Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 85490 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 427(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85490 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 427(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
I don’t look. It’s like a constant, low-level ache in my guts, but I drown the need to peek with more work. I’m physically exhausted and pushing myself to my limits, but I’m happy with how the ears are coming out. I spend a lot of time on the little hairs, making them as realistic and detailed as I possibly can, while making sure to include what I remember of my Jackal’s geometric patterns.
Dimly, I become aware of a noise. It’s beeping, no, it’s ringing. I squint through the dust and raise my respirator over my head as my house’s filtration system sucks away the worst of the rock grit.
My phone’s ringing. Which is weird, because my phone never rings. I walk over and frown at the screen: it’s an unknown caller.
That should be impossible. This number isn’t listed anywhere. It’s a clean line, given to me by Simon after his best tech guys stripped it down to bare functionality and gave it an untraceable SIM card. Only family has this number.
Except someone else is calling.
I pick it up between two fingers like it’s a rat and carry it over to my sculpture. Then I place it down inside the ear, and I smash the shit out of it with my hammer.
“That felt good,” I say, smiling to myself. The phone is a wreck of cracked glass and bent internals.
I sweep the mess away and I’m about to get back to work, when another noise gets my attention.
This one’s coming from upstairs.
It’s ringing, just like my phone had been a second ago, except my phone is in a million little shards.
“What the fucking hell?” I walk up the stairs, mystified, clutching my hammer. “Angelo? Elena? Davide? Simon? If any of you are messing with me, you’d better stop.” I yell out into the empty house, feeling like a moron. The ringing is coming from my bedroom. “Seriously, I’m going to murder you with a hammer. That’s not an empty threat.”
I head toward the sound. In all the horror movies I’ve ever seen, this usually ends with some masked monster with a knife stabbing the shit out of the dumb girl victim. Except there are no monsters here, none aside from me, and I hope some idiot tries to stab me. That’d be the best thing to happen to me all week.
Nothing moves upstairs. The ringing is coming from my bedroom, and my heart starts to accelerate as I push open the door. It’s meticulously clean inside, everything neat and orderly, the bed made and crisp, and it takes me a second before I can figure out where the sound’s coming from.
It’s my laptop. The screen’s closed, and it should be in sleep mode, but it’s making this terrible ringing noise. I walk over to my end table where I keep it plugged into a dock and yank it out, cursing at the thing, tempted to smash it with a hammer but then I won’t be able to stare at the screen and watch random anime while falling asleep tonight. I toss it down and flip it open, teeth bared and pissed beyond belief—
When the image of a jackal emoji stares at me from a black screen.
It’s jiggling like a call’s coming through.
And the emoji is smiling.
I stare as my heart goes haywire. It keeps ringing, ringing, the jackal head dancing, and I reach out with a trembling hand to move the cursor on top of the small green accept button.
I click and my heart’s in my throat.
Chapter 10
Laura
The mask appears in a shroud of blackness. I can’t make out anything in the room behind him. There’s only the mask, that familiar mask. My legs are weak as I sit down on the bed, and he’s staring at me, his gray eyes just barely visible through the darkness. I don’t know how, but I’m sure he’s smiling.
“You should have just answered when I called.”
I stifle a moan. It’s been so long since I heard his voice. My body’s betraying me big time here. “I didn’t know it was you.”
“I’ll send you a new phone. You shouldn’t break your toys.”
My mouth opens and I look around. “How’d you know?”
“It went abruptly offline and I know you, little demon. You wouldn’t just power it down. Don’t worry, I’m not watching you. Not yet, anyway.”
I stare at the screen and a cold sweat breaks out on my skin. “This computer is on the Bianco network. How are you connected to it?”
“Like how your phone was supposedly hackproof?” He laughs softly like that’s the funniest joke in the world. “Your family is good at a lot of things, baby, but this is my world.”
I try to formulate a rational response, but my head’s a little mushy. “Why are you doing this right now? You couldn’t wait, could you?”