Page 86 of The Order of Disorder
A hand wraps around my arm. A voice, tight and urgent.
“Max,” says the Damian one. “Where is Wyatt?”
Wyatt. Damian. Jake. Ryder. Names so loaded with emotion that it’s painful to think of them. Names with power, like spells.
Wyatt.
In the paint booth.
Adrenaline makes my heart palpitate, and I draw in a sharp breath, momentarily clearing my mind.
“Wyatt,” I gasp, panic flaring through the drugged haze. “Wyatt. He’s in the paint booth—”
“Where?” Damian’s voice sharpens. “Where is that, Max?”
“It’s in the hangar.” My voice comes out a whisper. Speaking is an exertion. “Hangar,” I manage to say again.
And then the world turns and sinks. Strong arms circle around me again, hoisting me up. Arms that feel so much like ones that once held me…back when I was alive.
I must be dead. We all are. That would explain the calm in my chest, the way everything feels like it’s been padded in cotton and contained in glass. Why they’re here.
We pass through the back doors of the hangar, propped wide open, gaping like the mouth of a giant metal beast crouched in the grass. Inside, it’s unusually quiet and empty.
The paint booth is tucked into the back corner—a boxy, metal structure built to contain the fumes and chemicals of spraying custom bikes. A narrow plexiglass window runs the length of one wall, fogged with years of paint mist. I try to point to it but I’m not sure if my arm moves.
“Wyatt,” I utter, my voice faltering halfway through.
The ghosts freeze and step back.
Outside the paint booth, Rocket is slumped in a folding chair, scrolling his phone, stationed on watch.
They tiptoe backwards and Jake lays me down gently against the wall, lifting a finger to his lips. Lips that have kissed every part of me. My heart cracks like old wood. I miss him. I miss all of them. But maybe this is what death gives you. One last moment with the people you loved most.
Damian crouches and presses something cold into my hand. I look down to see what it is, the world swimming.
A pistol. My fingers close around it, sluggish and clumsy.
“Stay here,” he whispers. “Don’t move.”
I watch them slip forward silently with a pervasive sense of calm.
Ghosts can’t be hurt.
Damian moves suddenly, quick and sure. His arm wraps around Rocket’s throat. A brief muted struggle before Rocket slumps limply, sliding off the chair to the ground.
Then Jake’s at the door, pulling the bolt back, and with a metallic groan, the booth swings open and they disappear inside.
I’m alone again. I knit my fingers around the gun I don’t know how to use, its solidity grounding.
It’s quiet in the hangar. The paint booth hums faintly from its ventilation system. The sounds from the airfield are indistinct and low at this distance. A muted cacophony. I wait, and wait, and soon the world darkens at the edges, pulling me under.
My mind separates and splinters, kaleidoscoping in a million directions, in infinite pieces. The dull rumble of the event on the airstrip becomes the pattering of the rain on Ryder’s roof on that last night we spent together. His dark brown eyes, molten in their intensity.
You’re not something I know how to give up.
At the same time, my thoughts warping and splintering, I see the strength and fury of him running out the door after me, ready to launch himself at Silas. I see the bullet burning through the air in slow motion, hitting shirt, skin, flesh, bone, stopping him in his tracks, blowing him back. How we split in that moment, momentum sliced—me, one way, him, another. Me, here, back to Billy and the hangar. And him to Valhalla, to the other side of this world. Death and hopefully something beyond.
He deserves something beyond.
