Page 6 of The Monster of Hotel No. 7
The two thoughts blur and I laugh again before Cosmo is in my face, his eyes flashing, but they look darker than his usual green.
My heart thumps wildly and I tip my head up, letting the sloppy strands of hair that fell from my bun slide away from my gaze.
Deep brown stares back at me.
A strangled breath leaves my lips, right before one single word.
“Sullen?”
Then the lights go out.
Chapter5
Karia
“What?” Cosmo’s voice is a whisper in the dark, harsher than I’ve ever heard from him.“Sullen?”He is close to my face, his breath dancing on my lips. “Why did you say his name? Why did youscratchme?"
What?I didn't even touch him.
I shake my head, unseen. "Why are the lights out?” I counter his question with one of my own, blinking in the night dark of Septem. I don’t hear the hum of the AC—still running everywhere in North Carolina—or the sound of the mini fridge behind the bar buzzing softly or…anything at all. I dig the heels of my hands against the thick leather edge of the sofa, curling my fingers around the material and squeezing.“What’s happening?”The vodka has hit me, and everything is warm and pleasant but it’s only a thin layer overtop the truth of fear strangled inside of my veins.
“Maybe the end of the world,” Cosmo says cruelly, and I jump my eyes to his green ones, vivid in the dark. “I don’t know, and I don’t care. You didn't need to claw at me so deep, fuck. Andwhy did you say his name?”
I frown, brows pulled together, shoulders tense; the eerie, unnatural silence is like a spider down my spine as I sit up straighter and dart my gaze around the room.I didn't touch you at all.But I'm too scared to say that. “I thought I saw…” I trail off as I look to Cosmo once more. “It doesn’t matter. Maybe we should go back up.”
“Sullen hasn’t been seen for two years,” Cosmo continues, like he can’t let this go. “Why the hell would he be here tonight? Have you been taking something, Karia? What the fuck is—”
A creak sounds, cutting him off. Not loud but hair-raising, unnatural in the gloom of Septem.
My breath hitches as I turn my head slowly, staring deeper into the shadows of the basement. There’s a small corridor further in, leading to restrooms and a supply closet and not much else as far as I know.
I blink, straining my eyes to see through the near-total darkness we’re drenched underneath. But in my focus, it’s as if my limbs seem to sway from a calculated breeze despite the fact we are indoors. The vague shadow of the floor tilts in my line of vision and then beneath my feet. Everything isoff,skewed, and I slump back against the couch, pressing my fingertips desperately into the leather as the temperature in the room plummets.
It is ice cold, or maybe that’s only inside my brain, the way my body feels numb, and I amfrozen.I can’t blink, turn my head, move my tongue. It is clumsy in my mouth, swollen, and the floor falls away from my white Vans. I have no sense of my body occupying this room beneath the hotel.
My chest rises, rises,rises.
Then there’s a thud.
Like a body dropping.
Finality.
Too close.
So close I should flinch, but it’s as if my nerves have forgotten how.
There is something—someone—standing where Cosmo stood, but I know it is not him any longer.
On sensation alone, I recognize the former leader of Writhe’s son. His presence has always chilled me, but something is more wrong now.
Wrong and…worse.
I didn't imagine him.
I see you, whether you want me to or not.
The thought feels strange in my head—bubbly, vacant—as unwillingly, my fingers and spine and the curve of my neck relax. I am collapsing against the couch. Sinking into helplessness. I have no choice in the matter.
