“I’d rather not.”
“I wasn’t asking,” Wren said. He lifted one shoulder in an apologetic shrug when Ledger narrowed his eyes. “I told you, I’m the free ride.”
Ledger couldn’t argue with that. He’d just made other assumptions.
“You’re right,” Ledger said. “Earl’s your problem.”
He grabbed the handrail to pull himself up and stalked back to his room. The door made a satisfying crack when he slammed it behind him. He stood there for a minute, then made an aggrieved noise under his breath and grabbed his jacket.
There had been a price for what Wren had done last night. That was the one rule with unnaturals: There was always a price, and since Ledger hadn’t paid it…
Wren had.
Shit.
Ledger pulled the door open and stepped outside. He was ready to break into a jog to catch up with the other man, but Wren was perched on the railing right outside the door. His booted heels kicked idly at the chipped metal bars. Ledger stopped in the doorway.
“Comfortable?”
Wren hopped down and landed lightly on the balls of his feet. He brushed off the ass of his jeans with both hands.
“I thought you’d be longer,” he said. “Are you ready to go? The boss doesn't like to be kept waiting.”
Ledger made an expansive gesture with one hand to indicate that Wren should go ahead of him.
“I’d hate to inconvenience him,” he said sarcastically. “And I’ll drive.”
Wren just snorted and headed down the stairs ahead of Ledger. He already had his keys out as his boots hit the cracked concrete at the bottom.
“You might not be in a fit state to drive back,” he said over his shoulder. “And no one wants to pay the boss a second visit.”
He swaggered confidently toward his pickup. Annoyed as he was, Ledger fell back far enough to appreciate the whole view. When he caught himself doing it, he shook his head in annoyance and stretched his legs to catch up.
“How many times do I have to tell you that I know what I’m doing?” Ledger said. “I bet I’ve seen worse than Earl.”
* * *
Ledger could admitwhen he’d been wrong.
When they’d gotten here, Wren had stayed outside. He’d just shown Ledger to the door and left him to find his own way down the hall. Now he stood on the thick, oddly moist carpet and tried not to breathe as he watched Earl drag himself across the room on two crutches. He was a drum-taut, dry thing hanging from the padded cuffs like a fitfully animated puppet. His skin was a darkish yellow, crusted with gray, tender scabs where it had split, its long nails curled back from the raw beds on the ends of clawed hands. Chunks of it came off on the carpet and lay where they’d been left, puffy and soft in a way that flesh shouldn’t be.
It wasn’t that.
That was bad, but not bad enough.
Earl was alive. Not dead. Not undead. Alive, while its body rotted and dried up around it.
Ledger would have guessed that Earl had been here a long time. It had been long enough for him to grow into the house. A web of dry strings of skin grew out of him, anchored into blisters on the paintwork and burrowed into the carpet. Some were as thick as Ledger’s thumb, others thin as a thread.
Some of them snapped as Earl jerkily moved about, and drops of syrup-sticky blood oozed out of the severed ends. Others were thick and white as ribbons and tied to Earl like a tether, a visible network of veins prominent on the surfaces that ran into the walls.
The soft, spongy walls with the coating of dust on them looked a lot like hair, and the moist sheen ofsomethingsweated out from under the stained wallpaper.
Ledger didn’t look too closely at the walls. He didn’t want to think about that. Or about what the motes of dust floating in the air were. He just focused on the rotted shoreline stink that grew stronger the closer Earl got.
It finally stopped in front of Ledger. Even stooped over and supported on two sticks, it was as tall as him. The sound of its breathing was labored and thin as it tried to force air into the stiff paper bags that were its lungs.
“You have… nothing,” it forced out.
