by Skylar Finn
“I can’t believe you!” she hissed, closing in. “I told you to leave Lourdes alone. We’re not collaborating behind your back or whatever. I thought you trusted me. I thought we’d gotten past this. Now Lourdes is texting me saying she was attacked in the White Oak parking garage. Are you insane?”
“Did you read the rest of her texts or did you only read far enough to think I’d done something wrong?” I demanded. “I saved Lourdes’s ass. Without me, she’d be wolf meat.”
Jazmin checked her messages again. “Oh. Oops.”
“Yeah,” I said. “We were all trying to figure out why anyone would have put a hit on Lourdes in the first place. Any thoughts?”
Jazmin blew her bangs away from her face. “I don’t know. Even when we were hanging out, it always felt like she was hiding something from me. Hi, Nick. How are you doing?”
“Not very well,” he admitted. “I’m afraid I don’t like all the hubbub that’s happening at my hotel right now. Do you recommend I offer Miss Calvo a ride away from the property?”
“No, let her stay,” I said. “I bet whoever wants to kill her is going to try again.”
“You want to use her as bait?” Nick said.
“Of course not,” I replied. “But if she knows something about White Oak, do you really want her out in the world where you can’t watch her?”
Nick considered this. “I suppose you have a good point.”
“Guys, she’s just a reporter,” Jazmin said. “She’s not out to get anyone.”
“Someone always gets hurt in situations like these,” Nick said. “Believe me, I know that better than anyone.”
“Yes, but—” Jazmin yelped, cutting herself off mid-sentence. Without warning, her leg buckled beneath her. I caught her beneath the armpits and lowered her to a nearby bench.
“Jazmin?” I tapped her cheek as her head lolled to the side. She was totally out of it. “Hey, what just happened? What’s wrong?”
“Her leg,” Nick said, pointing down. “Look at her leg.”
I glanced down. Between the hem of Jazmin’s pants and her socks, the skin was a strange color. I rolled up the leg of her pants and let out a startled gasp.
“Oh, my God,” I said.
The wounds from the basement demon’s bite had turned black, and the skin around the bite was mottled green and yellow. Pus oozed from the wounds, and her veins were darker than they should have been. It hadn’t healed. It had gotten infected. And the infection was spreading.
8
It was starting to feel like I lived in White Oak’s medical clinic. We rushed Jazmin to the exact same emergency room that Riley had just vacated, but the team on call was completely stumped by the wound on her ankle.
“What the hell is this?” the first medic, a fresh-faced guy with muddy brown hair, asked as he cut away the leg of Jazmin’s pants. “Oh, God. It smells awful. Tanner, have you seen anything like this before?”
Tanner was a woman in her late fifties with acne-scarred cheeks and a haircut like an Air Force sergeant. She leaned close to Jazmin’s leg without fear.
“Not in my life,” she said. “It’s clearly blood poisoning. It’s traveling through her veins, but this bite mark… do you know what bit her?”
“No,” I said. No one would believe the real story. My entire body shook from head to toe. Regular blood poisoning was scary enough. If you didn’t catch it fast enough, you were screwed. It was fatal. Demon-induced poisoning was worse. It lay in wait for several days, then snuck up on Jazmin like a snake in the grass. Her face was completely drained of color. She was the color of pasty white glue from head to toe, except for the discoloration around her ankle.
“This is beyond my capabilities,” Tanner said as she squeezed pus out of the wound. “White Oak isn’t fully equipped. We don’t have the resources to take care of her. She needs a hospital. Stat.”
“The roads are still bad,” the intern said. “Emergency services are taking hours to reply to each case. What are we going to do?”
Nick, who had accompanied us to the ER, chimed in. “There’s a helipad on the roof of the main building. We could have her airlifted.”
“Excellent,” Tanner said, nodding her approval at Nick. “Lucas, call Crimson Basin General for an airlift. Go.”
The muddy-haired intern rushed from the room to follow her orders. Jazmin moaned, her eyelids fluttering open and shut. I pushed her sweaty hair away from her face.
“Hey, it’s going to be okay,” I whispered, my voice shaking with uncertainty. I didn’t want to lie to her, but at times like these, a little encouragement went a long way. “Jazmin, we’re going to get you to a hospital so they can take care of you. I’ll be there with you the entire time.”
“No,” she rasped. “Stay here.”
“You don’t want me to go?”
“I want you to, but you can’t.” Her breath wheezed in and out of her lungs like an asthmatic without an inhaler. “You have to stay here. Take care of Riley. Talk to your mother. If you don’t—”
The intern returned. “The airlift’s on its way,” he said. “They said they’d be here in five minutes. We’re supposed to get her on a stretcher and take her to the helipad.”
“Let’s get moving then,” Tanner said. She jumped into action, shoving me away from Jazmin’s bedside as she popped open a portable stretcher. With the intern’s help, she transferred Jazmin from the bed to the stretcher, and they wheeled her out of the ER in a whirl of stress and IV bags.
Nick took the lead, and we rushed through the halls of White Oak to the private elevator in Nick’s office. Once Tanner wheeled the stretcher into place, there was only room for one more person.
“Get in, Lucas,” Tanner told her intern. He did so. Tanner cast us an apologetic glance. “I need him, but don’t worry. I’ll keep you posted on her status.”
“Good luck,” Nick said.
Jazmin used all of her strength to lift her head off the stretcher, but before she could say anything, the elevator doors began to close. I waved goodbye right before she disappeared from sight completely. Then she was gone. I hoped it wasn’t the last time I’d ever see her. Nick’s smooth palm found my hand, but I didn’t want his comfort. I quickly stepped away.
“They’ll take good care of her,” Nick assured me as I tried to evade him. His office was stuffy and dark. I needed to get out of there. “I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
I ducked around him and headed for the door. “You don’t know that.”
“Not to be a bother,” Nick said, “but it sure seems like trouble follows you everywhere you go. Is that a side effect of being an Internet celebrity?”
“It’s a side effect of being me,” I replied as I left his office. “I’m sorry, Nick. I didn’t mean to bring all of this down on you and your resort. It’s better if we don’t interact much anymore. It’ll be easier on everyone.”
“Lucia, wait.” He took my hand and drew me close. “I hope you know that it doesn’t matter to me what you’ve brought to my hotel. I want you to be able to trust me.”
I gazed up into his blue eyes, wishing I could unload all of my problems into his capable hands. “Nick, I just met you, and you don’t know the half of what I’m dealing with.”
“Then explain it to me.”
I tugged my hand out of his. “I can’t. I have to go. Promise me you’ll call if you hear anything about Jazmin?”
“I promise.”
In the suite upstairs, I lost it. With both Jazmin and Riley down for the count, the enormous apartment was empty except for me. It was like walking into a void. All of the most important people had suddenly vanished. They were hurt, and it was my fault for not taking care of my problems in the first place.
“Stella!” I yelled, my voice echoing around the apartment. “Stella!”
“This is not A Streetcar Named Desire,” she replied sardonically as she popped into existence near the kitchen. “Why are you howling my name? I got enough of that from my husband
while he was still alive.”
“Have you been paying attention to what’s happening?” I demanded. “I tried doing it your way and now Riley’s hurt, Jazmin might be dying, and my mother thinks I’m a terrible person.”
“What do you want me to say?” Stella asked. “That it’s my fault? Your presence at King and Queens triggered this chain of events. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that you’re the only person who can make things right again.”
“But you haven’t told me how,” I reminded her. “Other than to look into my past, which so far has been awful advice. Did you know about Jazmin? About the bite on her leg?”
Stella shuddered from head to toe, her red dress fluttering beneath her. “He’s getting stronger. To be able to affect a non-psychic like that.”
“Of course you already know who he is,” I said. “But you’re not going to tell me, are you?
Stella, as I expected, pressed her lips together and did not reply. I slammed my fist against the countertop, rattling the neatly stacked dishes that Jazmin had washed before her fainting spell.
“You aren’t like Odette,” I reminded her. “No one’s making you relive the moment of your death over and over again, so why can’t you just tell me what I need to know?”
“Because I’m in danger too,” she said, quaking. “He wouldn’t hurt Odette—not for long—but he has the power to send me to a place so terrible you can’t imagine what it’s like to reside there.”
“Hell?”
“Whatever you want to call it.”
“What if I can defeat him?” I said. “Then you and Odette and the rest of the ghosts from King and Queens can pass peacefully.”
She let out a humorless chortle. “You? Defeat him? I’d sooner bet on Odette or Riley.”
“If you didn’t have at least some faith in me, you wouldn’t be following me around,” I said. “Face it, Stella. I’m your best bet, so you might as well tell me what I need to know.”
She studied me with mixed apprehension and hope. “I suppose you’re right, but you’ve already begun to figure out what you need to know without my help. The reason Jazmin is so affected by him is because the two of you have such a strong connection. Right now, he’s using it against you. You need to find a way to turn it around. Use your love for Jazmin and Riley to fight against him. It’s the opposite of his own power.”
“But Jazmin’s not psychic. Why would he target her?”
“It doesn’t matter if she’s psychic or not,” Stella said. “She has energy—an aura, a soul, whatever you want to call it—which means she can lend her inner power to you. You draw strength from her. That makes you a bigger threat to him than if you were isolated. Haven’t you noticed the discord in your little group as of late? That’s a result of his influence. He wants you separated from your loved ones so that you have no support.”
“Well, he’s doing a great job so far,” I said. “Riley broke her arm and Jazmin had to be taken to the hospital. She has blood poisoning. Are they going to be able to help her or is a demon bite fatal?”
“There is no cure for a demon bite,” Stella said gravely.
My heart plummeted as if I’d been standing on the edge of a cliff and someone had pushed me off from behind. I free fell toward the craggy rock below, blood pumping into oblivion at the thought of having to live without my best friend.
“So you’re saying she’s basically already dead,” I whispered.
“No, I’m not,” Stella replied. “I’m saying that her fate is linked to yours. Should you choose to go up against the demon of King and Queens, the outcome of said duel will affect you, Jazmin, Riley, and everyone else involved.”
“I can still save them?”
“Yes,” Stella said. “You can still save them. I recommend gathering information. I cannot give it to you without revealing my position. As soon as he realizes that I’m traveling to and from White Oak, he’ll put me down and I won’t be able to help you at all anymore. When the time comes, I promise to show up. Until then, you’re on your own.”
Her image began to fade out, the telltale sign that she was leaving this part of the earth for whatever dimension held ghosts from their true place in death.
“Stella, wait!” I called. “How am I supposed to find out more? Who would know something?”
“He comes to you in your dreams,” Stella said, her voice fuzzy as if it echoed over a poorly-tuned radio. “Go to him in his nightmares.”
I sprang Riley from her room in the medical center that night. She was dead asleep with her bad arm tucked against her chest as if to protect it from harm. Her good arm flopped over the edge of the bed, hyperextended at the elbow. Her tiny muscles clenched and loosened in a rhythmic flow. She was dreaming about something. From the way her toes wriggled, I figured the dream had to do with skiing.
“Riley,” I whispered, tapping her on the chest. “Wake up, kiddo. We’ve got work to do.”
She murmured something and tried to turn over, but the plaster cast on her arm got stuck in the bedsheets. The restriction startled her. She yanked herself free and woke up at the same time. When she shot upright, I barely had enough to time to dodge her incoming head butt.
“Lucia!” she gasped as she hugged herself with both arms. “What are you doing in here? Is everything okay?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “Jazmin’s in the hospital, and we’re running out of time. I think I know how to get the information to get rid of this demon guy, but I need your help. Are you up for it?”
“Right now?”
“Yeah. It has to be while I’m asleep.”
Riley swung her legs out of the bed. “Tell me you brought me a pair of pants because this gown is a bit airy in the back.”
I tossed her a pair of sweatpants and a sweater that I’d brought her from the room. “Shake a leg, kid. Let’s get this show on the road.”
White Oak was somehow eerier than King and Queens at night. The silver moonlight filtered in through the lookout, casting a ghastly filter across the lobby. Devoid of guests, the resort’s modern flair lacked warmth. The sharply-angled designs were cold and creepy. The exposed ceiling beams threw long shadows across the floor, like thin bridges that threatened to buckle underfoot, sending passersby to the depths of the rushing river below. I was thoroughly creeped out, but Riley made the empty lobby her playground.
“This is awesome,” she whisper-yelled, jumping onto the nearest white leather sofa to hop up and down. Her purple cast did nothing to hinder her excitement. “We should do this every night.”
“You’re going to get footprints on the fabric,” I scolded her.
“So what?” She deliberately stomped her feet. “Nick’s probably got a steam cleaner on speed dial.” She leapt from one couch to the next with a gleeful chuckle. “This is the most fun I’ve had in ages. You should try it.”
“Maybe once we’ve gotten rid of this demon ghost thing that’s trying to kill us all,” I said. “I broke you out of jail for a reason, remember?”
She jumped high then kicked her legs straight out in front of her so that she landed on her butt. If her resulting wince was any indication, the leather couch wasn’t as kind to her tailbone as she thought it would be.
“You’re right,” she said, rubbing her butt. “What’s the plan? I’m assuming you have a plan.”
I gestured for her to follow me. “I spent the whole day researching people like us. Boy, you wouldn’t believe how many creepy subReddits there are on this crap, but I finally talked to a couple people who have experienced stuff like this before.”
“Uh-huh,” Riley said. “So what are we doing in this gym?”
“I thought we could use the mat room in case this gets weird.”
The mat room was exactly what it sounded like. It was a wide space free of any equipment or furniture and covered wall-to-wall in padded polyester mats. From what I’d heard in my limited time at White Oak, people did all sorts of things in here from mixed martial arts t
o yoga. The reason I knew about it was because Jazmin had practiced some of her Brazilian Jiu Jitsu rolls in here a few days ago. I ushered Riley inside and locked the door behind her.
We laid a few of the white complimentary towels on the mats to make it more comfortable. I rolled one up and stuck it behind my neck as a pillow. Then I lay flat on the floor as Riley knelt beside me.
“Now what?” she asked.
“Check my bag,” I told her. “I brought everything we need, including the instructions.”
She rifled through the small backpack I’d toted along with me, pulling out white candles, chalk, and a wrinkled sheet of paper covered in my handwritten notes. Lastly, she removed a bottle full of murky green water. She unscrewed the cap and sniffed it.
“Oh God,” she said, screwing up her face at the smell. “Please tell me you’re not going to drink this.”
“We both are,” I said. “It’s Calea. One of the sub-Redditors mentioned it. It’s known as the Mexican Dream Herb. Apparently, it enhances lucid dreaming, and it’s particularly effective for psychics.”
“Lucia, this smells like dead squirrels.”
“Would you shut up? Plug your nose and drink it.”
“Why do I have to go first?” She shoved the bottle at me. “You’re the one falling asleep. I don’t need this crap.”
“We’re connected, remember?” I caught a whiff of the Calea tea’s pungent odor and nearly gagged. I sat up, held my breath, and chugged half the bottle. It tasted better than it smelled, but not by much. I shivered as the disgusting brew hit my stomach and handed Riley the bottle. “Ugh. Your turn.”
Riley eyed the pieces swirling around in the water. “How did you do that so quickly?”
“Years of practice.” I rested my head on the towel as my vision began to swim. The tea’s effect was already setting in. “You’ll understand when you get to college.”
“Psh. College. I’ll be lucky if I make it to high school. My family drops like flies, remember?”
“Don’t say that!”
“Whatever. Here goes nothing.”