When Devils Sing(8)

A bolt of fear hit her, and Neera stopped walking at once. “My guitar!” She spun on her heel.

Kiran grabbed her arm, pulling her back. “The motel’s fine. Come on.” She dragged Neera to the front of the Colonial.

In the motel’s parking lot, a car was on fire. The flames rose high in the sky, billowing black clouds of smoke into the air. The few guests staying at the Colonial stood outside their rooms, bleary-eyed and curious. A couple of them recorded the inferno with their phones. Neera’s eyes darted around the scene, searching, until she spotted her grandparents standing in the lobby. They stared at the flames with open mouths.

Kiran dragged Neera across the lot and into the lobby, where she finally let go of her arm. “The fire department is on the way.”

Nanaji responded in Punjabi, and the adults continued the conversation that way. Neera was never taught Punjabi, save for a few words like hello, yes, and no. Useless in a moment like this. But Nanaji wouldn’t look Neera in the eyes. He kept his gaze trained away from her, as if she wasn’t there at all.

Neera moved to stand next to her grandmother, wrapping her arms around her small frame. Nani patted Neera’s face, smiling sadly. Tears fell from her eyes. Neera didn’t understand why her grandmother was crying. In the Singh household, the only emotion that ever got out was anger and the repression of it. Sadness was reserved for the places behind closed doors.

But then she looked again at the flaming car.

It wasn’t just any car on fire, it was her grandfather’s car. His ’87 Cadillac Fleetwood. Camel colored, with tanned leather interior. The car itself wasn’t worth much, but it was one of the few things her grandfather treasured. His gift to himself when he immigrated to America. Neera’s vision blurred as she stared into the flames.

The car’s engine exploded, lashing orange flames into the air. Glass shattered across the lot as the windshield gave out. Onlookers screamed and moved away, back to the safety of their rooms.

Neera could only stare as the Cadillac burned into a blackened heap of metal.





CHAPTER 3REID





The hunting rifle in Reid Langley’s hands shook. He sat in a ground blind beside his father, observing their prey from an elaborate hidden fort in the woods. About a hundred feet away, an animal grazed in the dark, oblivious to their presence and the rifle scope Reid had trained on it.

“Careful,” Russ, his father, chided in a low voice. “Steady.”

There was no way his father could see his shaking hands in the dark predawn hours, but somehow, he still sensed Reid’s weakness. Reid squinted down the scope of the rifle, staring at the exotic creature cast in green night-vision hue. A scimitar oryx, something akin to an antelope with horns like long, curved blades. The rest of its herd was nowhere in sight.

It was possible the others had been hunted already. Scimitar oryx were extinct in the wild—they only existed in zoos and places like this, their elaborate horns a sought-after wall decoration in every exotic hunter’s home.

Reid tightened his grip. If the oryx truly was all alone, perhaps it would be a mercy to shoot the animal.

An animal with no herd is as good as dead, he thought.

But his hands continued to shake. His palms were slick against the stock. Reid moved to wipe the sweat from his forehead, but his father placed his gloved hand over his, steadying his rifle.

“Focus,” his father said.

Reid leaned into the weight of the rifle, bracing the stock against his shoulder. He’d shot a rifle more times than he could count in his nearly eighteen years, practicing at the shooting range for hours with his siblings and his father. But he always avoided hunting trips.

When it came down to shooting a living thing, he just couldn’t follow through. That was precisely why his father had dragged Reid to the Oakbill Hunting Range that night.

“Go ahead,” his father whispered. “Now.”

Reid inhaled, aiming for the high shoulder of the oryx. The most ethical way to kill—break the spine, paralyze the central nervous system. The animal drops dead within seconds. It was also one of the more difficult shots to make, especially from their distance and the angle of the blind.

Crosshairs aligned, Reid braced himself for the shot. There was no way around it. His father was quite literally breathing down his neck. If Reid didn’t make the shot now, he’d simply spend another night in the blind until he did.

This is merely a means to an end, Reid reminded himself. He had little more than a week left in Carrion. His eighteenth birthday was fast approaching on the Fourth and with it, he’d finally have access to his trust fund. While most Clearwater kids blew their inherited wealth on things like yachting on foreign waters, Reid saw the trust fund as his one-way ticket out of Lake Clearwater for good.

But he had to play the game of the dutiful Langley son just a little longer. Then, he would be free.

At least, that had been his singular plan until a week ago. How could Reid leave it all behind when his closest friend had just vanished without a trace? He wanted to be rational about Dawson’s radio silence, but his gut said otherwise. In fact, it screamed there was cause for concern. Desperately, Reid hoped he was wrong because what would he do if he wasn’t?

Reid pulled the trigger. The stock kicked back violently against his shoulder, and he jerked backward with a pained grunt. With the silencer on, the sound was nothing more than a fast, sure pop.