RoseBlood(60)

“Then why are they so wet?” Sunny asks, picking up a vest that drizzles water. “If they were in the chapel, they should still be dry, right?”

I grimace at her powers of observance. Where’s an e-cig when you need one? The things are like pacifiers to her. “The clothes were tied up in the plastic bag, floating around in the baptismal.”

Jax stops picking up the stems. “Wait, what? That baptismal has been bone dry since the school opened. I’ve never seen water in it.”

No. That can’t be. I almost drowned in those depths . . . I can’t even process the implications before Quan practically dives into the tub, his eyebrows almost reaching his unkempt hairline.

He yanks out the hospital wrist band and the IV tubing, holding them to the lamplight. “Were these in the chapel, too?”

Audrey almost topples the chaise as she scrambles over to see. Everyone gathers around the items now placed on my nightstand under the lava lamp. I step into the ring of bodies to study the tiny letters and numbers I didn’t notice earlier, neatly written on the plastic label:

Rune Germain

1986 boulevard du Pernelle

passage à la Bouche de L’enfer

10-29 / 18:30

Dread ices my veins and frosts my heart.

Even though this time my name’s not taking shape before my eyes, it’s a reminder of the bleeding roses, and just as intimate and unnerving as before, because it’s on a hospital wristband where the third line of the address translates to . . .

“Passage to the Mouth of Hell,” I whisper.

Audrey and Jax exchange a glance. Quan and Sunny do the same. Then everyone turns to me.

“What?” I ask. “Do you know the place? Is it a hospital?”

“Try a morgue,” Quan answers as Sunny pries the wristband from his hand. “An abandoned morgue.”

“Dios mío.” Audrey drags a rosary from inside her shirt, kisses it, and crosses her chest. Then she touches the crucifix to the bird tattoo on her face and shivers.

“Don’t think of it like that, Blackbird.” Jax wraps an arm around her, pulling her petite body against his tall, powerful one and hugging her tight. The room grows quiet, all of us sympathizing as Audrey is dragged back to that horrific day when her sister almost died. After Jax whispers something in her ear, she nods and swipes some tears from her cheeks, breaking out of his embrace but keeping her fingers laced through his.

He slants his blue eyes my way. “The Mouth of Hell. That morgue is rumored to be the entrance to a rave club, but none of us have ever been able to pinpoint exactly where it is. It’s just the name of it, floating around online. They say if you get tagged, you wait at the address on the instructions and a car will come for you. But the pickup locale is different every time. And you’re forced to wear a blindfold, so you can’t see the way to the final destination. It’s also rumored, since the morgue once housed the dead, that creatures of the underworld can emerge and mingle with mankind there. That’s why the parties are so wild. People lose consciousness . . . don’t wake up until days later and find themselves out on the street with puncture marks on their arms and ankles. It’s got to be some kind of drug or something, because along with the needle tracks, they all have amnesia and don’t know how they got there. No one can ever find the place again either, unless they get tagged a second time. It’s some crazy stuff.”

“Yeah. We all decided it was an urban legend, since no one we know has ever actually found any proof of the place.” Quan takes over, still eyeing the IV tube. “Yet here’s something used to drain corpses during the embalming process, and there’s an address staring back at us.”

Sunny offers the wristband to me. “More than an address. Rune’s name is on that dang thing. And there’s a time and date. A month from now . . . two days before Halloween. This isn’t no hospital identity bracelet. It’s an invitation for a pickup. You’ve been tagged.” She presses my fingers around the plastic band, then slips out of our circle wearing an expression that wavers between concern and curiosity.

Every muscle in my body tenses as I glance at the clear tubing now dangling from Quan’s hand, unable to look away from the red droplets clinging to the inside.

My name bleeding across an infant’s grave, and now written on an invitation to a morgue.

What’s it mean? That I’m tagged for death? My blood runs cold.

I study the cardboard cutout that Quan kicked out of the way so he could shut the door when he came back earlier. The Phantom would’ve already taken me if he wanted to harm me, right? And he wouldn’t be helping me with my music if he had bad intentions, would he?

In the chapel, we connected on some indescribable level. He showed me his memories; he felt like home.

Audrey touches my elbow. I flinch.

“Hey, you okay?” she asks. “You’re as white as a ghost.”

“She has reason to be scared.” Sunny’s standing next to my pile of dirty clothes, holding up my bloody shirt. “Rune, it’s time you’re straight with us. What really happened today?”

I’m rescued by a knock at the door and Bouchard’s voice, rounding everyone up for dinner in the atrium.





14



ROMANCING THE ABYSS


“If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”