“Things are weird,” Ashley said. “I just needed some fresh air, I guess.”
“So you came to a … motel room?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Bug’s house wasn’t good enough?”
“Sorry. I can leave.”
Logan sighed. “No, sorry, you can stay. It’s a reflex. Hanging out just kinda seems like something friends do.”
Ashley smiled. After all the investigating, all the days at the cabin, all the secrets, maybe they were friends. She turned to face the TV mounted on the wall. Judge Judy played on mute, and Ashley wondered if this was the only channel at the Bates or if the show was on by choice. Either way, the room painted a picture of a certain kind of loneliness. She wondered how many nights Logan had spent like this, here and elsewhere.
“Looks like a party,” Ashley said. “You’re sure I’m not interrupting?”
“Nope, now you have to stay. I already used mental energy letting you in.” Logan motioned to the bed. “You’re free to stay over. I’d say sorry there’s only one bed, but we’re clearly in one of those dark, murdery romances. We should just lean into the cliché.”
Ashley laughed and threw herself onto the bed. The mattress was stiff as stone, but it was covered in knit blankets and a plush black comforter to make it bearable. Logan wandered around to the other side of the bed and joined her without a word. There was something weird about Logan tonight, something weird about the quiet.
Something weird, but not something wrong.
“Did you have an update?” Logan asked.
Ashley frowned. “If it’s okay, I don’t really wanna talk about investigation stuff. I just wanna … I don’t know, talk.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Outside, metal clattered against pavement. Ashley peeked through the motel blinds, squinting at the night. A shadow moved on the far side of the parking lot near the massive dumpster. For a moment, Ashley’s chest tightened.
“Who’s—”
“That’s my dad,” Logan interrupted. “Taking out the trash. You can wave.”
Tentatively, Ashley waved.
Alejo turned toward the window and blinked. After a moment, he waved back, expression snagged somewhere between confusion and distaste.
Ashley cleared her throat. “It’s okay I’m here?”
“My dads haven’t cared about who I brought over since I was, like, thirteen.”
“You brought a lot of people over?”
Ashley wasn’t sure why she asked. Maybe it was the strangeness in the air. She thought it was probably the strangeness in her own chest.
“You should’ve seen me in LA.” Logan smirked. “I was a menace.”
“I feel like that version of you would’ve been even worse.”
Logan’s nose crinkled up in protest. “Worse implies I’m bad now. Which … is actually fair.”
“You’re not as bad as you think you are,” Ashley said.
“I think I’m a national treasure.” Logan’s eyes widened. “Oh my god, if a bunch of camera guys pop out at the end of this whole thing and it was a hidden intervention to make me nicer, I’m gonna be pissed.”
“I wouldn’t,” Ashley said. “That would mean no one is actually dead.”
Logan pressed her lips together, squashing whatever she meant to say next. Just like that, Ashley knew she’d killed the easy tone of it all. She hadn’t meant to bring up the disappearances—tonight was supposed to be murder-free—but it was always lingering in the air around her.
“Hey, we’re not talking about dead people,” Logan said.
“Right.” Ashley closed her eyes. She didn’t want to talk about investigating. She just wanted a friend. “When this is over, are you gonna go home?”
Logan hugged a pillow tight to her chest. “I don’t know. To be honest, I don’t really know if LA is home for me. When I was growing up, my dad said home wasn’t a place we lived. It was when we were together. All three of us.”
Her voice was quieter than usual, dark eyes tracing the crisscross ceiling pattern in silence. It was only in quiet moments like this that the sadness came through. Because that was the thing about Logan—under the sharp one-liners and incredulous glares, there was always a sadness that felt so deep Ashley thought she could fall into it and never reach the bottom. It was a sadness Logan had sewn into her chest. That she’d fashioned into a piece of her personality.
“You don’t think that anymore?”
Logan shook her head. “I don’t know. Once we moved to LA, I was just alone all the time. I thought the show would end eventually and it would be the three of us again. But it was like I was always waiting. Even if we leave here and go back, I just … I don’t know.”
Ashley held her breath for a moment. “What’s wrong?”
Logan looked at her. It felt like the first time she really looked at her. She pursed her lips for a moment like she was considering whether or not the truth was worth it. Then, she sighed. “I talked to my dads. About everything. Or, I tried to. But Brandon just shut down. He literally walked away.”
“Oh.” Ashley cleared her throat. “Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know. But it’s not like it’s the first time. He just … shuts down.” Logan wiped her nose. “They let me on the show once. Alejo wasn’t there, it was just me and Brandon in Tulsa. Everything was fine, and then we were in the tunnels and I kept asking him questions and he just freaked. He wouldn’t even look at me. He told me to go home and leave him alone. And then that was it. They never let me on the show again. And he never … since Tulsa, this is how he’s been.”
Logan faced Ashley, but she stared past her at the motel wall. For a second, Ashley thought she might cry.
“That’s so sad,” Ashley said, and the words felt immature and wrong. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Logan said, voice quiet like a sigh. “I don’t know if he hates me or whatever. Until then, I really was trying to make it work. But I’ve got other plans now. When I turn eighteen, I’m gonna pack up and hit the road. I’m gonna find a place that actually feels like home.”
Logan looked at her. Her black hair fell at her neck, glowing with a warm sheen from the string lights. Ashley listened to the thrumming rhythm of her own heartbeat. She clutched the comforter between her fingers and inhaled the scent of air conditioner and musk. She was a different Ashley tonight.
What was wrong with her?
“You could stay in Snakebite,” Ashley said.
Logan’s brow furrowed. “I really can’t.”
“People will get better after we figure all this stuff out. You’d just be one of us.” The wall behind Logan was a blur of green and brown. Ashley stared at it instead of looking Logan in her eyes. “You wouldn’t have to keep moving around. You could stay here.”
Logan smiled, but it was bitter and cool. “Cute idea, but I wanna go somewhere that people don’t default hate me. In fact, I’d love to live somewhere they actually like me.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know yet.” Logan shrugged. “There’s lots of places. I’ll find one.”
Ashley looked down. As much as she wanted to believe there was a place like that—a place where people didn’t feel so alone all the time—it was starting to feel like it wasn’t about the town itself. Before Tristan’s disappearance, Ashley had loved everything about Snakebite. This had been home. She’d never felt alone here.
“Here’s a thought,” Logan said. She pointedly avoided eye contact. “You could come with me.”
Ashley’s throat was tight. “You mean leave Snakebite?”
“Sorry, that’s stupid.” Logan cleared her throat and tilted her head to face the ceiling. “Obviously you’d wanna stay here. You’ve got the farm and all that.”
Ashley’s grip on the comforter tightened. There was something strange about Logan’s suggestion, like she’d pulled open the curtains and revealed a horizon Ashley had never seen. In all her years in Snakebite, no one
had ever asked if she wanted to leave. It had never occurred to her that she could just … go. But Logan said it like it was easy. The thought almost made Ashley laugh.
“It’s not stupid,” Ashley said. “I just don’t think I could—”
“No worries. I take it back.” Logan ran a hand through her hair. “I always say stuff that makes no sense when I’m tired. That’s all. When I leave Snakebite, I wanna leave by myself.”
“Oh.”
“I mean, you meet tons of stray cats on the road, but that doesn’t mean you take them all with you.”
“I’m the stray cat?”
“Obviously.”
“I feel like you’d be the stray cat,” Ashley said. “You’re, like, two steps from being a cat lady now.”
“What’re you trying to say about me?” Logan scoffed.
Ashley arched a brow at her and they both burst into laughter. The sound echoed off the motel walls and that heavy feeling in her chest—that dread—quietly dissolved until Ashley could breathe again.
Logan’s smile was easy. She was only inches from Ashley now, cheek pressed into the mattress, eyes half lidded with sleepiness. It was the first time Ashley had seen laughter make it all the way to her eyes. They danced in the half-light, black and endless as the night outside. Ashley couldn’t remember Logan inching this close to her. Maybe Ashley was the one who’d moved. There was something restless in Logan, magnetic and dark and impossible to ignore. She’d lain across from Tristan like this a hundred times, but she’d never felt this pull.
Ashley held her breath.
“You okay?” Logan asked.
“Yeah, I’m…”
Ashley didn’t know what she was.
Logan’s expression deepened, her smile fading like a dimmed bulb. She propped herself up on one elbow, hovering just above Ashley’s face. Her black hair fell in a curtain between them, brushing gently against Ashley’s cheek. Ashley tasted her heartbeat, tangy and electric on her tongue. She let out one ragged breath, then another. It would be so easy to reach up, to pull Logan to her. She wondered if kissing Logan would make her forget about everything else.
This was a bad idea.
Before Logan could close the space between them, Ashley sat up. Her mind raced between panic and embarrassment.
“I…” Logan collapsed back onto the mattress and covered her face with her hands. “Oh my god, why did I—”
“It’s okay,” Ashley said, too quickly.
Even in the dim light, Logan’s cheeks burned brilliant red. She buried her face in her pillow and let out a long groan.
Ashley tucked her hair behind her ears. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. All at once, the motel room was too small. It was suffocating. The rose-patterned walls were too close, the air was too hot, the ceiling was too low.
“I thought you were…” Logan said.
Ashley fixed her eyes on a shadow in the far corner of the room. Logan’s stare bored into her. “I’m not into girls like that.”
Logan said nothing.
“I’m not into you like that.”
“Cool,” Logan said flatly. “Super cool. Got it the first time.”
They sat there for a moment that felt like a year. Ashley’s heart barreled up her throat, threatened to choke her with panic. Because, for a second, she’d wanted it. She’d wanted it more than she’d wanted anything in a long time. She hadn’t kissed anyone since Tristan. Even now, something tugged in her stomach and she wanted to reach across the bed and kiss Logan like she’d meant to.
“I’m so embarrassed,” Ashley said finally.
“Why are you embarrassed?” Logan cleared her throat. “You’re not the one who … you’re fine. We’re fine. Let’s just forget about it.”
“I should go,” Ashley said.
Logan shook her head. “No way. Not with everything going on. Just crash here and leave in the morning. It’s fine.”
“You’re sure?”
Logan sighed and buried herself under her comforter.
From the nightstand, Ashley’s phone buzzed. She reached across Logan to silence it, and even that felt like too much contact. It felt like danger. The silence was molten. The motel room buzzed with quiet anxiety. It burned in Ashley’s cheeks.
“Good night,” Ashley said.
Logan hummed something that sounded like night from under the comforter. She curled into a ball, pointedly facing away from Ashley like she could minimize physical contact. Ashley reached out and unplugged the string lights and they were left in the hot, stifling dark.
23
The Witching Hour
Beatrice Ursula Gunderson didn’t believe in ghosts.
That said, she did believe her best friend. And if Ashley Barton said the ghost of her missing boyfriend was haunting her, it was at least worth a look.
Bug had tried Ashley’s cell phone at least a dozen times over the last half hour, but she had no luck. Maybe that was for the best, since Ashley refused to look into the real suspects. The Ortiz-Woodley clan had something to do with all of this. Logan’s dads were cult-level weird, sneaking around all over Snakebite, lurking at the library, at the grocery store, at the park. They always whispered like everything they said was a secret.
Once, when she was boating on the lake, Bug was sure she’d seen the one with the glasses just wandering around at the cabin in broad daylight.
The neon BATES MOTEL sign had a brilliant yellow glow at night. For the most part, the lights in the motel rooms were off, but one window on the inside corner was ringed with a halo of soft light. It was probably Logan’s. Bug wondered if Ashley had ever been inside. She couldn’t pretend to understand what Ashley was getting from this friendship.
Bug tried Ashley’s phone again. It rang a handful of times before dumping her into voice mail. “Hey, it’s me again. I texted you. You’re probably asleep. I’m at the motel to do some spy work and thought you might wanna come help.” Bug looked at her phone and frowned. “Anyway, uh, see you tomorrow.”
And then she spotted it.
Parked over three spots on the far end of the Bates parking lot. A massive red truck gleamed in the yellow light, tucked into the shadows like it thought it could hide. Bug narrowed her eyes, because she knew that truck, and it wasn’t supposed to be here. Not at this hour. And not if Ashley wasn’t answering her phone. Bug scowled and opened her text window.
BUG: are you HERE???
BUG: i see your truck in the parking lot
She prepared to call Ashley again, but something rustled in the bushes at the far side of the motel. Bug pocketed her phone and warily approached the noise. There were all kinds of animals that prowled around Snakebite at night, but Bug didn’t think this was an animal. Its rustling was sporadic, more like the sounds of a person adjusting their limbs than a lost animal. She cast a glance at the room she assumed was Logan’s.
Maybe Ashley was in there now.
Maybe she knew what was creeping outside the motel.
Maybe that was why she was here.
Bug held up her phone flashlight and scanned over the bushes. In the murky yellow light, she finally saw the source of the rustling. A creature squatted near the lit window, half shrouded in bushes. Bug squinted and realized the thing wasn’t a creature—it was a man. He stooped along the motel wall with his fingers latched on the windowsill.
Bug’s heart came to a crashing halt.
She took a step back, trying her best not to breathe.
Her car was only a few feet away. She’d had nightmares like this before, meandering through the dark only to realize she wasn’t alone. But she wasn’t asleep now. The oil-slick pavement was real under her sneakers. The night air was warm and sweet, carrying the whistling moans of the wind through the valley. This was real, and so was the strange man staring into the motel.
He was real, and he was moving again.
If the tremor in her heart meant anything—if the instinctual twisting in her gut was real—it meant he was th
e killer.
Bug ducked around the abandoned pizza stand and sank onto the pavement. The night wasn’t just night, now. She felt something here in the dark. The shadows were thick, smeared across the pavement like molasses. Bug clasped a hand over her mouth to keep quiet.
There was no more rustling in the bushes.
There was no sound at all.
Bug pulled her phone from her back pocket and typed a text to Ashley.
BUG: there’s a man out here please come outside
She stared at the message for a moment, eyes fixed on the flickering cursor at the end of the text. She backspaced the message and tried again.
BUG: there’s a man out here. don’t come outside.
She sent the text and closed her eyes. If she was quick, she could make it to the car before the man saw her. But he wasn’t alone out here. The night was heavy, and the shadows were on his side.
It occurred to Bug that this might be it.
Without another thought, she ran.
Or, she began to. Before she made it to her feet, a fist knotted in the back of her T-shirt and threw her to the ground. Her skull cracked against the pavement and she gasped at the shock of pain, blinking up into the yellow light. A silhouette hovered over her, at once a man and a shadow. Bug fought to sit up, but the man wrapped his hands around her neck, thumbs pressed into her throat. Her scream came out as a croak.
“No,” the man huffed, not to Bug but to someone else. Someone she couldn’t see. He closed his eyes and snapped, “No.”
Bug Gunderson hadn’t given much thought to how she would die. She especially hadn’t pictured it like this: alone, writhing against the pavement of the Bates Motel parking lot, watching the white stars overhead blur and slip away into the dark. Bug gasped once, twice, and then there was no more.
She had one thought before she faded away.
She recognized her killer’s face.
The Dead and the Dark Page 17