“I hadn’t spoken a word to him,” I reason.“I don’t think I even looked at him until after—”
“That doesn’t mean he wasn’t looking at you,” Wes murmurs.The knife is lying against his forearm again and I watch the tendons of his hand shift as he grips it tighter.“If this is a rom-com, like you said, and he saw you from across a crowded room…”
Then we’re looking at love at first sight.
Moulin Rouge!Titanic.Romeo + Juliet.Whether it was from a trapeze, or the deck of a doomed ship, or through a fish tank, the male lead decided they were meant to be before the female lead had even spoken a single word.None of those films had a happy ending, though.
I know beggars can’t be choosers, but I don’t wantthat.I don’t wantthis.I can understand seeing someone and having an instant attraction, but not falling inlovewith someone before you know anything substantial like their last name or their birthday or if they actually do appreciate mass killing as a way of being wooed.
Wes blows out a sigh.“Look, I still think we need to assume it could be anyone, but—”
There’s a squeal of shoes against vinyl that makes everyone jerk their attention down to the lower level.For a second, I’m struck by the horror of my name traced out on the ground, as if I’m seeing it for the first time again, but then a figure appears from the shadows.He stops short, chest heaving, hair disheveled, eyes locked on the artful tangle of insides, which must look like a mess of red without the vantage point we have, before he tears his gaze away and turns it skyward.
When he sees us lined up against the railing, his sigh of relief is audible.He rolls the broken Midori bottle from one hand to the other, then lifts his free one in greeting.
“Hey.”
CHAPTER 20
“In my opinion, the best thing you can do is find someone who kills you for exactly what you are.Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, homicidal, what have you.”
—NotJuno
Wes is furious.
“Where the fuck were you?”
It’s subtle, slow, but I notice the way he shifts so he’s standing between us—the women—and John.I notice the way he isn’t holding his knife flush against his thigh, either; his arm is slightly raised, preparatory, and it makes my palms sweat around the match cards still in my hands.
“I found another set of stairs,” John pants, having run up to the mezzanine level and joined us near the booths as soon as he dropped his hand.Sweat beads against his forehead and glistens across the top of his chest.I always thought he was the “academia lean” that I’m usually drawn to in men, but the way the muscles in his forearms stick out while he’s clenching his fists, the tendons stark beneath his skin hinting at reserved strength… Now I’m not so sure.
“That side of the club wasn’t on the map, so when I saw the stairs I thought maybe it was an employee section, and it might lead to an exit.”He turns to Laurie and me, but he can’t bring himself to meet our eyes.“That’s why you wouldn’t have known about it.But they just led downstairs, so I circled back, and I must’ve gone down a different hallway… I got all turned around.I thought I was lost and I… panicked.”Color rises in his cheeks, his hair flopping down into his eyes, and he looks so shamefaced admitting it that my first instinct is to feel sorry for him.He rakes a hand through his hair, unable to lift his gaze to mine even when he says, “I’m so sorry, Jamie.I heard you scream but I couldn’t find you.I tried—I tried to get to you.”
His voice cracks on the last word, and that’s when his blue eyes finally meet mine.They are just as gorgeous as they were on our date, bright and appealing.But I’ve seesawed between thinking he could be a killer and thinking he’s dead in a corner somewhere, so I can’t find it in myself to reach out and console him.Casual touching feels a lot more dangerous when you’ve caught the interest of a serial killer.Jennifer doesn’t have the same issue.Especially when he starts apologizing to the other women and saying that he should’ve been there.She grips his shoulder with one hand, smooths her palm across his bicep, and he looks up at her with a grateful grimace.The way John places his hand over Jennifer’s does work in his favor when it comes to discounting him as a suspect, though.
“Look, it’s fine.We’re all fine,” I say, looking around at the frazzled group and figuring it’s as true as it can be in these circumstances.Wes isn’t actively trying to block John from joining the group anymore, and Dani and Jennifer look perfectly comfortable standing on either side of him.
“We know what he wants now,” I say.Even though the discovery thatIam what he wants is absolutely insane.“We can work with that to get out of here.”
John looks between us for the answer, but I just point over my shoulder and shift away from the railing, slipping the match cards into my bra for safekeeping.
He looks down at the dance floor—at the mess that as I suspected doesn’t have the same effect on ground level.It takes him a few seconds, but when he comprehends what the (literally) twisted message says, he turns around slowly, looking at me with new eyes.“You.”
“Me.”I pull my mouth into a grim interpretation of a smile and shrug.“Every girl’s dream, right?”
He allows one more glance back at the heart before he turns his back on it for good.
“This is probably the worst time to say this,” Laurie says from my side, her leg bouncing rapidly next to mine, and I know what’s she about to say.It hits me suddenly, like the flick of a switch.They never cover this in horror movies.No matter how long people are trapped or running or searching.It really is a glaring plot hole.
“Ireallyneed to pee.”
Bathrooms don’t have a great track record in horror.
While my thesis adviser, Jordan, would argue that zombie films are in a different class from slashers, there is some crossover when it comes to the danger inherently connected to restrooms.There’s a reason rule number three inZombielandis Beware of Bathrooms.I think he’d agree with me that the risk is far greater when the killer isn’t a member of the undead, though.The scenes are easy enough to conjure up:Scream 2, the 2018Halloweenreboot,Bloody Homecoming, Maniac!… I could keep going.We’re just lucky there isn’t a shower involved.
As soon as Laurie mentions she needs to go to the bathroom, Dani almost cries again as she admits that she is moments away from peeingherself.Avoiding that becomes our interim goal while an exit is still out of reach.There must be bathrooms on the mezzanine level, but I can’t remember whether we go down one of the middle corridors or go back around near the VIP rooms to find them.Laurie can’t remember, either, but she can vividly recall where they are on the first level, and John confirms that he located them on that first sweep he performed earlier in the night.After a short discussion, it’s agreed that we’d all rather walk a known path than try to navigate the unknown parts of the building and come face-to-face with my admirer.Wes takes the card from the VIP room and slides it into his back pocket, but we leave the rose where it lies on a table.I don’t really feel like claiming it as my own now that Heart Eyes has decided I’m his girl, and I don’t give it a second look when we leave the mezzanine.
When we get to the bathrooms on the first level—without coming across any more bodies, messages fashioned by someone’s vital organs, or slow-walking, statuesque killers with a preference for pink masks—it makes sense to have half the group keep watch outside the narrow hallway while the other half does their business.John, Dani, and Jennifer go in first after checking that the bathrooms are vacant (on Wes’s instruction) and ensuring nobody is hiding on top of the toilets inside the stalls (on my instruction).
