Page 129 of Disharmony

“Or who gave it to her,” I snarl, wanting to rip Blondie’s head off her body.

This shit isn’t funny. Ash could have fucking drowned out there. She almost did. If we got here a few minutes later, we’d have been fishing a corpse out of the fucking lake.

Venom talks softly into the cell phone, trying to reassure a hysterical person on the other end that Ash is okay, and we’re bringing her back.

Ash’s thick eyelashes stir, and her beautiful brown eyes stare up at me. “Oh, it’s you…”

Venom hangs up the call and says, “Cookie and the others will meet us at Ash’s cabin. Claudia will be there. She’s a trained medic.”

I scoop Ash into my arms. We’re both soaked through and shivering, but I’m not ready to let her go. Her heart is still beating, and that’s all that matters. In the terrifying moment I thought she was gone, mine almost cracked in two.

forty-nine

Venom

I stagger after Ripper. Seeing Ash floating rooted me to the spot. Ripper didn’t waste a second. By the time I could process what I was seeing, he’d already pulled her half-naked body from the water. It’s not the first time I’d have seen someone dead. I remember them. The bodies. The show. The screams. I froze then, and I froze again now. If Ripper wasn’t there, would I have been able to save her?

After seeing she was still breathing, all I wanted to do was cover her scars. They are not something she’d want other people to see. That, and calling Claudia, is the least I could do.

Zed is talking, something about first aid or how this happened, but his words rattle around my head, and I don’t listen. All I can focus on is Ash’s long wet hair hanging over Ripper’s arm.

I think of the words in her song:

I’m helpless, alone, dark, and cold,

A world that abandoned me,

A world that left me broken.

It’s you, my darling, who brought me back,

Your light, your words, your soul on mine…

You’re my star in the depths of hell.

“Venom?” Zed’s firm hand on my shoulder jerks me out of my trance. “You need to snap out of it.”

I nod, pinching the skin on my arm to remind me I’m in the present. It’s a technique I learned from my last therapist. She gave me an elastic band to use to ping myself whenever I start to spiral. It’s the only useful thing I gleaned from the twice-weekly sessions Starnote forced me to attend with an overly happy woman who thought she could understand me.

Ash’s friends are gathered on the cabin steps and run over as soon as they see us.

“Where are the rest of her clothes?” Cookie asks, seeing the hoodie we’ve put on her.

“We didn’t see them when we found her,” Zed snaps. “We found her floating on the lake. She could have drowned. What drugs did she take?”

“Drugs?” Leila, the DJ with promise, crosses her arms and squares up to him. “Ash didn’t do any drugs. She was staying sober for tomorrow. She’s not fucking stupid. Someone did this to her, and we all know who it was.”

Zed tries to take the diplomatic route. “There’s no evidence—”

Leila interrupts with a scoff. “Of course you would say that when it’s your girlfriend who tried to fucking kill her.”

Zed’s cheeks flush in anger.

“Leila,” Claudia warns her firmly, “enough, okay? We need to make sure Ash is okay, and I need to check her over.”

Ripper follows Claudia and Cookie, carrying Ash into her cabin. There are too many people around for me to follow, but I watch them through the window.

“What’re you still doing here?” Leila hisses, staring at me and Zed like she’s being confronted by the devil. She doesn’t understand that we care about Ash as much as they all do. If not, more. The girl has flipped our entire fucking world upside down, and I’d burn everything down to make sure she’s okay. “You’ve done enough, haven’t you?”

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