Page 6 of Consume
With my hand fluttering toward my pocket of iron cubes, I forced my head to turn like a too-tight screw to stare down the dining room door.
Step. Step.
Out of the corner of my eye, on screen, the bathroom light flicked off.
“Fuck this shit,” Crispin said in my ear. “That’s not Poh in there. She hasn’t come back yet. Is it a ghost? Is it because of you?”
Even though he couldn’t see me, I nodded, my gaze still locked on the door.
The footsteps sounded closer, almost right outside. If Pop was on his way, he’d surely meet it. Pop had never seen a ghost, but he’d witnessed me being flung through the air by one countless times. This one seemed perfectly content strolling around the second floor of the ship, but I wasn’t convinced that wouldn’t change.
Just outside the door, the footsteps stopped.
The lever on the door began to turn.
A deep tremble shook through my frame, but I immediately scolded myself for it. Old habits died hard. I’d been conditioned to be afraid of both the known and the unknown, to cower away from it, and it had taken a long time to sail away from that kind of thinking. I still was, apparently.
I backed away from the dining room door, skirting around the gurney table, and tore my gaze away from the moving lever on the door long enough to check the hospital room on screen. Nothing had changed.
My ass hit the double doors to the kitchen, and without turning, I motioned for Randolph and pointed at the moving lever on the door opposite me.
A cold waft of air needled up my back. “Trouble,” he ground out.
The lever stopped, caught by the locking mechanism, and the whole door shuddered.
My nerves shuddered with it.
“Do you want me to come back now?” Crispin asked softly in my ear.
I growled my answer. Not without Poh.
I could almost hear the relief in his silence, but I had no doubt he would come back if I asked.
Behind me, glass clinked to the metal floor, and a jar with a screw-top lid rolled until it hit my heel. I picked it up and swept toward the still-shuddering door. Without allowing myself time to consider exactly what—or who—might be on the other side, I unlocked and opened it.
Nothing. A whole lot of nothing. No frigid air to announce a ghost’s presence. No odd, ghostly smells. Which was strange because it had been right here, rattling the door.
I took a single step out into the hallway, and as soon as I did, a low wail sounded from somewhere inside me. The wail grew into a piercing scream. I drilled my fingers into the doorframe and doubled over at the noise. This was a warning. A warning from the Saelises inside me. Something was wrong.
Over the din in my head, two other sounds emerged. Crispin shouting. The elevator doors at the end of the hall dinging.
Pop. I stumbled into the hallway, and the wails turned to screams. What if it wasn’t Pop arriving in the elevator? What if itwasPop? I crashed into the hallway wall, my hands crushed to my ears and my yellow claws digging into my scalp. Ahead, theViciousroom door stood open, with the light turned on inside.
Beyond the open room from around the corner stepped Pop, gun raised. It looked so unnatural in his hands. As soon as he saw me, he lowered it and put his hand over his heart. He said something, but I couldn’t hear him over the screaming in my head. It was so loud now that tears rushed down the scales on my face.
When he started forward, I shot out my hand to stop him. Something was in theViciousroom, something without a heartbeat, but something that didn’t leave a cold trail of death after them either. I gestured for him to go left, his right, down the infirmary hallway and then take the long way to the dining room.
He did. I hoped he wouldn’t have to use his gun.
I started toward the Vicious room, gripping my ice pick and lidded jar tightly, but the screams in my head seemed to shove me back. They warred with Crispin’s static-filled ones about Poh in my ear, which only surged my unease even faster though my veins. I would get to Crispin in a minute, but right now, I needed to focus on what lurked inside the lit room and make sure whatever lurked inside didn’t go after Pop.
Whatever was happening, Poh could take care of herself.
With a shaky hand, I unscrewed the jar and set it in the middle of the hallway. “G-go,” I ordered, my voice wobbling so much, it only made it halfway down the hallway. “Get...in!”
Nothing happened.
Feozva damn everything.
