Page 88 of The Monster of Hotel No. 7
I launch my fist toward him but turn it into an open palm at the last second, slamming my hand against his sternum so hard his body jolts and brushes against the snack table, punch sloshing precariously up the sides of the bowl.
I know I can’t full-on fight him because I still need him to let us escape, but whether I knocked him out before or not, he deserved that.
“I’m going to sit down at this stupid dinner not because you told me to, but because I know you’ll stab me in the back if I don’t. Just to be clear, you areneverfucking me again.” Then I put my back to him and head toward the table.
Chapter35
Karia
“Burbank is dead,” Maude says in the dark red room, a glass of blood-colored wine in her manicured hand. Her nails are black talons, eyeshadow smoky gray, lashes false. And she looks like an ethereal dream with her pale white skin in a black silk gown looped with blood-red crystals. Everyone here is dressed in the strangest way, nothing coordinating or indicating what kind of attire is expected at thisdinner.
The pink-haired girl, Alivia—brown skin, red lips, golden eyes—is dressed in expensive denim and a white baby doll tank top. Elliot, sitting to my right, has on basketball shorts and a yellow T-shirt that saysNoin a dark academia-type font. My baby pink crop top and high-rise jeans fit in, but I almost wish I wore the dress Sullen bought me from Saks because I don’t seem to be stealing his attention likeMaudedoes.
If anyone suspects the tension between me, Cosmo, and Sullen is wound so tightly it might strangle all of us, no one acts like it. Perhaps it has to do with the wine flowing freely, bottles scattered now in the center of the table, all plates put away as everyone finished eating while Cosmo and I argued. Or it could be the heavy cloud of marijuana coming from Fleet, on the other side of Elliot, his only contribution to the conversation a few too-loud guffaws of laughter. Or even the tab I saw Alivia discreetly place on her tongue as Maude sloshed everyone another glass of wine. I wouldn’t mind some LSD myself; it feels like I’m tripping as is.
I grip my Riesling glass tightly, glancing at the silver skeleton hand wrapped around it beneath my fingers, part of the decoration. I’ve drank little since Cosmo excused himself to mop up the punch I poured on him and I came back to sit awkwardly at the table across from Sullen, who barely glanced at me.
Maude is delighted he’s here. Beside her. I can see it in the way her eyes shift to him every few heartbeats, her hands waving dramatically as she speaks, the poised goth queen morphing into someone more open and friendly as she drinks, but she still remains incredibly eloquent. She owns this shop. Hosts these dinners. Knows this history of some dead guy named Burbank Gates—a guest at the original No. 7; someone I’ve never heard of—and Sullen seems to be holding onto her every word. He can’t stop staring at her, his posture a little rigid, hands in his lap, dark eyes enraptured as she speaks.
“Cosmo wanted to discuss all the notorious criminals the original Hotel has hosted over the past hundred and fifty years or so, but Burbank Gates was one of the most loyal and still, in my opinion, the most fascinating. He cultivated enough of a following that many people still believe in his promises. He was a man of science, you know, and that holds weight.” Maude winks at us like she doesn’t think it should, then she takes another drink, glancing up through her lashes at Sullen. “Since the current owner of the small chain of Number Seven hotels is shrouded in mystery, we have no way of knowing iftheyknow this unsavory past.” She sounds like she’s narrating a podcast as she speaks so dramatically. “But some say his ghost prowls the original location, and his followers still stalk the streets of Alexandria, snatching up unsuspecting victims found in dark alleys.”
Cosmo snorts beside me. He leans back in the red velvet chair, cocking his head as he watches Maude. “Do you think hisfollowers—must be only like, two, give or take—are responsible for the heavy number of missing persons in Alexandria?”
I stiffen but say nothing. I don’t know if Cosmo is trying to hint that perhapsSullenis intending to makemego missing for this Burbank Gates’s religion, but I wouldn’t ever believe that. Besides, the fact Cosmo is keeping a secret on Sullen’s connection to the hotel is enough for me to keep quiet, for now.
Maude sets down her glass, eyes bright with wine as she looks to Cosmo with a smile on her red lips. “It was you who thought we should chat about the hotels. Maybe you should tell me what you think since this is your unexpected contribution to tonight’s dinner.”
Sullen cuts his eyes to Cosmo, who glances at me. He lifts one shoulder in the mock display of a lazy shrug, holding my gaze even as he speaks to Maude. “I don’t know a fucking thing. I was just…feelingcurioustonight. Tell me more about thisBurbank Gates.”
“Feeling curious?” Her eyes linger for a moment on Cosmo, and a chill glides down my spine in the red-tinted room. What if we’ve been found out? Cosmo knows too much, and now I realize I should’ve never let him in so close. My parents often remarked upon it with disapproval, how much he knew about Writhe. But I’m positive he’s done some work with lower-level organizations before—Mads said he did a job for him specifically—and I assumed he understood how to keep a secret because of all of his own.
It’s too late to take any of it back now, though.
“Okay, Mr. Cryptic,” Maude continues, and I’m relieved there’s true amusement in her words. “Well, Burbank Gates believed if you tortured a human being long enough, physically made them appearinhuman,you would have immortality.”
I stiffen, my gaze going to Sullen.
He isn’t looking at me, that placid smile on his face as he stares at Maude. But I remember what he said. That Stein was deconstructing him. Visiting a prognosticator to find out the best date for his death. That he had peculiar belief systems. Forthis?Immortality? Is this the man Stein Rule worships?
“That… makes no fucking sense,” Cosmo says, his tone light but his eyes serious as he looks at Maude. “Transmutation? Is that what Burbank was getting at? Some sort of alchemy?”
“The devil buys souls,” Elliot says from beside me, voice casual but the words make me shiver. “Maybe he takes other people as payment, too?”
“You’re very close. But it’s not the soul,” Maude presses on. “It’s not the body, the blood. It’s not transmutation.” She glances at Cosmo. “Not exactly. It’s the idea that you can be so corrupt, so heinous, so godawful as to reduce a human to nothing but the body, essentially obliterating the soul, that you rise above the empathy innate in most human beings and therefore shed the constraints of humanity, and mortality. Burbank believed sadistic serial killers who toyed with their victims achieved this rather easily. In other words, they didn’t become immortalbecausethey murdered; they weren’t offering sacrifices to Satan for some mythological longevity. They were creating it for themselves by stripping the morality from their core. Now, Burbank’s followers differed on what came next. Some believed you let the body die its natural death, or in the case of murderers,unnaturaldeath. Others, who didn’t like the idea of serial killers outdoing them, that you needed the subject to seeyouas their creator. Burbank called his major manifestoThe Scientist,which supported that idea. You created the experiment. The mind fuck of breaking someone down so much that they worship you, that’s what gave you true power. Then you could stitch them back together in your own making and dispose of them when you chose. Then, you are God. And God never dies.”
Something like thunder seems to roll above our heads, in the shop.
I flinch, my gaze once more going to Sullen.
And this time, he’s looking back at me.
“Truthfully, you’re right, Cosmo. His work made little sense,” Maude continues as Sullen holds my gaze. “He contradicted himself at every turn. In his haste to find god-like life, he wasted his own going down random rabbit holes and killing off his family to chase his high. I think he was little more than a serial killer himself and the science of dismembering people got him off.”
“What do you think,Scully?”Cosmo drawls, using the name he first heard Maude say, pretending for everyone else that Sullen didn’t drug him, or me, and that I didn’t hit him over the head to run away. We’re all holding onto our secrets in tight fists, and I have a feeling before the night is over with, they’re going to come out in ways we don’t want. “You buy any of this shit?”
I glare at Cosmo, but he still doesn’t mention Stein or Writhe, and for that, I’m glad.
Yet before Sullen is put on the spot, someone else speaks up.
