“Dru speaks the truth,” Jasper says, voice deep like the drum in that song. The song that started all this, when all I wanted was for someone to rescue me so I wouldn’t have to be alone.
I shake my head. “No, I can’t. She’s my friend. Anyone else.”
“You’d rather a stranger die for you?” Silas asks. “Better for it to be a friend. Cut your last ties. Then you’re really one of us.”
“I don’t … I don’t want this.” But it’s a lie. I want it. I want it so bad it’s making me shake. But Neveah’s eyes are on me and she’s crying, tears catching on her nose, pooling on the counter.
“You asked us to come,” Silas reminds me, hand warm on my back, breath soft in my ear. I feel his lips against my neck, just the slightest touch, but it sends heat through my body that almost brings me to my knees.
“He’s sweet on you, Silas,” Willis says with a knowing chuckle.
“What do you say, Lukas?” Silas asks. “We could feast, and then you and I could go somewhere private.” His hand tightens at my waist. “You won’t ever have to be alone again.”
It’s everything I want. Because I can’t go back to that house, to the well-meaning church casseroles and the empty rooms and the organized pill bottles and everything that the county assessor will be through next week to claim.
“I don’t want to be alone,” I whisper.
“You won’t be,” Silas says.
And then the jukebox kicks on and the fiddle is playing and that man is singing: “He’d the face of an angel but the heart of a demon…”
“Take what’s yours, Lukas,” he says, “and become one of us.”
I take a step forward.
“No!” Suddenly, Dru’s there, between us. He swings his baseball bat right at Silas, almost too fast for my eyes to follow. The bat connects with the side of Silas’s head, shattering into shards. Silas goes down.
“Run!” Dru shouts, and I take a hesitant two steps back to the door, my brain trying to make sense of what’s going on.
Jasper launches himself at Dru, but the redhead is ready, and he thrusts a shard of baseball bat forward, right into Jasper’s chest. Jasper crumbles to ash without making a sound.
“Run, you fool!” Dru shouts again, as Willis jumps onto his back and sinks vicious fangs into his neck. He screams as the blood runs, a river as red as his hair flooding across his throat.
Neveah’s on her feet. Whatever was keeping her pinned to the counter, fear or some kind of spell, seems to have broken when Jasper disintegrated. She grabs my hand and pulls me to the door. I stumble after her, eyes still on Willis as he rips out Dru’s throat. Dru collapses, eyes clouding over to nothing, head flopping like a broken doll’s.
I scream. Willis turns toward me, his face no longer that of a beautiful mad boy but of a monster. He takes a step toward us as Neveah unlocks the door and we stagger across the threshold and into the parking lot. Before he can follow, a hand stops him.
It’s Silas.
He’s lost his hat, and his hair is clotted with his own blood, but his face is whole. Whatever damage the bat did has already healed. He looks at me, eyes that swirl of oil-slick rainbow that I glimpsed before.
He says something to Willis, who throws back his head and roars, a sound that shakes the diner and rattles the windows in my car right behind me. But he doesn’t follow us. Neither does Silas. He just watches.
My hip bumps the fender of my car. I blink. I don’t remember crossing the parking lot. Neveah’s sobbing and shouting at me to give her the keys. I can hear the song on the jukebox, just a tinny wail of a fiddle leaking out the diner door.
And I realize that I don’t want to go. Leaving means leaving Silas. If I drive away now, I know I’ll never see him again.
“Neveah,” I whisper, but she doesn’t hear me over her own pleading. Louder, then. “Neveah!”
“What?!” she shouts back, breathless and terrified.
“I’m staying.” I turn to her, let her see me. My conviction. My want.
“I’m staying,” I repeat. “But you can go.”
I throw her my keys. She reaches for them but misses and they clatter to the ground. With a sob she scrambles to find them, and when she does, she wrenches open the car door and climbs into the driver’s seat. I hear the locks engage, and then the engine, and she tears out of the parking lot, barely giving me time to move out of her way.
As soon as she’s gone, I have second thoughts.
But I’m here, and Silas is there, just on the other side of the glass.
And I know what I have to do.
He waits for me to come to him.
I open the door, hands shaking. Dru’s body lies still at my feet and Willis is panting like an animal, eyes trained on me. But I stay steady on Silas, remembering what he told me.
“I want you to leave,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. It sounds pathetic to my own ears, and I clear my throat and try again. “I want you and your Boys to go.”
Silas tilts his head. The jukebox moves on to the next verse. And my heart breaks a little.
“Are you saying we’re not welcome here anymore?”
I nod, even though it hurts.
“Well.”
He bends to pick up his hat. Plants it firmly on his head.
“All you had to do was tell me so, Lukas.” He gestures to Willis, who reaches down and, with inhuman strength, slings Dru’s body up around his shoulders. Silas holds open the door and Willis goes through. Silas starts to follow, pauses to look back.
“But you owe me for Jasper,” he says, voice hard like it wasn’t before, “and I’ll have to collect one day.”
I watch them go. Watch until they fade into the darkness, until I’m sure there’s nothing in the parking lot, not even racoons. And then I collapse.
* * *
Landry finds me on the floor the next morning and lectures me about alcohol and drinking too much. But we both know I don’t drink, and she makes me a stack of pancakes and an oversized cup of coffee. Workers come to haul the old jukebox away by noon, and we don’t talk about it again. Neveah never comes back to the diner, and a few weeks later, Landry tells me that Neveah moved away, got into a four-year college somewhere. Jason and the Toad Twins wash up the next month, exsanguinated. Rumors circle for a while about some weird drugs that must be on the market, and their story even makes one of the prime-time mystery shows, the connection to the Finleys’ deaths too strange to ignore. The conspiracy podcasts go wild. They called it “Murder in Blood River,” and it causes a sensation for a while, but people have no idea. Not really.
Sometimes I hum that song, especially when I’m studying for my GED or getting the house ready for sale, but I never put my heart into it. I’ve decided to leave this shit town after all. Head to Dallas or Denver or something. Try to make my own way, see what happens.
I wonder if Silas will ever come to collect on Jasper’s death, like he said he would. I know all I have to do to find out is sing for him and mean it. But I won’t. Not for a while. Not until I’m ready. And while I wait, I’ll dream of a beautiful black-haired boy in a cowboy hat with oil slicks for eyes.