Page 67 of The Monster of Hotel No. 7
Karia makes some kind of gasping sound at my side, and I feel her eyes burning into my face.
“Yes,” I say quietly, answering Maude’s question, surprise flickering through me.
“I thought…the voice… Well, it is unusual. And extremely hard to forget.” She says it with an inflection at the end that I don’t understand.
Karia makes another choking sort of sound. I feel a little sweaty, perspiration along my brow, and I don’t look at her as I clasp my gloved hands in front of me. I’m not sure what is wrong with her, but I’m trying to save our lives here.
Maude seems to recover upon seeing me in the flesh, then she nods once. “Of course. The Attic is yours. Two nights, then I have another…person, coming to take residence there.” She finally glances at Karia, her dark eyes going wide as she seems to assess her, gaze flicking up and down her body in a way that makes me want to shield the Sun. But then she only turns her back to us and says, disappearing into the oddities along her shelves, “I’ll be right back with the key.”
* * *
“Who the fuck is that?”Karia’s words shatter the brief second of solace I had after we stepped into the Attic—in name only; in reality, it’s a spacious room above the Emporium, a tiny bathroom leading off the main space. The windows are covered with the same thick violet drapes as downstairs, blocking out the sunlight and lending the space a chilly, pleasant temperature. It smells of old wood and books in here, and while there is only one animal mounted on the light gray walls—a deer head—it feels better than any hotel room we could’ve gotten elsewhere.
And we are, momentarily, safe here.
We even have food; Maude led us here with a paper bag in her hand, set it on the dresser across from the queen bed and proclaimed it was egg and cheese bagels. I have no preference for food; I have eaten far worse than eggs, cheese, and bagels. I can consume anything when I am hungry enough, and right now, I am exhausted and ravenous both.
I close my eyes and for the first time in however long it’s been since I first stalked Karia and Cosmo into Septem, I allow myself to feel the trembling in my thighs, the stiffness in my shoulders, the pain along my spine from wounds never quite healed.
It takes everything inside of me not to stumble forward and face-plant onto the burgundy silk sheets of the bed.
“Sullen.” Karia bites out my name. She has not moved from her spot before the door, at my back. I would have heard her stupid heels clanking on the hardwoods if she did. “Whois that?”Her temper is fraying, and I know soon she will become mean.
If I wasn’t so tired, so fearful of being alone with her, soeverything,I would find it amusing.
As it is, nothing is funny right now. “Maude. She owns the shop.” It’s all I can manage.
“That doesn’t tell me anything,” Karia snaps back, too much energy inside her tone.Where does she get it all?“Why are we here? What is this place? How did you know to go here?I’m sorry,”she says in a way that implies she isn’t, “the lock on our door might be a deadbolt, but it’s not going to keep Writhe out.”
I say nothing.
I keep my eyes closed and think of the man beneath the hotel. The one I foolishly told I wouldn’t give Karia up to. I don’t know if that was all a dream, the way things are so delirious inside my head, memories slipping away. I don’t know how much sleep we got last night in the van, but it wasn’t enough. My body is in pain. My mind is muddled. I cannot stay with Karia. I will have to part with her. I do not know what thefuckI am doing. This is starting to feel like a bad dream.
I should not have come.
“Sullen! Answer me! You can’t just expect me to trust this witch in a taffeta gown and give menothing—”
I spin around then, eyes flashing open, hands in fists at my side.
Karia’s lips are parted, arms crossed over her chest, and she sucks in a breath and stops talking at my sudden movement.
Why did I think it would be a good idea to get her alone in a room where no one can check me? No one will interrupt us? No one will hear her scream if I push a pillow over her face until she passes out? And there are more innocuous things here that aren’t actually, at all.
A minifridge, Maude said. I glance past the old, cherry wood dresser where she set down the paper bags, and there it is, gray and short, but it could have alcohol. Karia is a big fan of that, which means this room has everything I need to shut her up.
I should not have done this.
All of it was so incredibly stupid.
“Say something,” Karia pushes.
I cut my gaze to her. “I know this will not make sense to you,” I whisper, not wanting anyone to hear anything I am about to say. “But I did speak to other people sometimes, growing up. Not in person. But I had limited internet access. Years ago, I connected with Maude on a forum. We exchanged voice messages.”
Karia’s brows dig in, her bottom lip pushing out. She has the same look she did downstairs when Maude first appeared and stared at me, and I cannot decipher it at all.
“I pretended I might meet her one day. She told me about this place. The Creep’s Attic, as it’s called. A safe haven to hide in the city.”
Karia half-turns her head, her nose lifted in the air. “Excuse me?What?Wait a second. Youmetsomeone online who you…planned to run away with?” She is spitting out the words like they are poison.
