Alexander Death(7)

It wasn't possible that Ashleigh was involved, though. Ashleigh was dead, and Seth was responsible for what he'd done, drunk or not.

Seth felt completely drained—the crowd had crushed in around him, leeching his energy, which had gone to heal any number of kids who were bleeding or injured from the riot. He staggered to his bed, leaving the bedroom door open so he could hear if Darcy returned. He turned up the volume on the phone on his bedside table, in case either Jenny or Darcy decided to call.

He closed his eyes, trying not to imagine Jenny caught in the middle of the riot, with people pushing in around her. He didn't want to think about what the mob might have done to Jenny—or what she might have done to them, and how it would upset her if she infected anyone with the Jenny pox.

The phone never rang.





***





Seth awoke sticky-eyed and sick in the morning. He checked the other bedroom, where there was still no sign of Darcy, who was supposed to be there. The odd girl had made friends with Jenny after Ashleigh's death, and Seth had brought her to Charleston for college orientation this weekend, since they were both starting at College of Charleston in the fall. Darcy, like Jenny, had disappeared the previous night.

He looked at the room phone. He didn't know Darcy's cell number by heart. He did know Jenny's home phone, but he didn't want to get her in trouble with her dad if she hadn't returned home yet. She already had enough reasons to be angry with Seth.

He wandered downstairs to the hotel's dining room. Maintenance men were fixing broken windows from the riot, and the hotel's promised “Southern-style” hot breakfast was not being served. There was only some cold cereal and coffee available in the lobby.

Seth helped himself to a huge bowl of Frosted Flakes and a Styrofoam cup of coffee. He ate quickly and sloppily, drawing disapproving stares from more elderly hotel guests. Using his healing touch sucked out his energy, even burning away at his body mass if he didn't eat a gigantic pile of calories. It worked the same for Jenny.

When he was satiated, he approached the front desk, where the hotel manager was on duty, a slender man with a pencil-thin mustache and a seersucker suit. He raised an eyebrow at Seth's disheveled appearance and the clumps of strawberry blond that stuck up from his head.

“May I help you, sir?”

“Hi,” Seth said. “Things got pretty crazy last night, huh?”

“I believe we shall endure. We are fully insured.” The manager gestured at his computer. “If there is nothing further, I'm afraid we have a great deal of work to do this morning, cataloging the damage to our exterior.”

“There was a girl who checked in with me, but she disappeared last night.”

“How unfortunate.” The manager resumed tapping at his computer keyboard.

“I was wondering if anybody's seen her.

The man sighed. “May we assume she was blond, scantily clad and quite drunk? We did have to ask such a person to leave the premises.”

“Um...no, that's a different girl,” Seth said. “The one I'm looking for has glasses and she's really, you know, pregnant.” Seth held a hand out in front of his stomach, not sure why he was demonstrating what the word meant. “So somebody might remember her. Her name's Darcy Metcalf?”

The hotel manager raised his eyebrows—both of them this time, not just the one.

“Metcalf,” the manager said. “Am I to understand you were sharing her room on the fifth floor?”

“Fifth? No, we're on the third. Seth Barrett?”

The manager tapped at the keyboard. “Ah, yes, Mr. Barrett. This is a bit confusing, sir. We had to call the police for someone matching that name and description. She had a room on the fifth floor, which she reserved, we eventually discovered, using a stolen credit card.”

“What? No, that's not right. We were on three, with my credit card, which isn't stolen.”

“Hence the aforementioned confusion, sir. If she was staying with you, at your expense, why would she then rent a room on the fifth floor using a stolen credit card?”

“Well, I don't fucking know, man,” Seth said, and the manager flinched a bit. “You must be confusing two different people.”

“You propose that there were two women answering to the name Darcy Metcalf?” the manager asked. “Both of them pregnant?”

“That doesn't make any sense, either,” Seth said.

“I refer you once again to the aforementioned confusion, sir,” the manager said.

“To be clear,” Seth said. “While Darcy was staying with me, she also rented a room on the fifth floor? With a stolen credit card? That doesn't sound like her at all.”

“Perhaps I should not disclose this,” the manager said, “But it might be the case that the card in question was stolen from the lady's father.”