Several people in the group still looked unsure.
“Look,” Tom said, “you all know I wanted to come here more than anyone, but Layla was right. You can feel it, right? It’s that same bad feeling you get when you walk home alone in the dark, or when you are in a room and can sense someone else is there. I used to get that feeling all the time when I fought fires, like something was squeezing my throat. Don’t you all feel it too?” he asked them. “We can’t see what it is, but she can,” he said, looking at me. “We have to trust Layla.”
“We’re a few days too late,” Ethel said.
“We’re still alive,” I replied.
“It’s all there. You just have to look. They cast no shadow. They don’t walk in the daylight. They don’t eat food. They look wrong,” Buddie said.
I could see by the overwhelming fear and despair on their faces, they had been convinced.
“We have to find those girls,” Summer whispered.
It occurred to me that wherever they had Kira and Susan, it was some place we had not yet seen, some place where the hosts were sleeping during the day.
“We will find them, and we will get out of here. We need to keep looking, but we also need to get ready. Is the bar well stocked?” I asked, turning to Jeff.
He looked confused but nodded. “It’s huge.”
“We need bottles. Hard liquor. As much as you can get. Can you do that?”
He nodded.
“I’ll help,” Will offered.
“You all need to play it cool. Keep to yourselves. Tomorrow morning, dawn, after they go to sleep, we’ll torch this place and go. We just need to make it through the night,” I said.
“What if we don’t find them by then?” Frenchie asked.
“We’ll find them.”
We made a plan to round up supplies and people. Everyone would meet at the front porch on the eastern end of the hotel at dawn. Several of us broke into groups to go looking for the girls, but it was late afternoon, and there was less than an hour of daylight left.
Jamie made me promise to check on Ian again while he and Tom went out once more to look for the girls. It was not a trip I was looking forward to making.
When I got to the infirmary, Ian was sitting on the side of his bed staring at his hands. The I.V. was gone. He had redressed in clothes I did not recognize. When he turned to look at me, I froze. His blue eyes had totally lost their pigment and had changed to an icy color. It was not just the color of his eyes that startled me but what I saw lying behind them. It was not Ian who looked out at me but his shadow aspect—his dark, angry self. I had seen glimpses of that side of him before and feared it. Once, long ago, he’d drunk too much at a party and thought I was paying too much attention to another man. On the way back to the car, he’d hit me. He was sorry later, but now he had the same look in his eyes. I knew then the transformation he had made was not just a physical one. His id had now slipped its chain.
“Layla,” he said, “I was just thinking about you.”
“You’re looking much better, Ian,” I replied carefully.
He smiled at me. “It’s strange, isn’t it,” he said, and then looked again at his hands, turning them over and back. “I feel perfectly fine. In fact, I feel really good. Come sit by me,” he said and patted the bed beside him.
I felt my spine stiffen, but I went all the same.
He turned and looked at me, brushing the hair away from my face. “You look worried,” he said.
“Kira and Susan are missing.”
He frowned. “Maybe they will be at the party tonight,” he said absently.
“What party?” I asked.
Ian then slid his hands up my arms. He pushed my shirt sleeve up to reveal the tattoo on my arm and shoulder. “Once upon a time, we were one,” he said, looking at the tattoo. His hands tightened on my arms. “Now you’re fucking my brother.”
“Ian,” I began, but with exceptional speed and strength, he pushed me onto the bed and laid on top of me, stuffing his hand down the front of my pants while he squeezed the tattoo on my arm. He shoved his hand hard into my panties and then into the soft folds of my flesh, pressing his fingers into my body.
“Ahh,” he groaned as he thrust his fingers deeper inside me, rubbing his crotch against my body. “Come on, Layla. You’re letting Jamie fuck you all night long. At least you can blow me one more time,” he said as he leaned in, whispering in my ear.
With my free hand, I pulled my gun from its holster and leveled the barrel on Ian’s forehead.
Startled, he opened his eyes.
I pulled the lever back. “How about I blow your brains across the ceiling?”
He leapt away from me. Seconds later he was standing in the middle of the room. I centered the gun on him.
He grunted. “Fuck you. Let Jamie have you then,” he said and walked out of the room.
I rose and looked out the door. Ian had already passed the hallway. The door leading outside swung closed. He was gone.
Chapter 31