10

PEYTON LOOKED MUCH smaller and frailer without Dru sitting next to her. Her face was so pale, so swollen. She looked like a dying person.

The flowers and balloons had grown overnight as well. Now they were the first thing you noticed when you came into the room. I caught an orderly leaving with a cartful of greenery as I was coming in, my ankle nagging me with every step.

He grinned, shrugged one shoulder. “Doctor’s orders,” he said. “Too many.”

I remembered my mom’s funeral. There’d been flowers. What had seemed like so, so many of them. Enough that my dad had to enlist the gardener to pawn some off on friends and family. I don’t want them here, I remembered him saying, his voice ragged, a sweating glass of whiskey in his hand. That smell is depressing as hell.

But even though there’d been a ton of flowers at Mom’s funeral, there hadn’t been as many as were in Peyton’s room right now. How many would there be when Peyton died? If, Nikki, if! I tried to correct myself. I squeezed my eyes shut to block out the crimson to make it easier to believe.

I walked around the room, idly checking the cards poking out of the flowers. Where were these people? Where were Abby and Sutton and the Drama Club? Where was Mr. Benecio, the Choral Group instructor? Where were her grandparents? Luna? The hordes of gorgeous guys always falling over themselves to be with her?

I pulled a card out of a vase filled with black daisies. Where in the hell did someone find black daisies?

The card read, Vee.

Vee. The singularly named bass guitarist for Viral Fanfare.

I turned it over, looking for more. A kind note. A get-well wish. Something. Anything. But that was it. Vee.

Where were you, Vee? Where was the rest of the band?

Black daisies. A hell of a strange choice.

I put the card back into the flowers and continued looking through the rest of them. None of them meant anything to me. My mind kept going back to Vee. Mint green. Sharp edges. Vee.

Finally, I went over to Peyton and stared down at her for a moment. Somehow she’d figured out that we shared this very important thing. Somehow she’d gotten my number. She’d tried to call it. She’d left me clues. I knew this with everything I had. But I still felt like I was invading her personal space by being in here.

“Hey,” I said softly. I moved her hair off her tattoo. “I live in color, too. How did you know?”

I sat down next to her, where Dru had been sitting the day before, and picked up her hand. I turned over her arm, searching for more tattoos. Nothing. Just the scratches and bruises from being beaten. I looked at her other arm. Nothing.

“So what am I supposed to do next?” I asked. “I think I’m onto something, but I’m not sure how to get proof. I don’t suppose you have any other clues to give me.”

I stared at her face for so long, I almost could have talked myself into believing that I saw it move. But of course it didn’t. The steady drip of the IV into her lifeless arm told me that much.

A nurse bustled into the room. She jumped, surprised.

“Oh! I wasn’t expecting to find anyone here,” she said, placing her hand over her heart. “Other than Peyton, I mean.”

“Just me,” I said.

“Well, that’s okay. I’m sure any company is appreciated. I’ll be right out of your way.” She checked the IV bag.

“Do you still have the clothes she was wearing when they brought her in?” I asked. “I can take them home for her,” I added sheepishly, to keep from sounding as creepy as I was afraid I did.

The nurse hesitated, seemed to think about it, and then shook her head. “They gave everything to the police. But honestly, all she had on her were her keys and a phone, and they gave those to her family. Who would have ever thought our Jane Doe would turn out to be Bill Hollis’s daughter? Crazy, huh?”

She moved to Peyton, picked up her wrist, and counted her pulse. “Just goes to show your mama was right.”

I blinked. “I’m sorry?”

She smiled warmly, checking various tubes and machines swiftly and expertly, as if she could do it in her sleep. “You know how your mom always said to wear clean underwear because you never knew if you were going to get into an accident?”

I shook my head sourly. “My mom died when I was a little kid.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. That’s terrible.” She wrote something on a pad she kept in the front pocket of her scrubs. “Well, my mama always said it, and she was right. You never know what’s going to happen to you when you wake up in the morning.”

Not true. Peyton knew what was going to happen to her.

Fear Is Golden.

“Has she had any other visitors? I mean, besides her family?”

“Well, I only work the day shift, so I don’t know what happens when I’m gone at night. She has a lot of kids come in after school, but they usually only stay for a few minutes.”

“You see anyone with spikes running through her ears? Lip piercing? Dreads?”

The nurse thought about it, and then brightened. “I think I know who you’re talking about. The girl who brought the black flowers. She wasn’t here very long, either.” She took a couple of steps toward me and leaned in. “Between you and me, she was a strange one, that girl. She asked if I knew whether Peyton had a will for her intellectual property. Isn’t that a weird thing for a young person to ask?”

Not if that young person is trying to kill Peyton, I thought, remembering the conversation I’d heard in Gibson’s apartment. All those songs will go with her. Was that what this whole thing was about? Was this a fight over song lyrics?

The nurse checked some other monitors and then straightened the blankets, tucking them under Peyton’s ankles. She stopped, patted Peyton’s foot through the blanket.

“Poor thing. So young and pretty. You related? You look a little like her.” She swirled her fingers in front of her face. “It’s the nose.”

“No. I’m just a friend,” I said, and then, realizing that the only Hollis I’d ever really spoken to was Dru, and that we’d so much more than spoken, added, “Of the family.” I felt myself blush and wanted to pluck my own tongue out and burn it.

“Well, you must be a good friend.”

“Have the police been around much?”

“Just the one. The one with the brown hair. Was just here this morning, in fact. This girl sure is surrounded with lookers, isn’t she?” She squeezed Peyton’s toe, patted her foot again, and then turned to leave. “Should be motivation for her to come back to us, huh?”

So Martinez had come here first, ready to arrest a man at his sister’s deathbed. Nice. What kind of asshole did that? I didn’t care what he looked like—he was clearly a heartless honor-and-glory type who didn’t care about tact and feelings one bit.

I sat by myself for a while after the nurse left but then decided that I wasn’t going to solve anything by sitting here. I checked the clock on my phone. There were still two hours of school left.

And I needed to see someone there.

“I’ll be back,” I said to Peyton. “Don’t worry. I’ll figure this out.” I stared at her a moment longer, willing her to open her eyes. Wishing that she would answer me. Just tell me . . . why me?

I left, thinking it was weird how I felt closer to her somehow. Nothing had changed. Not really. I wasn’t the close relationship type, at all. Plus, we were still in totally separate worlds. We had nothing in common. And we’d never spoken. Not directly.

But she’d spoken to me through that photo, hadn’t she? She’d talked to me through her tattoo.

We’d communicated in color—the most intimate way I knew how.

I got into my car and headed out of the parking lot, concentrating on what would be the quickest route that would get me to school. I was so focused, I almost didn’t see the beat-up car parked two slots down from mine.

Or the man standing next to it, smoking a cigarette, the smoke wafting up in curlicues around the tattoo on his jaw. Curlicues that popped into rusty starbursts.

But he noticed me. He peered at me as I crept by, never losing eye contact, never looking away. He had an angry crease in the center of his forehead. His lips were set in a tight line. We locked eyes, and my skin crawled with goose bumps.

It was Gibson Talley.

I dropped my gaze and punched the gas pedal, watching in the rearview mirror to see if he would follow me. He didn’t, but the uneasy feeling that had washed over me wouldn’t let go. Bumpy gray and black, bumpy gray and black. Was he there for Peyton, or had he followed me from his apartment?

Either answer wasn’t a good one.