of them would have jumped to such a conclusion.

Shaylee’s body suddenly turned as rigid as Ruth’s as she finally noticed the half-naked man at the table.

And then the kitchen light flickered. Really flickered.

“Whoa,” Marcus said, as they each craned their necks to see it.

The flashing light over their heads began to buzz, louder and louder until Ruth was certain the bulb would explode. Her heart started to do the same in her chest. Fluttering.

A heaviness pressed upon the room, a weight over Ruth’s head that made her want to shrink into the corner and hide. She couldn’t rightly name the feeling, or the cause. An immensity. It moved over the place as the light continued to blink, to buzz. Judging by the looks on the others’ faces, their eyes tracing the strobing air, Ruth knew they sensed it too.

“What the hell,” Shaylee said. “Do you guys feel that?”

“Ruth,” Marcus said, “why is there a cross sticking out of your back pocket?”

Dario.

Ruth hadn’t forgotten him, exactly, but…

“Shit.” She shoved the half-full cup of water into Shaylee’s hand. “He’s dying of thirst, do you mind? I’ll be right back.”

Maybe I’ll be right back. Maybe I’ll never come back.

The kitchen light didn’t explode, but it died with a loud pop that sent the others gasping. Ruth hardly noticed. She was already heading for the door. Marcus called after her. She hardly noticed that, either. She was already stepping out into the stairwell, hurrying down, pulling the crucifix from her pocket as she skipped two steps at a time until she reached the bottom. She raced for the entrance, pushed through the double doors, onto the walkway outside, and slid to a halt.

The crucifix slipped from her hand as she became wholly thoughtless with awe.

49

HELLO DARKNESS

That deep blue beginning to form at the edges of the sky blackened again. So did the streetlights. They winked out like snuffed candles as something swept over them, over the street, like the shadow of some low-flying plane, only it took the light of everything with it, draping lush, silky darkness over them in its wake.

Carissa noticed it too. The fist around Dario’s heart relaxed as she peered around them, studying the street, as well as those dark alleys on either side of the building. Sitting atop Dario’s ruined body, she muttered nervously to herself.

“No… No, it can’t be…”

It came from all angles. It gushed from the alleyways, thick as an oil spill, silent as a prayer, seething across the yard in a gust of stale, rattling breath. A curse. An ancient thing.

Carissa screamed as the darkness carried her, lifted her right up off the ground from Dario’s body. Everything was darkness now. No street. No apartment building. Only them and It, a thing without form, although it tucked Carissa against its hip with ease, blinked its terrible yellow eyes, and sucked the Tennessee air cold and dry with one rasping gasp.

“No!” Carissa screamed as she floundered against it. “This is impossible! This is impossible!”

“This has gone on long enough,” the darkness boomed, its throaty baritone shaking the very ground beneath them, a thundering storm cloud. “It’s time to come home, Carissa.”

“Put me down!” She pressed into what might’ve been its shoulder as she attempted to free herself from its vise. “Let me go! Let me go! I killed you! I killed you!”

Dario was halfway gone, though he was aware enough to wonder how one could possibly kill that without form, that without a heart left to squeeze. Darkness incarnate.

“Please!” she cried. “I can’t go back! I won’t go back! Dario! Dario, please! Help me! Don’t let him take me again!”

Dario could do nothing, though he’d have done exactly that if given the opportunity to do otherwise. He sat up slightly, his insides threatening to spill into his lap, just to better see them both—Carissa and the thing that had claimed her.

Grégoire Baudelaire, he remembered suddenly.

The darkness turned its yellow gaze upon him and Dario felt himself becoming something of a flimsy reed.

“The light approaches,” it said. “Do not waste this precious gift, wretch.”

Carissa continued to scream and cry and kick as the darkness hummed. Dario felt its pull. The sweaty, loose hairs upon his head quivered in the breeze of it, as the night became a vacuum, as Carissa’s lament faded into its depths, into its distance, the vampire’s impossible contours collapsing in on itself. The edges of Dario’s vision billowed as the shadows pulled away. A lifting shroud. The street and the city once more revealed themselves, as Carissa’s screams flattened into the whine of a mosquito in his ear, until that too shrank to nothing.

Then quiet. Stillness. In the darkness’ wake, Dario felt light enough to fly away with them.

“Dario!”

The sky was bluer than last he saw it. Brighter.

“Dario!”

Ruth arrived beside him in a hurry, her sneakers sliding on the wet grass. She knelt beside him, hands hovering in useless panic as her horrified eyes took him in.

“Oh my god…”

“I’m okay,” Dario said, as he plucked a blade of grass from the sticky surface of his exposed lungs.

“Dario, you’re⁠—”

“I’m okay.” He lay back down, his head upon the ground, and breathed. Breathed. Already he felt his body gathering itself back together. A funny sensation. An itch he didn’t dare scratch, lest his fingers become trapped in the mending flesh of his torso. “I’m okay, really…”

“Oh my god,” Ruth repeated. “It’s morning, Dario. The sun…”

Without another word, she grabbed him under the crooks of his armpits and began dragging him across the lawn, back up the walkway. It was slower going than when Carissa had done it. The heels of his feet smacked and bounced up the steps as Ruth pulled him along, one breathless heave after another. Before them, the quiet street turned brighter still. A sliver of gold teased the horizon. Ruth laid him down for just a moment to prop the door open against herself. She picked him back up and dragged him inside. The front door slammed shut. She pulled him to the stairs. Did she really intend to drag him up all three flights?

“Ruth?”

Someone else appeared on the stairway. A handsome young man Dario had never seen before in his life.

“Marcus, help me with him,” Ruth said. “Please.”

“Jesus Christ,” Marcus said. “Ruth, he’s… he’s…”

“I know what he looks like. Just help me carry him.”

The man called Marcus prepared to lift his upper body while Ruth prepared to lift him by his feet. Dario thought it strange they should fuss over him this way, when he really felt all right. In fact, he was feeling better by the second. As Marcus bent over him, slipping his arms under Dario’s, Dario could practically hear the young man’s pulse. He thought he could even smell the blood coursing back and forth through the arteries between his head and chest.

A remarkable urge came over Dario then. The power of it frightened him.

“Stop,” he said. “Stop, stop, please…”

Dario shook them off, sitting up all on his own on the steps. He peered down at himself, his chest a mess of blood and mostly scars. Scars. His flesh was already becoming whole. The scars where Carissa had pried him apart were already shrinking, sinking, flattening. It looked worse than it was, with all the blood that stained him. He grasped the stair handrail and used it to pull himself upright.

“Dario, are you sure⁠—”

“I’m fine,” he said. “I mean it.”

“Okay, well, we need to get you inside.”

She was right. The windows on the stair landing revealed the morning light, growing steadily brighter. Ruth put an arm around him and helped him to climb. It wasn’t so bad. He thought he was having an easier time of it than Zach had, anyway.

Which reminded him.

“Zach?” he said. “Is he…”

“He’s okay,” Ruth said.

They hobbled up to the third floor, where Marcus held the apartment door open for them both. With her arm wrapped firmly around Dario, Ruth started through the door and then stopped. Forcefully. She couldn’t go any farther. Not with Dario at her side.

An immense pressure pushed against him. A soundless gale. Overpowering. Dario fought to step into it, like pushing through a padded wall. Impassable.

“Dario,” Ruth said, holding onto him all the while. “You’re welcome to come inside.”

The pressure dissipated so suddenly that Dario stumbled forward from Ruth’s grasp and into the doorway. The young man there caught him in both arms. His scent bloomed fragrantly, a sweet vapor. Dario pushed himself away.

“You need to stay away from me,” he said, his bared teeth eliciting a gasp from the man.

“That’s okay, Dario,” Ruth said, quickly stepping between them as she guided him deeper into her apartment.

Another young woman stood at the kitchen table. Zach was seated beside her. Not necessarily alive and well, but alive. Dario offered them a cursory grimace as Ruth shuffled him along, past the kitchen and into the living room. From there they entered the hallway. Ruth directed Dario into the first door on the left. The bathroom. Dario simultaneously hated it and understood it.

They stood before the bathtub in silence, Ruth’s hand placed gently on Dario’s back. Despite being mostly a stranger, her touch was a comfort. He felt no urge to feed upon her like her friend.

“I hope this is okay,” she said. “At least for today, anyway.”

“Ruth.” She met his gaze expectantly in the dark. “Thank you for this.”

“Don’t sweat it,” she said. As simple as that. “Get some rest. I’ll look after Zachary in the meantime.”

She shut the door on her way out.

The bathroom was mostly dark. Dario stood at the edge of the tub for some time, dreading climbing in. It would be cool and hard and uncomfortable inside. But this was what his life would entail now, he thought. From cheap motels to strangers’ bathtubs.

He finally climbed in, one foot after the other. He lay down. The bathtub’s surface was colder than he expected, but not unpleasant. He lay back with his arms across his naked belly and closed his eyes. He could hear the others’ murmurs outside, down the hall in the kitchen. He heard them better than he should, he thought. But it wasn’t difficult to tune them out.

As it turned out, the bathtub wasn’t so miserable as he feared, and it wasn’t long before sleep claimed him, dreamless and deep.

50

HOME SWEET HOME

Ruth had a hell of a time explaining everything to Shaylee and Marcus—her disappearance, her survival, and the vampire in their bathtub. But it helped that Shaylee was a proud horror fanatic with a healthy curiosity for all things supernatural, as well as a certain indelible faith that it was only a matter of time before she experienced something herself. And as far as Marcus was concerned, it definitely helped that he’d seen Dario with his own eyes—the state of him in the stairwell, as well as the undeniable, trademark fangs.

Zachary Holcomb could have easily corroborated every part of her story if not for struggling to keep himself awake. The bite marks along his neck had to suffice for now. After providing him sufficient water, they moved him to the couch in the living room, which Marcus had already made into a bed of sorts, having spent the night anticipating Ruth’s possible return.

After many questions and long, thoughtful pauses, Ruth announced she was on the verge of passing out herself, in desperate need of sleep—as well as a shower, but that would have to wait.

Shaylee wondered at what point they should contact the police. Ruth couldn’t even begin to fathom what might come of that. Would they believe her? There were two dead officers at the motel and little explanation. They would also find Zachary Holcomb’s wife, both their vehicles, as well as the owner of the motel…

There was so much explaining to do, but now wasn’t the time.

“Is he gonna be okay?” Shaylee asked, regarding the man now sleeping on their sofa with vampire bites on his neck. “He’s not gonna… you know…”

“He should be fine,” Ruth said, though she was only guessing. “I’m gonna sleep out here with him, though. Just in case he wakes up.”

Marcus expressed his wishes to spend the day with them, in case anything should happen. Ruth told him she appreciated the gesture but that he should go to work.

“I’m just gonna be sleeping anyway,” she said. “For a while, at least.”

“Okay. If you’re sure.” He looked at Ruth like she wasn’t real, like this entire morning wasn’t real, like he’d wake up any moment. Ruth thought she understood the feeling. “I’m coming straight over after work, though. All right?”

He kissed Ruth on the forehead. It was so unexpectedly warm that for a moment she was sad to see him go.

Ruth dragged her pillow and beddings into the living room, where she laid them out on the floor under the sofa where Zachary slept. The floor was hard, but she was so eager to rest she didn’t care. It beat the hell out of spending the night tied up to a bed frame.

“I’m gonna go scour the news on my computer for a bit,” Shaylee said. “Holler if you need anything, okay?”

Ruth drew the curtains shut, making the living room as dark as possible before she tucked herself in under her blanket. Zachary mumbled something unintelligible. Dreaming.

Ruth lay back on her pillow. She closed her eyes.

That was all it took.

She woke to the sound of Zachary sobbing beside her on the sofa. His back was turned to her, trembling. Truth be told, Ruth was simply glad to see he was still alive.

“Zachary?” she whispered.

The tiniest whine escaped him. Still Ruth couldn’t tell if he was awake or not.

“I fucked up,” he said. A quiet moan. A quiet sniffle. He hitched with another sob. “Oh, god, I fucked up…”

“Hey…” Ruth said, sitting up a little more.

“She’s dead.” Zachary’s body shook as though he were freezing. “I don’t even know where my kids are. They deserved better. So much… better.”

Ruth didn’t know what to say. She sat up further, perched on her knees at the edge of the couch where she was close enough to touch him, though she refrained.

“I was a terrible husband,” he continued. His voice was muffled, speaking into the crevice of the sofa. He took a great deep breath. “And I’m an even worse father…”

“You’re the only father they’ve got,” Ruth said. “Those kids need you now more than ever.”

Zachary shuddered. He swallowed, the gulp loud in the living room’s quiet. He said nothing more. Ruth thought it best to leave him alone for now.

As she lay back down on the floor, her phone started buzzing next to her pillow. She picked it up, and discovered her boss was calling. Judy.

“Crap,” she muttered. She answered, putting the phone to her ear. “Hi, Judy.”

“Where are you?” Judy exclaimed. “You were supposed to be here at two!”

“I know,” Ruth said. “I’m sorry, I just⁠—”

“You’ve been on a real losing streak lately, Ruth,” Judy continued. “You used to be one of my best. What’s going on?”

“I know, I’m sorry, it’s just that⁠—”

“I need you here now. Before the after-work rush. Are you coming in or not?”

Ruth’s mind was reeling, foggy.

“No,” she answered. “I’m not coming in.”

There came a dramatic sigh on the other end of the line, Judy’s breath roaring into the phone.

“Ruth,” she said. “Do you want to keep your job or not?”

The question struck something deep in Ruth—a tender, silver vein she hadn’t known was there.

“No,” she said. “Not really.”

The line filled with humming silence.

“Excuse me?”

“I think I’m done, actually,” Ruth said, and the words alone buoyed her with a strange excitement she never expected to exist inside her, a desire she’d never known she possessed. “I think I quit.”

“You think you quit? Are you kidding me? Right now? Ruth⁠—”

“Yeah, no,” Ruth said. “I do. I quit.”

“Hold on just a second. We can work something out. Why don’t you⁠—”

“No, that’s okay,” Ruth said. “I’m actually really tired. I’m gonna go back to sleep.”

“Ruth, wait⁠—”

“Bye, Judy.”

She ended the call, turned her phone to Silent, and set it aside. She lay back down with a faint grin on her face. She still needed a job, of course. She needed money. But lucky for her, there was no shortage of shitty jobs in this town. She saw the ‘Now Hiring’ signs everywhere she went. At the very least, she could afford to take off a day or two.

She closed her eyes, as slumber pulled her back into its carefree embrace.

The kitchen light was on, casting its sickly cone across the living room. Ruth sat up and stretched. Zachary was still sleeping. He might sleep all day long, she thought.

She tiptoed into the kitchen where she found Shaylee making dinner for herself. Ruth could smell something in the oven. Her stomach growled.

“Oh, hey,” Shaylee said, keeping her voice low. “How you feeling?”

“Eh,” Ruth said.

“So listen,” Shaylee continued, positively buzzing. “I found your story online.”

An icy tendril shot through Ruth’s heart.

“It’s all over the local news. That little motel you said you were at? The two dead officers, and the other two bodies?”

Ned and Marjorie, Ruth thought.

“What are they saying?”

“They found that guy’s car,” she said, gesturing to the living room where Zachary slept. “As of right now, he’s a missing person. They haven’t said too much, but I’m pretty sure they suspect the owner of the motel is responsible, except…”

“The officers’ bodies,” Ruth said. “They couldn’t possibly think the owner was responsible for that.”

“They actually didn’t mention the officers’ injuries,” Shaylee said. “Not in any of the articles I could find, anyway. It’s possible they’re keeping some details close to their chests for now. Maybe they don’t want to cause a panic when they aren’t even sure of their findings themselves.”

“Yeah. Maybe…”

Ruth took a seat at the kitchen table, overwhelmed by what she knew was only the tip of the ‘aftermath’ iceberg.

“You hungry?” Shaylee said. “I’ve got a tray of tenders in the oven. I made extra just in case.”

“That sounds amazing,” Ruth said.

“Also…” Shaylee hesitated guiltily. “I poked my head into the bathroom. Well… I did more than that. I needed to pee. I couldn’t help it.”

“You saw him?”

“I think he was asleep, but I’m not sure. I hope so. It would have been awkward otherwise. You don’t think he’s dangerous?”

“No,” Ruth said. “At least not intentionally.”

She glanced toward the living room, thinking.

“I need to make a phone call,” she said, standing.

“Cool. These still have a few more minutes, anyway,” Shaylee said.

Ruth returned to her little bed on the floor. She picked up her phone and discovered several missed calls from Judy. Oh well. There were also a few messages from Marcus, checking in. She’d reply to those as soon as she finished her call.

She paused with her finger over her mother’s number. She dreaded this as much as she felt she needed to do it. She dialed. The phone rang four times before she picked up.

“Ruth?” her mother said.

“Yeah, mom, it’s me. How are you? Are you okay?”

Her mother gave an angry huff into the phone.

“Well, aside from getting next to no sleep last night, and the amount of repairs I’ve got to look forward to, I’m just dandy. I’ve got holes in my walls. Not to mention all my broken dishes. I’ll be lucky if I don’t hurt myself stepping on glass. You know, if I didn’t know any better, I’d be asking you to pay for all of this…”

“I just wanted to call and make sure you were all right, mom…”

“…and I still haven’t found all my cats this morning. They’re so afraid, I have no idea when they’ll come out from hiding. Jules was just shivering in my arms last night after you left, I don’t know if he’ll ever be the same…”

“Okay, mom,” Ruth said. “I’m glad you’re all right. I have to go.”

Ruth ended the call, and the relief that followed was akin to stepping out from a crowded house party into fresh air. Of all the things her mother could complain about, she was surprised not to have heard any mention of the literal vampire that had come through her kitchen window—as though her mother had somehow scrubbed that detail clean from her memory.

From the kitchen there came the beep of the oven timer, followed by the clatter of the baking pan as Shaylee removed her food from the oven. Ruth turned to Zachary beside her, lying perfectly still.

“Zachary,” she whispered. “Are you awake?”

No reply. She’d save him some food for later.

Marcus also brought food with him after he left work—McDonald’s, much to Ruth’s flattered heart. She ate with Marcus at the kitchen table. Zachary was still asleep on the sofa.

“What’s gonna happen when he wakes up?” Marcus said.

“I’m not sure,” Ruth said. “Shaylee says the police are looking for him. They found both his and his wife’s cars at the motel, so he’ll need to show his face eventually and give his side of the story…”

She took another bite of her cheeseburger. She wasn’t exactly starving after sampling some of Shaylee’s chicken tenders, but the food had smelled so good when Marcus handed her the bag, she thought it couldn’t hurt to eat some more after everything she’d been through.

“Do you think anything will come of this for the two of you?” Marcus asked. “Your relationship with him, I mean. After the dust settles.”

Ruth hadn’t really considered that yet, surprisingly.

“I’m not sure. He’s going to have a lot of pieces to pick up, to put his life back together after all of this. Maybe he’ll need my help. Or maybe he won’t.” She shrugged. “Maybe nothing’s changed between us.”

Maybe I’m still just a psycho in his eyes, she thought. And maybe he’ll blame me for sending his wife to that motel.

There was no way to know until Zachary woke up. Even then, he might simply ask to be taken to the station, and from there their lives would splinter apart and things would go back to the way they were—before he ever set foot in Dollar Delights.

Maybe, maybe, maybe…

Only time would tell, Ruth thought.

And whatever would be, would be.

Ruth opened her eyes to the dark. The sun was long gone, night fully upon them. Zachary snored on the sofa. Marcus lay beside her on the living room floor. She felt his breath against the back of her neck, his arm around her middle, holding her close.

They weren’t alone.

As her vision adjusted, she saw him. The other. He stood watching them sleep with his eyes alight, his pale skin giving off a subtle glow of its own. Ruth was startled to see him at first, until she realized who it was.

“Sorry to wake you,” Dario said.

She blinked her tired eyes, lifting her head slightly off her pillow.

“That’s all right,” she said, her voice croaking with fatigue. “How are you feeling?”

His eyes flashed in the dark as he blinked, there and gone, there again. “Better, I think.”

Ruth waited for him to say something more, but the room only droned with silence.

“I guess you’re leaving, then,” she said. “Do you think it’s safe to go out there? Carissa…”

“Won’t be coming back. Not again.”

“And that thing that took her…”

“A fate worse than death,” Dario said. “But it wasn’t here for us.”

Ruth shuddered just to think of it again. It was a relief to know it was all behind them. A relief to hope, anyway.

“I just wanted to say thank you again before I left,” Dario said. “For everything.”

“Yeah, of course,” Ruth said. “Any time.”

Dario made an amused sound—a sharp breath through his nostrils. “Well. I’ll see you around, Ruth.”

She wasn’t sure if the room was just so dark that she lost sight of him, or if he’d simply faded into the shadows themselves, but suddenly Dario wasn’t there anymore. The room was still and empty. Ruth lay her head back down, studying those shadows with an idle paranoia—like maybe she’d dreamed the whole thing.

Marcus made a sound in his sleep. A dreamy groan. He wrapped his arm more tightly around her, pulling her closer. Ruth sighed pleasantly and closed her eyes.

See you around, Dario…

EPILOGUE

THE GHOST OF SUMMER

Zachary Holcomb tucked his children in twenty minutes after nine o’clock. The house was deathly quiet. More so than it used to be. He could hardly stand it. The emptiness. The loneliness. He wouldn’t last another year in this house, he knew. Not when every little thing about it stung. Every piece of furniture, every doorway, every nook and cranny, another memory. But it was too early to begin thinking of moving on, so for now he allowed these things to hurt him. The hurt was necessary, he thought.

Even so, he refused to sleep in their bed. His and Marjorie’s. Instead he slept on the inflatable mattress in the downstairs sunroom, where he drew each curtain to the floor on all eight of the sunroom windows because he didn’t like the night peering in at him like it did—like the night was wont to do.

Lately his thoughts were restless, so it usually took him a couple hours to fall asleep each night. Tonight was no different. He tossed and turned himself dizzy, until all he could do was lay and pant.

He opened his eyes to the sound of the patio creaking outside. He sat up, scratched his head. The motion lights had come on in the backyard. He hadn’t noticed until now. He stood up with a grunt and shuffled to the patio door. He pulled the curtain aside. There was nothing out there, as far as he could tell. After a minute or so the motion lights turned off and the yard plunged back into shadow.

Then the patio creaked again. Someone was out there. Close.

He flipped the lock on the door handle, pulled it wide, and stepped out into the cool near-autumn air. The yard chirred with crickets. Somewhere, the thump of a garbage can lid slammed shut. He scanned the perimeter fence, where the shadows were deepest. The strangest thought occurred to him then, and he voiced it liberally.

“Ruth?”

The darkness didn’t reply. Probably it wasn’t her. Had some part of him hoped it would be?

They hadn’t spoken since that morning at the station. Everything had blown up then. It was hard to keep in touch. At least, that was what Zachary told himself. More accurately, he’d isolated himself, and she’d—surprisingly—allowed him all the distance he could ask for. Now the ball was in his court, so to speak. He didn’t know what he wanted to do with it just yet. He’d blamed her for a short while. For Marjorie. But that was bullshit and he knew it right off. He’d brought all of this on himself. On her…

Fuck, Marjorie…

He was in therapy now. Maybe when he learned to stop being a piece of shit, he’d give Ruth a call sometime. He still had her letter. He read it now and again, his newfound loneliness providing him a new lens with which to understand her fixation. She wasn’t as crazy as he once believed. She saw something in him, the way he saw Marjorie everywhere he went—in supermarkets, in line at the post office, in rush-hour traffic when every white hatchback looked a little like hers.

The loneliness that follows loss was an entirely different breed, he was beginning to learn.

Another creak. This time over his head.

Zachary whirled, one bare foot over the other, and peered toward the roof over the sunroom. A shadow darted there. At least, he could have sworn he’d seen one. Then there was nothing.

Another strange thought occurred to him, though somehow this one seemed less strange than the last.

“Dario?” he said.

Again, the darkness didn’t reply.

Discovered in a bathroom stall at The Manhole—a gay bar in downtown Memphis—thirty-four-year-old David Warner was found bitten and bloodless, the third victim this month in a string of possibly related murders across Shelby county.

David leaves behind a wife, April, and their three children, Max, Nash, and Harper.

Arianna Caruso’s face hovered in the ghostly white light of her phone as she scrolled for hours on end, unable to sleep. Or rather, unwilling to sleep.

Her dreams were poisoned.

Each night she was accosted by visions of terror and irretrievable loss. She put it off as long as she could, until her eyes were sore and her phone became heavy in her hand. Oftentimes she woke in the middle of the night with her phone lying on her chest because she’d fallen asleep by accident, heart racing from whatever nightmare she’d just escaped.

Usually it was about her mother. That night. The way she’d stood between Arianna and the naked woman on the stairs, who pulled her mother’s arm from her body like loose stitching. Even as she lay awake following these dreams, her mother’s screams echoed in the background of her mind, while she traced the alien shadows of her new bedroom in the dark—her auntie’s guest bedroom, more accurately. That’s where she’d ended up, after all was said and done, after she’d told the authorities her story ad nauseam and had seen the rigid disbelief in their eyes each and every time.

She did always omit a few key details, however.

Movement at the window sent Arianna sitting bolt upright—a scuff of footsteps on the rooftop just outside. Her phone tumbled into her lap, its light concealed as she stared wide-eyed toward the inky black gaze of night, listening.

I’m not afraid, she lied to herself.

She climbed out of bed. She approached the alcove of her window, climbed into it, into the scarce glow of moonlight. She flipped the latch and, reminding herself once more just how unafraid she was, softly moved the window open along its track. Crisp, early September air lifted goosebumps along her bare arms. She pressed her face into the night, brimming with fear and curiosity as she glimpsed the rooftop just beneath her dormer window. There was something there. A black box.

No, not just a black box…

A shoebox.

Heart thumping madly, she lifted it inside. She sat cross-legged in her window’s alcove, the box in her lap, the chilly air continuing to unleash goosebumps up and down her shoulders and thighs. She gently opened the box, and discovered a brand new pair of sneakers inside, exactly her size. Exactly to her taste, even. The scent of new shoes tickled her with nostalgia. She marveled for a moment, her scattered thoughts turning wild and hopeful.

She set the box aside and lunged for the window again, shoved herself halfway out into the night. She peered into the yard below, steeped in shadow. At this hour, with the street entirely vacant, the neighborhood asleep, her voice carried in a startling manner as she called out.

“Dario?”

Something stirred nearby. On the roof. She leaned farther out to see it. Him. A figure sat on the slope of the roof, knees bent, bleached under the light of the moon. The figure spoke, and the familiar voice was enough to bring tears to her eyes.

“Hey RiRi,” he said.

“Dario,” she said, her shallow breaths caught in her throat. “Where have you been? I thought… I thought you were dead.”

He became quiet for a time.

“Maybe I am,” he said.

He sounded wrong. Not like the Dario she knew. She studied him, huddled on the rooftop, the moon’s light turning him stone-gray.

“Come over here,” she said. “Come off the roof.”

Dario didn’t budge.

“I’m afraid for you to see me.”

“I don’t care,” she answered. “I want to see you. I need to see you. Please.”

He hung his head. Then finally he stood. He carefully navigated his way to her window, walking at an angle along the rooftop’s slope, his pale limbs so thin and bright sprouting from his darker clothes. Arianna pulled her head back through the window as he arrived there, grasping the windowsill. She could hardly see him with his back to the night, obscured, though his eyes were oddly twinkling.

“Here,” she said, and climbed out of the alcove entirely. “Come inside.”

Dario hesitated, before finally he crept in through the window. He crawled out of the alcove, coming to stand just beside her. Still it was so dark in her bedroom. She turned for her desk, reaching for the lamp on its corner.

“Wait,” Dario said.

She paused, but Dario said nothing more. He folded his arms, holding himself so uncertainly.

“I’m turning on the lamp,” she told him.

And she did. She flipped the switch and the soft, amber glow illuminated them both. Arianna nearly gasped, astonished by his appearance—the chalky pallor of his skin, the deep black of his eyes. Not only did he not sound quite like himself, or look like himself, but he hardly carried himself like he used to. His stature was stooped, shoulders slack, head slightly turned, unable to look her in the eye. Fragile in the worst way. Arianna was all at once relieved and saddened to see him.

“I was afraid you would hate me,” he said.

“I don’t hate you,” she said, moving closer, all but overcome with the urge to touch him. “How could I hate you?”

She saw the cracks in him widening. The welling of tears in his eyes. The contortion of his mouth. She wanted so badly to touch him, to hold him. She’d missed him so terribly, fearing he’d shared the same fate as their parents that night, fearing she’d never see him again.

His voice was paper thin through his quivering lips.

“I was afraid you’d think I was a monster…”

She couldn’t hold back any longer. She threw her arms around him before he could fall to pieces on her bedroom floor.

“No,” she said. “I would never think that…”

She squeezed him, felt his bones trembling through the fabric of his shirt, as a late-summer breeze found them through the open window and sent them both shivering in each other’s arms.

“You’re my brother, Dario.”

A SPECIAL THANKS

Dear brave reader,

I must say thank you. Without readers like you, authors like me wouldn’t be allowed a paddle in this violent, ever-changing sea—otherwise known as the publishing world.

I was just a scrawny eighteen-year-old when I wrote my first novel, The Writhing. A bit nervous and unsure of myself, I held onto it for TEN YEARS, writing a couple more novels in the meantime which I was equally unsure about. It took me a decade to realize my stories weren’t doing anyone any good just sitting on my laptop, and in 2019 I decided it was finally time to take the plunge. All I can say now is thank you. I only write this disturbing filth with the utmost love and sincerity. To be granted your curiosity means more than you can ever know.

If you have a moment, let me know your thoughts by leaving a review. It’s a simple gesture that means the world to us indie publishers and helps other curious readers such as yourself find books like mine. I’d greatly appreciate it.

Thanks again! There’s plenty more horror to come!

PS if you enjoy my writing but have already devoured all my supernatural horror fare, I also write suspense thrillers as Beau Savage! Check out my thrillers here.

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MORSELS

SAMPLE CHAPTERS

1.

She sat on her bed with a 9mm pistol in her hands, held loosely in her lap, and imagined what it would be like to blow his brains out. How violent could it be, really? How much blood? How long would he remain upright as the life blipped out of him? Would she do it from behind, or would she do it face to face? The latter was the more attractive option, she thought.

She thought.

She’d never killed anyone before. She’d never wanted to kill anyone before. Anyone else, at least. These thoughts had been running through her mind for some years now. Thoughts of confrontation. A spilling of truths. A spilling of blood. A fantasy she hoped to bring to fruition soon. Very soon.

There was a niggling doubt in the recess of her mind, however. Of course. She wasn’t a monster, after all. Not like him. Not like the rest of them.

Faint, early morning sunlight began to claw at the window curtains.

To her credit, she imagined the event with no frill. No melodrama. It would go down quickly. The quicker the better, in fact. Less chance for snags. Less chance for that niggling doubt to find its way to the foreground and freeze her up like the nervous, nail-biting mess she knew she truly was.

“This is for you,” she murmured.

Bang.

She turned the pistol over in her lap. Black, nylon-based polymer. A tiny thing. Ten rounds. It didn’t belong to her.

She imagined it all again. His dimwitted face. She lifted the gun in both hands, aimed it at her bedroom wall, one eye shut, and imagined that dimwitted face stricken with fear—beading sweat, a twitching mouth, dawning realization.

“This is for you,” she murmured again.

Her body trembled. Somehow tears sprang into her eyes. She lowered the pistol, cradled it in her lap once again, and allowed her mind to go blank for a time, until the cold rush of anxiety finished flushing through her. Her heart was pounding. She liked to think she was ready for this, that she’d been ready for years now, but only time would tell.

No. I am ready for this.

A single tear dripped from her eye and she hastily swiped away the rest on the back of her hand.

“He deserves this.”

She squashed that ever-looming doubt down as best she could, but it was like holding an inflated balloon underwater. Hopeless. Before she could lose control of it, before it could slip from her grasp and pounce into her mind as a full-fledged notion, she sprang to her feet and placed the pistol into the small hardshell suitcase opened on her bed, already packed with enough clothes for a one-night stay.

One night, she reminded herself. A soothing thought.

And perhaps it wouldn’t even take that long.

2.

Leaning against the passenger window, Connie Jacobsen watched the ash-colored clouds with dreamy eyes, the midafternoon sun hidden somewhere behind them. Those clouds promised rain, but they’d yet to see a single drop all day. She yearned for it. A little rain always helped to settle her nerves.

Bored of the sky’s teasing, she turned to the driver and watched him a while instead. He was especially easy on the eyes, his handsome face endlessly pleasing to her. Judging by the furrow of his brow and the idle manner in which he chewed the inside of his lip, it was clear he too was in desperate need of something to settle his nerves.

He sensed her watching. His concentrated gaze flickered in her direction. His restless mouth formed a coy, lopsided smirk.

“Can I help you?”

“Just admiring,” Connie answered smoothly. “You look like you’re thinking real hard about something. I can’t imagine what it could be…”

“Mhmm,” he answered. “Sure you can’t.”

Evan Caldwell squeezed the steering wheel a little tighter as he took a deep breath, and exhaled a slow and steady sigh—his own way of settling his nerves, Connie had come to learn. For him, a deep sigh was rarely a sign of relaxation.

As she continued watching him, he glanced her way again just to be sure, and that uncomfortable smirk broke into a full grin.

“What?”

“Tell me about it,” she said.

“I’ve already told you about it.”

“Tell me about it some more, then. If it’s bothering you…”

Another deep breath, another long sigh. He glanced nervously into the rearview, despite not having seen another vehicle on these long, green, southern roads for miles.

“I’m just ready for this weekend to be over, is all.”

“But we’re not even there yet.”

“I know.”

“And it’s only for a couple days.”

“I know.”

“It’s going to be fine.”

Of course, Connie couldn’t actually say this with any certainty. She knew nothing of Evan’s family besides everything he’d already told her—most of it through a bitter lens. Based on everything she did know, she imagined it would be an unpleasant experience all said and done. But for the sake of both their mental health, she’d decided from the start she’d be their equalizer—the silver lining to Evan’s rain cloud.

“And what do you predict will be ‘fine’ about it?” he asked.

“Well, it’ll end eventually,” she said. “We’ll survive. We’ll go home. Everything will be as it should be.”

“Yeah.” Evan squinted a little as he turned these things over in his mind. “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.”

“It’s the only way to look at it without worrying yourself to death.”

Connie turned back to her window, where the green leaves and wild grass continued to blur by. On roads like these, it was hard to imagine ever ending up anywhere.

There was a break in the clouds as they stopped for gas, so that the station ahead appeared as a beacon of salvation to them, doused in shimmering sunlight, its surroundings remaining dull and darkened—a respite from the gloom. Evan pulled alongside the first pump. There were only four. Aside from their vehicle, one other was parked near the convenience store, which Connie guessed belonged to the attendant inside. Evan climbed out of the car, and in less than a minute he opened his door again and leaned inside.

“These pumps don’t even have working card readers,” he said. “I’ll have to pay inside. You need anything?”

Connie focused on her bladder, and tried to gauge her current need to alleviate it.

“How close do you think we are now?” she asked.

“Honestly pretty close. Ten minutes? I’d just rather fill up now instead of tomorrow on our way out. Why, you need to pee?”

“I think I can wait.”

Admittedly, Connie held a certain squeamishness regarding gas station bathrooms. Even if she believed she could go, she would much rather hold it until they arrived at Evan’s parents’ summer home.

Evan remained stooped in the driver’s door, grinning as he read her mind like no one else could. “All right, I’ll be back then.”

Connie watched him make his way across the glittering parking lot, the sunlight especially bright somehow—its rays condensed through the opening in the clouds overhead like a magnifying glass. As soon as he ducked inside, however, the light shifted. The clouds shifted. Connie actually watched their shadows move across the parking lot, darkening the blacktop at the pace of a slow mudslide until the sunlight was entirely gone once again.

Alone in the car, now it was her turn to take a deep breath.

She was more nervous than she realized. She felt it now—that pit in her stomach coming to life, blooming icily inside her. She shivered with it. Perhaps a bit of nerves, a bit of the departing sun…

She gazed along the road ahead, which forked in two directions, each direction as choked by woods as the other.

It’ll end eventually. We’ll survive. We’ll go home. Everything will be as it should be.

When she looked to the gas station again, she startled.

A plump, scruffy man stood leaned against the corner of the building, one hand in the pocket of his jeans, the other already raised and waving playfully before she’d even realized he was there.

Waving at her.

She glanced to the gas station entrance. The windows revealed nothing, offering only reflections of the parking lot. Of Evan’s car. Of her sitting inside looking even more startled than she realized she was, her mouth hanging open in stunned silence.

The man was still waving when she looked again. He wiggled each of his fingers daintily. Mockingly.

“What the hell,” she muttered with a scowl.

She shook her head at him—a look that said ‘what’s your deal?’—and promptly faced forward again, peering toward the fork in the road, toward the dark blue-gray skyline over the trees. Her heart rate had increased a little. She took another deep breath. From the corner of her eye she could still see him, only vaguely. Was he still waving? Still twinkling his fingers with a crude smile?

Something else teased the edges of her vision. The front doors swinging open. She turned to see Evan emerging outside. He regarded her along the way with that boyish smirk she could never resist. The waving man had apparently moved. Her eyes darted left and right searching for him. But he was gone. Vanished.

Evan worked the gas pump. As he stood and waited beside the nozzle, Connie continued surveying the building, bewildered by the speed in which the strange man had taken his leave. That hadn’t been the attendant, obviously, she thought, or else Evan couldn’t have paid for his gas inside. She eyed the singular car parked near the entrance and deciphered no occupants inside.

She flinched as the gas nozzle audibly shut off. It clinked as Evan shook it around a bit before returning it to its holster, then promptly made his way back around the car. He climbed behind the wheel with a tired groan.

“Did you see anyone else when you went inside?” Connie asked before he even had his door shut.

Evan pursed his lips. “No. Just the guy behind the counter. Why?”

Connie turned to face the building again. “There was a man standing over there after you went in. He kept staring at me and waving…”

Evan leaned out of his seat, across Connie, peering through her window where she pointed.

“What did he look like?”

“Other than being creepy as hell, just a normal guy. He had some facial hair, I guess.”

“Oh, weird…”

Evan continued scouring the building, his expression hawkish, as the silence between them stretched steadily into an awkward one. Connie directed her attention to him, her head pulled back to make room for him there. She caught a whiff of his aftershave. Minty and fragrant. His parted lips slowly quirked into a grin, and it became all too obvious he prolonged his position deliberately.

“I think he’s long gone by now,” she said.

Leaning across her lap, Evan craned his neck to look at her directly, their noses an inch apart. “You think so?”

“Mhmm.” Connie held back her laughter. “It turns out the weirdo was sitting beside me all along.”

“What a twist,” Evan said.

He kissed her. Connie kissed him in kind, long and sweet. He smiled dopily for a moment, holding her gaze, before finally settling back into his own seat, taking his wonderful scent with him. He started the engine and buckled himself in.

As they pulled away, Connie searched the station one last time but saw no sign of the man.

“Are you nervous?” Evan asked, as he checked the clock on the dash for the umpteenth time since filling the tank, counting down the literal seconds until their arrival, it seemed—mentally grasping at them, most likely, as if he could clutch the seconds in his fist and slow time outright, so that they might never reach their destination.

“A little. Are you asking me because you’re nervous?”

“You already know I’m nervous.”

“So tell me some more about it,” Connie said, repeating herself from earlier. “We’ve got… I don’t know, at least five more minutes to spare for conversation.”

“And you want me to waste them repeating what you already know?”

“It’ll help. Trust me.” She watched as her boyfriend seemed to process this, resisting it. “Tell me what you’re so nervous about.”

Evan took yet another great big deep breath and blew it out forcefully.

“Well. I’m nervous about being stuck in the same house as them all weekend. I’ve been dreading it for weeks. If it wasn’t for you coming with me, I don’t think I could even stand it, or that I’d have come at all.”

“And why are you so nervous about being stuck in the same house as them?”

Evan made a sound, something like laughter in the back of his throat that couldn’t quite escape. He shrugged. Then he proceeded to sit with the thought, whatever had almost made him laugh, and became suddenly grave with it.

“They’re not good people,” he said finally. He sat with that thought for a moment as well, as if surprised to realize it. He’d expressed as much to Connie before, though never so succinctly. “Money and reputation matter more to them than… anything. More than being an actual family.” He turned and met Connie’s gaze for a moment, taking his eyes off the road to do so. “I’ve told you all of this before.”

“I know.”

He looked to the road once again. Connie could see it in his eyes, the way he stared through the road, beyond it, beneath it perhaps, his mind touching on other things entirely.

“I’m nervous about introducing you to them,” he let out next, almost like a confession.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t think they’ll understand you. Or us.”

“What don’t you think they’ll understand?”

“Well, for starters, my mom and dad never loved each other. Ever. It wasn’t the basis of their marriage. And judging by how they raised us, I’m positive they don’t even know the meaning of the word. Love and affection aren’t in their vocabulary…”

Do we love each other? Connie wondered. She only wondered this tongue-in-cheek because they’d yet to say the words. Her boyfriend didn’t even seem to realize he’d all but confessed it just now. She smiled, keeping these thoughts to herself as he continued.

“They one-hundred-percent expected me and my siblings to marry like they did. Not for love, but… you know. Myles lived up to their expectations that way. I didn’t. Riley didn’t. So… yeah, I’m nervous as hell to introduce you to them. Not for their sake, but yours. I’m worried I’m about to subject you to something terrible. Maybe it’ll be too much. Maybe you’ll even look at me differently for it…”

“What?” Connie broke free from the exercise with genuine confusion of her own. “You know that won’t happen.”

“Do I? I’m not entirely sure you realize what you’re getting yourself into. Maybe I haven’t properly prepared you for it…”

“I’m prepared to meet a group of people who may or may not come across as vain or snobbish…”

“And cold,” Evan said. “My parents are practically reptilian. They all are, really.”

“So I’ve been warned,” Connie said. “So long as I get to retire to a bedroom with you and only you at the end of the day, I am sure I will survive. In fact, I think you’ll be amazed at my ability to smile through every second of it. Like this.”

When Evan looked at her, Connie offered him the biggest, cheesiest grin she could muster.

“Oh, God,” Evan said. “Just like that, huh?”

“Just like that,” Connie repeated. She leaned out of her seat and kissed him squarely on the cheek. “Your family will be shocked at how relentlessly sociable I am.”

3.

Following a few seemingly aimless turnoffs, watching the roads get narrower and more private in feel, Connie almost couldn’t believe her eyes when the estate came into view. First there were only trees along the winding road, and more trees, and then there it suddenly was, nestled into them like an abhorrent secret. Abhorrent because it didn’t belong.

What had simply been described as a summer home turned out to be so much more than that. It was as if someone had plucked a full-size, colonial-style home straight out of the wealthy Washington D.C. suburbs and plopped it into the woods. Warm brown brick, black roof, with black shutters on the numerous windows. By all means it was attractive—pretty, even—but entirely out of place. At least Connie thought so. Then again, she wasn’t familiar with anything remotely ritzy or lavish. Anything in a place like this would have struck her as out of place. She could only imagine what Evan’s parents’ primary residence looked like.

They pulled slowly along the final stretch toward the waiting estate, Evan clutching their last seconds alone together with a crushing grip.

“If this is your parents’ summer home…” Connie murmured, leaning forward in her seat. “I can’t imagine…”

“Only one of a few,” Evan said. “They like this one for its seclusion, I guess. Makes them feel woodsy.”

“Wow. Talk about roughing it.”

The single paved road they followed joined into a round, looping driveway. Two vehicles were already parked and waiting along its inner edge—an SUV the size of a boat, and a white luxury sedan parked behind it.

“So who’s here?” Connie asked. “Do you recognize those?”

“The SUV will be my parents’,” Evan said. “If I had to guess, the white car is my brother’s.”

“So who are we still missing?”

Evan pulled behind the sedan. He shut off the engine.

“My uncle, who pretty much never misses a family gathering. And Riley… who I’m still not sure is even coming. I hope she does, but I’m doubtful.”

Riley was Evan’s sister. She was the youngest, and from what Connie had gathered, the most troubled of them. The black sheep of the family, as Evan had described her, which was precisely why he always spoke so highly of her. Connie could tell Evan wished to be closer with his sister, but just as she knew from experience, familial relationship dynamics were never so easy or reciprocated.

With the engine off, they sat for a moment longer in a mutually understood silence. Connie used that moment to study the house a little more closely. Despite being late afternoon, and the sky being as gray as it was, she noticed the curtains were drawn in each of the windows, upstairs and downstairs.

“To be honest,” Evan said suddenly, “if not for Riley, I don’t think I’d have anything to do with this family anymore. I wouldn’t have brought us here, that’s for sure. She’s the only one I actually want you to meet. If I could accomplish that outside of a family gathering, I would…”

“You don’t talk at all, just the two of you?”

“I have no idea how I’d even get ahold of her,” Evan said. “I don’t think she even owns a phone.”

“Your parents must have some means, if they’ve invited her like the rest of you. Right?”

“Oh, well, of course,” Evan said. “I’m pretty sure they still support her for the most part. Financially, I mean.” Evan sighed. “Messy, messy. You ready to dive in?”

“I’ve got my proverbial snorkel on and everything.”

Connie delighted in the look on her boyfriend’s face. Amused in spite of himself.

“See, it’s comments like that,” he said, “that my parents will not appreciate.”

“Their loss.”

“Their loss, indeed.”

They climbed out of the car and fetched their bags from Evan’s trunk—two luggage cases, one for each of them. As Connie dragged hers out onto the pavement, she repeated one thought like a mantra in her mind.

One night. Just one night.

Evan slammed the trunk closed. With yet another sigh he said, “Here we go.”

The wheels on Connie’s luggage bumped and rattled along the sidewalk to the entrance. The front door was fitted with a large, round window, the glass dark and murky and secretive.

Just one night.

They were three paces from the door when it opened to them. Two paces as someone pressed themselves into the widening gap to greet them. Connie realized her heart was hammering in her chest.

END OF SAMPLE

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