“We need gloves,” Sabrina said. “Who has some?”
“I have gloves,” Charity said. “Fashion gloves. Leather. But they’re freshly cleaned.”
Sabrina sighed. “Better than nothing.” Not by much, but she didn’t want to dampen the small amount of hope in the woman’s eyes. It was an emergency, and in an emergency, people who felt needed didn’t overstep. She needed caution, and she needed tools. She could manufacture one and make do with substitutes for the other.
When Charity returned with the gloves, Sabrina spread hand sanitizer over them and slipped them on. They were cold to the touch, brown leather with tiny rhinestones. Sabrina’s coworkers would laugh to see her now. She pulled the bloodied sheet away from Tristan’s wound. The smell of decay entered the room all at once. His shoulder had caved in like a sinkhole in his brawn. Ropes of muscle and shards of bone were visible inside, like a glimpse into a pit from hell, and around the injury, the flesh had begun to knot, bulging out like infected tissue.
“What—” Sabrina muttered. She’d never seen anything like it, and she’d seen some fucked-up things.
“Can you fix him?” Marion’s face was white and sickly. Sabrina should quarantine her. But first, she needed to deal with the issue at hand; the fate of the man who should be hers.
“I’m not sure what I’m looking at,” Sabrina said.
“It’s unfixable.” Deja crossed her arms over her chest. “The process has already begun.”
“What process?” Sabrina narrowed her eyes. Deja knew something more than she was telling.
“Some kind of infection. I’ve been trying to get cell reception.” Deja held up a phone. The sight of it seemed out-of-place after so long without them. It had to be the only one on the grounds. “There’s no getting through.”
Tristan’s lips pursed together as if in pain.
“Has he been given a painkiller?” Sabrina said.
“One thousand milligrams of Tylenol.” Deja shook a bottle in her lap. “I have enough here to last through the night.”
“What if we never get cell reception?” Sabrina asked. This was the way a crisis went: she formed a mental list, then checked off the questions as they were answered until the situation was reconstructed around her, revealing its solution once the picture was complete.
“The van will return in a few days,” Deja said. Sabrina couldn’t quite read her tone. Relieved? Resigned? Guilty? It wasn’t her job to find the culprit of assault, but she sometimes sussed out clues, which the police ignored if she told them. “It’s the best we can do.”
“He needs help now.” Sabrina thrust the bottle of hand sanitizer into Deja’s chest. “Wash your hands. Get me a lighter and a knife from the kitchen. STAT.”
Deja pursed her lips. Sabrina sensed her manipulative gears working, contemplating how allowing Sabrina to solve the problem might break the contract that forbade contestants from partaking in dangerous situations during filming. Sabrina didn’t give a single shit about her contract, not when Tristan’s life was fading like his farmer’s tan under the monotone sky. She didn’t care about suspected murders or ghosts or her friendships or her sister at home. She cared only for her patient.
“Do you want me to help or not?” Sabrina said, frustration edging her voice.
“Fine.” Deja scowled and left the room.
“I don’t want to lose him.” Marion reached out as though to touch him, then stopped herself. Tristan’s eyelids fluttered, but they were stiff, like a bandage stretched too tight. “Tristan? Can you hear me?” Marion squeezed his hand. “He squeezed back!”
“Don’t touch him! We don’t know what he’s got,” Sabrina snapped. The woman had sniffed too many nail salon fumes to think right—Tristan would have realized this eventually. Over in the corner of the room, Linda and Charity made eyes at one another. No one else was serious about the man’s plunging heart rate.
When Deja returned with the requested materials, Sabrina wiped sanitizer over the blade, let it dry, then held the lit lighter under it, coating both sides in heat. “Better double-safe than double-sorry.” Bending over Tristan, she pressed the hot blade to his flesh where the wound needed closing.
Tristan’s body began to shake, like Sabrina’s did when an orgasm moved through her. Where the knife touched him, smoke drifted from his skin. Sabrina coughed through it, trying to view the wound beneath the haze.
“Is that supposed to happen?” Marion pulled at her hair until a strand came off in her hand. She let it fall to the ground, too concerned with Tristan’s state to care much.
His wound burst into flame.
It happened all at once, like the way paper caught on the driest days.
Sabrina screamed, and it cascaded through the room from throat to throat, an infection of throat-numbing terror. She dropped the knife. It clattered to the ground. The room smelled like a campfire, then Deja was beside Sabrina with a bucket full of water. She tossed it onto Tristan. The flame died.
“Let’s wait for some professionals.” Deja wiped excess water off onto her soaked pants. She grimaced as she turned away from the bed. “We could make things worse.” She gestured at Tristan, who still shivered as his now-blackened wound smoldered in his shoulder. She knew this was no simple illness. This was nothing like Sabrina’s mother’s crystal wishes. This was something else altogether. Something summoned from Hell.
“I am a professional,” Sabrina muttered, but this was beyond her skill set. She stared at the wilting body of the man who was supposed to be her saving grace, her ticket to unlocking everything life needed to bestow upon her.
She reached for him, her future, but she didn’t dare touch.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Linda
The contestants divvied tasks even as Deja insisted she and Tatum had it covered: two women would watch over Tristan at a time, while two women would steal some sleep. Every few hours, Deja roamed the grounds, checking for a phone signal.
In the room, Charity’s gaze remained trained on Linda. Linda felt it boring through her, insistent, worrying. Like her teachers used to be when she went half-catatonic in class.
“What?” Linda blushed to be so observed.
“Nothing.” Charity’s lips formed an underscore.
“You keep looking at me.”
“It’s just, you look like you could use a snack or something.” Charity reached into the pocket of her cardigan and pulled out the smallest bar of chocolate Linda had ever seen. “Here.”
“Oh.” Linda unwrapped the chocolate. “Thanks.” She placed it on her tongue. It was dark, with a hint of citrus, barely sweetened. The chocolate had been in Charity’s pocket, warmed by her warmth, infused with her in some impossible way. It was perfect. She wanted more.
“You look zapped, too.” Charity reached out as though to move a strand of hair out of Linda’s face, then stopped herself. Linda offered a lazy smile, began to redo her ponytail to capture all the strands, then decided to leave another one loose enough that it would fall back down. “You should sleep first.”
