Maleficium: Duo (Devil's Playground 2)

“This ain’t nothing but a regular ass motel room,” Dion openly observed, a bit of tension visibly leaving his shoulders. “Is that water safe?”

I stepped around him and looked over the small welcome package that had been left for us. Recently, based on how solid the ice in the bucket holding bottles of water was.

“If it’s sealed, it should be.”

“Should?”

“There’s no way of knowing for sure until you take a sip.”

“It might quench your thirst, might make you drop dead and foam at the mouth,” Mel explained, clearly recalling the Blight House incident.

“Is it the same for the tap? Cuz I think I’ll wait to rinse my mouth then.”

Mel screwed up her nose, giving him a disgusted look. “After what just came out of there? I think you should take your chances.”

“Noted,” he mumbled, bravely grabbing one of the bottles of water. “I’ll be in the bathroom.”

Leaving him to it, I went over to the most obvious place one would go in a room like this, the desk.

“What have they left us this time?” Mel asked from beside me.

“More junk.” I sifted through a stack of white papers labeled as invoices, allowing her to see them too.

“That’s a shit ton of money.”

“It’s all being marked as paid to Moloch Enterprise, subsidiary of the Infernal Syndicate,” I read aloud.

“Since when is the Moloch company a subsidiary?”

I shrugged, continuing to sift through the invoices. A familiar name caught my eye, and I flipped back three.

“Aaron Woolfe. Don’t we know this guy?”

“Uh, we know of him. He owns resorts and shit, ironically.”

“He must be doing good business then. Look how much he put invested just last year.”

Her brows lifted as she shook her head. “What could they possibly be doing with all these shitbags’ cash?”

“…building and running two big ass cities?” I replied slowly, phrasing the statement as a question.

It was rhetorical.

My Abuelos’s reference to generous contributions had an explanation now, somewhat. There was still too much I didn’t understand for me to say without a sliver of doubt, that this is what he’d been talking about. Even if that were the case, again, one thing remained unclear. What was the point?

“Lana?” Mel nudged me with her elbow.

I glanced over to see what she wanted to show me. It was another ledger of some kind. I read it from top to bottom, crushing the invoices within my hands.

“Both Gracelyn and Selena are listed here, but they spelled her name wrong.” She tapped beneath where Selene was written on one of the admission lines.

“That’s weird,” I mused aloud, reading down the remainder of the list. “That could be someone actually named Selene.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, her voice lacking conviction.

“Hey! I drank some of this water. Still alive,” Dion announced as he returned to the main room.

“Good, because we know where we need to go next.”

“And where’s that?” He chucked the remainder of his bottled water onto one of the full-sized beds.

“Here.” Mel turned and showed him the clipboard she was holding.

“Vesania Sanitorium? They want us to go to a crazy house, like this whole place isn’t already insane enough?”

“We--.”

“Don’t have a choice,” he cut Mel off.

“I know. I know. I’ve been hearing that from your friend since we met. Is my girl’s name listed on that thing?”

“Wait...hang on.” I leaned in and studied the sheet of paper on the clipboard again.

When I didn’t see her name, I flipped to the next sheet. Fourth row down, she was listed as admitted, just like Gracelyn and possibly Selena.

“Let him see.” I tugged the clipboard from Mel’s hands and thrust it at Dion. “Row four has a Morrigan H.”

He lowered his glasses so that they rested on the bridge of his nose and blinked as if he couldn’t believe what he was reading. Mel quirked a brow, giving me major side eye. I returned it as if to say knock it off. Dion looked up at us, his throat bobbing with a swallow.

“When do we go get them?”

“Now,” Mel and I replied in unison.

Moving the quickest he had thus far, the clipboard was tossed down without a second thought and he began moving towards the room’s exit.

“Don’t get reckless,” I warned.

With no rebuttal or acknowledgement of my warning, he pulled open the door and froze. Where there had just been light, was now nearly complete darkness.

CHAPTER NINE

I wasn’t expecting him to step into the dark, but I was here for this sudden gallant knight energy. His entire body was almost swallowed whole by insidious shadows.

The only thing keeping his silhouette visible was the orange glow coming from the right. I reached back for Mel’s hand before following him. I didn’t want to risk us being separated. I brought myself nearly flush with Dion’s back, breathing in the smell of dried sweat.

“That wasn’t lit up a few minutes ago.” Mel indicated an exit sign, the culprit for the glowing light.