Smoke Show (Tess Skye Book 2)

by D. N. Erikson

  “No promises.”

  “That’s the spirit.” I carefully extract the folded piece of paper containing her and Emmy’s DM conversation. “Here.”

  I hold it out, but don’t fully extend my arm.

  Rosie sits still for a moment, waiting for me to give it to her. Then with an annoyed grunt, she leans forward, lifting herself slightly out of the chair. The gun points off to the side wall.

  She grabs the sheet of paper. I grab her wrist.

  She tries to jerk free, but I have the tiny golden pistol secured firmly in my own hands in less than a second.

  “Figured this thing had to be plastic.” I flick the barrel with my nail. “But it’s solid steel. Better construction than I thought.”

  Rosie, for her part, is frozen in a half-standing, half-sitting position, looking about ready to have a heart attack. “A-anything you want.”

  “For fuck’s sake.” I remove the magazine and pop the chambered round out. “I’m not going to shoot you.”

  I toss her the magazine to prove my trustworthiness, but slide the single round into my jeans along with the gun.

  She starts breathing semi-normally again, but her brow remains knitted in a tapestry of worry.

  Finally, she says, “If I tell you about Project Ghost, you’ll go?”

  “Unless you can tell me where Emmy is, then yeah, that’s all I’m looking for.”

  Rosie cracks her knuckles. “I wish I knew where she was. Or if she was even still alive.”

  “Then just what you know Project Ghost.”

  “I think you guessed the gist already.”

  “Let’s see if my guess is correct.”

  She nods. “She wanted to disappear.”

  “As a marketing stunt?”

  “It started that way.” Rosie tucks her raven hair over the diamonds dangling from her ear and sighs. “Then it evolved.”

  “Evolved into what?”

  “An actual way out.”

  “Why? She was making millions. Had tons of fans. Her fame was still growing. Heard she landed a role in that new franchise. What’s it called?”

  “Dino Space Warrior.”

  “Yeah, that one,” I say. “A modern classic, no doubt.”

  “You can’t imagine the pressure. There’s no escape. No rest. It’s relentless.”

  I think back over the past year, and the still fragmented memories floating around in my head. Not just my own, but those left behind from the many forced Soulwalks. All as the proverbial poison Sword of Damocles hung over the town’s water supply.

  “I might have an idea about the pressure,” I say.

  “You have no damn clue.” Rosie snaps, her nose wrinkling in derision. “Millions worshipping at your feet, while waiting to tear your legs off if you don’t live up to their impossible expectations.”

  “Agree to disagree, on that point,” I say. “So Emmy faked her disappearance?”

  Rosie opens her mouth as if to respond, only to quickly shut it.

  “You were about to say something.”

  “Just thought I had to sneeze.”

  “You may not believe me,” I say. “But I am trying to keep her safe. And at this point, I’m not sure anyone else is even trying to find her.”

  “Except the hundred other parasites that’ll descend on this town because of Hex’s reward.” Rosie stands up straight. “No, you’re just like the rest of them.”

  “You’re a rather poor judge of character.”

  “Cynicism comes with the territory.” She points an angry finger at the cracked door. “I’ll send you a bill for the glass. It was imported.”

  “I’ll be keeping this, then.” I pat my back pocket where the pistol and round currently reside. Before I leave, I stop in the doorway. “I didn’t ask you about the chief.”

  She smooths out her dress, trying to hide her fear beneath a mask of immense irritation. But it can’t disguise her quivering lip. “I have a lot of work to do, if you don’t mind.”

  “Chief Bobby Summers was going to help Emmy disappear, right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I knew Hex was broke before I came here,” I say, trying once last time to establish that I can be somewhat trusted. “This isn’t about getting his money. Because there isn’t any.”

  “Fine, goddamnit.” Rosie throws her arms up in exasperated surrender. “Emmy said that the police chief himself was willing to help. Had it all planned out for her, Delia, and Stacey to just disappear.”

  “Stacey?” I think back to the drunken little pink dragon causing a scene at the Red Whale. That’s the first I’ve ever heard her name linked to the disappearance and murder.

  And the first I’ve heard of all three of them wanting out.

  “It was batshit crazy. Career suicide. Illegal. I tried to stop them.”

  I recall the memory fragment in Delia’s house that played repeatedly when I was Soulwalking in her body. Emmy and her being chased through the halls by someone unknown. Stacey definitely wasn’t there.

  I say, “You know why Stacey didn’t show?”

  “Could be anything with her. I’d call her a train wreck, but that’d be an insult to train wrecks.”

  Harsh, but based on what I saw last night—and the news that’s trickled out regarding Stacey’s exploits over the past few years—pretty accurate.

  “One last thing.”

  Rosie really looks about ready to call the cops, even if it means she goes down for obstruction of justice. Anything to be rid of me. But she says through clenched teeth, “As long as it’s just one.”

  “This final photo of Emmy.” I bring up the now-iconic image on my phone, of that seemingly lost girl on a dusty road on the outskirts of Ragnarok. “Any idea what she was doing out there the day she disappeared?”

  “She used to film videos out there before she made it big,” she says. “Probably feeling nostalgic for simpler times.” Then Rosie points toward the door, indicating that I’ve long overstayed my welcome.

  Even though I’m the one with the gun, I hold my hands up and back away.

  I nod toward the blonde-haired receptionist as I pass by the front desk. She averts her gaze and focuses as intently as she can on her computer monitor, either afraid of what I’ll do, or worried about the cataclysmic tongue-lashing she’s about to receive from her boss.

  Maybe both. But I’ve gotten what I need, so there will be no more excitement at Santellini & Associates today.

  In the end, it makes sense that the disappearance was planned—at least originally. After all, what do you do after you’ve experienced peaks higher than any mortal creature could ever hope for?

  In other words, what do you live for when there are no more mountains left to climb?

  The only place to go is down.

  Or you can vanish into thin air, like a puff of smoke. And return to climb a mountain that few creatures in history have successfully summitted: becoming a legend that transcends generations.

  A legend that never dies. At least in the minds of the public. Because unless you’re like Javy Diaz or Marius, the reaper comes for us all. Which makes being remembered after you perish the next best thing, I suppose, if you’re hungry for fame and fortune.

  But what happens when you change your mind and decide you actually want to vanish forever?

  And your best friend dies before she can even disappear?

  Neither of those events were part of the original plan. But somewhere in that tangle has to be the answer to where Emmy Davis is now—or at least lead closer to it.

  Which means my next step is paying a visit to Stacey Knight. I need to find out why she bailed on that fateful evening two years ago. Because she might just be the missing piece of the puzzle who’s been hiding in plain—if drunken—sight all along.

  Eighteen

  You’d think that a social media superstar with millions of followers would be hard to track down due to stalkers, creepers, and general privacy concerns.

 
And you would be very wrong—at least in the case of Stacey Knight, who has her current location pinned publicly to the top of her social feeds at all times for the world to see. She’s lost a bit of luster in the past two years. Her brand had always drafted off her two more popular and less controversial friends, but appearing in the tabloids every other week for cocaine possession or public urination has a way of slowly destroying your marketability. Not that she was a golden child when Emmy and Delia were still around.

  But when you’re getting in trouble with your coconspirators by your side, the antics are lovable—or merely as youthful hijinks. Amusing fodder for the gossip mill.

  When you’re a solo act, though, the mill senses weakness. A wounded gazelle limping behind the herd. And it’ll call you a junkie, a drunk, a waste of life, and everything in between as it chews you up and spits you out.

  Which is probably why Stacey Knight, strutting down Paris runways and host of her own streaming reality show just a few years ago, will be MC-ing a shifter celebrity fight tournament at the riverfront this afternoon.

  With some time to kill before that incredible event kicks off in about two hours, I take the truck out to Ragnarok’s southern border. Dust sweeps over the cracked road as the afternoon sun beats down on the smoldering asphalt. A single traffic camera—housed in what looks like a metal garbage can—monitors the cars roaring in and out of the town limits, automatically ticketing those ignorant to its presence.

  And two years ago, this very traffic camera snapped the final fleeting shot of Emmy Davis—caught only because a car speeding past had been going twenty over. The driver was questioned at the time, but the man driving his wife and children on a family vacation to visit Great Reveal Memorial Park was hardly kidnapper material.

  But the snap became iconic once Emmy’s team—Rosie, if I had to guess—uploaded the image to her social media profiles. Almost as a final epitaph.

  I’m not sure what I’m hoping to find out here. Maybe nothing. All I know is that photo isn’t where Emmy’s story ends. And by visiting the exact spot where the trail went cold, maybe I can uncover a lead that everyone else has missed.

  I fire off a text to Keiko and Catalina about girls’ night as a sports car zooms by, certain to receive a party favor in the mail courtesy of the California DMV.

  After finishing up my response to Catalina’s “tequila bitches!” meme with a thumbs down accompanied by a vomit emoji, I start scrolling through Emmy’s old social media posts. There’s a definite evolution here—from the somewhat rough, albeit authentic, meanderings of a teenage girl finding a creative outlet, to the slick, well-cultivated content stream of a marketing team cultivating an advertiser-friendly image.

  I scroll past lots of song lyrics about heartbreak and boys that must’ve sounded profound to her teenage mind.

  Like this gem from 2017: don’t love me like that / when you act like a rat

  Not quite Shakespeare, but it does have a certain directness that perhaps the bard’s more rhythmic style lacks. Then again, I did get Cs in high school English, so I might not be appreciating the finer linguistic touches of the songs populating her feed.

  But a Tweet right above that lame broken-hearted lyric catches my eye.

  Chillin with the bestie, talkin year two of the five year plan for world domination…

  It’s her and Delia, smiling from ear to ear. Each is touching the town limit sign that stands thirty feet beyond my windshield.

  I might have found something close to the origin of her planned disappearing act. Year two would be 2017—and her disappearance in 2020 would be year five.

  I tap on the Twitter thread. Below that, Delia Wolfheart posted: hell yeah girl, gonna be the story of the century

  There are only twenty-six replies. Most of them are from 2020, post-disappearance.

  I type “how many followers did Emmy Davis have in 2017” into the search bar. The first article, titled “Restauranteur’s Daughter Sees Shooting Star Soar Higher,” gushes that “Emmy Davis began her meteoric rise to stardom from relative obscurity, growing a following of 3,000 in 2016 to 20,000 in 2017. But it wasn’t until 2018, with the release of viral videos pranking her fellow social media supernovas Stacey Knight and Delia Wolfheart, that Davis’s popularity exploded. She amassed an incredible 57.1 million followers across her social platforms in under six months, a clip even the most popular actors and musicians would struggle to match. The hit train hasn’t abated since—and neither have the controversies.”

  Cue mugshots, belligerent middle fingers aimed at paparazzi, candid snaps of her curled up drunk on the sidewalk, and other questionable behavior. But I’m not interested in gossip.

  I return to the picture and squeeze my thumb and index finger together to zoom in.

  Emmy and Delia aren’t just touching the sign. It looks like they’re putting something on it.

  I think I might’ve just found a stone that’s been left unturned.

  I hop out of the truck. Dust kicks up on the dry afternoon breeze. Shielding my eyes from the midday sun glaring off the endless road, I head over to inspect the sign.

  When I get closer, I can see there’s a sticker on its bottom left corner. I pull up the photo. Delia is on the right and Emmy is on the left. Running my fingers over the sign’s right side, I find the remnants of some adhesive. No sticker, though.

  But the one on the left is still there. It even bears Emmy’s stylized signature, now emblazoned on lip balms and phone cases the world over. But back in 2017, when she was just another high school senior trying to make it big, the only place you could’ve probably found that logo outside her own house was on this sign.

  I peel at the sticker’s edge to see if there’s anything hidden beneath it. My nail slips off the corner and accidentally rakes across the front. Part of the logo flakes off like a scratch-off lottery ticket.

  I keep rubbing my nail over the front to reveal a series of numbers.

  They look like coordinates.

  I’m about to pop them into Google when I’m distracted by an engine’s distant roar. I glance up, watching as a cobalt blue Ferrari 488 Spider zooms into view.

  I know the exact model because Sherlock Anderson has been kind enough to name drop it in multiple conversations.

  I snap a quick pic of the numbers and hurry back to the truck. Seeing this jackass twice in a single day is going to test the limits of my patience.

  He slows down and leans over the passenger side door. “Beaten to the punch, it would seem.”

  “Thought I told you to fuck off from this case earlier.”

  “See, that’s what I appreciate about you, Skye.”

  “My boundless charm?”

  “Your dogged pursuit in the face of certain defeat,” he says. “My team already canvassed this entire area hours ago. You’re behind the eight ball.”

  “Sherlock, let me explain something.”

  He flashes that thousand-dollar smile. “I’m all ears.”

  “As much as I’d love to see you dead, some silly moral imperative beating deep within my soul demands that I warn you again.”

  “We’re all adults here, Skye.” Sherlock steps out of the car and stretches his chino-clad legs. He unbuttons the top of his collared shirt, revealing a waxed chest. “I know what it’s like playing in the deep end of the pool.”

  “You’re a real dumb bastard, you know that?”

  He glances between my weather-beaten truck and his own gleaming ride. “If being dumb has gotten me this far, I’ll take it.”

  I hate the guy. And everything his assembly-line brand of investigation stands for. But it’s legal—the same way fast food might stretch the definition of the word food while nonetheless being peddled on corners across the country.

  Problem is, I have a bad feeling that if Sherlock keeps sending his junior investigators out where they don’t belong, one of them is going to cross paths with Marius.

  Which will not end well.

  But he’s right. H
e’s an adult, as are the people he employs. You place your bets and take your chances. So I shrug, conscience clear. “Just don’t ask me to scrape your ass off the sidewalk when you hit the ground.”

  “Thinking about my ass, are we, Skye? Quite unprofessional.”

  I walked right into that one.

  With nothing left to say, I just roll my eyes and climb back into the truck. Sherlock, for his part, takes a minute to survey the dusty scene, no doubt trying to figure out if I discovered something his investigators might have missed.

  I did. But he doesn’t need to know that.

  After he drives away with an annoyingly overconfident wave, I thumb the secret coordinates into the phone’s map app. To my surprise, I’m greeted with nothing.

  I double-check the image of the sticker and reenter the digits. But I didn’t make a mistake.

  There’s nothing.

  I sigh. Another dead end. My phone buzzes. It’s Catalina in our group text.

  Ready for tonight, sluts?!

  Not quite. Because unfortunately I have a shifter celebrity fight tournament to attend first.

  Nineteen

  The riverfront teems with smiling people enjoying the blue-skied, if sweltering, summer day. I weave my way through the chattering crowd enjoying their funnel cakes and corndogs to get to the 2022 Shifter Battleground Championship.

  It’s a very official and violent sounding moniker for what amounts to has-been social media stars slapping each other in the face for one final check before their star burns out for good.

  To their credit, however, there is a line outside the shorefront venue. Never underestimate the market for watching the once rich and powerful embarrass themselves.

  The ticket runs twenty bucks, which seems steep. But I have a little extra cash from the Wolfhearts’ retainer, so I pay the exorbitant fee, get my wristband, and head inside. I follow the roar of the crowd through a short tunnel before emerging into the outdoor arena.

  Arena might be overselling things. There are bleachers that hold maybe a thousand people overlooking the shoreline. Spotless water stretches out in the background as two badgers nip and claw at each other on the gray sand. Ropes mark off the ring’s boundaries, but it’s possible for someone to go under them on one side and end up in the river.