“Not well. We had the talk.” We’d discussed Gary’s situation and what we would do when the end came. But I didn’t tell her about the box. Not because I didn’t trust her. For all I knew, the box could contain a collection of stuffed animals and nothingmore. What was valuable to one person might not be to another. And besides, it wasn’t like I’d ever sell or get rid of whatever was inside. Also, the box wasn’t relevant to the conversation. Gary was alive and as well as he could be, with cancer eating away at him. But Gary always called Silvia a good egg, so I’d tell her about it eventually.
“So, he said goodbye then.” There was silence, and then I heard sniffling.
Her crying brought tears to my eyes, but I didn’t let them fall. I felt the emotion in my throat as I said, “He might be okay, you know.”
“He might,” she agreed, but neither of us believed it. The truth sat in the pit of my stomach.
“He wants you to stay with him,” I whispered. If I spoke any louder, I’d let the tears come. It was as if my volume controlled my grief. There was no sense in mourning a man who was just in the other room, asleep. “I’ll stay until you get here.”
That was the last thing I said before I heard the kitchen floor creak under someone’s footsteps. “If you had needed something, you should have just yelled.”
When I turned, it wasn’t Gary. A man in a black cloak stood in Gary’s kitchen. I sucked in a breath. That was when I remembered meeting Grym. He’d worn a black cloak, and we’d been in a dark, smoke-filled room. Then a door appeared. I’d had a chance to see my mom again, but I’d chosen not to.
Had all that been a game to them? Would they usher me back into the afterlife only to give me a choice again, and then repeat the process again and again? Maybe this was my version of hell.
I gripped the phone tighter.
“Elliot, are you okay?” Silva asked.
“I don’t think so.” My gaze never left the stranger. It wasn’t Grym’s face peeking out from under that hood. It was someone else. Someone whose expression was carved from stone.
“I’m calling the police,” Sylvia said just before the phone went dead. The police would be great right about now.
“Who the hell are you?” A better question was how he’d gotten inside the house. I’d locked the front door. He must have just appeared the same way Grym had. “Grym said I had a choice. I’ve already made it.”
“Come with me.” He held out his hand as if that were all it would take for me to do what he said.
“Like hell.” I let the phone drop from my hand and tried to run around him, but he grabbed me by the waist.
I could hear Gary call my name, asking if I was all right and what was going on.
I fought as hard as I could, screaming for him to let go. Unfortunately, I think he must have drugged me or knocked me out, because one minute I was fighting him in Gary’s kitchen, and the next, he dumped me in the middle of what looked like a bedroom.
I narrowed my eyes even as I stayed on the floor. “I’m not letting you rape me, you dickhead.”
The guy had the audacity to contradict me. “I’m not a rapist.”
“You are a kidnapper, though.” I took in the room, all without taking my gaze off him. A king-sized bed was to my left, and he dumped me unceremoniously in the center of a rather soft rug in front of a fireplace.
He sighed and rolled his eyes. “You know what? You aren’t my problem. I don’t know why I agreed to retrieve you.”
I opened my mouth to scream, but the guy disappeared right in front of me. One minute he was there, and the next he wasn’t. The scream died in my throat. I blinked, then rubbed my eyes, thinking I might have imagined him from the start. Maybe it was all a dream. Maybe Gary had really died, and I’d lost my mind from grief. That made far more sense than the guy vanishing.
Maybe I was in a drug-induced coma. If so, my brain put me in a pretty kickass room. My bed at home was half the size, and I never made it.
I stood and walked to the door, trying the handle. I didn’t expect it to be open, and it wasn’t. I banged against it and yelled. I wished I had grabbed my cellphone. The cops showing up would be great right about now. I hoped they could track me here. But where was here? And how could they track me without my phone?
I was so screwed.
I wanted to believe it was a fever dream, dying before and the choices Grym had laid on me didn’t seem real. Maybe I was high on something that wasn’t weed. I could hear my heart banging in my head as the panic set in even more. That didn’t happen in dreams. Not even in nightmares.
What the hell was going on?
The door might not open, but the window did when I tried it. I thought about screaming for help, but the houses were far enough apart that the neighbors might not hear me.
And that made me stop for a second, calm down enough to figure out where I was. Delivering pizzas meant I knew many of Hollowbrook’s neighborhoods by sight, even from a second-story window. The room’s window looked out onto the road. I recognized the driveway because I had been there only yesterday.
“Son of a bitch.” I narrowed my eyes at no one in particular, but in my mind I pictured Grymley Reaper’s stupidly handsome face. “You fucker.”
