A figure was looming on the other side of the glass.
His father. Standing there in his bathrobe. Looking scared to death.
“Let me in!”
Peter didn’t move. Clay gripped the door handle and Peter gripped it from the other side, the fear in his eyes focused entirely on his son. And in the yard beyond the porch something snickered, mocking Clay for believing his old man would save him.
Essie had gotten to Peter. Of course she had. They say a succubus owns a man the moment she has his seed. She had seduced his father the way Annie Strafford had nearly seduced him.
And so this was how it would end. With all the Hailmaker’s underlings descending on him, Clay struggling helplessly while Peter watched them devour him. A fate infinitely worse than being beaten to death behind a concert hall. “Dad,” he yelled. “I need your help!”
A moment passed between them.
Peter took in the lumps and bruises on Clay’s face. “They beat you up?”
“They tried to kill me,” Clay told him. As honestly as he’d ever told anything.
His father let go of the handle and Clay turned it and charged into the house.
Inside, the alarm was muted, but still loud enough to have to scream to be heard. “I just saw something!” Peter yelled. “Watching behind the porch rail!”
“Is Essie here? In the house with us?”
“Haven’t seen her since last night! She won’t answer my calls!”
Glass broke outside as one of the lights shattered. “Who the hell is out there, Clay?”
Clay grabbed one side of the kitchen table and dragged it across the French doors. “I don’t think you want to know!”
Peter killed the alarm and fumbled with his phone. “The police want to speak with you. They think you, or friends of yours, set the fire on purpose.”
“Great, call them back. Tell them I’m ready to chat. Get up here in force.” Something struck the back door, rattling the pane. Clay flinched, and witnessed the broken shaft of a golf flag rebounding across the deck. “Shit, the cops won’t get here in time. Do you still have that .38 we shot when I was a kid?”
Peter hesitated. “It was sold to one of my partners.”
Clay darted to the kitchen counter. “Grab something, anything you can put between us and them.” After arming himself with laptops and guitars, he thought it was high time to find an actual weapon. Clay was drawing the largest German blade from the carving block when his father snatched his wrist—and his father swallowed back his fear, which, Clay realized, still wasn’t focused entirely on the threat outside. “Payton Alexander is dead.”
Peter’s fist tightened on his son’s wrist.
“You don’t think I—”
“Did you burn down our guesthouse and… and…”—even in the heat of the moment, he couldn’t bring himself to say it (kill, murder, scare to death)—“hurt your therapist?”
“Listen.” Clay let go of the knife handle and stared his father in the eyes. “That’s what they want you to think. I fell in with some bad company and they’re after me now. I think they always have been after me. But I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Peter’s expression failed to change. “On your mother. Swear.”
“On your wife and my mother, I swear to you.”
The front bell rang cheerfully. Peter’s grip slipped and Clay pulled the knife and brought it with them into the foyer. “Careful,” he warned as Peter stuck an eye to the peephole.
“No one’s there.”
“There’s at least two of them. And you’re not going to want to hear this, but one is—”
A fist slammed the door, and before Peter could look again, Essie’s voice cried out. “Petey! Baby, for goodness sake, open up.”
Peter’s face slackened in relief.
“Dad, no.”
Peter stared at Clay for only a moment before hurrying back to the door. He had his hand on the knob before Clay pulled him away.
Clay tossed the Michael Myers blade onto the stairs and took hold of his father’s shoulders. “What are you doing?” Peter said. “It’s just Essie.”
That wasn’t true, and this close, Clay could see even the old man didn’t believe it was true. But he badly wanted to. The human mind, under duress, sought ways to escape nightmare, real or imagined, and Peter was willing to open their door and risk everything if his orderly, logical world would only reinstate itself in the form of his girlfriend.
“Essie’s gone, Dad. She died last night trying to save me. I wish there was something we could do to save her—God, I do. But all that’s left outside is a corpse that’s still moving.”
“Peter,” Essie called, her voice sickly-sweet—in contrast to the knob, which was twisting violently back and forth. “I don’t have my keys. Let me in.”
“Are you alone?” his father called back.
“Of course, and freezing my tush off. Can we have this conversation inside?”
“She’s not alone.”
“Clay, knock it off, she’s cold out there and I—”
“Petey? Please.”
“If you open that door, she will kill the both of us—”
“I know you love Clay,” Essie cut in, “but he’s dangerous. He’s on something, like you always suspected. His therapist knew it and look what happened to him!”
Phone forgotten in his hand, Peter seemed to sway between Clay and the door. Scared, confused, indecisive—these were not adjectives a man of his stature was accustomed to feeling. How had it come to this? his eyes begged. Choosing between his son, whose face reminded him of the wife he’d lost too soon, and the L.A. woman who’d made his life worth living again. Still, Clay sensed the hesitation in him. The truth, however unlikely, bubbling to the surface. “Your mother used to tell me you were the best person she’d ever met. I thought that was funny because, for me, that person was always her.”
“Then trust me. For her. There may be someone else who can help us.” Any time now, Rocco, please feel free to
