Our only chance is to get out of the building and find help before he steps off the sigil. We might only have minutes, and there’s no telling how big this place is.
Adrenaline will carry us. People do crazy things on adrenaline, like flip cars or cut their own hands off.
Nico presses his shoulder against mine, turning his face into my hair.
“If things go sideways,” he says quietly, “you need to kill me.”
“Nico, enough.”
“I don’t have a life to go back to,” he says. “I’m not deluded. It’s only a matter of time before I end up dead or in jail. You have a life. I can never make up for the things I’ve done, but at least if I die protecting you, I will have done something g?—”
I fling my good arm around him, holding on as if I can physically keep all those poisonous thoughts from eating him. He goes rigid, but then his arms come around me like he’s trying to pull me into his bones, one hand in my hair, the other pressing between my shoulder blades. It’s desperate and fierce and so tight I can barely breathe, but I don’t want him to let go.
Unfortunately, the universe has never been particularly interested in letting me have nice things.
The door across the room opens.
Nico’s arms tighten around me. I peer over his shoulder at the door in time to see a metal lockbox skitter across the floor, coming to rest in a divot where a tile is missing.
It feels like a whole minute before the speakers turn back on.
“Open the box,” the Game Master croons.
I untangle myself from Nico and crawl to the box before he can argue. The axe is lying beyond the box, still where Nico must have dropped it after the last trial, its blade stained with my blood. I don’t want the Game Master to have a weapon when he walks in here, so I grip the handle, making a pointnotto look at the lump of bloodied flesh on the tile, and I haul the axe backwith me as I kick the box along. By the time I reach Nico again, I’m panting as hard as I did coming off the treadmill.
I pull the box onto my lap. He leans over my shoulder to watch me pry the lid open. Inside are two small brass keys and two bottles of water. A scratching sound comes from inside the box, so quiet I almost miss it under the pounding of my heart. I know that sound. I’ve been so busy trying not to die that I forgot I could even hear that sound.
I tilt the box in the light until I find the glistening streaks of ectoplasm streaking the clean metal.
“Each of you must take a key,” the Game Master instructs.
The key is the same size as the house key I kept on my lanyard as a kid. Nico takes his, turning it over in his fingers like he’s looking for a trick.
“Swallow them,” the Game Master says.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
I place the key on my tongue. It feels bigger than it looked, filling the space between my tongue and the roof of my mouth. I try not to gag. What kind of trial is this?
I don’t need to know what the trial is to know I don’t want to swallow that key. I shift the key with my tongue, wedging it between my cheek and my teeth like a chipmunk hoarding a nut. I bring the water bottle to my ear, in case the Game Master had any ideas about contaminating us, but I hear nothing. I take a long drink, making a show of swallowing, tilting my head back so he can see my throat work. I drain the entire bottle in desperate gulps.
Nico’s key disappears without fanfare, followed by an equally long drink of water. I watch his throat. Shit. He actually swallowed the thing.
“Wonderful,” the Game Master says, his voice slithering through the room. “Your fourth trial is simple. The building’s exit is located not far from the playing area, but you’ll need a keyto open it. As soon as one of you retrieves your opponent’s key, I’ll unlock the door to the playing area, and the winner will go free. Thirty minutes should be more than enough time for you to retrieve one.”
CHAPTER 47
In Grady’s bedroom, investigators found over forty pencil sketches hidden beneath his mattress, all depicting women in varying states of undress and injury. The violence was a fundamental part of his fantasy. He needed them bleeding before he could want them.
—Inside the Mind of a Teen Monster: The Boy Next Door Killerby Amanda O’Reilly
I turn to Nico and keep my back teeth gently clenched as I say, “Do you want the axe or the scalpel?”
Not even a smile.
“I mean, we could try to throw them up, but I don’t think I can,” I say. “My stomach’s so empty I’m pretty sure it’s started digesting itself.”
Still no reaction.
