Page 17 of Sick Bargain

When Soren says something in the back and Cain laughs at it, my eyes shift there, but Keegan’s never leave my face. Ifeelthem on me. “Just waiting,” he answers. “Doyouneed something?”

I gulp nerves and shiver at the chills running down my spine. “To make it to twenty-seven,” I tell him.

“You will.”

“How do you know?”

He almost smiles. Almost. It’s there, ghosting under his features, unable to meet the light of day. It makes my chills worse. Soren comes out with his violin, shouting a goodbye to Cain.

“See you tomorrow night, Remiel,” Keegan whispers, lips somehow right next to my ear. When did he get this close? My blood turns to ice. His eyes don’t shift down to my pocket where the calling card is, but… my instincts, those very same ones that have kept me alive for twenty-six years, are screaming at me to see what is right in front of me.

I must go pale, because for the first time in his whole life, Keegan smiles at me as he backs away and out of my shop, following my brother. His best friend. The third name on my list.

It’s Initiation Night,and I’m hunkered down in my small house with Cain. But the usual anxiety that comes with Vile’s initiation is nothing when combined with the third calling card.

Burn or Run, Remiel. Either way, you’re mine.

I don’t know what it means, but it’s got me on edge. Almost as much as the clues and hints swirling around in my mind since seeing Keegan at the shop yesterday. Is he the purple mask, or did he merely say the same thing coincidentally?

There’s no way it could be him. Keegan is too… apparent in Moros. He’s with Soren a lot, and I’ve known him since they became friends in their early teens. I would have noticed if he changed his whole lifestyle to become one of the ten Vile Boys. Right? I would have noticed him missing from the house more often, disappearing for days at a time, or showing up with wounds and blood all over him.

Keegan has an older brother named Killian, and surely, he would have mentioned something if he started disappearing more often. Come to think of it, Killian isn’t around all that much lately…

No. I’m spiralling. Dipping into hypotheticals that mean nothing and keep getting more and more dire the longer I spin out into the middle of oblivion. There’s no possible way Keegan is the purple mask. If he was one of the Vile boys, I’d know. I’m the type of guy to notice the details. So, no. It isn’t possible.

But he called me Remiel…

And I don’t believe in coincidences…

“Just anxious?” Cain asks, handing me a beer and flopping onto the couch next to me. He’s shirtless because he got a tattoo after work, so he’s letting it air out. “Initiation Night is always fucked up, but we’re good here. We’ve survived it here for the past few years, right?” He nudges me with his knee to calm me down, rubbing his hand over his close-cropped hair.

He’s right. For the past few years, we’ve ridden out Initiation Night together in my tiny house. I live on a back street that isn’t too busy, but we hear things. See things through the windows.We used to look, trying to catch glimpses of an unknown night, but now we shut the curtains and try to block it out. But this is the first year of initiation I’ve been chained to a Vile Boy. I don’t even know his name, but my life is his.

When someone yells outside, I turn up the TV volume and refuse to look out the crack in the curtains. “What is it?” I ask him, nodding at his new tattoo. I’m trying to ignore the fact that my house smells different than it usually does. Like I said, I notice details, and the eucalyptus and wintergreen diffuser I run isn’t subtle like it usually is. It’s glaringly obvious, running at full tilt, and I don’t remember turning it on. I never turn it on to full strength.

Cain sits up, showing me the front of his body. Along the underside of his ribs is a new design. Tribal like most of his others, it runs from left to right in harsh black lines with pointed tips. “It’s my grandpa’s design.” There’s a glaze over his eyes when he talks about it, and I know what he’s remembering.

Cain is someone who associates pain with pleasure, and the tattooist in town, a guy named Mason, has no trouble mixing the two. A few years ago, when Cain got the balls to admit it to Mason, they started working together to make his tattoo appointments just a littlemore. Now Cain goes for ink and an orgasm.

“Looks awesome,” I tell him, choking on eucalyptus and wintergreen.

He blushes, but I’m not sure what he’s remembering, so I don’t ask. That’s his business, and other than me and Mason, no one else knows. Especially not his girlfriend. She’d be pissed if she found out he got off while getting inked.

“Where’s Sadie tonight?” I ask.

“With her sisters. Tried to talk her out of it, but they’re in the crypt.” Sadie’s family belongs to one of the many small cults around here. They’re called Death For Life, and they worshiptheir dead and believe in their ancestors to protect them. Outside Moros, their beliefs might be admirable and traditional in some cultures, but here, they’re a cult. Mostly because they sacrifice one another to their dead relatives in the belief that they’ll come back to watch over the living. It’s fucking nuts to me, but I can’t say shit about it when I’m locked in the clutches of a suicide curse. Nothing makes sense in Moros the same way it would anywhere else, and once you accept that, life gets a little easier. So, Sadie and her sisters will ride out Initiation Night in their family’s crypt, trusting the dead to keep them alive until sunrise.

“Does it smell strong in here to you?” I ask Cain.

“Yeah, a bit.” He shrugs, swigging the rest of his beer. “Another?”

While he’s getting more drinks, I play with the frayed edges of the calling card in my pocket. Burn or run? I still don’t know what it means, and since there’s no time or sign of another meeting on it, I don’t know how to protect myself from it. I’m still reeling from the last run-in with him. A girl died, and now her face is plastered all over town on missing person posters.

I can’t say a thing about it. The Moros PD will look, but they’re as twisted as the rest of us, so they won’t look hard. They just like the attention it brings from the outside world. Even negative attention is good attention in Moros—keeps people intrigued but afraid.

“Are you burning incense or something?” Cain asks from the kitchen. “I’m getting a smoky floral smell over here.”

I try to sniff the air but only get wintergreen. Heading into the kitchen, I look around for anything that might be burning. “No. I never burn incense.” But I smell it now. Campfires and something more chemical. “The fuck is that?”

---