All the Inside Howling (Hollow Folk #2)(15)

“Ok,” I said. “So it’s about you.”

“And I need your help.”

“I can’t—”

“You can sense emotions.” She paused. “Only the first time you meet someone?”

With a nod, I said, “I can force it, but that’s . . . nasty. It hurts.”

“That’s tricky, then. People you’ve already met have to be considered suspects.”

“That’s . . . a really good point. I’m surprised neither of them ever thought of that.”

The words were out before I realized it, but the look on Becca’s face told me she hadn’t missed what I said.

“Neither of them?”

“It doesn’t matter, Becca.”

“Austin. Of course.” She ticked his name off on one finger.

“Not ‘of course.’”

“Please. I’ve seen the way you look at him.”

That, I thought, was debatable. “That’s not why I told him. I . . . I was trying to find out if he had killed Makayla. I did something to him, and it messed him up for a while. I felt responsible, so I told him. Mostly because I thought he was going crazy.”

“And because he was hot,” Becca said. “Don’t make that face. Who’s the other one? You’re getting all red.”

“I’m not—”

“Oh my God.”

“Becca, I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Oh my God.” She drew it out this time.

“Let’s move on. This isn’t—”

“Emmett Bradley.”

“I didn’t tell . . .”

“You told Emmett Bradley.”

The sound of his name turned my guts to barbed wire, but I shrugged and nodded my head.

“And not me?” Becca asked.

“I . . . used my power on them. To see if they’d killed Samantha. It left them so messed up that I had to tell them. Austin thought he was crazy, Emmett was freaking out—”

“There was a rumor that Emmett had a thing for Mike Trujillo. Came onto him in the locker room. That’s why Mike punched him out.”

Now my face was really burning. “I heard that.”

Instead of the mocking I expected, Becca’s face softened, and she patted my arm. “Oh, Vie, I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about.” I cleared my throat and shrugged off her touch. “Listen, I’ll start looking around, seeing if I can find out what happened to River. Just because he was dead in the dream doesn’t mean he’s dead in real life. He might be missing, he might be hurt. He might,” I tried for a smile, “have caught the next bus.”

“We’ll find him,” Becca said. “He’ll be ok, and we’ll find him.” But her expression hadn’t changed: the sadness was still shining in her face like the moon shining from the bottom of the ocean. Sadness for me, I realized, and that made the skin between my shoulders itch, made me want to shake that look off her face.

“Not we—” I started to say, but Becca raised an eyebrow, and I sighed. “All right. We.”

“How do we start? You can’t try to read the minds of everyone in Vehpese.”

I didn’t tell her that this was exactly what I’d been trying to do for the last few weeks as I searched for Mr. Big Empty. Instead, I eased the car away from the curb. Squeal, screech, thunk went the Ford, and the car shuddered and began limping forward. My head ached from when I’d hit it against the dash. My eyes, puffed up like marshmallows from the perfume, still stung. Every time I turned my head, the slash across the back of my neck tightened, and the smell of blood drifted toward me. But for the first time in weeks, I felt energized. Purposeful. Mr. Big Empty had given me a clue by showing interest in Becca and in River’s disappearance. I finally had a lead.

“Where are we going?” Becca asked.

“Where we should have gone almost an hour ago.”

Becca nodded in realization. “The Dumpster.”





Early on Saturday morning, with the cold October air carrying the smell of onions and hash from Gary’s Greasy Spoon, Eighth Street was deserted. Sunlight flooded the blue sky and glittered on the corrugated metal walls of Jigger Boss. Long streaks of rust ran the length of the building, and dents and scrapes and half-scrubbed graffiti gave the building the battered look of an abandoned crack den. Not in a trendy way, either, I decided. By night, Jigger Boss managed to look semi-respectable. By day, though, it looked like it needed to be knocked down and shoveled into a blast furnace.

I pulled Becca’s Ford into the small employee lot behind the club, and when I killed the engine, my eyes settled on the Dumpster. And, behind the Dumpster, the steel door. My heart kicked and scraped like it had been run over by something going a million miles an hour. It was in there, the animal part of my brain said. Whatever had been waiting in the dream, it was in there, behind that door. It had almost gotten me in the dream. The cut on the back of my neck stung. It had almost gotten me, and it was in there, and it was waiting.

Becca, looking half-frozen and breathing short and shallow through her nose, fumbled with the door. It was enough to shame me into moving, and a moment later we both climbed out of the car. It wasn’t even ten o’clock in the morning, I told myself as we crossed the lot. There wasn’t a car in the parking lot. Nobody would be in Jigger Boss, not at this hour, and even if there were, they wouldn’t do anything. We were just two kids poking around in the Dumpster, in broad daylight, in the middle of town. We weren’t in any danger. We weren’t a threat.