I caught myself staring and continued the rest of the way into my room. I closed the door as quietly as I could behind me.
As the hours passed and the moon traveled across the night sky, I lay alone in my room and tried not to think about her. I didn’t know many women. It wasn’t like I had the opportunity to meet them through work like a normal person. The criminal underworld was still mostly a man’s world, and the few women I’d crossed paths with would just as soon stick a knife between your ribs as look at you. The only woman I saw with any regularity was the creepy, dark-haired woman who was always with Underwood, and I really, really didn’t want to think about her just then.
Bethany was different. I’d felt a connection with her from the moment we met, and yet we came from completely different worlds. Bethany risked her life on a regular basis trying to do good. Me, I was a thief. I stole things. Sometimes I stole lives. She was about rules and protocol. I was dumb muscle, paid to do, not think. We couldn’t be more different if we tried.
In my mind’s eye, I saw her pull her shirt up over her head again, saw the fiery bird inked on her back …
Annoyed at where my thoughts were headed, I got up from the bed. The night was creeping by at a snail’s pace and I needed something to distract myself. Things were complicated enough as it was, I didn’t need to add any more wrinkles by wondering what other parts of Bethany’s body might be covered in tattoos.
I didn’t have The Ragana’s Revenge with me to read, so I decided to rummage through the wall closet instead, hoping I’d find some clothes to replace my ruined shirt and jeans. Like most New York City closets, this one seemed to have been added as an afterthought to the already cramped living quarters. It was just a foot and a half deep. The shelf up top was cluttered with dusty old hats, a stack of ashtrays, a battered suitcase, and an awkwardly shaped object I couldn’t make out at first. I pulled it off the shelf for a closer look. It was a primitive wooden idol shaped like a man, but with hundreds of iron nails hammered into it from top to bottom. I shuddered and put it back on the shelf quickly. I didn’t know what it was. With some things, I figured it was just as well not to know.
Hanging from the wooden bar under the shelf were Morbius’s old clothes. I tried on a variety of the shirts and pants, but he must have been more broadly muscled than I was. They were all slightly too big for me. I was about to give up when I finally found a shirt that fit, and shortly after, a pair of pants. Hidden under some folded bedsheets I found a box containing a pair of black leather boots. I grabbed a coat as a replacement for my ruined leather jacket. Once I had them all on, I looked at myself in the mirror on the back of the closet door.
Black linen shirt. Black jeans. Leather boots. Long brown trench coat.
Now that’s more like it, I thought, beaming at my reflection.
A sudden creak of the floorboards outside my door made me freeze. Dim light from the hallway spilled through the crack under the door, along with the shadows of two legs. Someone was standing right outside my room.
Bethany? No, my instincts told me right away it wasn’t her, or any of the others. But that was impossible. No one else—nothing else—could get into the safe house. I kept my eyes on the shadows under the door and didn’t make a sound.
Then came the faint but persistent scratching of what sounded like a single fingernail on the door.
Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.
A chill crawled up my spine. Slowly, quietly, I pulled my gun out of the leather jacket on the chair and crept toward the door. In the light underneath, the shadow legs moved off. Footsteps traced the floor outside, heading away from my room.
I opened the door slowly. In the hallway, the overhead lights were still out, but now there was some kind of faintly glowing ball hovering low on the floor by the baseboard. The magic version of a night-light, I supposed. Across the hall Bethany’s door was still ajar, a strip of pitch black space showing between the door and the jamb. My gut clenched. Had whoever was out here gone into her room? I heard the wooden steps creak under someone’s weight. I looked quickly and thought I saw a shape on the stairs that led down to the second floor, just a brief flash of silhouette, no more discernible in the dark than a shadow. I would have thought it was my eyes playing tricks on me if it weren’t for the odor lingering in the air. It was sickly sweet, like rotting meat. My first thought was Thornton, but this scent was different. It wasn’t him.
I reached the landing and looked down into the living room. The lights were off, but the bright glare of the streetlights bled through the curtained windows. It gave me just enough light to see a dark shape move across the living room floor in silhouette. It was a man, short and wearing a blazer that looked ragged around the shoulders.
I lifted my gun and hurried down the steps, but when I got to the bottom he was gone. No, there he was, descending the flight of stairs at the other end of the room, the black blob of his head and shoulders disappearing into the dark stairwell. Holding the gun in front of me, I crossed the living room and risked a quick glance down the stairs. Below was only an inky pool of darkness. I couldn’t see a thing.
The stairs creaked under the intruder’s weight, and then stopped. He’d reached the bottom. I strained to listen, trying to discern which direction he was moving in now, but I didn’t hear anything.
I started down the stairs slowly. I tried to be quiet but the steps creaked under my feet. I might as well have used an air horn to announce my approach. As I descended, the darkness swallowed me. I hoped if I couldn’t see the intruder, he couldn’t see me, either.
When I reached the bottom, I stayed by the stairs, listening for any movement. My eyes adjusted slowly to the dark, helped by the diffused haze coming through the curtained window near the front door, but I didn’t see anyone.
The doorway to the kitchen was on my right. It was the only place the intruder could have gone. Holding my gun with both hands, I crept into the room.
The stench of decay was stronger here. I felt along the kitchen wall for the light switch, and flipped it. The overhead snapped on and flooded the room with light.
I didn’t see anyone.
Just as I began to wonder if I was imagining things, he rushed me from my blind spot, little more than the dark blur. He slammed me up against the kitchen wall and put one forearm across my throat. He used his other hand to push my gun hand to the wall and pin it there.
When I finally had a chance to focus on his face, I gasped in surprise.
“Hello, errand boy. Long time no see,” Bennett said. His skin was pale and waxy. His lips and eyelids had darkened to a bruised purple. He was wearing the same blue pinstriped suit he’d worn last night, though now it was stained and torn. There was a long, straight gash across his neck. Beneath it, dried blood painted a trail down the front of his shirt. I stared at the wound in horror. God, was that what Underwood had done to him behind the black door? Slit his throat?
Except, now Bennett was here in Ingrid’s kitchen. Did nothing stay dead the way it was supposed to in this damn world? Was the barrier between life and death really so weak that anyone could just come and go as they pleased? He wasn’t wearing an amulet like Thornton, so what was he doing walking and talking when he ought to be six feet under? How the hell had he even gotten inside? Bennett wasn’t a ghost. He felt solid, real. Wasn’t there supposed to be a ward around the safe house to keep everyone out? If Bennett was here, it meant either the ward had stopped working or he’d walked right through it like it wasn’t there. Neither answer was comforting. But then, there was nothing comforting about being held against the wall by a walking corpse, either.