Page 6 of Guarded By the Nightmare

I walked around to my door, whereas he just walked through the passenger side and settled himself. He didn’t wear a seatbelt, but he also didn’t set off the “put your seatbelt on” alarm, and if I thought too long about how he was sitting down while being made of smoke, it’d just give me a headache, so I skipped it.

He waited for me to pull out onto the road and then drive several blocks before speaking.

“There’s only one reason one hires a Nightmare,” he intoned, saving me from trying to figure out which of my Spotify playlists was the best one to kick off a murder spree. “Who are we killing?”

I shook my head. “Tonight? I’m not sure yet.”

I got a sense of vague disapproval from his side of the vehicle. “And why not?”

Because I hadn’t been expecting this.“Our plan doesn’t officially begin until tomorrow.” I watched his dark smoke fingers tap his dark smoke knee in irritation. “But don’t worry. I’ve got something in mind for you tonight. Just so I know, though, do you, uh, always have to kill people?”

It wouldn’t make sense if he did—or if he’d just kill me, without doing my bidding first, like an evil genie.

“Preferably,” he answered, while looking out the window. “High emotions work just as well. Hate, fear, terror. I can work with what I’m given, but I do have certain things that I prefer. Fear before death tastes sweeter.”

“So you’re like a ghostly gourmand, eh?”

He didn’t dignify my bad joke with a response.

“Was your mother a fog machine?” I pressed, and that earned me his attention again. “Sorry, sorry, I should’ve known a ‘your momma’ joke was a step too far,” I said, shirking back against the driver side door. “I’ve just never been murder-buddies with anyone before. I don’t quite know what to do.”

“Murder buddies,” Sylas repeated, and snorted. “I’m currently trying very hard to ignore your presence, my queen. It’s the same reason as why I didn’t ride in the elevator with you. I am very, very hungry, and right now all I want to do is surround you in my blackness, make you feel like you’re lost and forgotten and have never been loved, and frighten you until you weep so that I can lick the tears from your eyes,” he said, before looking back out his window again. “But I currently think it’s best that you keep driving the car.”

I panicked, then realized that wasn’t going to make me any less desirable to him. “Yeah.”

“I would like to eat soon, though,” he went on, like he was the little kid in a back seat on a road trip, rather than someone that had just very nearly threatened me.

Then again . . . did I have any tears left?

I glanced up at myself in the rearview mirror, trying to remember the last time I’d cried. I’d spent months crying after that party in May it felt like, for myself, for Ella, and because no one believed me, but then eventually the tears had all dried up, replaced by whatever it was that lived inside me now.

I imagined if you cut me open I’d look like a piece of balsa wood, all dry and hollowed out.

“Could I just take you to, I don’t know, a funeral parlor?”

“I prefer pain that is sharp and new, and preferably unwilling. That said, I suppose beggars cannot be choosers. I’m not allowed to feed from others without your permission, however.”

“You sure do seem to have a lot of rules.”

“Indeed,” he agreed, continuing to stare out the window. “Once upon a time I was boundless, feeding whenever I desired.”

“And now?” I couldn’t help but ask.

He made a dissatisfied noise. “I am bound.”

“To . . . the hourglass.”

“Or whomever holds its mark. Yes.” He craned his neck to look behind us. “Many things have changed since I was last free.”

Was the Nightmare making small talk?“When was that?” I asked, although I was fairly certain I already knew.

“The air traffic controller.”

The Boeing had gone down when I was starting high school. It’d been all over the news for weeks—so much so that it’d swamped the news of the Hourglass Killer’s latest victim three days later off of the newspapers entirely.

What was one miserable death, compared to three hundred?

“What was that even about?” I asked.

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