Page 51 of Ghosts of Halloween

My breath hitches in my throat, but no one’s coming to catch me red-handed. It sounds like someone’s pacing. Jack, I realize, as the steps halt and he speaks again. “Tell that to him. Tell Caden you don’t want to be with him anymore.”

Silas’s reply is quiet, taking on a hissing quality. He’s pissed, but I can’t make out his words. Then Caden cuts in.

“I say we try. It should work either way, so what’s the harm? Who knows what will happen once she’s…”

“For fuck’s sake,” Silas interrupts, louder now that he’s talking to Caden. “It’s not that I don’t want you, you know that! I just can’t let her off the hook. If you want to try, do it. But I get to tell her first. I need fucking closure, and you do, too.”

There is silence, and in that utter quiet, a drop of hot wax lands on my finger. I hiss, the pain unexpected, and more steps thud inside before the door flies open.

“Hello, angel.” Silas’s smile looks demonic in the flickering glow of the candle. I shiver, but when he grabs my arm just above the prosthetic and drags me inside, I don’t resist. A cold, dank dread fills me, my heart fluttering desperately.

Something bad is about to happen.

Silas lets me go, and I stop in the middle of the room, surrounded. The three stand around me, their faces serious. I look at Jack, searching for the tender spark in his green eyes, but there’s nothing. His mouth is set, arms folded on his chest.

On my other side, Caden stands with his hands in his pockets, watching me with a mild expression, but he says nothing.

And finally, Silas. His eyes burn with hate, and the air around him crackles, a dark, menacing cloud of something half-transparent riding on his shoulders. I flinch, terrified yet unable to tear my eyes away from him. He has a knife in his hand, a long, vicious blade with a serrated edge. It gleams in the light of the flames as he turns it. He’s just playing, I think, but it looks threatening.

He makes my knees weak with dread.

Slowly, he rises, his feet leaving the floor, and I press my lips together to hold back a whimper. I glance at Jack, but his face is hard and closed off, the vein in his forehead jumping lightly with his pulse. Caden looks indifferent, his arms folded.

No one reassures me. No one offers to hold me, and after the treatment I got earlier, this change is striking. My hands shake as I turn to Silas, clenching my teeth to control their chattering. I’m still viciously cold, but I refuse to ask for help. I don’t deserve it.

“When I lay on that floor, my bleeding guts shredded with bullets, I found out something very interesting,” Silas says, watching me with narrowed eyes. “It’s a funny story, so listen closely. One day, a young, pretty man went to a bar where he met a girl eager to get fucked. She was just twenty, but she hung out there all the time, sipping soda and smiling at men. He found her willing and pleasant, and after he got off, they talked for a while. She was very talkative, that girl. Loved being listened to, and he was a good listener.”

My heart sinks. It drops to my stomach and lower, until I’m afraid it will fall out of me and roll down the dusty floor, beating wildly just as it does in my chest right now.

But it can’t be. There’s a twist, I know. It’s not going where I think it’s going. Just have to listen.

“A few months later, the pretty man joined Vladimir, and when they talked about the pussy they could get in this town, he mentioned the girl. He kept loose tabs on her, and she had a boyfriend now, but her reputation didn’t change. As they talked, he let slip something the girl told him. Vladimir got interested and pressed him for more details.”

He is silent, and I hiccup, all those trapped sobs, screams, and moans wanting out. I wait. The tension in the room thickens to tar, the air so heavy I can’t breathe. I suffocate, and I want to claw at my throat to get it to open, but I stand frozen. Time is so slow, it seems distorted, and Silas still doesn’t speak.

Until he does.

“That girl who led Vladimir to us. That girl who fucked every man who so much as looked at her. See, that girl wore a prosthetic. And because that pretty man was so kind to her, because he listened so well, she told him how much it cost. He wouldn’t have guessed it on his own. People know jack shit about amputees. But she told him it cost twenty grand, and he remembered. She told him lots of other things. How her brother got it for her. How he slaved away at a low-pay job to keep her fed. And she even told himwhenher brother took her for a fitting to get that expensive arm custom-made for her.Just before Halloween.Not even a month after Vladimir got fucked.”

I shake, unable to move, unable to draw in a breath. I know where this leads. I know how the story ends and what it means. But with every fiber of my being, I want it to be something else. Let there be a twist. A stupid, goofy twist that will make us all laugh.

“That guy told Vladimir all of that, and Vladimir may be stupid, but he’s cunning. He did some snooping into her brother’s finances. And that was enough. He knew. The little talk that slut had with that man after he fucked her is what got us all killed.”

He looks at me, eyes so cold, they burn, and I stand there, frozen, as the last dregs of my hope dissolve into nothing.

“It’s your fault Noah’s dead,” Silas says, his voice so soft. Almost kind. “It’s your fault we died.”

30

Jack

The wail that tears out of her throat sounds inhuman. I thought I saw her in anguish before, but I was wrong. I can see how Silas’s words destroy her from within, everything exploding, folding in on itself, until she’s on the floor, beating it with her fists.

And something strange happens. I thought I was over it. I thought I forgave her. But Silas’s little speech dug out the cold fury inside me, and I’m surprised at how strong it still is. Seeing her practically crawling out of her skin now that she knows what she did to us makes me eager for more. Fuck, I want to see her bleeding. I want to be the one delivering the blow now.

And yet, I don’t want to see her hurt. It’s such a bizarre combination, I don’t know what to feel or do. I just watch her.

At that eerie moment, where satisfaction and desperate worry for Harlow war inside me, I notice with a detached sort of curiosity how different her hands sound when they hit the wood. The thuds of her prosthetic are more hollow, louder, and I wonder if she will damage it if she hits hard enough.

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