Page 17 of The Monster of Hotel No. 7
“No, no, I did not think so. I am truly sorry for what is about to happen, but I couldn’t stay away from you. Your eyes are always inside of my head, and you did send me those pathetic letters, after all.”
He read them.
I have one second of shameful agony, hot and bright over my fear, before I feel it.
The needle, plunging into my stomach. It is a deep, vicious sensation.
I cry out and he stares at me as I do, a small smile tipping up the corners of his lips while he holds my face in one hand and perhaps my life in the other.
The needle comes out.
I hear him toss it onto the steel table.
I can still see.
Nothing is happening yet.
Nothing is happening.
He is cupping my face in both hands now as he looms over me.
“What did you do to me?” I ask quietly, my eyes roving over his, my own frantic, desperate for answers. “What is going to happen?”
“Don’t worry,” he whispers, smoothing his thumbs up my cheekbones as he studies me as if I am a patient and he is my doctor. “When you wake up, it will only get worse.”
It happens slowly.
I am sluggish.
I can’t keep my eyes open.
Gray spots; white.
Then, his hands still around my face, everything slips into darkness.
Chapter10
Karia
Cosmo is the first thing I see.
My vision blurs as I blink, thinking he’ll clear when I’m fully awake, but he’s still there, on the couch across from the table I recognize as the one inside Septem.
His arms are folded, his expression stern as he stares at me and heat pricks at my face, but it’shim.
Not…
“Have you been speaking to Sullen Rule?” Those words don’t come from him.
I turn my head and it is Isadora Croft.
Her hair is in braids, pulled back from her face, dark eyes locked onto mine.
I’m half-sitting, half-slumped against the leather couch and I wipe the back of my hand over my mouth, the room spinning slightly as I do. Saliva smears across my face and I swallow the dryness in the back of my throat.
I swear the faint trace of leather is on my tongue.
I drop my hand and look down, noting the destroyed black skirt, myhalf-madcrop top, white socks, white Vans.
