Page 81 of Serial Killer Games

She pries one hand out from where I’ve hidden it and holds it between her own hands, warming it. I finally look up at her. Her face is serious and stoic, and the mood is completely gone, I know it. How could it not be?

She licks her lips. “How much timedoyou have?”

My dad was dead by thirty-four, but for the first time it occurs to me I don’t know when his symptoms started, or at what point life became unbearable for him. Only one person in the world has that information. I open my mouth to explain all this, but—

“Hey, what about my chocolate bar?”

It’s Cat, glaring at me from the end of the sofa in an old-fashioned nightgown that makes her look like a Victorian ghost. Dodi leaps off me and straightens her nightshirt, and I burn with gratitude that my hands were somewhere G-rated.

“You have to leave,” Dodi says abruptly.

She doesn’t need to tell me twice. I throw on my coat and go, down the stairwell, out the fire exit. As the door snicks shut behind me, I realize I forgot my bag. I step out into the street, no idea what happens next.

The car is half a block away. I click the key fob, and the entire city blinks out into darkness.

35

Blackout

Jake

The interior light of thecar is the only point of illumination in the vast, dark night. Streetlights, house lights, everything else has winked out.

I shiver, as if somewhere in the future someone has stepped over my grave. When I get in the car the light flicks off, and I’m in a darkness so thick you could lie flat like a starfish and float on it. My eyes adjust. Stars materialize in the sky. Have I ever seen stars in the city? Then an eerie glow blooms in the window of the house nearest me. A gaunt face illuminated from below appears, and disappears after setting a candle on the sill.

Power outage. Of course.

In my head I see a space heater with no power to run it, in a dusty, cluttered room getting colder and colder. I start the car and pull a U-turn onto the road.

When I arrive, Bill’s neighborhood is full of dark-eyed houses too. The door swings open under my tenth knock and a flashlight shines in my face.

“Come back to kill me?” Bill says. “Good night for it, and just in time. I would have frozen to death before morning.”

It’s why I came. I follow him inside. It’s chilly, my breath clouding the air in front of me.

“Do you have a fireplace?”

He frowns. “Of course.”

“And firewood?”

He thinks. “I haven’t had a fire in years. There must be some in the garage.”

There is, and it’s dry as bone. Bill watches with suspicion as I kneel at the living room hearth.

“You’re doing it wrong,” he says. He can’t get down on his knees, so he starts poking and knocking my handiwork with his cane. “Balance that one on top, like that, or it won’t draw.”

He has a great, ancient box of matches, mostly gone. I strike one, and it gives a deliciousschwickas a tongue of fire licks up. Bill and I watch the flames curl around the paper and set to work on the edges of the wood. The firelight peels back some of the darkness in the room, and when I examine Bill, I can see he’s still wearing his thin terry cloth robe. The idiot.

“Your dad never teach you to build a fire?”

“My dad’s dead,” I tell Bill. “So no.”

Bill peers at me. He looks even more confused when I settle him back into his easy chair and drape a blanket over him. I pull the ottoman close and sit on it. It’s time to confess. It’s time for an exchange of information held hostage. Sitting on Dodi’s sofa, I realized there are things I want to know from Bill. I want to know how this is going to go. I want to know how long from onset to game over. I want to know how long until that tipping point where loss of quality of life matters. I want to make the most of this.

“I’m not casing you out. I check your mailbox to make sureyou came out. If you miss a couple of days, I look in the windows to make sure you’re not sprawled out at the bottom of the stairs or something.”

“Who are you?”

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