Page 57 of Never Say Die
Someone in the parking lot said, “Oh my God,” distantly, then closer, louder, “Oh my God!”
“Call the police!”
“It’s okay—it’s okay, we’ll get you down! Don’t jump, all right? J-just stay there!”
Guests wandered from their rooms in bathrobes andslippers, holding beer bottles and squirming toddlers. Car doors were left open, keys still jammed in the ignition. Georgia walked backward until she crossed the motel’s shadow, shielding the sun from her eyes, and turned her gaze to the roof.
“Oh, fuck. . .” Georgia covered her mouth, shoulders hunched toward her ears, gasping in ragged breaths. “Holy shit. Guys—guys!”
Aiden said, “We missed one.”
Shay flexed his jaw. “Imissed one.”
In the lot with Georgia, Pru, and Dylan, Aiden stood beside Shay, watching Laura teeter on the edge of the roof. Teal hair, velvet glove, bloodied fishnets, and dirty boots, standing with her arms spread, welcoming sandy wind and the uproar below. Aiden thought,two stories isn’t high enough. He wanted her to glance at him, to see him alive despite her, but she stared at the sun, lips curved into a fragile smile, and fell like a falcon.
Dylan turned away and Pru ducked into him, hiding under his arm. Georgia screamed. Aiden yanked her around, smashing her face to his chest. For a moment, he forgot to be afraid. Laura’s skull met the blacktop, splitting. Bones bent and broke. An elbow pitched upward, one foot turned wrong, both shoulders popped and loosened. Blood seeped through her hair and spread across the hot cement, shiny and dark. She hadn’t jumped, just drifted—aimed, flew, ended.
Aiden clutched Georgia, cradling the back of her head as she sobbed into his shirt. “I got you,” he said, trembling. “Stay with me. Don’t look, okay? Don’t look.” He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t blink. Couldn’t tear his gaze away from Laura’s cracked cheek and dented chest. Her wide eyes, black as night. Her smile, open. Teeth, pointed.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The police arrived eighteen minutes after Laura jumped.
Pru bullied the motel manager into cancelling their second night and Shay booked a last-minute room at the Hilton. Georgia cried until she got sick, dry heaving miserably behind the RV, and Aiden watched a storm brew on the horizon while Dylan gave his statement to an attentive cop.I don’t know, man. I don’t know. We got here, and she just—she just fell. She didn’t even jump. She just. . . It’s like. . . Fuck, I don’t know.Aiden smoked a cigarette on the curb and dodged police, scampering into the lobby to search for non-existent coffee whenever someone in a uniform looked his way for too long. Once the officer let Dylan go, Knight’s Blood left in a hurry. The tarp draped over Laura’s small, still body shrank in the rearview mirror. Red and blue flashed across Cit’s lonely truck. Strangers wiped their eyes and shook their heads, shocked silent at the arrival of a young corpse.
Aiden had wanted to crouch beside Laura’s body. Study her shark mouth and demonic eyes. Learn everything he possibly could about her unbecoming. Instead, he’d stared at her familiar,twisted features from afar, and typedBlack Eyed Demoninto the search bar on his phone.
Links had directed him to articles about black-eyed children and alleged hauntings, monsters from tabletop roleplaying games and discounted Halloween costumes. He scrolled through poorly filtered selfies, anime drawings, and grainy photographs, and got nowhere. Foundnothing, like always.
But she’d changed. Transformed. And Aiden needed to knowhow.
“You doin’ okay?” Pru asked. Her knuckles paled around the steering wheel.
Aiden shifted in the passenger’s seat, holding Sherlock under his chin. He scratched the ferret’s warm belly. Watched the sun melt into the desert between buildings, turning rooftops gold. “I don’t know,” he said, and pressed his nose to Sherlock’s head. “You?”
“You didn’t look away.” She shot him an apologetic glance. “Sorry, I—I mean, yousaw, you?—”
“Yeah, I saw. I’ve always wondered what it’s like to be weightless, you know? Turns out it’s fast. When it happens like that, I mean. Really fucking fast.”
Pru’s throat flexed, but she stayed quiet.
Shay held Georgia on the lumpy couch. She sniffled and quivered, pawing at her flushed cheeks and puffy eyes, and kept her gaze downcast. Aiden imagined she felt safer there, like a child shying away from a jump-scare during a movie. He rested his cheek on the seat and glanced at Shay, who stared through the window at the pink-tinted sunset. Dylan, bless him, rolled a joint.
The band settled in a spacious, two-bed suite on the fourth floor. Aiden stood with Dylan on a tiny balcony, stealing puffs off his skunky, hand-rolled indica, dwelling on the concept of power. Harnessing it, transferring it, becoming twisted andsuicidal because of it. He wanted answers. A reason. The why. Thehow. If someone like Cit could create someone like Shay, what was stopping Aiden from doing the same to himself?
Shay ordered room service, requested an extra cot, and disappeared into the bathroom. Their overpriced dinner arrived on crowded trays, and Aiden stewed in pregnant silence as everyone nibbled on flash-fired pizza and crispy calamari rings. He hadn’t stopped seeing Laura’s teeth, hadn’t stopped picturing her weak hands on the ritual stone in the desert, hadn’t stopped turning Cit’s words inside out—burn the intent.
At one point, Pru pushed a tray toward him. He ate, because everyone else was eating. Because no one wanted to eat, but they’d made an unspoken promise to try. He picked at pepperonis, forked brownie into his mouth, and followed Shay’s lead, escaping into a steamy shower once he’d eaten enough. He tended to his stitches alone. A normal-sized band-aid did the job. Bandaged his thigh alone.
Alone had become a learned thing, a lived thing. Yet he wished Shay had been the one to run lotion across the splotchy, swollen bruise parallel to his top surgery scar.
“Favorite winter thing?” Aiden asked, curled under the comforter with Georgia. Across the room, Dylan snored faintly beside Pru. Shay lay on the cot, nested in blankets they’d brought in from the RV.
“Fat birds,” Georgia whispered. “And peppermint mochas.”
“Travel destination?”
“I don’t know. Maybe one day we’ll get on a plane, take our music across the pond. Make it all the way to Paris.”
