Cassie Alexander - Deadshifted

I hadn’t eaten anything in who knew how long. Between my jet lag and the clouds catching up with us outside I couldn’t tell what time it was, but it’d been a while. The only thing I had left to heave up was bile, and thanks to my worry about Asher, I had plenty of it, bright neon green.

I leaned over, hurled, and waited, and then hurled again. If my own stomach hadn’t been empty I wouldn’t have seen it—but there in the pit of the sink, before my own bile pushed them down, were several small frothy things, like the beads of tapioca in those gross bubble drinks that other people liked. I leaned down into the sink, trying to see. I’d been so caught up in the act of puking that I wasn’t sure whether they had been there before me or come out of my own mouth.

When I looked up, Kate was in the doorway behind me, looking horrified.

“Are you ill?”

“No, I’m pregnant,” I said, scanning the countertops. Maybe the former occupants of this room had left some rich-people version of Listerine.

Her frown grew. “I can’t believe you’re out here endangering your child!”

I swallowed drily. I knew I was taking risks, but I didn’t have a choice. If I didn’t find Asher I couldn’t make things right, and I doubted Nathaniel’s plan had left any safe places on this boat. I couldn’t explain that to her, though, not when she was mad at me because her own son had died.

“I’m being as safe as I can.”

Jorge’s voice saved me from trying to explain more. “Hey, ladies? You should come see this now—” I rushed past Kate toward the sound of his voice.

“What is that?” Jorge stood at the edge of the second fancy bathroom in this suite, a finger pointed at the pedestal tub. I looked where he pointed—and I’d never been so glad I’d just puked.

There was a person in the tub, facedown. The jets were still on, making the water froth and the corpse—now that it had been down for longer than anyone could have possibly been holding his breath—jiggle and dance.

“He’s dead, right?” Kate asked.

“He’d better be,” Jorge said, picking up a decorative vase with a heavy base.

I reached over, took a lily out of the vase, and walked over to the side of the tub. I had to see who it was. Just in case.

I poked the body twice. It floated farther sideways but did not otherwise respond. I angled the stem in so that it slid beneath the person’s face, leveraging it toward me. An overly long tongue dangled out, bloated and purple, but as the face turned it retracted, disappearing inside a water-swollen jaw. Not Asher, I realized with full-body relief.

But.

Dead people’s tongues didn’t disappear. Fall out, maybe. But not move. Especially not after they’d been cooked.

I’d never seen someone boiled alive before, and some function of the fancy jet control was keeping the water piping hot. The musky scent in the air was stewed human, mixed with churning effluvia. There was a greasy film, which provided just enough tension to create bubbles. Still—something about the way that tongue had moved was wrong. Not that I wanted to reach in there and find out, not even with my worst enemy’s hand … I grit my teeth. Real nurses don’t hide—from anything.

“Hang on.” I hooked the stem into the man’s mouth and used it to keep his head tilted up at me. I dug around, trying to determine if I could even see a tongue. I couldn’t, but—I floated his whole body back inside the tub, and intestines were spooled out underneath. Somehow they were wrapped around one of the jets near the floor of the tub. He’d boiled and split open, like an overripe sausage.

“He’s clearly dead. Can we go?” Kate said from the doorway.

“Motion to leave, seconded,” Jorge said.

There was no point in searching further. It was wrong, but it wasn’t Asher—and there were still hundreds of rooms to go. “Sure.”

I dropped the lily, and it bobbed inside the tub with the rest of him.

Marius’s group was waiting for us in the hall. “Sorry,” I said, apologizing for our delay. “There was a dead man floating in a tub.”

Tan-man stood a little behind the other two—which was why they didn’t see him shaking.

“Oh, my God—” Kate gasped and pointed at him like he was unclean. Nathaniel glanced at him and watched him slide down the closed door beside them both, making no effort to catch him. Marius turned and, seeing the man fall, whirled into action.

“Are you okay?” He went into medic mode, helping Tan-man lie down without hitting his head. “No fever,” he announced to the rest of us, gawking above.

It wasn’t a seizure, it was just profound shaking, the kind that in the hospital made the monitors scream that your patient was having ventricular fibrilation, Come defib me! —when really he was just cold.

Or—I groaned. “How long’s it been since you had a drink, sir?”

“A few hours.”

The whites of his eyes were subtly yellowed—I hadn’t seen it before, I’d been too wrapped up in my own problems. But I bet the rest of him was yellow too, underneath all that fake tanner.

“You’re detoxing?” Marius accused him.

“I told you I didn’t want to come along! That doctor made me!” the man shouted, from the floor.

No wonder he’d been trying to steal Valium—benzos were among the only things that helped when detox was inevitable.

Marius looked up at me. We both knew the score. The good news was, Tan-man wasn’t dying of whatever mysterious ailment was going around. The bad news was, Tan-man would be useless to us here, or more useless than he already had been. “We’ve gotta get him downstairs,” Marius said, leaning forward to indicate that “we” meant me.

I shook my head. Even if finding Asher was statistically impossible at this point. “I don’t want to go.”

“I’ll take him,” Kate volunteered.

Marius grabbed the man by the shoulders. “Can you stand?”

“Yeah. Maybe.” He let Marius hoist him aloft, and Marius looked at the woman.

“Go straight back the way we came. No detours.”

“Sure.” She herded the man slowly, him leaning on every passing door, and cast a glance back at me, eyeing my belly. “You should try to be safe.”

Easier said than fucking done, but I smiled and waved anyhow.

The four of us looked at one another in the hall.

“I believe Edie and I would like to be paired together now,” Nathaniel said, gazing coolly at me.

Jorge’s face screwed up into a question, but I shook my head so he wouldn’t argue. “You’re right. I think we would.”

“For whatever good it will do,” Marius said. “This is a useless goose chase. Everyone’s already gone.” Which was, in itself, creepy. Marius gathered himself and held the sheet of paper up with all the names. “Fine. You two—the Kontises; we’ll take the Morkins.”

Marius naming everyone all the time only made it worse. Marius unlocked the door for us and Nathaniel started rapping on it. “Mr. and Mrs. Kontis?” he said archly as we stepped in. No response. He pressed the door open and gestured with his other arm, looking at me. “After you.”

I hesitated long enough that he had to know I was thinking too hard. Should I show him my back so he’d know I wasn’t scared of him, or not, so he’d know I was? I went with caution, edging down the narrow entry hall, my back to the wall, until we reached the cabin’s main living space. I heard the door shut softly behind us.

My back still against a wall, I watched him enter the room. “What’s your game?”

“I have no idea what you mean,” he said, with a malevolent smile. “I’m flattered by your attention to me, but I’ve only just become a widower. I’m afraid a year must pass before we can date.”