Page 88 of Make Them Bleed

“Hey,” a voice at my elbow says, and it’s Desire again, Brad hovering like a patient tide. “You look like you’re deep in thought.”

“Occupational hazard,” I say, tighter than I mean to.

She follows my line of sight, sees the Five, then sees my band and Arrow’s tied hands. “Ah. First night, big energy. Perfect storm,” she says softly. “Do you need water? Do you need… to sit somewhere with less mirror?”

“We’re okay,” Arrow says. She studies him and nods, apparently satisfied that he knows his yeses from his noes.

“If you need staff,” Brad adds, “raise your hand. Black cuffs. They will ghost problems without a scene.”

“Thank you,” I say, grateful for the kindness of strangers.

They drift again, and I store the tilt of the world where kindness still fits.

Man One leans back, glances at the art, and in the mirror his face goes so empty for half a second I can’t tell if he’s bored or calculating who dies next. He taps a finger against the side of his glass—one-two-three—then taps again, faster—one-two-three-four-five. My skin prickles. Code, or habit, or both.

Paul pays his bar tab with cash. He doesn’t look at the Five again. He doesn’t have to. They’ve already looked at him enough.

I squeeze Arrow’s hand hard enough to hurt us both. “We have them,” I whisper.

His eyes connect with mine and turn a shade darker. “And we’ll make them bleed.”

“Make them bleed,” I echo, and the part of me that wants blood is already sprinting laps in my skull.

The Five eventually rise. They ghost out the way they came in, the room inhaling the space they leave like someone skimming a ring off the surface of a drink. Pride loosens by degrees. People start kissing again the way they were born to do in magical rooms with rules that protect them.

Arrow’s hand is still laced with mine. His thumb draws one slow line across my knuckle. “Ready?” he asks.

“Let’s go.”

We pass the bar on our way out. Adele smiles the kind of smile that both blesses and warns. “Good first night?” she asks.

“Educational,” I say.

She tips her head. “It always is.”

Outside, the night is bright but I can’t see any of it. All I see in my head are the Five.

“We need to learn everything about them,” I say, steady now. “Everything.”

“We will,” Arrow says. “We’ve already started.”

I slide my hand into his without looking. The Five are living, breathing men who walk through doors like they built them.

I’m afraid. Also, for the first time since a scream bled through my phone screen, I can feel a path under my feet. It’s not straight. It’s not lit. But it’s there.

30

Arrow

We park a block down from Paul Felder’s split-level like three badly behaved civics teachers. Ozzy kills the headlights and the hatchback settles into the curb’s shadow. Gage checks the neighborhood twice through his lens and once through that extra sense he has that tells him which porch cameras are real and which are Amazon miracles that recorded nothing but moths.

I shouldn’t be here without telling Juno. I promised her honesty, and here I am cutting a corner and calling it strategy. I can’t risk Paul recognizing her. My phone sits facedown in the cup holder, buzzing once with a text I won’t read yet. I can feel the weight of it, the way you feel a loose tooth.

“I’m just going to say it,” Ozzy murmurs, flicking a gaffer-taped battery pack in his hands like a stress toy. “We look stupid.”

“You look stupid,” Gage corrects, which is rich, considering he’s cradling a paper grocery bag that contains three latex masks of presidents no one remembers unless there’s a quiz.

I tug my own down long enough to glare at them through Hoover’s eyeholes. “Hoover’s ready to get some answers.”