When Devils Sing(5)
The doctor cleared his throat. “We need to move his body soon.”
“He’s not a body,” Sam snapped. “He’s my baby brother.” She needed more time with him, but she knew there would never be enough. Not when a wolf was at the door, hungry for blood.
Sam squeezed her brother’s hand one last time, holding back a choked sob.
Ben’s fingers twitched.
She froze, loosening her grip on his hand. Her pulse thudded in her ears as she stared at his fingers, loosely curled inside her larger palm.
They twitched again.
His fingers gave another tremulous movement, like the muscles were waking up, and then Ben’s hand gripped her own.
Sam’s gaze went to her brother’s face as his left eye fluttered open.
The doctor whirled into action. He pulled a small flashlight from his front pocket. He checked Ben’s pupil, then his pulse with his fingers.
“My God,” the doctor whispered. “He’s alive.”
But Sam knew—God had nothing to do with it.
CHAPTER 2NEERA
It was only in the late hours of night when Neera Singh found time to play her guitar. The best time to practice was always, but the second-best time was when she was meant to be scrubbing blood off the walls in her grandparents’ motel.
Neera sat on the cool tile floor in Room 11’s bathroom. The small space reeked of bleach and lemon, but she didn’t have the luxury of being picky. The acoustics of the room were just too damn good. She hit record on her phone and set a timer, giving herself thirty minutes before she had to continue cleaning. That’s all she had most days—those precious thirty minutes.
The last of the Colonial Inn’s housekeepers were gone. All that remained was Neera and her mom, Kiran, to keep the place clean while her grandparents ran the front desk in shifts.
Before long, the timer on Neera’s phone rang, signaling an end to her session. She played back the recording as she donned rubber gloves and dipped a sponge into a bucket of cleaning solution.
Neera kept her mind on the music, listening intently, as she got to work on the blood-spattered bathtub. Red streaks covered the yellow-white tile, seeping into the cracks. It wasn’t often that there were bloodstains left over when guests checked out, but it was common enough that Neera knew better than to ask questions. She learned young that the motel, while a home for her, was merely a pit stop for others. Gone were the days when the Colonial housed bright-eyed snowbirds on the way to Florida. If the rooms were booked at all, occupants were often running from something, even if it was just themselves.
Nothing surprised her anymore, but Room 11’s last occupant had given her pause.
The man—well, boy, really—had checked into the Colonial in a frenzy, stumbling through the lobby’s door. He had looked about Neera’s age, with a shock of white-blond, tousled hair and blue eyes that had seen better days. As he lingered at the front desk, she noticed the whites of his eyes were bloodshot and the skin around them swollen pink and puffy.
It had taken Neera a moment to recognize him. She knew Dawson Sumter from her second job, bussing tables up in Lake Clearwater on the weekends. Except the boy that had stood before her was a ghost of himself. While he usually ran with the Clearwater crowd, rich kids dripping of privilege and bravado, Neera could tell he was from Carrion. It was how he always took extra care with his posture, the tidiness of his clothes, the clean parting of his hair. He had the peculiar look of a marionette doll moving through the world as someone else pulled the strings.
Neera had asked, as she passed him Room 11’s key, “You okay?”
“Yeah.” Dawson kept his eyes trained downward as he grabbed the key, and Neera swore there was dried blood on his pale hands. But he had merely said, “Relationship problems.”
It was a lie, and they both knew it.
It’d been a week now since Neera had last seen him, but his room was paid for through the day. She continued to scrub the walls, wondering just what Dawson had been running from.
Neera didn’t know when exactly her grandparents’ motel became the last place people wanted to find themselves. Somewhere between the last recession and the impending one. But all that mattered to Neera was getting the hell out of Carrion, for good. If she and her family could do that, they’d be all right.
Without stopping her scrubbing, Neera glanced at her Yamaha guitar. Her ticket out—for all of them.
Neera’s phone buzzed twice, yanking her from her thoughts. A text from her mom.
Jason said yes. Tomorrow at 3
Jason managed the Tavern Bar & Restaurant in Lake Clearwater, where her mom tended bar and she bussed tables. He was also in charge of selecting musicians for the upcoming Cicada’s Song, an open-mic competition that happened during the Cicada Festival—though it wasn’t really an open mic. The contest was a special event, only held every thirteen years during the festival, and the Clearwater folks were highly selective of who they allowed onstage.
There was a chance the winner of the Cicada’s Song could walk away with a record deal at Blue Mountain Records, run by Grant Langley himself—Lake Clearwater summer resident and kingmaker of the Nashville music scene.
Neera frowned at Kiran’s text. She hadn’t really expected her mom to pull through. Getting an audition was as likely as winning the lottery, especially for someone like her. But it didn’t help that Neera’s usual confidence vanished when performing in front of an audience. Her throat would get tight, her voice would warble and falter. She’d shrink away from the lights and the crowd until people started pulling out their phones, leaning across tables to chat with their friends.