Page 37 of Goldilocks (Salt and Starlight #2)

Sam pressed harder on the gas pedal.

“He’s not picking up,” Ivan said, his voice razor-sharp.

In the passenger seat, Jasper slid a wicked-looking blade from its sheath, tilting it toward the light, examining the edge with a practised eye. Ivan butted forward between the two seats. “Is that thing real?” he demanded.

“Real?” Jasper questioned. He re-sheathed the blade and tied back his hair with a brown leather band. “It is metal from the stars. I earned it through my skills at court,” Jasper informed Ivan. He probably hadn’t intended to wind Ivan up. Ivan took his irritation and unleashed it on Sam.

“What is going on?” he demanded. “Is Eric in danger?”

Yes, he was.

“There’s a monster at the house,” Sam said. There wasn’t time to worry about what or how much he should tell Ivan. He knew about Roan, and he cared about Eric. He was getting a damn pass.

“A ghoul,” Jasper said. “They can be strong…depending on how much they have eaten.”

Sam’s hands trembled, so he gripped the wheel harder. Roan’s sister had died to a ghoul. A merperson had died to one of the things in Sam’s house. And now he was driving there above the speed limit to go and face it?

“We’ll grab Eric and get out as fast as we can,” Sam said. “The best thing will be if it’s not there at all.”

It liked to hide, right? So maybe if Sam showed up with Ivan and Jasper, it would slink away and not bother them. He wished he had Roan with him. Or Adonis. But at least he had Jasper with his sword, and Ivan, who was no small man either. They would be fine.

Sam’s turn came up, and he slammed on his squealing brakes to make the bend. Ivan and Jasper both flew forward, neither wearing a seatbelt. Jasper slammed into the dash, and Ivan fell between the seats, managing to smash his head on it too.

“Jesus Christ, Sam,” Ivan growled, cupping his forehead as he got himself orientated.

Pebbles skidded through the air, pelting the house. Cracks spider-webbed across the front windows. The windshield of Ivan’s parked car, sitting in Sam’s usual spot, shattered. The front door swung open under the barrage of stones.

Sam barely spared a glance at the empty car.

The open door.

He jumped out, leaving the engine running.

Fear roared through him, but he forced his feet forward. His body screamed to stop, but his mind knew Eric was inside.

“Eric!” Sam called, shoving open the door that a draft was blowing closed on him. He stepped into the hallway, and his body locked up. Three doors on his right, the kitchen followed by his dad’s room, followed by what used to be Eric’s room. Three doors on the left, the living room, then the bathroom, then Sam’s room. And right at the very end, between Sam and Eric’s bedroom doors, was a ladder. A ladder leading straight up into a perfect black square.

The attic.

A putrid stench assaulted Sam’s nose. He tried to block it with the back of his hand, the intensity making him gag. It smelled like decay. Like week-old ripe and rotting roadkill. Humid heat rose around Sam, enclosing him in air that he didn’t want in his lungs. Air that stoked the panic in his mind the same way oxygen fed a fire.

Jasper pushed Sam to the side as he entered the house. He, too, went still, his nose scrunching up.

“What is that smell?” Ivan cursed. “Eric?” he called. He came to stand side by side with Sam.

“A corpse,” Jasper answered. Sword out, he looked left to right, peering through the immediate doorways.

A creak sounded overhead.

Their heads snapped up. The ceiling, stained with watermarks and lined with cobwebs, groaned again. The steps moved away, steady, deliberate. Sunlight filtered through the open door, illuminating the drifting dust falling from the ceiling’s vibrations. A large stride , Sam thought dimly. The footsteps led toward the trapdoor. Boards creaked at the edge of the black square.

Sam stood frozen.

A phone rang. Down at the very end of the hall and to the right. The only door in the house that was closed. Ivan angled his screen toward Sam and showed him the outgoing call to Eric. Ivan seized Sam’s elbow and dragged him close. Sweat dampened Ivan’s shirt to his body, and through the white fabric, he saw black lines, whirling designs. More tattoos.

“Go around,” he whispered. “Check the window.”

Then he turned, yanked a dagger from Jasper’s belt, and gripped it tight.

Sam ran.

Outside, the air was hot, dry. The sun scorched the back of his neck, the breeze offering no relief. Sam reached for the band at his neck and gripped Roan’s gift to him tightly. Golden scales, sharpened to a little knife.

Sam pushed open the garden gate that squeaked, saw a glimpse of a stone stained brown with old blood. Reaching Eric’s window, he peered inside. The glass was filthy, but he could make out a toppled dresser, blocking the door. Bent over in the corner, clutching his head, was Eric.

Sam watched Eric’s shoulders heave, and relief shivered through him.

He forced down his first instinct to yell and instead tapped lightly on the window. Eric’s head jerked up, pale. Bloodied. When he saw Sam, his eyes widened, and he got to his feet, swaying unsteadily and half falling against the desk. Quaking hands undid the latch, and Sam helped push the window open.

“Come out,” Sam whispered.

Eric’s face was pale, and blood soaked his ginger curls on one side of his head to a deep crimson. One pupil was blown wide, the other a pinprick. “Sam?” Eric murmured. “I feel sick.”

“Come on,” Sam urged.

Eric blinked. “That’s…the window?” His voice was dazed. Lethargic.

Sam pushed the window open as far as it could go and reached in, taking Eric by the wrist and pulling. “Come on .”

As Sam leaned in for him, he pushed the window further open. The metal squeaked.

A shriek tore through the air, piercing through Sam’s ears and into his head like a physical attack. In the middle of the high-pitched shriek, a loud thump sounded on the other side of the door. Sam released Eric to cover his ears, and Eric mirrored him. As soon as Eric let go of the desk, he stumbled and fell to the ground.

The entire door jumped, the heavy dresser hopping, its legs sliding across the ground. The feet scraped the dark wooden floor pale and then caught on the groove of a plank and went no further. The door bounced again, quaking as if something heavy and powerful was throwing itself against it.

Sam released his ears and grabbed the window frame, hauling himself up and tumbling over the desk and onto the ground. There was a gap in the shriek, and Sam thought he heard a muffled cry through the door, but he couldn’t distinguish it. His ears were ringing. Sam shoved the dresser forward again, leveraging his body weight against the blasted thing to get it to move, and then he jumped over Eric and shoved the desk over, so the next time the dresser got shoved, it would jam against the desk, which was braced against the wall. In the time it took to do that, Eric had rolled onto his side.

Sam grabbed his brother under his arms and hauled him to his feet.

The door jumped. It jumped again. Within the shrieking, he heard splintering wood. Eric swayed lethargically and Sam cursed. “I’m sorry. But we need to go.” He manoeuvred Eric so that his top half was leaning out the window, and then he shoved. Sam was no stranger to physical labour, and though Eric was bigger than him, the strength to lift him came. Eric pitched out, head over heels, and Sam clutched his calves to cushion the brutality of the descent.

Eric fell onto the weeds with a groan that was immediately swallowed up by screeching and banging.

Wood groaned and cracked, and Sam jumped onto the windowsill. He was perched there, halfway in, halfway out, when the racket abruptly stopped. The shriek ended. The bangs ceased. Sam hesitated. Chanced a look over his shoulder to the door.

Through the splintered door, something loomed. Too tall. Too still.

Then it moved.

Fast.

Sam leapt out. Grabbed Eric below the arms and got him vertical again. His sweating hands slipped their grip, and he had to re-adjust, plunging his arms beneath Eric’s pits so the hook of his elbow found ample leverage.

“Eric,” Sam cried. “Get up!”

But Eric couldn’t. He fell against Sam when he managed to get him vertical, mumbling something incoherent. Desperate, Sam dragged him around the corner to the back of the house before he dropped him, despairing.

Where was Jasper?

Where was Ivan?

Sam pulled his golden knife free from the chain around his neck, and he clutched it in his right hand. He pressed against the corner, Eric behind him. The sun beat down on Sam, leaving him squinting, with sweat dripped into his eyes, which he roughly wiped away.

He would surprise it. It would run around the corner, and Sam would stab it. And once he’d stabbed it, he’d grab Eric and get to the car and then grab Jasper and Ivan, who he was sure were both perfectly fine, and they would all drive away all well and good and—

Eric groaned.

Sam roughly kicked his side with the back of his heel. “ Quiet, ” he hissed.

Eric grabbed his ankle so tightly his tendons and bones cried out. Sam stifled his cry of pain and twisted, keeping the knife in his right hand and at the corner where he needed it. Eric lay collapsed against the side of the building, exactly as Sam had dumped him. And crouched over Eric was a thing.

Round eyes, the exact same shade of green as Sam’s own, peered up at him, only these eyes lacked lids, and humanity. Its mouth had no lips, only sharp teeth. Leathery-grey skin pulled so tightly over bone that Sam could clearly see the outline of its skull.

They stared at each other.

That’s my hoodie , Sam thought. A navy top that he’d lost years ago. And then realised his ankle was in its hand, over-long fingers wrapped tight like a shackle.