Lover Unveiled, page 36
In this respect, it was kind of like Vernon. Old school, but still useful.
At least for another two months, three weeks, and four days, in his case.
Buddy sat forward in his swivel chair and pointed to his shiny shield. “I’m busy. I got a job, I got responsibilities. She have to understand where I am. This affects me, man.”
Buddy was a twenty-seven-year-old Caldie born-and-bred who was growing out his hair anywhere there was a follicle, and who seemed to think, in the ways of the younger generation, that absolutely everything revolved around how he was feeling.
Vernon had had to listen to the trials of the kid’s internal sense of self for every eight-hour shift since Buddy had been hired back in October.
“And my mother knows how I feel.”
Who doesn’t. “Mm-hm.”
“I have a right to feel safe in my own home—”
“It’s your mama’s house. And you’re not paying rent.”
“I’m allergic to cats, though. She knows I’m allergic—”
Like a gift from God, one of the sensors started blinking on the console. As Vernon sat up to enter the diagnostic coding request into his computer, he hoped—for the only time in his professional career as a security guard—that there was an actual fire.
“Maybe your mama sending you a message,” Vernon remarked while he waited for the IT response.
“You mean . . . you think she’s doing it on purpose? To get me out of the house—”
As the assessment reading came back, Vernon got out of his chair. “It’s another malfunction. There’s no heat registering. I’ve canceled the alarm, but I’m going to go check anyway.”
“I’ll come with—”
“No.” Vernon pulled on his jacket. “You stay here. Someone has to monitor.”
Buddy was protesting the seniority factor as Vernon stepped out into the hall. As the door shut behind him, he closed his eyes and listened for the click.
Ah . . . heaven.
If he played this right, he could stretch the investigation out for an hour or more. The security office was on the first floor right next to the freight elevator, but he was no fool. He was taking the stairs. Slowly.
Down on the basement level, he whistled a tune that had no name, the same one he always fell into when the pressure was off. It was like a combination of Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September” and Smokey Robinson’s original version of “My Girl.” And chances were good he was going to be a-whistlin’ for as long as he was inclined to. Unlike the rest of the floors above, the basement didn’t have any office spaces in it, only storage areas, but more to the point, it was so damn late, all the suits were gone for the night, even the ones who liked to work the long hours on weekends.
And that was another reason he was sure the alarm was a malfunction. Down here, there were no coffeepots left on. No one sneaking cigarettes and ashing into a combustible bin in a men’s room. No gooseneck desk lamps angled too close to an out-box of memos or computer equipment sparking . . . or any of the thousand bizarre things that he’d heard about or seen personally in the building.
Being security for a property like this for thirty-seven years? You learned about all the different ways human beings screwed up. He’d busted people out of elevators they’d stopped on purpose after hours to have sex in. He’d rescued people off the roof, people who’d had it with their lives. He’d turned the other way when some arguments got loud in the stairwells—and interceded in others so no one got hurt. He’d tolerated everybody, no matter what their status, stats, or proverbial serial number.
The fact that Buddy was driving him nuts was probably the best indicator, other than that he turned sixty-five next month, that it was time to hang up the ol’ uniform and find a hobby. He’d never had a hobby. Maybe shipbuilding. He liked things with little parts, and God knew he was a natural when it came to making order out of messes.
Which was why he’d always liked this job—
The burning smell got his attention, even though he didn’t get understand the shadings inside the nasty aroma. It was like . . . leather burning?
Vernon picked up his pace. Like the rest of the building, he knew the basement by heart, and he hustled down to the storage space that was having what appeared to be a very non-malfunction.
Getting out his old-fashioned ring of keys, he also had his passcard ready. Each of the storage units was privately leased, and if he entered, he had to swipe to record his ID along with the date and time for security purposes. And in this case, the particular space was rented to one of the insurance companies, so there was a lot of sensitive information inside.
When he came up to the door, he put his palm on it—and frowned when the steel wasn’t hot. He put his key in the lock anyway, and as the dead bolt gave way, he pushed the heavy weight with his shoulder.
Immediately, he got a whiff of what had grabbed his attention. The smell was definitely coming from inside, but as the motion-activated light came on—
“What the hell?” Vernon muttered.
Stepping into the storage area, he swiped his ID card to quiet the beeping of the door alarm, and then he just walked around . . .
All the completely empty space.
The walls were as expected, painted dark gray, with the ceiling and the floor done in black. This made sense. Every time one of the units was leased, the maintenance crew slapped a new coat of cheap and glossy on every square foot, the layers so thick now that the contours of the concrete were buffed out completely. But this paint job was pristine, no scuffs where boots had traveled or boxes set down, no dings from where things had been pushed into corners.
So not only was there nothing currently inside, there never had been.
Not his problem, though. If some company want to pay for the privilege of not putting a damn thing down here, that was their stupid mistake. His concern was figuring out why in the hell he was smelling something that was burning and seeing . . . absolutely nothing. And yes, he was sure he had the right space. The alarm report told him so.
Maybe he was having a stroke.
No, wait. One of the sprinklers, way in the back, was double-blinking, indicating it was the one that had gone off.
Vernon went over to it and walked around a couple of times. But nothing changed: The fire alarm continued to blink, and his nose kept talking about some kind of smoky stuff, and the storage unit remained totally empty.
Okay, this was definitely going on his weird list.
Heading back to the door, he took one last check at that which he had already checked; then he stepped out—
Vernon froze, all of the blood draining from his face.
Down at the end of the corridor, walking in the kind of flanking formation he knew from his time in the Army, there were three men dressed in black leather. Well, one had camo pants on. And Vernon did not need a metal detector to inform him that the bulges under those jackets were weapons.
All of them had dark hair, deadly eyes, and were lock-focused on him.
With a sudden wave of nausea, he realized wasn’t going to make it to retirement.
Dear God . . . Rhonda. She was going to have to bury him.
Vernon closed his eyes. He had mace, but no gun.
He had no way of defending—
• • •
—opened the door to the security office. Over at the console, Buddy looked up.
“That didn’t take long,” the kid said. “So it was just a malfunction, huh.”
Vernon blinked and looked around. Buddy was the same, still bearded and long-haired, still young and bored. Likewise, the console was what it had always been, and so too the monitors. His chair was also exactly as he’d left it, swiveled around to face the door . . . yet he felt like he’d been gone twenty years. And as he went to sit down at his side of the control panel, he had some vague stomach upset and a headache that had moved in between his temples.
“You okay, Vern?”
He hated when the kid nicknamed him. Usually. Not right now.
“I’m fine.” After he cleared the alarm notification, he turned his chair toward Buddy. “Hey, can you do a favor for me?”
Buddy’s eyebrows popped. “Yeah, sure. You want a soda?”
“No, I want you to”—Vernon rubbed his forehead—“rerun the security tapes.”
“Sure, from where?”
“Down in the—” The pain between his temples got worse and he gritted his teeth. “In the basement. Where the alarm was.”
“Did you see anything?”
“No, I didn’t,” he said roughly. “I just want to review the tapes.”
“But if you didn’t see nothing—okay, yeah, sure. Whatever.”
As Buddy worked the monitors and the feed was set up, Vernon opened his drawer and took out his Motrin bottle. Shaking two—and then four—into his palm, he choked the pills back dry.
He was coughing as the image of the corridor in question came up on Buddy’s right-hand screen—
The second Vernon focused on that vacant, basement-level hallway of doors, his whole brain lit up with pain.
“Keep going,” he groaned. “I want to see the footage from when I was down there.”
As the headache intensified, he had to fight to keep his eyes on the glowing image—
The feed clicked out: Just as he emerged from the stairwell, stepping out of the fire door and into the corridor, the images went black.
“What the hell,” Buddy muttered as he ran it back.
Buddy might have been a whiny codependent with his mommy, but he wasn’t an idiot. He wasn’t doing anything wrong with the technology. The file, for some reason or another, was corrupted to the point where it provided no visuals whatsoever.
Eleven minutes.
Eleven missing minutes.
“I give up,” Vernon said as he let his head fall back.
“It happens. And hey, the alarms are off. So it’s all done with whatever it was.”
“Yeah.”
Still, there was this nearly undeniable urge to probe his memories. Something had happened down in that basement. From the time when he’d left this office and decided to take the stairs to the—
Vernon let it all go as the agony ramped up again. It was such a strange headache, like he’d eaten three ice cream cones, one after another, a kind of sharp, cold spear right in the front of his skull.
“You want to call in?” Buddy asked in a voice that seemed worried. “You don’t look too hot.”
“Motrin’ll kick in in a few.” Vernon cleared his throat. “Tell me about the cat again, would ya?”
Buddy immediately went back into his drama. “Yeah, so my mom says he was a present from Aunt Rose, but I don’t think he was. I think she needs an excuse to kick me out—”
So bizarre. As Vernon concentrated on the feline drama, the headache completely disappeared—and it couldn’t be the Motrin. There was no way they were this effective this quickly.
But as if he were going to argue with what worked?
“And you can’t get allergy shots?” Vernon said when there was a pause for breath in Buddy’s reporting.
The kid frowned. “What are you—wait, you can do that?”
Vernon nodded and started to shrug out of his uniform jacket.
“Yeah. Sure. You go in and they give you shots and then you’re not allergic.”
“Oh, my God, that’s exactly what I’m going to do! Thanks, man.”
With another incline of his at-the-moment-not-hurting head, Vernon decided to glance at the console. When the lights didn’t hurt his eyes or bring the pain back, he relaxed. Who the hell knew what it was. Maybe that pinched nerve in his neck was acting up again.
Yeah, that had to be it.
Man, he was so ready to retire, he really was.
Inside the storage unit full of designer clothes, Mae lowered the flaming purse from the sprinkler head’s vicinity. The red light was no longer blinking.
”No, no . . . no . . .”
She turned back to the door. The reinforced panel was still shut and totally secured, but someone had been close by. She had scented them. She had heard their voice. They had been so close—
There it was again. Her instincts pricking as if she were no longer alone.
Mae looked to the sprinkler with all kinds of hope—the light was still solid.
“Shit.”
As she got off the chair, she thought maybe she was just losing her mind, all fried on desperation and the terror that came with knowing your murderer wasn’t going to stay away forever. And as she stared at the door again, the wave of emotion that came over her was totally not helpful: No longer scared for her life and focused on getting free, she was beyond sad. Near to the point of tears.
Mae breathed in deep—
At first, the scent did not make sense. And then she was convinced she’d imagined it because more than anything, it had been what she had prayed for.
“Sahvage!” she yelled. “I’m here! Sahvage!”
Through the connection of her having fed him, she could sense him clear as if he were standing in front of her. He was here. He somehow had found her.
Throwing the bag to the floor, she bolted across the space, shoving racks aside. Curling up fists, she pounded on the door.
“I’m here! I’m here! Help!”
As she struck the steel panel over and over again, something in the back of her mind registered—and it took some further yelling to figure out what it was. Abruptly, she stopped striking the steel, stopped hollering. Calming herself down, Mae knocked lightly.
Knocked more loudly.
Pounded again.
There was no sound.
As she made contact with the door, there was no reverberation back to her, nothing entering her ears . . . nothing that would register to anybody else, either.
Trying not to panic, she knocked on the white-painted Sheetrock by the jamb.
Nothing, either.
And even though there was smoke curling around the racks of clothes, and a stench in her nostrils, she feared, for no reason that made any logic, that no one else could smell any of it.
That Sahvage couldn’t scent it.
Mae put her hands to her mouth and wheeled around to the racks and displays. This was an illusion, she realized. This whole . . . all of the clothes and the accessories, the furniture and the kitchen, that tub over there . . . it all didn’t exist in the normal sense.
Which meant she didn’t exist in the normal sense.
“Sahvage,” she whispered. “Help me . . .”
How the hell was she going to breach the divide that separated wherever she was from where everyone else existed . . .
. . . before the demon returned?
Oh, dearest Virgin Scribe, if the brunette came back, Sahvage was now in danger, too.
Full-blown panic jammed up her brain, and she paced back and forth. Then an idea came to her.
Mae broke into a scramble, and as she skidded into the kitchen area, she started ripping open cabinets.
White vinegar. Thank God. Salt—yes. Lemons . . . lemons . . .
Mae tried the refrigerator. “Come on, there has to be—”
No lemons, but there was a honey-lemon vinaigrette. Turning the bottle around, she shook her head. The third ingredient was lemon. It was going to have to do.
“Candles . . .”
She opened drawers. Found pink, yellow, and blue birthday candles in one.
“Sterling silver. I need . . .”
Over on the display table, where the purses were, she nailed that one by pouring out a shiny dish that held a dozen pairs of earrings.
“Knife.”
She dumped the growing pile by the door. Went back to a wooden block full of Henckels sitting on the counter by the stove. Snagged the flaming purse on the way back to her supplies.
Sitting down cross-legged, she tried to remember what Tallah had told her. What the measurements were, how much of the one and the other of ingredients. Oh, and as for the lemon-delivery system of that salad dressing? Who knew how to weigh that.
Your intention matters.
As she heard Tallah’s voice in her head, she inspected what she’d put into the silver basin—as if she was going to know what was right or wrong? Then she popped the top on the birthday candles and took out a blue one. ’Cuz true blue, and all that.
What the hell was she doing? It wasn’t like this had worked with the Book.
“Stop it,” she commanded. “Intentions . . .”
Bracing herself, she bit her lip—and cut her palm, right over the lifeline. The blood came out fast, dropping all over the place as she picked up the candle and tilted it to the still-burning purse.
The flame caught quick.
Even though Mae’s heart was racing and she didn’t really think this was going to work, she put her dripping wound and the burning candle over the dish. Then she closed her eyes and tried to calm her mind. Picturing Sahvage walking through the door, she—
No. If this was some kind of fucked-up, other existential plane, she didn’t want to get them both trapped here.
She pictured Sahvage straddling the two planes. One foot in the realness, one foot in wherever she was.
With total concentration, Mae recalled every single thing about the fighter. She pictured his cropped hair. His beautiful, harsh face. His obsidian eyes. His lips . . .
But as she drew in a breath, she couldn’t feel him. Even as she pictured him, it didn’t go far enough: It was a photograph, not a sculpture. Definitely not a person.
Mae popped her eyes opened and looked around. “Think of him, think of him . . .”
Refocusing, she tried to quiet down again, and put herself inside the memories of them together—
In the bathroom. At Tallah’s.
All at once, it clicked: She was so close to Sahvage, their lips nearly meeting, their eyes locked. She could scent him in her nose and feel him inside her body even though they weren’t touching, her blood racing, her senses alive, the precipice she was about to jump off of leading not to a hard fall . . . but a soaring flight.
With that in her mind, she now imagined that he had one foot on the far side of the door, and one foot on her side, whatever that was. He was reaching out to her, extending his hand to her. And she was putting her palm on his. And he was pulling her . . .
