“I think so.”
The air tasted wrong. There was something metallic in it—something sulfuric and strange. A sound clicked through the quiet. Not the turn of a hospital cart, the push of a wheel, but the slithering scrape of something old. A sudden panic gripped him.
He was making a mistake, letting her walk inside that room.
But he didn’t have a choice.
“Listen to me,” he said. “You need to be careful in there. You didn’t know Schiller before. I did. The boy inside that room? He’s wearing Schiller’s face, but he’s not the guy I pledged with.”
A little bit of truth, wrenched free like a tooth. Tucked inside his jacket pocket, his pinkie popped out of joint with a single, bruising crack. He bit down a groan. Behind him, Lane craned her neck to the side, peering around him at the waiting room. She didn’t look afraid. She only looked determined.
Softly, she asked, “How is that possible?”
“Because,” he said, and his voice came out gritted, “people don’t just come back from the dead by accident. Nathaniel Schiller died five weeks ago. When he went, he left an empty body behind. And now something else has crawled inside it.”
Nate Schiller’s mother was small and fair, her face a perfect oval and her hair styled in a neat sandy cut. She had the same nose as Nate—the same big, doleful eyes, only hers were a pale, powder blue where Nate’s had been dark and turbulent. She glanced up as Delaney approached, her hands clutched as if in prayer.
“Hi,” Delaney said. “Are you Mrs. Schiller?”
“Sarah,” she corrected, and rose to her feet. “You must be a friend of Nathaniel’s.”
“I am,” Delaney said, though she wasn’t exactly sure that was true. “I’m Lane.”
“Lane.” Sarah’s smile wobbled. Her eyes were fringed in tears. She reached for Lane’s hand and held it, her fingers shaking. “It’s so sweet of you to come all this way.”
“It was nothing,” Delaney assured her. “Really.”
“I thought it would be good for him,” Sarah said, dabbing at her nose with a tissue. “Howe. He was always a little odd, growing up.” She let out a watery laugh. “He saw things that weren’t there. He heard things no one else heard. It made it tough for him to make friends. When he started showing an interest in Godbole’s program, I thought, ‘This is it. This is the direction he needs.’?” She sniffled, reaching into her bag for another tissue. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize.” Delaney felt suddenly like she ought not to have come. She was an interloper. A stranger. She didn’t know Nate; she’d been haunted by him. She had no right to be here, comforting his mother.
But it was too late to turn tail and run.
“I’m going on and on,” Sarah said. “It’s just that it was always the two of us, at home. He was such a mama’s boy. And then he went and found a group of friends, and I really thought a little bit of brotherhood might be good for him. He didn’t say anything when he called home. He didn’t say what they were making him do.”
Delaney frowned. “What do you mean? What did they make him do?”
“I’m not sure.” Sarah’s eyes flooded with tears, and she caught them on petite fingers. “He pledged with a group he called the Priory. He said it wasn’t a fraternity, but it was definitely some sort of boys’ club. The police think he might have been involved in a hazing ritual.”
“Oh.” Delaney felt suddenly and deeply stupid. She glanced back at Colton. He stood at the far end of the hall, his phone pressed to his ear, his ball cap pulled low, his eyes fixed on her.
“I was about to run down to the cafeteria and get something to eat.” Sarah’s gaze flicked over and over again toward that wide, flat window along the wall. “Would you like to go in and sit with him while I’m gone?”
“I would,” Delaney said, her regret deepening by the second. “If that’s all right.”
“Of course. I’m sure he’d like to see a friendly face.”
***
Nate Schiller’s hospital room was plain and cold. The walls were empty of adornment, the space lit by a single humming rod. The bed was thin and white, propped upright and edged in rails. Delaney stood in the open doorway and subdued a shiver.
The shadows here were obsolete, driven into hiding by the bald white of the overhead lights.Stay away, they seemed to say, cowering beneath the bed and the chair and the trays.Stay away.
Propped against a series of pillows, Nate dug into a tapioca pudding. Starchy white pearls lumped over the plastic edge of his plastic cup, spilling onto his hand. He didn’t speak. Neither did Delaney. He looked the way he had in the Sanctum: aquiline nose and round jaw, his face dusted in freckles. His unwashed hair hung into his eyes in a row of pale Cs.
This close, Delaney could see the wrongness in him. There was something incongruous in the way his face didn’t show the same signs of wear as the rest of him. There were no circles under his eyes, no waxen skin or sickly pallor to suggest exhaustion or stress.
He didn’t look like someone who’d been dead. He looked content. He looked healthy. He looked stuffed full of pudding. His mouth was relaxed, his eyes bright. Beneath the thin paper of his hospital gown, a series of electrodes stuck to his chest in flat white circles. He picked up his head and regarded her coolly, and Delaney had the creeping sense that he was wholly unaffected by the passing time.
