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“Oooh, cherry martinis,” Xave says.
I whirl, lightning fast. “Don’t touch that!”
His hand freezes midway toward the glasses. He backs away as if the drinks are nuclear warheads. “O-kay, so ... what then?” He looks toward the bed and wiggles his eyebrows.
“Don’t be stupid, Xave.”
A lopsided smile tips his mouth. He’s trying to get a rise out of me. I ignore his smug expression and walk around the room, examining every corner, every piece of furniture.
“What is this place?” Xave asks, fingering the chocolate that rests on one of the pillows. “How about this, can I eat it?”
“I wouldn’t touch anything,” I warn him.
“Um, am I missing something here? I mean, that Elliot guy’s creepy, but he’s just a dude. I don’t get what James and Clark keep going on about.”
I look behind a mirror, wondering if it’s one of those two-way contraptions. I really can’t tell.
“I admit it’s weird,” Xave continues. “This place is like some sort of rich, fancy cathouse or something. But I don’t really see what’s so scary about that. I always figured they had places like this for rich people who are into ... you know ... that sort of stuff.”
I examine the ceiling looking for cameras. So far I’ve spotted nothing out of the ordinary.
“Why are we here, anyway? What are we supposed to do?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know, but I have a feeling it’s not what you’re thinking.”
Xave stands in front of me and looks down into my eyes. “What happened out there? I noticed your hand is bleeding. How did you hurt yourself?”
Balling James’s silk handkerchief up in my hand, I try to hide the evidence, even though it’s too late. “It’s nothing.”
“C’mon, let me look at it.” He’s serious, nothing like the careless boy I’ve grown used to.
I’ve yet to reconcile the two sides of him, especially since I never know which one I’m going to get any given day. This new, budding Xave scares me and throws me off balance with his intermittent flashes of maturity. Who said boys are simple? I could take up astrophysics and understand it a lot quicker than I’ll ever understand him.
He puts a hand on my elbow and slowly slides it down my forearm. Stopping at my wrist, he lifts my hand and examines it.
“Where’d you get that ring? You didn’t have it earlier.”
“I ...” I can’t think of what to say.
A small knock at the window makes us jump.
“What the ...? Stay there,” Xave orders me.
Staying close to the wall, he sidesteps toward the window, then peeks outside through a gap in the curtain. My shoes are glued to the floor, and I’m ready to kick them off. I’d be in trouble trying to fight in this dress. The least I can do is be ready to run.
“It’s James,” Xave says. “There’s a balcony out there. He wants us to come out.”
Xave pulls back the curtain and opens what turns out to be a set of glass doors, not windows. James steps in, a finger pressed to his lips. I won’t be making any noise. Even if I knew what to say, the knot in my throat would choke my voice.
“There’s no way I can prepare you,” James whispers. “But if you don’t feel ready, we can go.”
“We didn’t go through all this just to quit,” Xave says.
“How about you, Marci?” James asks. “Can you handle it?”
No.
“Yes.”
My fear is an avalanche, but Xave is right. I’ve come too far to chicken out now.
“All right. Follow me and be quiet.” James exits the room. Xave and I follow. I look right and left. The balcony seems to wrap around the entire house. The soft glow coming from the rooms reveals several lounge chairs and potted plants. The floor is a checkerboard of dark and illuminated patches. We’re overlooking a large garden with sculpted trees, a fountain and a greenhouse that sparkles like an ice house.
James stays in the shadows and we follow. Blare is not out here, and when we pass James’s room, I spot her silhouette behind the sheer curtains.
We move past and approach the next room, backs pressed to the wall. James leans in and takes a cautious look through the window, peeking with one eye. He nods, satisfied with whatever he sees inside. With one hand, he beckons for us to take a peek, too.
Xave gives me a meaningful glance and shakes his head, indicating there’s no way he’s going to spy on anyone’s private business. It’s cute, really. He’s worried about his morals when the priority is getting this over with and making ourselves scarce.
I push past Xave, pretending I’m wearing armor and I’m a brave knight. After a deep breath, I peek inside. The couple with the giggling woman occupies the room. She sits at the edge of the bed, holding an empty martini glass. She sways as her eyes fight to stay open. Her partner is sitting next to her, watching her intently.
Xave puts a hand on my shoulder and makes me jump. He presses against me and peers in over my head. I push against his warm body, finding that I’m a bit braver with him by my side.
The woman looks about to pass out. The guy takes the glass away and sets it on the night table. Her eyes roll backward and, a moment later, her body goes limp. He catches her and, after some pushing and shoving, settles her against the headboard. With a smile of pleasure on his face, he stands and removes his jacket. Back to us, he proceeds to unbutton his shirt.
For support, I put my hand on top of Xave’s, where he grips my shoulder. Slowly, the shirt slides off the man’s back and the first glimpse of James’s monster is revealed. Xave’s fingers dig into my clavicle and I welcome the pain. Breathing becomes a struggle as my heart drowns in panic. My eyes are frozen wide, my mouth open as I gasp for air, my brain struggling to believe my eyes.
I try to form a reasonable explanation for the patterns on the man’s back, and come up with “tattoos.” These vivid red, black and yellows, however, are nothing like any tattoos I’ve ever seen. I know what ink looks like on someone’s body, and this is nothing a mere human artist can create.
This is ... alive.
The man’s right side is covered in iridescent, bright colors that smoothly blend from one shade into another in a strip pattern. As my brain tries to fit what it sees into a category, it comes up with the word “snake.” Where there should be skin, there are ... scales? Large red, black and yellow sections that seem to have life of their own, breathing, accommodating themselves as he flexes his muscles. His left side has similar patterns, but they are uneven, incomplete somehow, as if they were an afterthought or the tattoo artist forgot to finish them.
He sits on the bed in front of the woman. I see only their profiles. She looks numb. Him, pleased in the extreme. He tilts his head back, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. His chest expands and his eyelids flutter in something that looks like ecstasy. The scales wrap around his chest but there’s something else there, something I can’t distinguish.
My skin crawls with the knowledge that this is the moment, the point of no return. I want to hide my face on Xave’s chest, but I go on gaping, eyes burning with my inability to blink anymore.
Something moves on the man’s chest. It throbs to life like a second heart, then unfolds, tasting the air. A cry jumps to my throat, but I bite my tongue and I bite again. I will not scream. Even as blood pools inside my mouth, I will not scream.
Two tentacles covered in tiny hairs reach toward the woman, making me think of roach legs. At the spot where they sprout from his chest, the appendages are wide, then taper into sharp, needle-like ends made out of something like bone.
Vomit burns behind my sternum. Xave’s chest thumps on my back. His hands grip my shoulders and tremble. My heart hammers in time with his. My body shakes against his rigid frame.
The tentacles elongate and move in waves, reaching, hungry for the woman. They’re millimeters away from her nose, then undulate their way to the back of her neck and wrap her in a hug. My mind goes through a hundred possibilities of what her end will be. They’re all horrific, worse than any nightmare I could have imagined just five minutes ago.
Why has James brought me to see this? What is he trying to tell me? He can’t mean that I ... Terror surges from my gut and explodes inside my head, ripping my feeble control to shreds. As the implications shake my core, the cry still lodged in my throat suddenly becomes a living, earsplitting reality.
In an instant, the tentacles are sucked back into their slimy hole. The man’s head whips toward the window. Black eyes rimmed with wide strips of yellow search the dark night beyond the sheer curtains. I scream again. His gaze isn’t human.
James is beside us, urging with frantic gestures to get back in our room. I spit blood, wishing I had bit off my tongue. Xave pulls me back, arm around my waist, dragging my wilted body. The sound of a thousand steps and voices fill the house.