All the Inside Howling (Hollow Folk #2)(53)

“Will you at least tell me why I’m dropping you here? If you’re afraid I’ll try to crash the party again, I promise I won’t. I’ll be a very, very good boy.” He smirked again, and it was so hot on him that it smoked. “I’ll even shake Austin’s hand.”

“You are a complete and total moron,” I said, getting out of the car. “Go straight home.”

“You’re not any fun.”

“You’re a miserable drunk. Remember what I said about Austin, Emmett. I wasn’t joking.”

For the first time that night, he looked irritated. “I get it. You’re protective. I told you I messed up, and it won’t happen again.”

I slammed the door, and the Porsche screamed across the asphalt. If Emmett didn’t kill himself by driving drunk, he’d kill himself by driving angry. A moment later, the tail-lights whipped out of sight, and then I was alone.

Ahead of me, the glass winking in the shimmering white light, stood Sage and Sarsaparilla. What was waiting for me? A bullet in the back of the head? Another round with Salerno? Maybe both. But I had a feeling it was something else. I hurried towards the back lot, keeping close to the storefronts. I had an appointment with Lawayne Karkkanew.

Sage and Sarsaparilla was, as far as I could tell, the closest thing to a hipster soda bar that Vehpese had. It was nominally a coffee shop, and technically it could be considered where Austin and I had our first date, although I hated him at the time, and he was trying to hire me to prove that he killed Samantha. In that sense, it wasn’t really much of a date. Aside from serving bizarre soft drinks (the buffalo grass flavor stands out in my mind), Sage and Sarsaparilla wasn’t much to boast about. At this hour, the windows were dark and empty, and one lonely emergency light glowed at the back of the building.

I circled around the glass-and-wood structure, towards the parking lot in the back. My mind went to my earlier encounter with Lawayne in his office at Jigger Boss. He’d been hounding me, trying to get me to give him the stolen Glock. I’d insulted him. He’d come around the desk, knocked me around, and then whispered, Eleven o’clock. Sage and Sarsaparilla, out back. That wasn’t much of an explanation, but whatever Lawayne had been trying to tell me, he’d also been trying to hide it from Salerno. That’s why Lawayne has made such a show of throwing me around, when what he really wanted was to pass me a message. Well, on second thought, he’d probably enjoyed tossing me around too; I wasn’t exactly Lawayne’s favorite person.

But all of that begged the question: why? Why did Lawayne need to talk to me in private? Why did he have to tell me in secret? Why didn’t he want his own bodyguard to know? And of all places in this god-forsaken town, why Sage and Sarsaparilla?

As I reached the rear of the building, I slowed. The wind had gotten louder, and that taut thrumming from earlier had changed to a whistle as the wind poured between the buildings. It was colder here too, where the wind picked up an icy edge from the river. The river-smell, a fresh, muddy smell, made me think of when I had jumped, and the rocks in the river, and Emmett dragging me to shore. And that was stupid, I told myself, very, very stupid to think about Emmett, very stupid to give him even an inch more in my brain than I had to, because he had this way of throwing out his elbows and shifting around until he’d taken up every inch, every spare inch in my brain, just as he had tonight when he’d managed to drag me away from the party, and as soon as that happened I’d be good for absolutely nothing because I’d be thinking about his eyes, eyes so perfectly dark that I could see myself in them like a mirror, or I’d be thinking about his jaw and curve of his chin, or—Jesus, I thought, catching myself. Hit me with the coldest shower you’ve got, because I’m a lost cause.

I turned my attention back to the space behind Sage and Sarsaparilla. As far as I could tell, there was no one there. The asphalt looked new, and the white lines crisp and fresh, and on the next building, the yellow glare of an emergency light showed where a series of kids had tagged their names and where someone else had added that Colton McDowell Has Donkey Brains, which wasn’t really breaking news but which did make me feel a little happier. I stayed where I was, in the building’s shadow, shivering as the wind cut through the borrowed sweater. It had to be eleven, probably past eleven. So where was Lawayne?

That was when I felt the muzzle of a gun settle against the back of my neck.





With that cold steel pressed against my nape, I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe, at least, not for a good thirty seconds.

“Sorry it had to be this way,” Lawayne said. As always, he had that buddy-next-door tone, but tinged with what sounded like genuine regret. “You put me in a pretty tight spot, kid. Real tight. I don’t like that, but I might have let it pass. Unfortunately, there’s bigger fish than you or me in this mess.” His hand closed over my shoulder, and I jumped. “Easy. Now, where is the Glock you stole from my desk?”

It’s in a storm drain, I almost said. It’s in a storm drain if it hasn’t been washed away, or if some kid hasn’t accidentally fished it out or if a thousand other things haven’t happened. I didn’t even know if I could find the storm drain. It had been dark, and I’d been terrified, and who the hell knew?

Telling him that, though, was going to get me a hole in the back of the head, so I licked my lips and wished the wind were blowing the other direction, wished it could fill up my lungs, wished I didn’t feel like I was running on top of a big, spinning ball.