All the Inside Howling (Hollow Folk #2)(62)

“What?”

She jabbed me in temple again, cracking my head against the glass. “Enough melodrama. Enough crap. Right. Now.”

I’d only seen Becca like this once before, and it had been the night I had forgotten Austin’s birthday.

“Vie,” Austin asked. “You there?”

Rubbing the ache where my head had struck the glass, I managed to say, “Yeah. I’m, uh, sorry.”

“For scaring him,” Becca growled.

“For scaring you. I just . . . I kind of freaked out.” A high-pitched noise rang in my ears, and I pulled the phone away. Then the ringing cut out. “No, scratch that. I really freaked out. I still am freaking out, to be honest.”

“Wrap it up,” Becca said.

“It’s ok,” Austin said, oblivious to Becca’s commentary. He let out a bubbly, relieved laugh. “Just, come back. Come straight here. We’ll figure it out.”

“The dinner,” Becca snapped.

“Uh, yeah.” The ringing started again, and I shook my head, trying to clear my ears. Over that single, piercing note, I said, “I’ll be there for dinner.”

“You sure? You can come over right now. Sara says she won’t be here if you don’t want to see her.”

I wanted to answer, but the noise in my head had grown into something huge: it was more than a ringing, or a chiming, or even a single note. It wavered, its pitch dropping and climbing again. As the noise shifted, rumbling in my chest, I thought of Salerno. And then something came into view on the horizon: blue and red lights spinning against the horizon, and sunlight flashing on the chrome carapace of a Greyhound bus that had driven off the road and torn great ruts into the grassy median. In an instant, I thought of Frankie, who had been leaving town on the morning bus. This bus. And I thought of his dreams. The oldest dream, he had said. Dreams of being chased.

I grabbed Becca’s arm and pointed towards the line of emergency vehicles. With a surprised nod, she slowed the Ford to a squeaking halt. The Ford gave one last, enormous shudder, and then the driver-side front wheel snapped off. As the car listed to the side, the wheel rolled forward another twenty paces before circling and falling flat.

I looked at Becca. With a horrified look on her face, she held up both hands.

“Austin, I have to go.” I was shouting over the—

—growling—

—ringing in my ears. “See you at dinner.”

“Vie, you still sound—”

But I disconnected the call. As I turned my attention to the Greyhound, I forgot about Sara, and about Austin, and about the Ford’s wheel rolling away from us. The scene before me had the feel of puzzle pieces fitting edge to edge, or of a key sliding home, or of a dream. The oldest dreams. And then that noise, the noise that started in my chest and rattled in my throat, trying to break free, made sense. It wasn’t sirens or a train whistle or a ringing phone. It was a howl. I had heard that howl when Salerno died.

Deputy Fred Fort was leading a man in handcuffs away from the bus. Blood soaked his old gray hoodie, and he held his head down. But I knew who he was. I knew that jaw-length dark hair, without a hint of gray. As though he had heard my thoughts, as though he knew where I was, his head came up and swiveled towards me. Across the width of the highway, for an instant that seemed to last forever, I locked eyes with DeHaven Knight.





For a moment, as DeHaven and I locked eyes, everything had gone still and quiet inside my head. Then he surged towards me, screaming something incomprehensible and struggling with the deputies. For a moment he was loose, staggering forward, his face fixed on me like I’d killed his mother and cut up his father and shit on the family crest. Still screaming, too, he was screaming not my name, not any name, just “Mine.” Just that one word, so stretched out by his screams that it took me a moment to realize what it was. And then the deputies slammed into him, the weight of their bodies dragging him to the ground.

“Oh my God,” Becca said, staring at the deputies struggling with the blood-soaked man. “What happened?”

“He killed him.” Fingers numb, I passed the phone back to Becca, who took it without seeming to realize it. “He killed Frankie.”

“Who?”

“This guy I met. I don’t know, he was a bum, I guess. But why would he kill Frankie? Why would he kill him on the bus?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know who you’re talking about.”

“Come on,” I said, jumping out of the Ford and running across the highway. As I did, the crowd of passengers came into view on the other side of the road. They huddled together against the cold. Most of their faces were blank with shock and terror, but a few showed a wary watchfulness, as though they weren’t sure the trouble was over. I veered around the Greyhound, crossed another stretch of highway, and slowed as I approached the crowd. Becca, looking like some exotic bird in her bedazzled pink sweats, hustled after me.

“What happened?” I asked. The question drifted through the crowd, and most of them shifted and turned away from me. One woman, though, red-faced and with chapped lips and hands, met my gaze. Her hair fell almost to her back, but it was thinning and limp, and she wore an old-fashioned dress that came to her wrists in tight sleeves.

I repeated my question, and she pumped her chapped hands as she maneuvered through the crowd towards me. “Are you with the police?” she asked.