Rye radios us from outside.“Got a stash of phones.Burners.”
Vandal finds an earring in the gravel behind a storage shed.“No church girl wore these.”
Oaks finds a trail of dried blood that leads toward the trees.
And me?
I find a room with names carved into the walls.Girl names.Ages.Dates.Some recent.Some scratched out.
Becki was right.
Royal looks at me, nostrils flaring.“We’re not dealing with the doomsday cult we grew up with.”
“No,” I say.“We’re dealing with a graveyard someone hasn’t finished filling.”
Chapter 18
Royal
Becki couldn’t have made that up.She’s not manipulating me.At least not about the missing girls.That is my first thought when we leave Pearly Gates.
The night air tastes burnt, as if something in that basement never stopped smoldering and I carried the smoke home with me in my lungs.The girls’ names.The carved dates.The glitter from the glittery scrap of Marlena’s shirt still stuck to my palm like it wants to stain my skin forever.It clings like guilt.Fresh.Wrong.Unshakeable.
Legend keeps telling me we move fast.We don’t go loud.We don’t panic.The problem is that I’m already panicking.Not on the outside.Never on the outside.On the outside, I’m stone.On the inside, something cracked open, and the light went out.
I should tell someone.Sophie, maybe, although she already has enough weight on her back.Or Legend, standing there pretending he is not imagining his own woman’s name carved into that wall.I should look him in the eye and admit the truth.I’m losing control.
Instead, my body turns toward the clubhouse hallway.Toward my room.Toward her.
The closer I get, the worse the shaking becomes in my hands.The key digs into my palm, sharp, cruel, steadying.I don’t drop it.I don’t let myself.Her scent hits the air before her voice does.Peaches.Sweat.A heat I don’t deserve, a heat I crave like punishment.
When I unlock the door, she is sitting on the cot like she has been waiting all night, waiting for the monster she knows is coming back.Her legs are bare, knees drawn up.My top hangs off one shoulder as if she has not even tried to keep it on.Her eyes track me with a sharpness that could bleed a man out.
“Rough night” she asks, her voice slow and amused, like she already knows the answer.
I say nothing.Entering, I close the door quietly, because if I slam it, something inside me will break beyond repair.
She tilts her head.“Something happen at Daddy’s house of horrors,”
I freeze mid-step.My blood roars.
She smiles, slow and dangerous, like she can smell the sin on me.Smell the fear.Smell the part of me that stayed down in that basement listening to chains clatter and imagining girls screaming.
“You should not say his name right now,” I tell her, and it comes out as a warning.
“Oh” she murmurs.She uncurls from the bed in a slow stretch, the chain sliding across the mattress.She unfolds her legs like a creature made of dark corners and stubborn fire.“Touchy subject?”
I want to walk away.
Instead, I walk toward her.
She sees everything instantly.The rage.The grief.The bruised guilt smeared across the inside of my skull.
“Tell me what you found,” she whispers, and she already knows it was something unbearable.
I seize her wrist and pin it to the wall before she finishes the sentence.
She gasps, but not from fear.No.Becki Crowley gasps as if she's been anticipating this exact moment.
