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CHAPTER FOUR

CHARLOTTE

I wake up with a hangover from hell, a pounding, rhythmic throbbing banging through my skull. For a moment, I just lay in my bed, trying to remember what the hell I did last night that I feel like I got run over by a truck.

And then it hits me.

I did get run over by a truck.

Well, not a truck. A car. Driven by that guy I spoke to at the diner?—

The diner. I’m not in my bed. I’m not even in my state . I’m in fucking Louisiana.

I jerk up to sitting, and the room tilts sideways and then spins around, my head still throbbing. I squeeze my eyes shut, peel them open again. I’m in a bed, a silky patchwork quilt pulled over my legs. The room is dim. It’s nighttime, I think, but there’s a dull yellowish lamplight coming from the corner.

I whip the blanket off my body and roll off the side of the bed. Something jangles, a noise I don’t place until I put my bare feet on the ground and realize there’s a metal cuff around my left ankle that trails a long, heavy chain.

For a minute, all I can do is stare at that chain, barely visible in the room’s sulfurous light. Then I pick it up, the metal cold against my palm, and run through it link by link, dropping it against the dusty hardwood floor with a steady, repetitive clanking until I confirm the other end is attached to the heavy wooden bed frame.

This can’t be real. It doesn’t feel real. It feels hazy, like a dream. I keep waiting to wake up and find that I’m hungover in some crappy Louisiana motel. Or even better, my apartment back in California.

It doesn’t happen.

“Help!” I scream, the first thing I think even though I know it’s dumb. The only person who’s going to hear me is the one who did this. Surely.

Fragments of memory flash through my head. A pretty Southern waitress. Don’t mind Jaxon. An enormous greasy hamburger. Bright blue eyes watching me over the top of a booth. And on the highway?—

Staring at me right before he reached into my car.

I scream again and bang the chain against the floor like I’m a ghost in some Victorian penny dreadful. It feels like I’m in a penny dreadful, actually, with the decor in this room. Everything’s dark and wooden and heavy. Thick velvet curtains. A huge, weird painting on the wall that I can’t make out in the dim light. Some kind of mannequin in the corner.

“Let me out of here!” I scream, slamming the chain down as hard as I can. There’s enough slack that I’m able to get out of the bed, dragging the chain with me, and I almost make it to the door. Almost, but not quite. I pound the chain against the floor some more, hoping I’m scraping the hell out of the wooden slats. “Let me the fuck out, Jaxon .”

If that’s even his real name. If he’s even the one that’s keeping me here. He could have been some kind of honeypot or something.

I stop, breathing hard. The only answer I get is the heavy, creaking stillness of an old house.

“Fuck,” I whisper, falling backward on the bed. There’s a ceiling fan overhead, spinning in slow, lazy circles. Fear clenches in my stomach as I work backward from the moment of the crash. Everything’s fragmented and my head’s still pounding and I can’t think straight.

Edie. This has to do with Edie, right? I show Jaxon the symbol, and the next thing I know, he’s pulling open my car door after an accident on the highway and grabbing my hair and?—

I scream again, swinging my leg around so the chain makes as much noise as possible.

And this time, I do get an answer. Footsteps.

My fear clarifies. It’s one thing to be chained to a bed. It’s another to have the psycho who did it let himself into your room.

I scramble backward over the bed until I half-jump and half-fall off the other side. A key rattles in the lock. The brassy, old-fashioned knob turns. I keep stumbling back until I press up against the cool slick wallpaper.

The door swings open, and there he is. Pellerin’s resident artist.

“You don’t have to make all that noise,” he says coldly. “I know you’re up here.”

“Fuck you.”

He steps into the room, his eyes fixed on me. I sweep my gaze over him, looking for a weapon. His hands are empty, though. And he’s wearing dark, baggy sweatpants, an oversized black T-shirt. His hair’s kind of mussed, too.

“Were you sleeping ?” I spit out.

“Yes.” He keeps staring at me. “Which is why I’m asking you to keep it down.”

“Keep it down ?” I laugh, shrill and hysterical. “You know what’ll make me quiet? If you let me fucking go.”

He sighs, shoulders hitching. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

I press against the wall, trembling, waiting for him to explain. He does not.

“Why?” Maybe a prompt will get him to talk.

He doesn’t answer. But he also doesn’t try to come closer to me. He stays in the doorway. Just out of range of the chain, I’ll note.

And for a minute, we stare at each other. It’s still hard for me to think, the way my head feels like it’s splitting open. I’m not sure if it’s a return of one of my migraines or some lingering symptom from the crash.

“Why did you kidnap me?” I ask.

His eyes gleam in the yellow light. “I can’t kill you.”

My terror erupts at the word kill , just for a second before I register what he actually said. I take a deep breath, steadying myself. “Why not?”

“I’m not allowed.”

“Not allowed? Not allowed ?” My voice is shrill enough to cut glass. “Not allowed by who?”

He answers in what is possibly the most irritating manner I could imagine.

“Whom.”

“What?” I want to kill him. I want to wrap the chain around his throat and kill him.

“Not allowed by whom,” he says.

I burst into disbelieving, hysterical laughter. He’s dead serious. “Is that why you kidnapped me?” I asked. “Because you’re a fucking grammar Nazi?”

Irritation flashes across his face. “I told you why I kidnapped you,” he says. “I can’t let you go, and I can’t kill you, so you’re going to stay here until I decide what to do with you.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

He glares at me.

“Not allowed by whom?” I can hear the mocking tone in my voice, and part of me knows is this so, so stupid, that I’m taunting what is apparently a psychotic killer. Who the hell knows what he’s going to do to me?

Or maybe that’s making me stupidly brave. The fact that I have nothing to lose.

“You wouldn’t understand,” he says flatly. “Now, please be quiet.” He turns to leave, then stops and says over his shoulder, “There’s a chamber pot under the bed if you need to use the bathroom.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I can’t stand it anymore. Adrenaline surges through me, and I launch myself at the bed, bouncing off the old creaking mattress and slamming toward him, only for my foot to be jerked backward by the chain. I topple forward, and the piece of shit steps up and catches me, sliding his arms under my arms before I can fall on my face.

“Careful,” he says mockingly. “You’re still chained up.”

I kick at him, trying to squarely slam my shin up against his balls. It doesn’t work; he catches my leg with his thighs, pinning me into place. As he leans over me, his silky black hair falls like a curtain and tickles my skin. His eyes bore down into mine, intense and heavy.

If this were literally any other situation, I’d feel like I was in the process of being seduced.

“There’s no point in trying any of that,” he says smoothly. “I’ll win.”

I try to wrench my leg away from where it’s clamped between his distressingly strong thigh muscles, but he just squeezes it harder and jerks my torso up close to him. His lips are dangerously close to mine. His eyes blaze.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” I say.

“I wasn’t going to do anything.”

I swear his voice sounds ragged, though. A little desperate.

He eases me down so I’m lying on my back, my leg still clamped between his thighs. Then he jumps away from me, light and nimble. I kick at him, but it’s pointless. He’s already several paces away.

“Are you going to be quiet?” he asks me.

“No.” I sit up, moving cautiously, never taking my eyes off him.

Jaxon frowns. “Why are you being so difficult?”

I laugh. He can’t be this clueless, can he? To answer, I shake my left leg so the chain rattles and scrapes against the floor.

Jaxon sighs. “You don’t have a choice.”

“Well, you do.”

His bright blue eyes narrow. “Actually,” he says, “I don’t.”

When he says this, his expression is dark and dangerous and cold, and fear squirms through me again, quieting my urge to talk back to him. I’m fucking lucky, actually, that he’s crazy and decided he can’t kill me. I’d be luckier if he decided to let me go, but still. I should work with what I have.

We glare at each other.

“Be quiet tonight,” he says. “And I’ll bring you breakfast in the morning.”

I don’t want to think about what a guy like this eats for breakfast. Still, I don’t say anything. Just push myself up to standing, bracing myself against the bed. He watches me warily, like he expects me to attack him again. Not that I’d reach him. He’s still in the doorway, just outside of the range of the chain.

For a moment, we stay like that, sizing each other up. Then Jaxon steps backward to leave me alone. And I don’t want to be alone. I’m scared and panicky, but I’m also angry. I want answers. I want to know why he’s doing this.

And so before he can slam the door shut, I blurt out, “This is because I have a picture of that symbol, isn’t it?”

He freezes with his hand on the doorknob. When he looks up at me, his eyes are storming.

“I knew you recognized it,” I say, keeping my voice low. “I saw it on your face in the diner.”

The darkness in his features deepens. He squeezes the doorknob, tightens the line of his jaw. “That’s not something a human like you should have ever seen.”

Human?

And then he slams the door shut so forcefully that the walls shake, and I don’t know if my heart will ever stop racing.