His words were cut off by a rumbling and then a vibration that emanated from the floor, one so great it rattled the smoky window over the toilet and created waves on top of the blood in the tub.

“Like exactly now.”

“I don’t want to leave her—”

Eddie’s voice turned into a growl. “She’s gone. And we need to—”

“Fuck you!” Jim lunged forward.

Eddie’s massive arms were iron bars. Even as Jim fought the hold, and went animal on the guy, clawing and ripping to get free, he got nowhere.

Voices rang out—his and Adrian’s. But Eddie was silent as he started to pull Jim from the room.

Then Eddie cut through the vocal chaos and the flapping of clothes: “Knock him the fuck out! I can’t keep him from seeing the mirror!”

Adrian stepped in, rolled up a fist, and cocked his arm back. The strike was hard and fast, the crack cutting through everything…and stunning Jim into compliance.

He was dragged out in a daze, the heels of his Timberlands streaking across the hard floor, his head ringing like a bell. Once his boots were past the bathroom door, Adrian slammed the thing shut, and Eddie flipped Jim up off the floor and into a firemen’s hold.

Dizzy and disoriented, Jim tried to place a new fleet of strange sounds that came from a vast distance. Glancing over at the counter in the kitchen, he saw that the knives were moving around, arranging themselves, making order out of the mess they’d been in. And it was the same with the dressers—which explained the reverberations: The chests of drawers were trembling on their feet, finding positions like soldiers called for a lineup.

He barely remembered leaving the loft and he didn’t register much of the trip down the stairs…but the cold air outside did revive him enough so that he was able to push himself free of Eddie’s hold and make it to the truck on his own two feet.

As Adrian drove them away from the warehouse, all Jim could see was the girl’s face.

There was no singing as they went off this time.

No talking, either.

CHAPTER
34

Devina’s taunt ricocheted around Vin’s inner pinball machine, triggering all kinds of evil bells and anti-bonus points: Jim and Marie-Terese had been alone…in her car…going back to his studio…

“You know everyone you’ve been with?” Devina said to Marie-Terese. “You must have an incredible memory. But right now only one of those men matters—isn’t that true, Vin?”

This was a crossroads, he thought, a place of choosing one or the other way to go.