As the cab pulled away, Gary and I looked at the building in front of us.
“He’s staying in a hotel?”
It wasn’t exactly a hotel. It was billed as a hotel, but it was in worse shape than a hostel. To me, it was the worst excuse for a rented living space I had ever seen. The O and T in the lit up “HOTEL” sign were out; the windows were barred and some were broken; the air conditioners were leaking blue liquids onto the sidewalk. A prostitute and her street-side agent both stopped in front of the doors and were actually scared to enter.
Gary said that there was a large spot of darkness burning on the fourth floor, so we took the rickety elevator up.
“Let me do the talking,” I told Gary who, as always, complied without complaint. In my mind, it was very simple. I was going to play the adoring fan role and ask Mason if I could get an autograph. Whether he gave me one or not, I would have found out where he lived and therefore be one step closer to beating him. I didn’t think twice that Captain Cross was staying in a shabby looking hotel. Remembering the rundown set and general shoddiness of the kid’s show was all I needed for a reference. Mason wasn’t making a dime dressed as a TV pirate. To me, living in a shithole like the one I was walking into, with the scummy looking desk attendant eyeing me and the elevator having seizures on its way up, was the kind of thing that would make Mason Scarborough want to throw his life away to a Shade for. It definitely justified why he would be a vengeful prick willing to get possessed by a demon.
The carpets on the fourth floor hallway ran from sticky to soaked to nonexistent. I tried my best not to touch anything as the air smelled like someone poured burnt beans on a wet dog and then tried to flush it.
Gary stopped us at 4J and shot me a thumbs up. I knocked.
Hearing footsteps approaching the door, I fixed myself as much as I could, flashed my most fanatical smile, and started “heartthrob” screaming as the door opened. Unfortunately, a second scream, this one of pure terror, replied to mine when the door finally swung opened.
“Mandy?”
“Petty?”
My sister was dressed in wrinkled sweats and a large T-shirt with what appeared to be a huge spaghetti sauce stain on the bottom. Her hair was tossed up in a messy scrunchie. She tried slamming the door on me, but I was too quick. I put my shoulder into it and pushed in time to burst in.
The room was a mess, with every piece of luggage Petty had brought with her strewn around the room. Saint, his fur mangy and wild, picked his head up from the pile of clothes he had turned into a fortress, probably to protect him from the rats.
Petty didn’t know where to go. “Shit.”
“Shit is right, sister darling. I would love to know why the hell you’re still here.”
She looked panicked. If we weren’t on the fourth floor, I am damn sure she would’ve tried the window. “How the hell did you find me? I-I-I …”
I quickly scanned the room and spotted three dresses hanging up. Only three dresses: the one she had come in, the one she wore to my apartment, and the plum one from the restaurant. I only needed one more piece of incriminating evidence and, luckily, she was wearing it.
“Petty. That stain on your ‘I heart NY’ sweater. Only one thing can make that stain on clothes. Only one thing, Petty!”
“Um. Why, whatever do you mean, deary?” Noticing the blotch, she stretched the bottom of her sweater and tried to scratch it out with a nail. “Oh.Vodka truffle sauce is such a pain to—”
“Only one chef makes sauce like that. And his name ends in Boyardee, bitch!”
Petty threw her hands up in frustration. “Okay! O-kay. What do you want me to say here? What? You have me by the balls?”
“Have you by the … Petty. Where is your accent?”
“Oh shit.”
“RUN BITCH! OMMAGAHD! RUN BITCH! OMMAGAHD!”
“Gary!” I shouted. “This is a highly stressful situation I’m dealing with here.”
Gary walked in from the hallway holding his phone again. “It’s Phil. He’s downstairs in the lobby.” He jumped back on the phone. He jumped back off. “Never mind. He’s on his way up.”
“Craaap!” I was split by wanting to pummel my good for nothing sister and having to defend myself against a loon. “Gary. Go stop Phil at the staircase. No! Wait! On second thought, stay here.” I picked up an umbrella and pointed it at Petty. “Don’t you dare let her leave.”
Gary crossed his heart. “Got it!”
I ran around the bend in the hallway as the loud clank of the elevator signaled the opening of the door. Phil rushed out, and with a head full of steam, charged at me.
“I’m going to kill you!”
“Love to see you try,” I said, and swung the umbrella at his head. It was fairly easy to dodge, but instead it connected with the side of his head with a dull thud. His whole body corkscrewed in midair and then went crashing down. But he leapt up, immediately holding his swollen eye.
“Ow! What the hell, Grey?”
“Uh. Huh?”
Phil ran passed me, wobbling but headstrong, and I chased him in a slightly confused trot. After running into my sister’s room, he froze in the doorway, and then fell back on his ass. His face was pale as he turned around and threw up.
I jumped over him and what I saw in the room made me lightheaded. I dropped the umbrella.
Petty was on the ground, her head turned to the side, eyes bloodshot and open. She wasn’t moving. She wasn’t breathing. There were thick bruises forming on her neck, which seemed violently gnarled to one side. She looked like a doll—lifelike, but completely wrong. Totally wrong.
Gary was straddling her.
He turned around, eyes glowing, mouth ripping open. “I didn’t let her leave.”
And then his voice started warping. “I didn’t let her leave.”
The rest was a full frontal nightmare. He lunged at me, skin spreading against the air like a blanket, growing impossibly wide like a wave of black tar. I turned back into the hallway to run, but the weight toppled me to the ground. I felt my feet slide into Gary’s gaping mouth, my muscles growing tighter as I tried digging my nails into the ground. White blotches scattered around my sightline and all the sound around me became muffled.
The last thing I saw, running on all fours toward me in the hallway, was my roommate—its golden eyes beaming like headlights, fire leaping from its mouth.
CHAPTER 22
“Mandy?”
This voice seemed to be calling me from far away.
“Mandy?”
Like echoes. Bouncing around in the dark.
“Mandy, can you hear me?”
Something startled me awake. It was dark when I opened my eyes and my body hurt like all hell. I couldn’t tell where I was, or what had happened to me. But I recognized that voice.
“Petty?” The word was lost in my throat; it came out sounding like a croak. I was dying of thirst.
Out of the darkness to my right, something moved closer. It floated as if unattached to this world or the next. In the dark, the silhouette appeared black and white. It came into view: a torso, arms. There was wild dark hair around the shoulders. This person sat down next to me and the mattress sagged on that side with their weight.
“Petty?”
“Yeah, Mandy. It’s me.”
When I reached out, I felt her arm, then shoulder, then hair. She was real. I wasn’t dreaming. However, I still couldn’t see her face.
“Petty, it’s dark.”
She didn’t reply. I tried to listen to her breathing, but couldn’t.
“Petty?”
“Yeah?”
“The last thing I remember … I remember seeing you dead.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
In the silence, in the darkness, something made me feel uneasy. I tried sittin
g up, but even more bolts of pain leapt through my body. Nothing seemed broken, but then again, nothing seemed to be connected to me. I needed something to drink. My head was swimming in the shadows of the room.
“Why are you here?”
“W-where else should I be?” Petty stammered.
Strings of memory started coming to me, forming loose knots, broad pictures. “You were supposed to leave. You were supposed to be long gone. But I found you. I found you staying in a crappy hotel—”
“I can explain,” she began, cutting me off.
“… probably the entire time. Probably sucking up Mom and Dad’s savings.” I dragged myself up. Pain ripped through my back and legs but it only goaded me on. “If I didn’t see you die, if that was a dream or a nightmare or whatever it was, then how come you’re here? How come you didn’t go back home?”
“Okay, Mandy. L-let’s calm down, now.” She shook her head in the darkness. Maybe she was looking around.
“Where’s your stupid accent now, Petty?”
She got up and I tried grabbing her, but I slumped out of bed and hit the floor like a wet mop. My eyes were getting adjusted and my surroundings were no longer fuzzy. We were in my room—our room. The room we shared as kids in my parents’ apartment.
I slowly dragged myself over to the light switch.
“You died, Petty.”
“Wait. Amanda. There’s something you need to know first.” Seeing that this wasn’t stopping me sent Petty into a panic, screaming, “Barnem, get your ass in here!”
“How do you know—”
“You have to relax, sis. The Shade nearly killed you.
“How do you … know …” The words were sloshing around in my mouth but weren’t coming out. I tasted a pang of wetness, and as I reached for the switch, I realized that the blood I was tasting was dripping down from my nose.
“Barnem!
I got to the light before she could call him again.
The bulb going on was like a nuclear explosion against my eyes. I braced myself against the wall as even my ears screeched. With my senses coming back down to earth, I could only see Petty standing in the middle of the room, her face buried in her hands.
Tackling my sister, I hugged her. I don’t know what came over me. I was pissed, angry, relieved, concussed, delirious, and lonely. It was everything. Everything rolled into one. I didn’t say anything. I held her small frame, my face drowning in her hair that was now loose and wild and free.
But something wasn’t right. Not only was Petty not hugging me back, but she was freezing to the touch. Looking at it in the lamplight, I saw that her skin was beyond pale, almost white. Her fingernails were jet black.
I backed off.
“You’re not …” I was trembling. The walls to the room churned. “You’re not my sister.”
Petty lowered her hands and dropped them to her side. Her face was white as well, as if her skin was a blank canvas. As she opened her mouth to speak, I saw that every tooth was blackened and her tongue was gray. But what stood out were her eyes—black ovals with brown pupils at their centers.
I couldn’t tell if she was screaming at me or for Barnem as I hit the ground.
****
I woke up in the room again, tucked under some blankets, and with a bucket of vomit sitting nearby, possibly mine. The moment I stirred, the figure sitting in the darkness moved with an immediate focus. It handed me a cup of water which I grasped with two hands to guide to my mouth.
“Please don’t try getting up again,” Barnem said in a half whine. “You’re what, a hundred and twenty pounds with keys in your pocket? You look light, but … Jesus.”
It took me forever to form the words in my mouth, to push the breath out of my throat, to mold the sound with which he could finally hear me as I told him, “Fuck … you.”
“No, seriously. It’s pretty incredible how much you weigh when you consider that you’ve lived off a diet of ramen noodles. You must have the most compact fat cells in modern science.”
I let him revel in his stupid quip while I gathered myself and rolled onto my back. “Did I just have a nightmare?”
“That wasn’t a nightmare,” the Seraph said slowly.
I sighed. “The ‘fuck you’ was for something else, FYI.”
“Oh?”
“At the start of this all, right when Palls showed up, so did you. After living upstairs for years, poof. Here you are. Then after disappearing for weeks, there you are again. Right on my television. You were sitting in that park.”
“Okay.” The Seraph was sitting in one of my foldable chair, tipped back against the door, hands behind his head. I couldn’t see his face so I wasn’t sure if he was going to be serious or smiling or even shocked by what I was about to say.
“I always wondered if it was all coincidence.”
“Spit it out, Grey.”
“You showed up because you knew where Palls was going to strike next. You were sitting on that park bench because you knew Gary was a Shade. Those damn secrets you keep locked in that head of yours puts everyone—not me, but everyone—in fucking danger. And now my sister … And now Petty …” When the words couldn’t come out, I gave up.
“It was for the greater good.”
“Spare me the sermon.”
“That’s just like you, you know? Can’t believe in a high power, one that has this all set to a plan already.”
“Right. A plan.” I used my arms to slide my heavy legs into place. “Not sure if this is possible. You probably know, but to that I’m going to say ‘Go to hell, Barnem’. And I’m going to mean it because one of these days, I’m going to have the energy and the space to punch you right on your fucking face.”
The Seraph snickered. “When that day comes, Grey, I’ll let you.”
We both sat silently in the darkness. I couldn’t trust him. Maybe I should have never trusted him. But he still had more answers that he wasn’t keen on sharing. “What the hell happened to her, Barnem? What happened to Petty?”
The Seraph sat up. “Hell if I know the details, Grey. You might blame me for keeping secrets, but even I don’t understand it all. What I do know is that your Shade came and saved the day. Again.”
I closed my eyes as I relived the sight of my roommate bounding toward me like a giant hellcat. But then I saw the images of Petty’s broken body on the floor of that apartment. The welts on her neck. The life leaving her eyes.
She hadn’t left the city. She lied and had been there the entire time. I was starting to feel the anger surge inside of me again, but mixed with grief, it only began to flood my lungs with pressure. I wanted to cry, but I also felt that it wouldn’t change a damn thing.
Barnem cleared his throat. “You know, I might be the last person you want to get advice from right now, Grey. I get it. I also don’t give a shit, so here it goes. There are things I do that are quote/unquote human. I eat and shit. I don’t hiccup but I do sneeze and cough. I can get drunk and high. Man, can I get high. Woo! But there are other things I can’t do. Like sex. What’s the big deal? Or dreaming. What’s up with that? Or ice cream.”
I scoffed. “You’re telling me Seraphs can’t eat ice cream?”
Barnem grimaced. “Huh? No, no. Lactose intolerant.”
“Ah.”
“But kin …” he began. “Brothers. Sisters. Sons, daughters, aunties, nephews. First or second cousins thrice removed. Everything about blood. About family. It’s a mess. The whole thing. I mean, it kind of makes sense. If the Bible was a reality show that only featured its brothers and sisters, you would have at least ten seasons of material.”
I sighed. The entire thing was a mess. I knew Petty showing up was going to really screw things up. But I would have never known how epically it would go down.
“She needs you now, Grey. She’s outside waiting to talk to you. H
ow that talk ends up happening, or even if it goes down at all, is up to you. But let me say one thing and I’ll back off, let you breathe a bit. You’ve had more people try and kill you in this last month than most of the dictators I’ve met over the centuries. And yeah, you got some grit. I can’t say I would have ever thought someone like you would still be breathing after all of this. But the stupid truth staring you right in the face is that you aren’t going to do this alone. You’re going to need me. Hell, you’re going to need that shadowy thing outside if you want to keep that head attached to your shoulders. You have people who want to support you and have been there. You went all the way to the park to get me off of that bench, remember? So maybe for the first time in your life, you should start depending on other people. Let us help you.”
He put his hands up and let them fall into his lap.
I slid the rest of the way out of bed and my knees shook under my weight. I clasped the wall, slid, slipped, and Barnem caught me.
“Let’s go see your sister, Grey,” he said, and guided me to the door.
CHAPTER 23
Considering that it involved a demon, an asshole Seraph, a negligent prick who let someone get murdered, the person who got murdered, and me—our little “family meeting” was like any ordinary one.
I tried keeping my calm. Tried to keep my composure. What didn’t help was the way the demon, Phil, and Petty were acting: like three kids pulled into the principal’s office for participating in a homicide. I tried to keeping it all together.
And I lasted a good minute.
“I’m going to fucking kill you.”
Sitting side by side on the couch, the three of them wondered who I was talking to. Phil, questioningly, pointed to himself.
“I mean all three, but let’s start with you and how you lied about the visit you had from a ‘big, black bird’.” Phil held his hands up. He looked so distraught that I started feeling sorry for him. Thankfully, that didn’t last long. “Speak or I’ll beat you with whatever energy I have left,” I said holding up my fist. This, of course, was a half assed threat. It took everything out of me to swivel my elbow, prop up my arm, and bare those knuckles. The demon had tried to possess me and I was learning how much a thing like that takes its toll on you. But half assed or not, I could tell from Phil’s face that it was extremely effective.
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