Page 85 of The Monster of Hotel No. 7
“You do understand the entirety of Writhe is looking for you. Cops arecrawlingthe streets. Even if I were inclined tolet youleave, you’d be found in seconds.” He stares down at me with hard eyes, his back to the small table of food. For a brief moment, I want to upturn the entire thing. Dump the bowl of punch on his fucking head and run with Sullen from the chaos.
But although I have no desire to rule Writhe or even work within it, being raised by parents profiting from underground crime taught me a lot of things, including how to negotiate.Weapons come last,I’ve heard my mom say more than a few times.
“Say something,” Cosmo snarls, his gaze narrowed as he takes a step toward me, veins in his hands bulging under his skin. “Youhit mewith a fuckingflashlight,Karia. For that freak.” He jerks his chin toward the dining room, and I pray Sullen can’t hear a word he just said.
As it is,Iheard it.
I step closer too until I’m forced to look up higher to meet his eye. “Don’t call him that,” I say quietly, my teeth clenched. I squeeze my fingers around the cold drink in my hand, a shiver running down my spine and not just from the punch or the cold temperature of the room. Anger is hot in my blood, but I’m sweating, the contrast between it all freezing me to the bone.
“What?”Cosmo’s mouth falls open, and he genuinely looks shocked. “You don’t think you should saysorry?You don’t think you owe me a fuckingexplanation,Karia?” He hisses my name, dipping his chin so he’s closer to me, both of us leaned in toward one another like two snakes coiled up and ready to strike. “What did he do to you, huh?” He glances at my eye and I know he sees the cut I tried to hide with new makeup samples I found in the Attic. His jaw clenches as he studies it, then he says, “I’m going to kill him, you get that, right?”
“Why are you even here? How do you know about this place?” Maybe I’ve answered none of his questions, but I don’t care. This all feels very distinctly like a setup, save for the fact Cosmo doesn’t work for Writhe.
The thought occurs to me that perhaps it’s not a trick for Sullen, but for me. My muscles tense and I squeeze the cup in my hand, hearing the plastic crinkle. Maybe I should be running for an entirely different reason than protecting Sullen. After all, he might have carried me out of the hotel but before that, it’s not as if he treated me kindly. Then again…Kindis not what I want.
“Nah,” Cosmo says bitterly, clenching his jaw. “I’m not giving you shit until you tell me why you chose him over meandsay you’re sorry.”
“I’m not sorry.” The words are tangled in my chest, but I push them out as I watch Cosmo’s brows lift, his complexion flushing with the same anger I feel. “You were going to hit him. You don’t know him at all. You don’t know half the shit he’s been through—”
“So a little sob story got him in your pants? I didn’t know you were so fucking easy, Karia.” He steps closer, his chest heaving, hands by his sides, the cup still splintered in one. “He’s fucked up, yeah, but you know what?” He flicks his gaze up and down my body. “So are you, if you’d trust him before me. He might be in your parents’ little cult club, and I might not belong there, but that doesn’t make the two of you fucking friends.I’myour goddamn friend.” He lifts his hand, the one holding the cup, and points to himself, his index finger against his chest. I see a shallow well of blood along his middle finger from the plastic of the cup, sliding down toward the web of his fingers, but I say nothing about it as I lift my eyes back to his.
“Then you’ll let me go. And you’ll trust I know what I’m doing.”
“Karia.” He says my name on a sigh as he shakes his head, rolling his eyes for a second before he focuses on me again. “Even though you fuckinghit me,I mean this respectfully; you don’t knowshitabout the real world. You can’t run from the cops, your parents, all of Writhe. Von, Isadora, you know, yourotherfriends? You’re not gonna get away from them. You’re spoiled and pampered, and you’ve never had a job in your fucking life. You spend your days shopping and painting your nails and watching movies in your home fucking theater and driving aimlessly in your BMW and moping around while Von and Isadora actually do something with their lives. You let me get you drunk andfuckyou and you don’t care what I do to you as long as you can’t fight back. You’re kind of pathetic and you’re just waiting around for Mommy and Daddy to find some asshole cult member to sell you off to so you can suck his dick while he does the important shit.”
For a moment, I have no control over my facial expression. I’m not entirely sure what I do, if I’m even breathing.
All of that vitriol cut to the quick of my worst fears. That I’m not valuable, that I’m nobody, useless, weak, pathetic, disposable,unseen.
The same way my mother looks at me. How my father coddles me because he knows I’m not a real threat to anyone, or anything. Once upon a time, I told him I wanted to be a teacher, thinking it was important becausemyteachers were important to me. I glowed with pride when I got something right in class and I became a favorite. I thought the goal might give my parents some honor to place in me. But Dad only smiled and clamped his hand gently on my shoulder, his fingers lightly tapping my back in a patronizing way every child experiences at least once in their life and he said,“We’ll see, honey. Writhe might have a better use for you.”
I was twelve.
And I knew then whatuseI might one day have.
Bows in my hair, ballet slippers on my feet because I liked how they looked, braces on my teeth, and still… I knew my worth then, to Writhe. To my own parents. Turns out, I’m not worth anything more to my friends.
“Shit, Karia, I didn’t—” Cosmo starts.
“Don’t.”It doesn’t even sound like me saying the word. It’s my voice, I’m looking at Cosmo’s shadowed eyes, red glinting off the whites of them from the lighting, but mentally, it’s as if I am far away from this moment.
I don’t even know what the hell it is I’m supposed to do here anymore. Convince myfriendto let me and Sullen escape? To where? For what? I don’t know how to run; Cosmo was right about that. I don’t know anything. I will only hold Sullen down. He really could survive on his own; he has already lived through so much. He’s intelligent and crafty and cunning and terrible and he deserves to have a life without the threat of Stein Rule or Writhe hovering over his head.
I will drag him down.
I am like a child; someone who needs to be taken care of.
I am not for him.
“Karia, I just… Youhurtme, and I don’t mean physically. I thought… Despite what your parents have insinuated, those talks we’ve had about it, I thought maybe you could chooseme,and…” Cosmo pauses, glancing down.
I am still frozen. I don’t know what I feel. What I think.
I take another drink.
Another.
I feel suddenly so incrediblystupidfor being here. For dragging all of Writhe upon Sullen. If I had let him escape alone, maybe Stein would have tried to hush it up and look for him more quietly. Maybe he would have already been so far away, he would be out of reach.
