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Seeming to feel our reactions, Black looked around, scowling.

“What? Nick says he can smell the dead baby heart, and you all shrug and act like it’s no big deal. I repeat the damned information, and suddenly I’m insensitive? Suddenly it’s gross?” He motioned angrily at the corpse. “Fucker’s been dead for three hundred years!”

“Black, it’s not that,” I said. “Why do you think it’s a ritual?”

He blinked, staring at me, then down at the male on the rug.

“You just said they bled out more than one person here, right?” Surprise colored his voice. “What kind of normal murder requires someone to remove a baby’s heart? It’s got to be a ritual. That, or cannibalism.”

Looking around at our mostly queasy expressions, he frowned.

“Obviously this is some kind of ‘thing’ they did, and this guy was just the latest victim. I don’t think he carved that shit in his own feet… do you? Especially since it barely bled. That strongly suggests whoever carved those symbols on him, they did it posthumously. Maybe they put the heart in his hand, too. Or maybe he’s a willing sacrifice who took part in the ritual.”

There was another silence.

Now Dex was scowling at Black, as if unsure if he should be offended by him or not.

Black looked around at all of us, scowling.

“What?” he growled. “Am I the only one who finds it easy to believe Brick’s parents… who were from Louisiana, by the way… were into some creepy racist religious crap that involved them killing nice black folks from the Northeast?”

Black scowled directly at me.

“…Or did you miss that reference to them being in hiding here? That they were running from people who wanted to hang them? That they were responsible for children disappearing from thelastplace they lived, too?”

I felt sick by the time he finished.

I realized he was right, though.

He was right. It was so obvious to me now.

There was a long-feeling silence.

I, along with the rest of them, stared down at the body.

I felt helpless, staring at it. Useless.

We were never going to solve this.

It was all too confusing, too dark, too depressing, too long ago.

We were too high. That was the crux of it, really.

We were way, way too high.

I was pretty sure the cakes were making us all into morons.

As if she heard me, Kiko let out a high-pitched giggle.

13

WORKING TOGETHER

We started combing through the rooms systematically after that.

Something about the direness of our situation finally began to sink in, even though I didn’t feel any less weird. My weird got more focused when I focused on the house, or maybe just more angry, more determined to get us the hell out of there.

I struggled being around Black, even now.