But why would she do that?
Why would she play a game with me? Did she think I was too slow to catch on to that, because I was onto her and—
Slow.
Someone else had said that word to me recently…
Oh, right. Ice’s note. Too slow.
Suddenly, I wished that I hadn’t crumpled that shit up. What if there was something in that note, some kind of clue? I wouldn’t put it past Ice, to be honest. He was the manipulative one, the one who liked to fuck with people’s heads. He wouldn’t be able to resist making it obvious…
Oh, shit.
I knew where he was.
CHAPTER TEN
Shell
I was sitting in the passenger seat of Cade’s car, running my fingers through my wet, tangled hair as Cade careened around the corner, barely getting through the intersection before the light changed. “Hey,” I said, grabbing the handhold on the ceiling. “Can you slow down?”
“Thought you’d be eager to find your sister.” He stared straight ahead, and the car was still hurtling down the road.
“I am,” I said. “That’s why I left without even combing my hair. But you’re going to get us pulled over, and that’s going to make it take even longer.”
He glanced at me, and then back at the road. The car slowed a bit. Not all the way down to the level of the speed limit, but at least not warp speed anymore.
“So, how do you know that’s where he is again?” I said.
“It was in the note. He said, ‘Too slow.’ So, that could only mean this place. He left me a little clue, and I figured it out.”
“But I don’t get it,” I said.
“Of course you don’t.”
“It’s an inside thing? Something only the two of you understand?”
“Slow,” he said. “Mental hospital. It’s obvious.”
“Um, it’s not.”
“A mental hospital,” he said. “One that’s been closed down for nearly twenty years, so it’s old enough that they used to do lobotomies there. They keep trying to tear it down, but every time the project gets underway, whoever is funding it backs out.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard about the place,” I said. “But I still don’t see what it has to do with being slow.”
He glanced at me again, like I was an idiot.
“What?” I said.
“Lobotomies.”
“So?”
“People who have lobotomies are slow. Too slow. Like the note.”
I raked my hands through my hair. “I think you’re just making connections that aren’t even there.”
He laughed. “You would think that. Because you’ve never done this before.”
“And you spend all of your time chasing psychopaths around trying to save girls?”
“Point,” he admitted. “But you’ve just got to trust me. It’s a clue. That’s what it means. And we’re on our way to the place where we’ll find Starling.”
“But I saw a story about that on the news,” I said. “They were filming the place, talking about how kids like to break in there during Halloween and how it’s haunted and all of that. Which I don’t believe, incidentally. But still, it’s huge. We could search the place for days and not find them.”
“No, I know where she’ll be,” he said.
“How could you know that?”
“Because I know him, and he and I have talked about mental hospitals before.”
“Well, that’s why you know he’s there, then. Because of that conversation, not because of the clue in the note.”
“No.” He shook his head. “The conversation, it was a long time ago, and it was actually about how he’d like to kill someone in a hospital, so that he could take advantage of the stuff that’s in the hospital for the purposes of torturing people.”
My whole body went cold. It was as if I’d forgotten all about the reason Cade and I were together in the first place. Starling was in danger. Real danger. And I was too worried about getting laid and whether or not the guy liked me back to even worry about her.
God, that was so like me.
Not the preoccupation with sex part. That was kind of new. But the fact that I was thinking of myself instead of Starling? The fact that she was being hurt and I wasn’t even worried about her? Yeah, that was the kind of sister I typically was.
I sucked.
I dragged a hand over my face. “He’s going to torture her?”
He gripped the steering wheel. “He, uh, likes torturing people. He gets off on it. He likes pain.”
“But you don’t, right?” Suddenly, that was important to me.
His grip on the steering wheel tightened.
I thought about him spanking me earlier. That hadn’t really hurt, but maybe it was just part of his sick, twisted—
“Look, Shell, you should know… I’m not a good guy.”
Fuck. I sat back in my seat. “You like torturing people too?”
“No. Not…” His jaw twitched. “I don’t do it. It’s bad for business. You want to succeed knocking people off, then you learn to do it quick and clean, and torturing someone first is neither.”
“But do you like it?” My voice was tiny.
He didn’t say anything.
I grabbed the handhold again, and I squeezed it hard. I had sex with him. I let him hurt me. “Is that why you spanked me? If you had your way, would you hurt me worse? Really hurt me?”
“No.” He shot a glance at me. “Why would you think that?”
“Well—”
“No, I guess I can see why you would think that.” He sighed. “I like control. I like being in control of someone else. I like… but it’s not about enjoying pain for me. I’m not a sadist. I’m just…” His voice dropped several octaves, so that it was barely audible. “I do like killing. I’m good at it, and I like it, and I’m not a good guy. And you… you should probably stay away from me.”
I blinked. He liked killing? Liked it.
I knew that he killed people. I also knew he had a code. But I guessed that if you needed a code, it was probably because you were tempted to do things outside of the code. Like, I didn’t need a code at all. I would never kill someone. Not anyone, ever.
Well.
Maybe I would kill Frazier Smith. If I had the chance. Maybe I would. Something told me that guy was contributing nothing useful to the world.
“Anyway,” continued Cade in a subdued voice, “we were talking about torture. It was kind of this thing where we were sharing our fantasies about the perfect kill.”
Oh, God. He fantasized about killing people. Oh. My. God.
“And,” he kept going, “he was talking about doing things in a hospital. But then he started talking about a mental hospital, about shock therapy and lobotomies and—”
I made a mewling noise, cringing and thinking of Starling.
“Sorry,” said Cade. “Maybe that was too much information.”
“No, I need to know,” I said. “When I find her, whatever he’s done to her—”
“She’ll be fine,” said Cade. “Ice promised us he wouldn’t hurt her.”
“You said we couldn’t trust him.”
“It was just last night,” said Cade. “We’ll get there before he can do anything.”
I pressed my forehead into the window. “What was yours?”
“Mine?”
“Your fantasy? Your perfect kill?” My voice came out dripping with disgust.
But he didn’t respond.
* * *
Shell
I didn’t want to split up inside the mental hospital, because it was creepy as hell in there. It was nearly noon, but inside, there was no electricity, and the doors were shut tight on either sides of the hallways, so that the only light filtered through dirty windows at the ends. The light was gloomy and ghostly. Gray. And it barely penetrated.
The place was dark and silent and strangely barren.
Sure, there was the odd gurney in the hallway, complete with
unbuckled restraints that hung open at the corners.
But for a place that was frequented by teenagers, it was surprisingly clear of the stuff we’d seen in the other building. No beer bottles, cigarette butts, graffiti. It was as if this place hadn’t been touched for twenty years.
And I didn’t believe in ghosts or anything like that. I didn’t fall for that stupid stuff where people go into places with voltmeters and infared cameras and claim that spirits are communicating with them. Whatever. That’s bullshit.
But…
Well, I couldn’t account for the fact that the minute we stepped into that place, I felt like we weren’t alone. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s that uncanny itch at the back of your neck that tells you to turn around and check to see if something is watching.
A holdover from the days when we lived in the wild, when we were wary of predators or something. A piece of my lizard brain lighting up, screaming at me that this place wasn’t safe.
So, I really didn’t want to split up.
Honestly, even though Cade had just told me that he enjoyed killing people and that he was a bad person, I wanted to clutch his arm and huddle close to him, because I was afraid.
But he was adamant. “This is the best way. I’m going to go and make some noise, and I’ll attract his attention. That means he’ll leave Starling alone. You need to get to where she is so that you can get her out of here. It’ll be safer for you if you don’t see him anyway.”
“But… but…” I tried to think of a good reason.
“You’re not scared, are you?”
I looked around at the tall, metal doors looming above me in the gray light. “No,” I said in a small voice.
“Good. Because trust me, Ice is the only thing to be scared of in this place. He’s the boogeyman.”
Great. Thanks for that. Because now I wasn’t only going to be worried about ghosts and whatever strange otherworldly presence I seemed to be sensing, I was also going to be worried that Ice was lurking somewhere around the next corner, holding a long, thin sharp tool once used for lobotomies, which would already be dripping with my sister’s blood and brain matter—
“It’s just down the hall and down the stairs,” said Cade. “You’ll be fine.”
I tried to smile at him. I couldn’t. I wanted to clench my hands into fists and beat his chest with them until he agreed to take me with him and not leave me alone.
But he was already walking off in the opposite direction.
Into the dark.
I watched him go.
He was swallowed up by shadows, but I could still hear his footsteps.
I waited.
But then I couldn’t hear those anymore either.
It was completely silent.
I swallowed hard. I didn’t want to move, but I knew that I had to. So, I slowly picked up my foot and took one step in the direction that Cade had told me to go.
It felt… wrong, as if I was walking against invisible resistance in the air.
I do not believe in ghosts, I thought. Hard.
I pressed forward. I decided that I would simply look down at the floor, not anywhere else. I could only see a few feet ahead of me very well anyway. Everything was all ominous gray shadows.
I peered at my feet. I had chosen to wear a pair of pale blue tennis shoes. They were covered in sparkles, and they had white laces. I didn’t wear them all that often, so they were still quite white and clean.
After this little trip to the dirty mental asylum, they might not be, though.
I thought of them spattered with blood, because the next door, two feet ahead of me, was going to fly open, and Ice was going to drag me inside and slash my throat, and my blood was going to spray everywhere.
I shook myself.
That wasn’t going to happen.
Despite my intention to look only at the floor, I couldn’t help but steal a glance over my shoulder.
Something moved in the periphery of my vision.
I snapped my head back, my body electrified. What the hell had that been?
I didn’t see anything now. It had looked like a shadow, like nothing but darkness.
I gulped.
“I do not believe in ghosts,” I whispered.
And suddenly, the air seemed chillier.
I shivered, hugging myself.
In the distance, there was a loud crash and the sound of hysterical laughter.
I jumped.
And then I remembered that was Cade. He was supposed to make noise, draw Ice out.
“You’re being stupid,” I muttered to myself. “Think about Starling. Focus on her. There’s nothing in this place that can hurt you.”
Footsteps.
They were coming from the opposite direction that Cade had gone, the direction that I was walking towards.
They were coming fast. It was the sound of someone running.
The spirit of some mental patient, trying to escape, running through the halls for all eternity?
Something rounded the corner, running out ahead of the window. It was a man in a ski mask.
Fuck.
Ice.
My heart stuttering, I threw myself sideways, into the very room that I had thought he would pull me into.
Inside, it was brightly lit, sunlight streaming through a wall of windows. The room was empty except for a tattered dividing curtain, which was half falling off the rungs. I flattened myself against the wall, trying desperately not to breathe very loudly.
Had he seen me?
I tried to hear his footsteps, but it seemed like my damned heart was beating so loudly…
But there they were.
He was still going fast, and he was coming up the hallway.
I couldn’t be sure if he was coming for me, or if he was going to go past me.
I held my breath.
I clutched at the wall, my fingernails against the concrete.
The footsteps grew nearer.
My body shook.
Nearer still.
Oh, God, he had seen me. He was going to come in here, and all those visions I’d seen of him, they were going to come true. He was going to cut me to pieces, and all the time, I would only see his eyes, never his face. His damned eyes would be the last thing I saw before I died.
I cringed, wishing I could melt into the wall.
And the footsteps passed me.
I sagged against the wall, letting out my breath.
He hadn’t seen me after all.
I waited for several minutes—long minutes—just to be sure that he was gone.
And then I peered out into the hallway.
Nothing there.
I stepped out of the room and darted down the hallway. I had to get to Starling.
* * *
Cade
“Well, you found me.” Ice’s voice.
I turned. I was in what had once been some kind of meeting room. It was vast, with big windows, full of overturned couches, the stuffing coming out on the floor. They were all probably motels for mice these days.
Ice was across the room from me, framed in a doorway. He was still wearing his mask.
“Hiding as always, I see.”
He stepped into the room. “I thought I explained the mask to you.”
I nodded slowly. “Oh, yeah, I remember. You’re so fucked up in the head that you actually think the mask is the real you.”
He laughed. “I’m fucked in the head? You’re the one who can’t even accept what you are. All your stupid rules, Cade. You know that you want all the things that I want. You just won’t let yourself.”
“Just because I want something doesn’t mean I should take it,” I said. “There are better reasons to be alive on earth than selfish ones.”
He snorted, taking a few more steps into the room. “Yes, you’re a real humanitarian.”
“You’ll want to take off the mask, Ice,” I said. “It’s going to be an impediment to this interaction we’re about to have.” And I stro
de across the room to stand directly in front of him.
He didn’t take off the mask. “Interaction? And here I thought you’d just put a bullet in my back, the way you do all your other hits.”
“I’m not here to kill you.”
“Don’t even look them in the eye, do you? Afraid you’ll enjoy watching them die, aren’t you? Afraid that if you watch, you’ll get so hooked that you won’t be able to stop.”
I grimaced. “Take off the mask.”
“Why run from it? Why not be what we are? You and I together, we could have so much fun, Cade. We could paint the walls with blood.” When he said it, there was a wistful longing in his voice.
And I felt the tug of it too. I wasn’t going to deny that I felt it. But I didn’t much appreciate his bringing it up, rubbing my face in it. This was all my private struggle, and I’d shared it with him, because I had hoped that I’d find a kindred spirit in Ice. I was always so terribly alone, and I wanted him to be just like me, so that someone, anyone, could understand.
“Why should I take off the mask?” he said.
I slugged him. My fist in his jaw. It was muffled a little bit by the knit fabric, but it stung my knuckles anyway.
His head whipped to one side. Then he turned back to look at me, surprise in his eyes.
“Take off the mask,” I said. “Or you won’t see the next one coming either.”
Ice ripped the mask off his head, and there he was—just a normal looking guy with freckles and red hair. A ginger, I thought, smirking. He bared his teeth and dove onto me.
I sidestepped. “If you want to hurt someone, Ice, hurt me.”
Ice was behind me now. “I never wanted to hurt you, Cade. All I wanted was for you to understand. And you do. And yet you refuse—” He ran for me, leaping on my back.
I shook at him, trying to get him off, my hands going to his hands, which were holding onto my shoulders.
He brought his legs around my hips. He tightened his arms around my neck. “I don’t want to kill you,” he said in my ear. “But if I have to, I will.”
I went down on one knee, fighting to get air. I struggled against him, but I couldn’t get free.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
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