Page 80 of Never Say Die
Shay hadn’t looked away from the knife. He glared at the unzipped backpack, lip shaking around unspoken words, unanswerable questions, a well-deservedfuck you,maybe. Aiden steeled his nerves.Yeah, I kept you, he wanted to say.I kept the only thing I had left of you. He extended his hand, palm open.
“Shay,” he said, likeplease.
Shay unfolded his arms and tore his eyes away from the knife. He pinched the pillowcase, flipped it inside out, and bundled the heart. A crimson stain darkened the naked pillow. “What’re you?—”
“Same thing you do with drugs when a party gets busted.” He reached across the bed, snatched the cinched pillowcase, and toed at the discarded paper on the floor. “These are my notes for the ritual. I doubt they’ll give us a damn thing, and I definitely don’t think we can reverse whatever bullshit power-exchange Cit had planned, but you wanted to see them, so.” Heat filled his nasal cavity. Caused his throat to itch. “Get rid of that pillow—shove it in your suitcase or something, I don’t know. I’ll take care of this.”
Brutal silence filled the space between them. Aiden turned away, grabbed his backpack, and darted into the bathroom. He twisted the lock. Inhaled. Exhaled. Took out the knife and unraveled the pillowcase. Thoughts raced at him—being hunted, being hurt, hurting Shay, finding Laura—colliding with memories, fears, every-fucking-thing he’d tried to forget. He curled and uncurled his fingers. Gripped the smooth, heavyhandle until his palm ached. Remembered blood on his knuckles, pooling through Shay’s shirt.Focus. The heart slapped porcelain.Gross. Aiden pressed the knife into its center, carved, and sawed. Arteries shaped like tree-roots split against the blade and he ignored his damp eyelashes.
Good,Cit said, from somewhere close and distant.Just like that, boy. Think your sweetheart can feel it?
“Shut up,” Aiden hissed. Hot tears dripped off his nose. Stale blood bunched under his fingernails. He tore at muscle, peeled away ventricles, and set the knife against stubborn tissue. Red filled the grooves in his palms.
You sure we’re awake, bitch?Thomas said, from somewhere near and gone.
“Enough. You’re dead—you’re fuckingdead,” he whispered, and hit the faucet with the back of his hand. Nausea rolled through him. His gut lurched, and he swallowed hot, briny bile.
Severed pieces and coagulated clots circled the silver drain. Aiden gathered the larger, meatier chunks and dumped the butchered heart into the toilet. Memories he didn’t recognize appeared. Cracked ribs and gnashing teeth, soupy gurgles bubbling from an open throat, hands digging, pulling, uprooting. He flushed with his foot, gulped in another breath,keep it together, don’t be a little bitch, do-fucking-not, and tried to swallow, again and again and?—
Aiden fell to his knees. His stomach pulled toward his spine, emptying painfully. He coughed and gagged. Flushed again. Spat into the clear, whirling water.
“Qué mierda,” he whispered, licked around his mouth, and spat again. “Santa Muerte, puedes oíreme? Necesito tu ayuda. Por favor, por favor.”
Aiden prayed until his phone buzzed on the counter.
That Bitch Ass Psychic: You’re late.
Kelly drank her coffee extra hot. Latte, actually. Soymilk, two pumps of low-fat caramel, three and a half packets of stevia, and amodest—yeah, seriously—honey drizzle. She sat between Shay and Aiden in the backseat of a taxi, sipping her sixteen-dollar not-coffee, and cleared her throat.
“What’ve you got there?” she asked, innocently enough.
“Some book Camila gave me,” Aiden said. He thumbed through Defiéndase Con El Diablo: Magia Negra, squinting at a circular diagram divided down the center. Above the left half, bold text read:Dominar—Permanent Energy. Below the right half, italicized:Renunciar—Abandoned Energy. “Thought it might be useful.”
“Black Magic,” she whispered, and tapped the cover, “is only useful for those who believe, little brujo. Last I checked, you didn’t.”
“Don’t call me that.”
Kelly hummed, studying him with a smile.
Shay glanced at the book. “Anything interesting?”
“Few things,” Aiden said. He flipped the page and followed a segment with his pointer finger.Le energía es inmortal. Origen requiere muerte, como todos los comienzos requieren finales. La energía robada crea un vacío. La energía reutilizada crea oportunidades.“Stolen energy creates emptiness—void—and reused or repurposed energy creates opportunities.”
“Surely, you’ve realized nothing ends, haven’t you? Not truly. We’re all recycled and remade in some way, shape or form. Sometimes people will watermark the places they’vebeen—ghosts, poltergeists, you know what I’m talkin’ about—but our essence, soul, whatever you’d like to call it, renews itself.”
“As someone who’s legitimately haunted, I hear you. But my abuela would flick water at you for using the wordghost. It’s this—un vacio,” Aiden mumbled, placing his thumb over the word. “Void. That’s what I’m stuck on.”
Kelly’s mouth thinned into a dagger. She tapped the partition attached to the center console. “Here’s fine, dear. Thank you.”
The taxi pulled along a fissured sidewalk in front of a gas station manned with two rusty pumps. A CLOSED sign hung crooked in the window. It was a voiceless place—glass gummed, roof sunken, completely and loudly abandoned. Horror movie bullshit. Stubborn weeds reached through the concrete, vining around fist-sized dents filled with gutter runoff. Mosquitos buzzed, landed, bit. Aiden swatted his nape, and tucked the book under his arm, scanning bell-shaped Cyprus trees and feathered palms. Spanish moss billowed like specters over murky water, and duckweed clustered atop the shifting swamp. Aiden scraped his boot across a red ribbon—fire ants—and thought,where the fuck are we?
Shay fanned the bottom of his damp t-shirt. His stupid, gigantic sunglasses slid to the tip of his nose. “Not to bethatguy, but this doesn’t look like someone’s neighborhood, Kelly.”
“Don’t be a judgmental prick,” she said, and flicked her slender fingers toward a boardwalk behind King Gasoline. Her chunky cork wedges made thumping sounds against concrete, then blacktop, and echoed faintly on warped, wooden panels. “The house is on the bayou, obviously.”
“Oh,obviously,” Aiden parroted. It was too hot to take Shay’s hand, so they walked close together. Every once in while their knuckles bumped, fingers linking, dropping, tangling again.
Moss clung to an alligator’s scalp, floating near a shallowbank, and sunlight pruned as the boardwalk curved around larger trees. Unease festered, itching beneath bandages, aching in faded bruises, burning in the raised peaks on Aiden’s stomach.
