Page 101 of The Monster of Hotel No. 7
“You don’t think I’m fine?” she asks quietly, ignoring everything else I said, and meant. “Well excuse me if we aren’t all strapping women down in dental chairs and poking their nipples with needles. I suppose not everyone can achieve that level of sanity, Sullen.”
I jerk her closer with my hand on her wrist, her Vans sliding over the slick cement of the alleyway. Then I dip my head, flicking my tongue along her bloody palm, tasting the iron-metal of it to show her just how goddamnsaneI am. I feel the brittle prick of the shard of glass, too. I tilt my chin and use the unnatural sharpness of my canine tooth to scrape it from her skin.
I have to bite down with my fingers on her wrist to stop her trembling. My eyes lift to hers as I raise my tongue to the edge of my tooth, feeling the aculeate glass there. I flick it back in my mouth and swallow it as I stare at her.
Her lips are parted, the bottle still in her hand.
“I suppose not,” I say quietly, then press my lips to her palm and watch her shiver in the dark.
Slowly, I lower her hand, the taste of her bright on my tongue.
“Sullen,” she whispers. “That’s…dangerous.”
I smile coldly at her.I have survived worse.“You can saythank you, Karia.” Or you can saythank you, God.I know she would never call me that but perhaps I did take something from Stein’s delusions of grandeur.
She doesn’t look away from me as she takes another drink and this time, I grab the bottle from her hand.
“Hey!” She steps forward, lunging toward me, but I step back. “I stole that. It’s fucking mine. Give it back.” Her voice is shaky, but she swipes her hand out to grab the Jameson and I snatch her wrist in my free hand, stopping her.
For a moment, neither of us move, eyes locked in the alleyway as I realize the storm is completely gone, leaving only damp, dreary fall air behind.
“Give it back.”
“Just because you believe I am fucked up,” I say carefully, never looking away from her. “Doesn’t mean I’ll let the same thing happen to you.”
“I think you need to worry about your own daddy issues, Sullen, before you tackle any of mine.”
I flinch with those words, but she doesn’t stop.
“You threaten to kill me one minute then you want to save my soul the next, swallow the glass from my skin. Like I said. I’m not scared of you, and you don’t own me, and my shoulder really hurts,” here, her voice breaks a little, “and I don’t know what the fuck we’re supposed to do. I want to protect you, but I don’t even know if you like me and I…” She trails off, snatching her hand from my grip and wiping her fist over her eyes.
Of course I like you. I’m obsessed with you. I don’t swallow fucking glass for just anyone.But I don’t say that. I keep quiet.
She drops her arm by her side and lifts her chin as she stares at me, taking a deep breath. “You want to go to the original hotel,” she says steadily, changing topics and tone so completely, I feel momentarily dizzy, as if I’ve consumed the liquor from the Jameson bottle in my hand. “I could tell. That’s why you pretended to be interested in Maude. You’re just like everyone else, it’s almost fucking hilarious. You want to go, and I don’t know why, or what we’ll find, but we’ll go there. Maybe they’ll keep our secret and Writhe won’t think to look there, especially if Stein never told you about it. If there’s cameras—”
“There may not be. If it’s still in operation for anything, it’s criminal. Even Stein didn’t put them up everywhere, so he could hide his own misdeeds.” And catch everyone else’s. Including Karia’s, with Cosmo and Von.
“So we’ll go there, and we’ll find whatever you’re looking for and maybe along the way, I’ll find something too. Something that makes me not so fucking pathetic.” She wraps her arms around herself. She is drunk and belligerent and still so beautiful.
“Pathetic?” I ask softly, thinking of the word along my sternum. “Who said you were pathetic?” But I’m sure I know.
“Oh, fuck off.Yousaid the same thing, remember?” She abruptly gestures toward the bottle in my hand. “Put the cap on,” she snaps. “Don’t let it spill.”
I almost want to laugh, but I twist the cap on and hold the bottle by the neck instead. With my other arm, I adjust the bag of our clothes on my shoulder. She sees the movement and swipes the Jameson from me before I can even react.
“To lighten your load,” she says dryly. “Now somehow we need to get into a fucking cab and hope we can find the address to thisoriginalhotel.” She walks past me, toward the entrance of the alley.
I turn to track her movement, imagining threading my fingers through the messy bun in her hair and jerking her back to my side. But then I’m thinking of me and Cosmo de Actis calling her pathetic, and why she would ever believe it to be true.
Chapter37
Karia
Ilean away from Sullen in the back of the cab. Drinking the Jameson straight was a bad idea, but I know I’d feel even worse if I was sober. My shoulder is aching, my palm stings, my temples throb, I need to eat, and I have zero answers about Sullen and far more questions.
The cab driver glances up at me once and our eyes meet as he drives through downtown Alexandria, the sun starting its deep amber ascent over the city.
Sullen was right. The cops are out of sight, and no one is stopping any of the morning commute that I can see.
