Her voice was impossibly small.
“Get out, Logan,” Brandon snapped at her.
The second voice groaned beneath the sound. Ashley touched her TV screen and it was hot.
Brandon closed his eyes. When he turned to Logan, he didn’t look at her. The dark substance crashed over him like a wave and, for a moment, the screen went black. The only sound was Brandon’s ragged breathing.
And then the screen roared to life. A commercial for tires. Ashley exhaled and her lungs ached. She wondered how long she’d been holding her breath. Her phone vibrated from the table next to her bed.
“Hello?” she said.
“Ashley.” A man’s voice. “It’s Gus. From the Chokecherry.”
Ashley blinked. She wasn’t sure who she’d been expecting, but it wasn’t Gus. “Oh. Hi, Gus. What’s going on?”
“I don’t wanna bother you. But I just saw your friend Logan in here. She said she was heading home, but I don’t know. She seemed kind of down. I think she’s heading to the old cemetery.”
“Why?” Ashley asked.
“She was pretty hung up on one of the graves. I don’t wanna get too much into it. Don’t know if you two are getting along, but she was looking a little worse for wear. I’d go make sure she’s okay, but I gotta close up.”
“Wait,” Ashley breathed. “The Ortiz-Woodley grave, right?”
“That’s the one.” Gus cleared his throat. “She … a couple of your friends gave her a hard time. I think she was pretty shook up. And then we got to talking about her dads and the grave. It’s my fault.”
“I’ll be right there,” Ashley said.
There was one thing they’d seen that they’d never talked about. One thing that had haunted Logan since the night they found Nick. And if Logan was going to visit the grave, it meant she wasn’t waiting for ghosts to find her anymore. Ashley clenched the fabric of her shirt between her fingers.
The logo for ParaSpectors crashed back onto the TV.
Ashley stared at Brandon’s face on the screen. This Brandon was different from the one she’d seen in Snakebite. His face was gaunt, eyes wide, hands trembling. The dark thing she’d seen coiling around him was gone, and now he was alone. There was nothing in his eyes.
He was empty.
Maybe whatever was wrong with Brandon was connected to everything going on. It was connected to the grave. It was connected to Logan—Ashley was sure of it. And if she wasn’t fast, she was sure it was going to kill again. Ashley turned off the TV and grabbed her purse.
If Logan was going to find the truth, she wasn’t going to do it alone.
29
Hands Made For Hurting
Ashley parked the Ford along the highway shoulder. On one side of the road, the lake beat against the shore. The clouds overhead were deep gray, bruised and swollen with an approaching storm. Ashley could taste the musky scent of impending rain on the tip of her tongue.
On the other side of the highway, Ashley spotted Logan. She sat in the dirt beside one of the graves with her face cupped in her hands.
“Hey,” Ashley called.
Logan looked up and her expression changed, brow furrowed in anger. “Oh my god, are you serious? Leave me alone.”
Ashley’s jaw tightened. Cautiously, she walked around the iron fence that enclosed the cemetery and made her way to Logan as the dust under her feet spotted with rain. She didn’t check the stone key to see if this mound of dirt was the one marked ORTIZ-WOODLEY, but she didn’t need to. Bits of the dirt had been swept away by deft hands, hardly scratching the surface. Dozens of dried white lily petals littered the ground. Ashley recognized them as the flowers Alejo had left when they first arrived.