“Who is the guy, do you know?” Dex asks eagerly.
My dad shrugs while I say, “I didn’t get his name. But the woman’s name is Dawn. Dawn Knightly.”
Now he’s even more impressed. “Holy shit.”
“Dex,” my dad warns him.
“Look, dad,” Dex says. “I’m thirty-five years old and I can say holy fucking shit if I want to.”
My dad glares at him.
I can tell Perry is trying to kick Dex under the table. “That might be true but don’t forget my dad—our dad—is a theology professor.”
“Who is Dawn Knightly?” I ask, attempting to breakup their showdown which happens every time we all get together. “Was she in the band?”
Dex tears his eyes away from my dad’s death stare and looks at me in such a way that I know I’m about to get an earful. “No. She was the music journalist who Sage Knightly, the guitarist, fell in love with. Documented the rise and fall of the band on their last tour before everything went to hell in a handbasket. You want to talk about infamous tours, that one is for the books. There’s a whole mythology built around it, which now I wonder if it could have been real after all.” He leans back in his chair, taking off his cap and running his hand through his thick black hair, eyes going to the door. “Damn. I wonder if I should go over and introduce myself.”
“And say what?” I ask. “Ask him for his autograph?”
He gives me a withering glance. “Sage Knightly had a bunch of solo albums after Hybrid. I wonder if he could give me permission to use some of his music in my documentary. Fuck knows the Deftones will never respond to me.”
“Will you ever tell us what the documentary is about?” my father asks gruffly. “You’ve been talking about it for ages now.”
After Dex and Perry called it quits with their Experiment in Terror YouTube show (they were the original YouTubers), they were both at a loss of what to do with themselves. Luckily it didn’t take them long to figure it out. I thought that they might go the paranormal investigator route much like the Warrens (you know, the real life couple The Conjuring was based on), but they seem to have put everything scary behind them. For now, anyway. Can’t say I blame them.
Instead they opened up a company together, Haunted Media. Dex uses his prowess as an editor, cameraman, and musician to make music videos for some major artists. I never thought you could turn making music videos into a career, especially in the age where MTV plays nothing but the Kardashians, but Dex has a dark and creepy tone to his work that goes over well with so many bands and artists. Perry is the manager of the company, the brains and the beauty. She keeps Dex in line, which he needs badly, and is the key liaison between the business and the customers. The saying behind every man is a great woman, is totally true in this case.
But then there’s this documentary that Dex keeps mentioning but never tells anyone what it’s about. Even Perry shrugs when I ask. I know he has aspirations to be a legit filmmaker beyond the music video business, so a documentary makes the most sense as a stepping stone, but he’s always been strangely cagey about it. Then again, Dex is a pretty cagey guy by nature, so I don’t read too much into it.
“You’ll find out once I know,” Dex says and I know he won’t give us anything more than that.
After dinner I head up to my room to work on my blog for a little bit, which means going through and editing a slew of photos I took with Amy and Tom last week. I admit, I’ve been slacking on my blogging duties which isn’t good since that’s really the whole reason I got into my design school. They liked my sketches of course, but it was the whole social media aspect of being a fashion blogger and the fact that I’ve had my blog since I was fifteen that helped seal the deal. They wanted to take on someone who already had a personal brand and a platform to move forward with.
Perry and Dex are downstairs watching a movie on Netflix and even though I’m working on my sketches, trying my hardest to get the right forms for a leather jacket—maybe a leather jacket partially inspired by the one I thought I saw today, the one belonging to the man who may or may not exist—but I just can’t get it right.
I guess I doze off with my head on the sketchpad and a charcoal pencil in my hand.
Three hard knocks seem to ricochet through my brain.
CHAPTER THREE
My head snaps up from my desk and I let out a muffled cry, heart bouncing in my chest as I try and rescue my thoughts from sleep.
I pull off the paper that’s stuck to my cheek and quickly look around. My bedroom is dark except for the light above my desk. I’m alone, though I could have sworn those three knocks came from someone pounding on the desk, beside my head. That’s how much it rattled me.
I try and catch my breath, taking air in deep and slow. I reach for my phone to check the time, wondering how long I’ve been asleep, wondering if Perry and Dex are still downstairs watching TV, when there’s a flutter at the window.
I gasp and whirl around, nearly falling out of my chair.
Something black flashes past outside the window, the light’s reflection on the glass obscuring most of it.
Holy shit.
I’m on the second floor but that doesn’t really matter because once upon a time, Perry saw a demon on the roof and then fell off said roof trying to run from it. I could never figure out why she even went out there but now I know.
Complete morbid curiosity.
I slowly get out of my chair and edge toward the window, heart in my throat, watching my reflection get closer as I approach it. I reach for the window edge to open it the rest of the way.