The Dead and the Dark(28)

UNKNOWN: lol thanks for paying for dinner btw

Ashley thumped her head back against her seat.

AB: Sorry I forgot.

After a few seconds, another message popped up.

UNKNOWN: You have reached your limit for messages from this number. You will need to purchase one (1) dinner before receiving any further correspondence.

Despite herself, Ashley laughed. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. She and Logan weren’t going to be friends, but they were going to get to the bottom of this. They were going to get Tristan back. She was going to stop seeing things she wasn’t supposed to. Everything was going to go back to the way it was.

Ashley started the Ford and drove into the dark.





13


A United Front Of Losers


Logan stood in the center of the Bates Motel parking lot with a to-go box of wings, mozzarella sticks, and chili-cheese fries—all things she’d had to pay for, since Princess Put-it-on-my-tab ditched her. It would be easiest to just duck back into her room, but that meant another night of staring at Twitter by herself. It meant turning the TV all the way up to drown out the screaming in her brain. Because everything was very suddenly too much: ghosts were maybe real, Brandon maybe had something to do with Tristan Granger’s disappearance, and she was maybe the only person who could clear his name.

At least, she was the only person who wanted to.

Instead of swiping into her room for the night, Logan clutched her to-go box to her chest and made her way to room one. It was the room she’d seen Elexis duck into the other night. After Ashley and her friends, Logan was desperate to talk to someone her age who was also not evil.

She knocked once. There was shuffling inside the motel room, then the door opened a crack. The beanie-clad boy from the night before peered out like his motel room was a front for a den of criminals.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Logan, in case you forgot.”

Elexis blinked at her.

“I hear we’re family. We met the other night.”

Elexis’s eyes widened. “Yeah, I know. I didn’t write that. I was just—”

“I know you didn’t write it.” Logan shook the to-go box, rattling the mozzarella sticks against the cardboard. “Elexis, right? Are you busy? I come bearing gifts.”

“Oh,” Elexis breathed. He eyed the to-go box in her hands and his brow furrowed. Reluctantly, he opened the door the rest of the way and motioned Logan inside.

The inside of Elexis’s motel room was worlds different from her own. The floral-patterned wallpaper was almost completely covered with video game posters. He’d gotten rid of one of the full-size beds and replaced it with a gnarled brown futon. The other bed was pushed into the corner of the room, over-burdened with pillows of all shapes and sizes. The focal point of the room was a TV stand that acted as a shrine to his PS4. The TV was paused on what looked like some kind of cowboy shooter game.

At least someone was having fun.

A boy Logan didn’t recognize sat on the futon wearing an Iron Man T-shirt. He fiddled with loose bits of electronics, looking up at the sound of the door closing. His wide brown eyes were both scared and curious.

“Do you guys like mozzarella sticks?” Logan asked. She set the to-go box on the futon and delicately opened it. “They’re probably cold now, but…”

“You’re…” the Iron Man boy said.

“Logan. What’s your name?”

“Nick.” He dug into the mozzarella sticks. “We didn’t write that thing on your dads’ door.”

“I know you didn’t,” Logan said.

Nick and Elexis shared a nervous glance.

“Did they write something else?” Elexis asked. He paced across the room and stood in front of the TV like he meant to hide the game he’d been playing. “I can tell you who did it. I saw John Paris’s truck here the other night. Or, I heard it. It woke me up. And then I woke you up.”

“Not surprising. I just ran into him at the bar and he seemed lovely,” Logan said. She waved a hand. “I was actually coming over to see if you guys wanted to hang out. Family’s gotta stick together.”

“I’m not related to you,” Nick said.

“There’s not a lot of kids our age around here.” Logan pulled apart a mozzarella stick. “And my dinner date kinda ditched me.”

“You had a date already?” Nick asked. “You just got here.”

“Figure of speech.”

“She was hanging out with Ashley Barton,” Elexis interjected. “I saw you guys leaving town this morning.”

“Correct.” Logan smiled. “I was briefly hanging out with Ashley Barton.”

“Why?”

“We’re hunting ghosts.”

Elexis and Nick both eyed her. After a moment, they laughed. Logan laughed, too, because sometimes it was easier to just tell the truth and let people make up their own minds about it. If Elexis and Nick thought she was joking, she wouldn’t correct them. Convincing a couple of teenage boys that the impossible existed wasn’t on her usual list of fun party activities. She barely believed it herself.

“What’re you working on?” Logan asked, angling to get a better look at the contraption in Nick’s hands.

“Making a computer,” Nick said. “Are you and Ashley friends?”