She sighs and carries the dress back to her room. It leaks, dripping water along the floor of the hallway. She can hear the droplets hit the concrete behind her like sharp echoes of each footstep. When she enters her room, she immediately shuts the door and snaps the lock. The sound of it—snap!—sends a pleasing chill down her body, making her groin weak.

“This lock is not for you to touch. Unless you want the creatures to get in.”

I think this is an exception, Daddy.

She tosses her dress onto the mattress and falls down next to it. From her impact, the lollipops shoot into the air in unison and collapse back down with hundreds of soft thuds. She crunches the last bit of candy in her mouth, tosses the stem onto the bedding, and picks up a new one. She unwraps it and places it on her tongue.

“A sweet for my sweet.”

A bubbling similar to the reaction across her skin fizzes beneath the crown of her skull. She fiddles with her thumbs, glaring at the door, waiting for her daddy to walk through.

“I’m here to protect you. To keep you safe.”

But he doesn’t and she continues to stare, unwrapping and sucking and unwrapping as her vision fades at the edges and the metal door grows brilliantly vivid.

CHAPTER XVII

The boy chews, eyeing the silver-haired figure before him in the mist, unnerved by the stranger’s complete stillness. A dark and towering statue standing just outside the streetlight’s reach. The boy shifts his dirt-rimmed nails to the unregistered gun tucked between the belt of his worn-out jeans and spine.

You wanna move along, pal?

But he doesn’t dare say it. A deep instinct forces him to swallow his words.

“Hello.”

The boy’s skin prickles at the man’s voice.

“Yeah? What do you want, old man?” Frank asks, hacking up a thick loog and ejecting it out onto the sidewalk. His fingertips tremble over the handle of the gun. His skin is wet and dewy, but that’s just from the aftermath of the rain, though he can taste the sweat on his lips.

“I have an offer for you.”

Silence consumes the air between them. The man does not move, his body inanimate, the shadow over him concealing his mouth so that Frank can’t tell if he is speaking or if the words are being injected directly into his mind.

Frank grips the gun’s handle, his finger stroking the trigger. “All right . . . I’m interested.”

“I know a way you can make a quick thirty thousand dollars. But you must be prepared to do something . . . egregious.”

Frank lets out a thick string of laughter. “Thirty? Thirty?! Listen, grandpa! For thirty thou’, I’ll do ya anything! E-gracious or not! What’s the job?”

The silver-haired man divulges.

The boy lifts an eyebrow and removes his grip from the gun, the trigger no longer a negotiation piece in this deal. “Huh, ya don’t say? And what’s in it for you?”