Page 34 of Death and Do-Overs

He again pressed his mouth tentacles together.

I waited for a response that didn’t come.

Frustrated, I took my food and left.

Back at the hotel, I opened the door to my room only to be punched in the nose by a dank and spicy scent that lingered in the air. As I settled in, I noted that the heater sounded as if a shrieking rat was being mauled by a particularly masochistic owl within the walls. And the best part—the thin mattress was filledwith rocks, or at least that’s how it felt to sit on it. I couldn’t wait to see how it felt to sleep on.

Thankfully, my room did have working plumbing, or close enough. The water from the sink came out in orange-Gatorade spurts and smelled like rust. But at least the toilet flushed.

With Nie set up on the nightstand, and a foam takeout container on the mattress beside me, I leaned against the headboard and fumed.

“No one wants to tell me anything,” I told Nie, not expecting a response.

She at least seemed to want to tell me things, but she couldn’t.

Information from the day swirled in my head, a cloudy blur.

I typedLevi Riversinto my phone’s browser.

“What do you think we’ll find about Levi?” I asked Nie. “Private investigator?”

If that was the case, he should definitely have an internet presence to drum up business. So far, though, I couldn’t find anything.

No website. No social media. Nothing.

That in and of itself was suspicious. EvenIwas forced to use social media for my work at the shelter, and I was the least social person I’d ever met. Levi Rivers was the anti-me. Levi—if that was in fact his real name—probably had extra accounts on every platform, simply to satisfy his pastime of chatting up strangers. His personal motto would be along the lines ofa stranger is a friend you haven’t met yet. Disgusting.

Still having no luck, I switched to scrolling through images.

“Fffff,” Nie said.

It was just like she’d done inside the restaurant. I wasn’t sure if it was intentional then, but now that she was doing the same thing again, I figured it couldn’t be a coincidence.

It seemed she was attempting to expand her vocabulary from three words to four. I wanted nothing more than to encourage her. The better we could communicate, the more I’d learn about what had happened to her.

But, I had no idea whatfffffwas supposed to mean.

Maybe it was related to her cause of death, since pretty much all she’d said to me wasdie die dieanddie here.

“Fists,” I guessed. “Flame thrower. Fireball?”

The corners of Nie’s mouth twitched downward.

Okay, I wasn’t even close. “Frying pan?”

Her gaze snapped up to mine, her stare a dark storm of intention, recognition.

A bubble of hope swelled in my chest. We were making progress. “That’s it? You were assaulted with cast iron?”

A silent plea for patience etched across her features as she rolled her eyes up toward the ceiling and exhaled a long sigh.

That bubble of hope about our progress—it popped.

“Fff.”Her nostrils flared, and she looked downward and past me.

I followed her gaze.

Nie was glaring at my takeout box like she could will herself to jump off of the nightstand and dive into the container through sheer force of will.

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