Page 258 of Stay Scared

We kept enough: the masks, the chase, the narrow corridors that make people forget how close the exits really are. We kept the lie while finally learning that the person inside it matters more.

That distinction took eighteen months, several contractors, one city hearing that nearly ended in assault charges, and enough money to make Ash briefly consider murder as a budgeting strategy.

Crimson Night sells out anyway. Of course it does. People still want monsters.

They just want the monsters to stop when the fantasy ends.

Most of them never know how difficult that lesson was for the men who own half this place. Cade runs performance and construction because nobody else can convince an actor to crawl through broken scenery after demonstrating it himself first. Owen controls security because taking surveillance away from him entirely would have been less realistic than giving a wolf responsibility for the fence. Ash still designs rooms like he is trying to settle an argument with God.

I own the other half.

That fact bothers him less than it used to.

Not much less.

Getting here was less graceful than the finished building makes it look.

The first breakfast we attempted together ended with Cade burning bacon because he was arguing with Ash, Owen silently moving the smoke detector farther from the stove, and Ash informing both of them that my kitchen had become operationally inefficient.

It was my kitchen then.

I reminded him.

Ash told me efficiency did not care whose name was on the lease.

I made him clean the pan.

He did, badly.

The first night I stayed at Crimson Night voluntarily happened three months later.

Not because somebody convinced me to. Not because weather made driving home inconvenient or because we worked until two in the morning and pretended exhaustion had made the decision for me.

I finished reviewing a new chase route, looked at the time, and said, “I’m staying.”

All three men went quiet.

Cade tried to hide how pleased he was and failed immediately. Owen looked toward the hallway camera before catching himself. Ash asked which room I intended to use like he was requesting information for a scheduling document.

I chose Ash’s.

Mostly because of his face when I said it.

The following morning, Owen stood outside the door instead of checking the hallway feed.

He knocked.

I made him wait long enough to understand that I had noticed.

That became a pattern.

Owen still knows things before I tell him. He notices when I change shampoo, when I take a different route through the building, and when I am halfway through deciding I want to leave a crowded room. The difference is that now he asks what the observation means before acting on it.

Sometimes the question is painfully literal.

“Do you want me to know why you moved your bag?”

“No.”