Chapter 22

He watches them leave, standing below as they climb the spiral staircase, and the boy lifts the door for her.

His heart pounds a little harder, and he closes his eyes, enjoying it.

He likes them. How the boy watches her when she’s not looking. How she breathes, because she knows when he’s looking.

He misses that feeling. It’s consuming, the want. Sometimes he thinks it’s better than the having, because when it’s just a fantasy, you’re in complete control. You get to wonder what it will be like to have her, and it’s fun, because when you no longer have to wonder, the dream is gone.

The boy places his hand over the small of her back, not touching as he guides her up to the roof ahead of him. He quickly follows, the door slams shut, and the chamber echoes like empty things do. Like they cease to exist when we’re not there.

But the tower is never empty.

The boy and girl leave behind ghosts whenever they go.

He walks to the boy’s surveillance room and scans the cameras, seeing them scale down the fire escape and run to the right, back to the alley where his car sits.

Gazing around at the rest of the images on the screen, he verifies that none of them are recording the inside of the hideout.

Good.

The boy is smart. He’d almost caught him a few times.

Leaving the room, he passes hers, but he doesn’t go in. Her scent hits him from here. But it’s not the Rebel’s. It’s not like summer. This is an older scent. Her scent. A wispy spice. He draws it in. It’s still there.

Unzipping his leather jacket, he lets the air cool his neck as he drifts into the other room.

Coming to the foot of the boy’s bed, he drops his gaze, jealousy knotting inside of him. The mussed sheets and the smell of summer in here too.

God, he misses being young.

A figure stops at his side, and he watches a hand reach down to the sheets and loop a pair of blue silk panties with his fingers.

“Don’t touch them,” he tells Deacon. “The boy loves her.”

Deacon drops it and doesn’t argue. That’s what’s great about him. He doesn’t understand, and he doesn’t care to. He just does what he’s told.

Deacon walks around him, the bourbon on his breath wafting through the air. “I don’t know why we’re skulking about,” he grits out. “I don’t care if they’re here. We should’ve just come in and torn the place apart.”

“Keeping the phones was your idea.”

But Deacon raises his voice. “I had no idea anyone would find the place.”

“Shut up,” the man bites out, spinning around and leaving the room.

The two could come back anytime. He and Deacon have been sneaking in and out, looking for the phones, but while Deacon wanted to run out the trespassers, the man couldn’t let them go. Watching, listening…he almost couldn’t breathe.

Weston. The Falls.

Déjà vu.

They’re meant to be here.

He and Deacon meander into the great room, the letters still on the wall and looming over all, and even though they’d been here a handful of times over the years, they look around as if everything is new.

“It’s amazing how much he’s pieced together,” Deacon says.

“Some details were off,” the man adds.

They’d listened to the story the other night. Their story. They’d been in here, close, hearing the latest version of Carnival Tower, and he was truly in awe of how captivating those two were. He wanted to stay. To listen to them in the bedroom.

But it would’ve been wrong. She’s the boy’s story. Not his. That must be respected.

He’d taken Deacon away and let them have the tower that night.

Pulling open the door to the Rivertown tunnel, they walk down toward it.

“He knows we’ve been here,” Deacon says.

“I think so too.”

The boy is smart. He doesn’t fear them. Should he?

Should they fear him?

“You like this, don’t you?” Deacon teases. “You want him to find us. You want him to find her.”

The man stops in front of her picture. The one with her hair dancing around her and her eyes that always looked kinder than they actually were.

They pluck the portrait off the wall, staring at it. At the girl who hurt a Weston boy, and that was only the start of the carnival she would never escape.

Winslet.

“It feels like something is starting again,” he whispers to Deacon.

After so long…

He closes his eyes and breathes in a lungful deeper than he has in years, starved of oxygen and no appetite, but he’s hungry again.

Hellbent again.

Finally.

It’s happening.

He lets Deacon leave first as he trails far behind and detours into the surveillance room once again, and to the drawer of phones he’d found three visits ago that he told Deacon weren’t in here.

The phones they were looking for that he’s always known where to find.

Pulling out a present, he adds another one to the pile—a new one. A gift for the boy.

He leaves, carrying the portrait and with hot blood rushing through his veins.