If they hoped to have any type of future, he was going to have to give up this game he was playing.
But if he was in as deep as it appeared, she doubted he would.
When Ash woke next, she realized she’d slept the entire night and well into the next day. Light filled her room. Merc had shifted away from her to lie on his side, his back to her. She looked over his wounds, expecting the worst, but that wasn’t what she saw. The gashes were half the size they’d been last night. There was very little swelling and no active bleeding. How was it possible he’d healed so quickly?
Were the cuts real? Was this all part of his role playing? She tried to touch his back, but her hand couldn’t get close to it. A wave of heat hit her palm, like a force field. She reached around him to touch his forehead, checking him for fever. His temperature felt normal.
Ash got up and dressed. This wasn’t a normal day, and she didn’t want to meet it in her pjs. She took a bottle of water from the fridge then dug around in the kitchen drawers for a straw. Merc needed water for sure. He was sleeping too hard to be very hungry—she’d get them something later.
Ash knelt beside the bed. “Merc, you need some water.”
He looked at her. Took him a moment to focus. Man, when he shut down—either for meditating or sleeping—he went deep.
She smiled at him. “Hi.”
He pushed himself up to a sitting position and took the bottled water, draining it before lying back down.
The rest of the day went like that. She got him up to use the restroom—which he insisted on doing by himself—gave him water, then he slept. And as the day progressed, she could see his wounds improving. She still couldn’t touch his back, but the heat emanating from him was less intense.
When Merc had slept for nearly fifteen hours, Ash decided she’d better venture out for food, if either of them was going to eat that day. She stuffed her passport and some cash into her pants pocket. She locked Merc inside their shared room, then walked down the narrow road and turned toward the main plaza. There were plenty of late-afternoon diners filling up the outside seating at the many cafés.
The first restaurant she came to was the one they’d eaten at last night. Merc had seemed to enjoy it, but for some reason, she didn’t feel inclined to order takeout from there. The next two were new additions to the food scene, having popped up in the days since her arrival. They weren’t busy, but neither seemed appealing. She kept walking, making her way around the plaza, searching for…something.
She finally stopped at a small restaurant on the opposite side of the plaza. The waiter pointed to a chalkboard with a short list of choices.
Among the many tables filled with people, a white man with straight brown hair sat alone at his small bistro table.
“I can recommend the fried fish. Just had it and will do so again before I leave.”
Ash smiled. “Thanks.” She ordered two of those.
“You’re welcome to have a seat with me while you wait,” he offered.
He spoke American English, but looked Scandinavian. Big-boned, angular features, icy-blue eyes. He was a gorgeous guy, if your tastes ran to the brutal side. “You’re from the States,” she said.
“I am. Colorado.”
“What are the odds? Me too.”
“Huh.”
One thing Ash had learned in her years of traveling alone was that interesting things often came from random conversations with other travelers. She sat across from the guy. “Ashlyn.”
The guy didn’t offer his hand. “Jack Newsom.”
“What brings you to Valle de Lágrimas, Jack?” Ash asked.
“Miracles. Curses.” He shrugged and grinned. “Same for you?”
Ash nodded. “I was here not too long ago, shortly after everything happened. It just stuck with me. I wanted to come back and see how what happened had affected the town.”
“And your thoughts now?”
Ash stared at the man a moment, wondering how much to say about Merc’s game. Was this man another gamer? She decided to ignore what she knew and pretend everything was normal as she sent an approving look around the flourishing plaza. “I think it’s done wonders for the village.”
Jack didn’t look pleased at her approving stance. “For everything, there is a cost.”
The man’s intense eyes made Ash uncomfortable. Best to just keep things casual until her food came and she could cut out. “Have you been here before?”
Jack ignored that question. “How is your friend feeling?”
“My friend?”
“I’ve seen you around town with him. Usually, he doesn’t let you out of his sight.”
Merc had only been with her in the evening yesterday. “Oh, he’s napping. Said he’d meet me here.”
“You’re lying.”
And just like that, Jack flipped from an interesting stranger to a likely predator. Ash took her phone from her pocket. “I have to make a phone call. Excuse me.”
Jack grabbed her wrist. Ash’s eyes shot to his face. He didn’t have dark hair but blond. And he was missing half his cheek, leaving his teeth exposed. She gasped. As soon as she blinked, the vision was over. Her free hand covered the section of her own cheek, mirroring the spot where she’d seen his facial deformity.
Jack jumped to his feet, a look of shock and horror on his face. He gave her a narrow-eyed glare, then walked out of the café.
Shaken, Ash went over to stand close to the café’s entrance, in sight of plenty of other people. She hoped Jack wouldn’t follow her back to her room.
You are safe. Sam’s voice flitted through her mind.
Great. Now she was channeling Summer’s fiancé. Listen, Sam. I don’t want any part of whatever game you guys are playing. Leave me out of it. Your role-player friend was creepy with his half-face.
Sam didn’t respond, or if he did, Ash was distracted by the waiter bringing her food out. She paid for it then left the café. On her way across the plaza, she ran into two boys she recognized: Pablo and his little friend. Their eyes were alight with excitement.
“Señorita!” Pablo said. “Did you hear the news?”
Ash shook her head. She’d been with Merc the whole day.
“The bodies,” Pablo’s friend said. “They fell apart. People have taken the bones.”
“They’re gone?”
“Yes. Gone.” He swiped one hand across the other.
“And that’s not the only thing,” Pablo said, exchanging a dark look with his friend. “At the pits, there are no new bodies, but there were some before. What was there was…was…massacred. You know they weren’t dead when they went into the pits. Something got them last night.”
“La Tunda,” his little friend whispered.
Pablo shook his head. “We don’t know. There was nothing left of the ones dying, but their blood, shredded clothes, and some bones.”
“Oh. God. That’s horrible,” Ash said, briefly taken in by their story…until she remembered none of this was real. She looked around the plaza at the crush of people. Talk about a massive live-action role-playing game. Was it possible the adults running this alternate reality had pulled these boys into their game?