Still, none of them speak.

Not even as they finally file into the wellness room, shaking Naya’s hand as she looks each of them in the eye and thanks them by name. Everyone seems so haunted, as if they’re being followed by the ghosts of all the Deckers they called tonight. Perhaps it’s a good thing they don’t know about the Deckers who died and will die without warning today.

Each and every one will be Death-Cast’s ghosts.

Frankie Dario

5:16 a.m.

Frankie is back in bed, watching the news.

He’s clutching the TV remote in one hand and his phone in the other. He finds holding other objects prevents him from punching walls and people when he’s upset. And he’s far past upset—he is pissed off. Rolando has ignored all seventeen of his phone calls. If he’s dead, Frankie won’t mourn him. He never liked the guy, but if Rolando is alive and couldn’t even bother to respond to one of his texts, then Frankie is going to punch his teeth in, he swears. A night in jail would be worth it for the fortunes and awards Rolando has cost him.

The news is reporting on a shooting that happened earlier tonight in Times Square, shortly after midnight. It takes a special kind of idiot to be in that crowd, and while the world is apparently down many idiots, Frankie wishes he’d been smart enough to attend the Death-Cast festivities. Of course something explosive was going to happen! If he’d been on the scene he could have scored some brutal, devastating photographs that would have improved his life.

Gloria stirs under the blanket and looks between Frankie and the TV. “Can you lower that?”

“I could if Rolando answered my calls.”

“You’re calling him now? He started working at Death-Cast,” she drowsily says.

How stupid does she think he is? “No shit. But I needed his help.”

“With what?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

He’s never in the mood for a lecture, but especially not at five in the morning on no sleep. His wife has always been so unsupportive when it comes to his dreams. That’s because she has no real artistic eye, no ability to see into the soul of his photographs. Instead, she expects Frankie to be practical, as if he wants to fix radiators and plunge toilets and deal with tenants who disturb him at three in the morning for the rest of his life.