The Price of a Soul [Chapter 3.3]

Author's Note: If you're reading these chapters as they come out, you might be a little confused by why I posted the third part of chapter three a day after the first two parts. You might also be wondering why I had the little conversation with Dirix and Issac instead of just continuing the scene with Quinn. 

This actually was supposed to be a part of chapter four (which is why there was a scene break) but it didn't really fit with the conversation that Issac and Quinn had without warning when I was writing the original chapter four. I decided that this worked better with the events of chapter three than it did with the events of chapter four, so here it is!

Last Line(s): “The information is all digital these days,” Dirix hurriedly said. “I'll email the files to you as soon as I can get up to my office. And as for what Adam was...”

He glanced up at Azazel.

“He was a demon,” he finally admitted. “But not from here or down there. I don't want to get on Azazel's bad side, but I doubt anything worthwhile is going to come out of him looking into Adam's disappearance. I don't think anyone really cares that he's gone.”

xXx

Quinn waited until Issac and Nolan were in the middle of a conversation before she ventured past the front gate. She wasn't really sure what she was supposed to be looking for. There had to be someone that stood out from the others. Detective shows and books always made it so easy. They'd either bump into someone by accident or notice a crucial detail that gave a stranger's connection to the case away.

But everyone was keeping their distance, and Quinn didn't have the slightest idea of what would be considered suspicious. Maybe she should have gone with Issac. What were the chances that Nolan would actually recognize her? He hadn't done any acting for years. Even if he had, she doubted he expected to see Lizzie Holt's missing daughter at his haunted house.

She let out a sigh, closed her eyes, and thought for a moment.

When she felt like she had finally pushed away the doubt and confusion, she turned her attention back to the employees. Her gaze immediately fell on a man leaning up against one of the gravestones. He was dressed like some kind of zombie, with scabbing, infected wounds. She could even see a bone peeking out from one of his arms. The longer she looked at him, the more she felt a pull to him that she couldn't quite explain. There was something about the combination of his makeup and the way he was casually watching Nolan and Issac talk that just felt wrong.

She took a deep breath.

It wasn't until she was just a few feet away from him that he finally turned to look at her, but she had the sneaking suspicion that he had noticed her much earlier than that. Now that she could actually see his face, she was hit by a sense of recognition: he was the man she had studied on the bus ride into town. His suitcase and headphones were unsurprisingly nowhere to be found, but everything else was the same. He had the same tall and vaguely muscular frame, same messy blond hair thrown into a tiny ponytail, and same startlingly blue eyes.

Quinn wasn't sure she had ever seen eyes that were so bright.

Or, she thought as she looked up at him, eyes that were so cold.

“Hi,” Quinn awkwardly said.

The man looked her over. His gaze lingered on her pockets and on her hood. The way he slowly surveyed her was eerily reminiscent of the way Issac interacted with people he didn't know – like he saw a potential threat and was trying to see if it his guess was right. Seemingly satisfied with what he saw, the man stared down at her with his unnerving blue eyes.

“Hello,” he said. “If you're here for the attractions, you're a little early.”

“I'm, uh, not,” she said.

He raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms. “Then what are you here for?"

“I wanted to ask about the disappearances,” she said. “I saw that Adam worked-”

“The police have already done their investigating,” the man said, his tone cold. He narrowed his eyes into what was almost a glare. “And I think you're a little young to be playing detective, anyways, kid.”

She opened her mouth to protest. He was barely older than she was! She knew she looked a little young for her age, but he had to be in his mid-twenties at most. But then something clicked, and Quinn realized that she had found the clue that she was looking for. Her posture loosened; she adopted a much more casual tone. Acting was something that ran in her blood – and she knew how to play clueless.

“I guess I am,” she admitted, “but it's just so...sad.”

She fell silent for a minute, her gaze dropping down to the man's chest.

“Wow,” she said, “that make-up looks really realistic. The make-up crew here must be incredible. It looks like your skin is actually decaying! And if I didn't know any better, I'd think that the bone I can see in your arm was the actual bone.”

The man pushed himself off of the gravestone.

The beginnings of a smile were dancing on his lips now. He straightened and checked his arm; the smile grew even more. “I actually did it myself,” he proudly said. Quinn checked off another little box in her head. “Nolan allows us to do our make-up if we're good enough at it – and he's always impressed with mine.”

Quinn gave an excited nod.

“I wish I could do make-up that good,” she said. “I've tried doing it for Halloween before, but it never turns out right.”

She paused.

“...Do you have any advice?” she asked. She glanced over in Issac's direction; he was still talking with Nolan. She probably didn't have much longer until he came over. Quinn had a sneaking suspicion that the man would close up again once Issac joined her.

The man faltered.

“Er,” he said. “YouTube. Lots of YouTube.”

“And practice?” Quinn guessed. “You must have been here for awhile.”

The warmth faded from the man's eyes.

Maybe Quinn's acting hadn't been as good as she thought it was.

“Not that long,” he slowly said. “Maybe a little more than a month – Nolan likes to start running this place as soon as the weather starts to cool in September. But I've done jobs...similar to this one before. It runs in the family, I think. There's just something so entertaining about watching people's terror.”

Quinn stared.

The man's lips pulled up into a chilling smile. She wondered if he could hear how fast her heart was pounding right now, or if he could somehow smell the sweat forming in the palms of her hands.

She took a step back. She bumped into something small – and hard. And even though she knew the man was still right in front of her, she couldn't help but give a startled glance behind her. She only felt a temporary sense of relief at the realization that it was just a gravestone. Seeing the smirk on the man's face when she looked back at him made all of her short-lived comfort go away.

She turned.

Issac wasn't talking to Nolan anymore. She was sure she must have been as pale as one of the cardboard ghosts they had up next to the front door. She didn't know where Issac was right now.

“Well,” the man said, his tone nonchalant, “it looks like your friend has finished interrogating Nolan, kid. And, seeing that I actually have a job I need to get back to, I think this is where we go our separate ways. So why don't you go run along back to him, and maybe, just maybe, keep your nose out of things you don't understand?”

Quinn watched as he popped off of the gravestone and started to walk away. He raised a badly decaying hand in what might have been a goodbye.

When Issac put his hand on her shoulder a minute later, Quinn was so startled that she almost jumped in surprise.

“Are you alright?” Issac asked, tilting his head to the side. He had a concerned expression on his face – brows drawn together – but he seemed to be looking at something behind Quinn. She spun around expecting to see the man standing there, but he was talking to the woman that had been with Nolan earlier.

She looked back at Issac.

“I...I just got startled,” she lied.

Issac crossed his arms.

“I'm fine,” she reassured him. She knew there was nothing that she could say that would fully convince him, so she gave him a smile that barely reached her eyes. “I think I found someone suspicious.”

Issac gave a little nod, gesturing for her to continue.

Quinn glanced back in the man's direction. Even though she wasn't looking at Issac, she knew he was following her gaze. The man was still talking to the woman; he was seemingly oblivious of their stares. “He called me a kid.”

“You are young,” Issac countered.

She shook her head. “I'm almost his age. You look younger than you actually are, so maybe he's in a similar boat.” Watching the man and woman talk made her feel like she was staring at a completely different person. His shoulders didn't slump as much, and he was much more animated as he talked. It even looked like the woman was laughing from the way that her body was shaking. Quinn wondered how someone could switch how they presented themselves to the world so quickly. How could he hide how cold he really was?

“Did you notice anything else?” Issac asked.

Quinn nodded. The woman was laughing even harder now, and one of the nearby employees had joined in on the conversation. “I don't think he was wearing makeup. His wounds were too realistic. And when I asked him about it, he said he did it himself – but struggled to come up with makeup advice for me.”

She turned back to Issac. His arms were still crossed, but it was no longer because he didn't believe her. The hand underneath his chin gave that away.

“He must be a shapeshifter,” Issac said. “If not that, he would only be able to pull something off like what you described if he was proficient in illusion magic. Did you catch his name?”

She shook her head.

“He also told me not to look into the disappearances,” she added. She fiddled with the strings of her hoodie. One was dangling farther down than the other, and she wanted them to be the same length. “He must know something about it.”

Issac's arms fell back to his sides. “It was a good thing, then, that I asked Nolan for all of his files on his employees. If we're lucky, the file will have that man's photo and his name.” The comment took a moment to register. She blinked, stared at Issac as he pulled out his phone, and didn't move as Issac said, “An Uber should be here in a few minutes to take us back to the lodge-”

“Isn't that illegal?”

Issac gave her a blank stare. “The Uber?”

“The employee files,” she said. “Can he even do that?”

Issac mulled it over for a moment.

“Legally, no,” he admitted, “but contracts outweigh legal liability.”

That brought up even more questions, but Issac had already begun to walk towards the gate. Quinn let herself take one last look at the unnamed man lingering in the graveyard behind her. For the briefest of moments, their eyes met – forest green staring at little blips of bright blue. But then he turned his focus to the other employees, and Quinn went rushing after Issac.