“IF I WERE A monster,” Corinne had told us on the front porch with the lanterns swinging and the shadows dancing, “I’d pretend to be human.”
Bailey had laughed, and Daniel had smiled. She’d walked up to him, taking his chin in her hand, turning his head side to side, squinting as she stared into his eyes. “No,” she said to him, “human through and through.”
She looked at Bailey next, running her fingers through her long black hair as she did it, which was because Daniel was there and she always put on a show. Her nose touched Bailey’s, and Bailey didn’t flinch. We’d learned to let her have her way. Go along for the ride, and it turns out all right. There’s a plan that only Corinne knows, and we’re a part of it.
“Hmm,” she said. “No, no, not here, but he’s been here. He visits sometimes. What does he make you do, Bailey? Does he make you kiss other people’s boyfriends?” That was you, Corinne, I thought but didn’t say. Neither did Bailey. “Does he make you like it?” Her hand was on Bailey’s back, under her shirt, her body pressed to Corinne’s, and Daniel’s eyes had gone dark and hazy, under a spell. “Does he make you dream of him at night? Of boys who aren’t yours?”
She stepped back, breaking the spell. Bailey blinked twice, and Daniel walked into the house.
Corinne smiled like nothing had changed. She took my chin, looked deep into my eyes. I could see myself reflected in her pupils from the lantern swinging overhead. She blinked and pressed her cheek against mine, facing away from Bailey, and whispered in my ear, “There you are.”
The Day Before
DAY 8
Now that we’d emptied the garage, I could see why Daniel had tried to convert it years earlier: windows on both sides and light streaming through, exposed beams inside a steepled roof; a corner tucked away for storage that would be perfect for a bathroom. I stood at the entrance, staring at the unfinished walls, lost in my memory of Daniel and Dad, Tyler and his father, working together out here in the early-June mornings ten years ago. Before everything changed.
The low rumble of an engine cut off, and I backed out of the garage.
“Nic?” a deep voice called from across the yard. One I didn’t recognize at first. It tickled my memory, pulling at threads while I tried to place it.
I spun around to find a man down by the road, sliding off a motorcycle, the sun behind him, his face in shadows. I walked toward him, my hand shielding my eyes, until he became less shadow, more person. Where his sleeves ended, dark writing began—scripted and curling—all the way down his thumbs.
“Jackson?” I asked, still too far to see his face.
He nodded. “Yeah, hey. Hi. Sorry to drop by like this. I’m looking for Tyler.”
“He’s not here.”
I stood at the edge of the road and watched as the words on his arm seemed to ripple when he ran his hand through his shaggy brown hair. Erase the tattoos, crop the hair, change his clothes, and he was classically all-American. Strong jaw and defined cheekbones, broad shoulders, lean frame. There was a reason he was Corinne’s. Just one version nested inside another now. He had a tremor in his left hand as he brought a cigarette to his mouth, assessing me through the smoke. “You sure?” he asked.
I rolled my eyes. “Do you see his truck?” I looked over my shoulder, cupped my hands around my mouth. “Hey, Tyler, you here?” I turned back to face him, the smoke more pungent now. “I’m sure.”
“It’s not a joke,” he said. “I’ve been looking for him. And I’m not the only one. Haven’t seen him since Friday.” And today was Monday. Seven days since Annaleise was reported missing.
“What makes you think I have?”
The heels of his black boots dug into the dirt as he leaned against his bike. “I work at a bar, Nic. Where people talk. A bar that Tyler lives above.”
“I haven’t seen him, Jackson. I swear it. Not since Friday.”
He paused, shifted his feet in the loose dirt where the road met the grass. “I can hear his phone from inside his apartment. And . . . I don’t want to call the police. I don’t think that would be such a good idea. But I was wondering if . . . maybe you had a key? Just to check.”
My stomach turned hollow—I hadn’t seen Tyler in three days. Hadn’t heard from him at all. I’d thought of many possible reasons for him not showing up in the last few days, but until that moment, none of them had anything to do with his safety.
“I don’t have a key,” I said. I used to, and then he moved. I was already backing up to the house to get my car keys. “Let me just grab my purse.”
Jackson nodded. “Yeah,” he said.
* * *
AT NINE A.M. ON a Monday morning the bar was closed, which I was glad for. Jackson had implied that there were enough rumors already. “His truck is gone,” I said, standing in the gravel lot behind the bar. I looked up at the window—the blinds pulled shut.
“I know. It’s been gone all weekend. But the phone . . .”
“No, you’re right,” I said.
“I can call the landlord, but I don’t want to leave Tyler with a paper trail. Not with the cops already stopping by. Part of me thinks he’s just avoiding them—it’s what I would do. But . . .”
“The phone.” Ringing inside and no sign of Tyler.
“Right. The phone.”
Jackson unlocked the main door, and the vestibule area felt claustrophobic with the bar dark and locked to the side, and the narrow stairway, and the glass door streaked with dirt. He locked the door behind me and motioned for the stairs. “After you.”
Our steps echoed in time, and the hall smelled faintly of cigarettes, and his hand brushed mine once on the railing. The floorboards creaked at the landing, and Jackson stood behind me, fidgeting with his phone.
“Let me,” I said. I took out my cell and called Tyler, keeping the phone by my side, pressing my ear to the door.
“You hear it?” Jackson asked, leaning way too close.
“Yeah, I hear it.” I closed my eyes, straining to hear more. The slow and periodic drip of a faucet leak. The rattle of the air-conditioning unit as it stirred to life. But no footsteps. No rustling of bedsheets. No call for help. “I don’t hear him,” I said.
“That’s what I’ve been saying.”
There’s something distinctly different about being told someone is missing over the phone, or seeing signs stapled to trees or a picture on the news, and confirming it in person, feeling the absence. It’s a pinprick of discomfort that grows into a hollow terror. It’s a void that gets filled with all the horrible possibilities existing all at once.
I knocked on the door again, in the same way I’d checked the same places for Corinne over and over—back to the caverns, wondering if there was a corner I’d forgotten, a room tucked out of sight. “Tyler, it’s me,” I called, my voice wavering with panic. “Tyler.” My fist was clenched when Jackson pulled it away from the door.
“Come on,” he said, heading back downstairs to the bar. He led me through the empty bar to a storage room and grabbed a ladder. He carried it effortlessly out the door and around back into the parking lot and situated it directly below Tyler’s window. “You’re my alibi and I’m yours. We weren’t breaking in. We were checking on him. Got it?” We nodded at each other, sealing a pact.
He checked the streets behind us, empty now. I put my hands on the rungs, but Jackson placed a hand on my shoulder. “Me. I look like maintenance. You look like a pretty girl on a ladder. People won’t question me.”