“Ah, Ms. Lori?” Ahmed began, “I wonder…I wanted to ask Mr. Gorge some questions about the sale last night.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. It was fast. Too fast, you see. I hoped to work out things. Details I forgot.”
“Lori” cocked her head curiously. “I don’t suppose you have the paperwork that Mr. Gorge gave you last night?” she asked. “He didn’t leave his copies.”
“Yes. Yes,” Ahmed said, pulling out the folded sheets of paper. He smoothed them out on one of the pool tables. “Is all very simple, you see. Maybe too simple, is my worry.”
“You are concerned about the price?”
“No. Yes. Ah, yes and no,” Ahmed smiled weakly. “Price is good, yes, but I have loans and such. I can do this, but I am unsure of details. I hoped Mr. Gorge would not feel is too late.”
Lori nodded, looking over the paperwork quickly. “It does seem like a fair price.”
“Ah. Well. I did not expect to sell until last night. I had not planned.”
She smiled comfortingly. “Opportunity knocked, and you didn’t want to miss it.”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Kovac-”
“Ahmed, please. Call me Ahmed.”
“Ahmed, then. It’s just Lori, by the way. Ahmed, I understand that this probably came on in a rush.” She sounded sympathetic. She’d had several thousand years to practice such mannerisms, after all. She could also recognize opportunities. “Tell me, what sort of plans did you have for business after you sold the hall?”
His smile faded a bit, showing vulnerability. “That is the real problem,” he acknowledged. “That is what I have to talk with Mr. Gorge about.”
Lori nodded, folding the sales papers back up without giving them back. “Mr. Gorge has already passed ownership of the hall to a new party.”
Ahmed blinked. “He has? So soon?”
“Mr. Gorge had plans when he made the purchase. Most of them didn’t work out as he had intended, but I think they’ll work out to your benefit as well as for the new owners. Tell me, Ahmed, how would you feel about staying on as manager? For a few years, at least?”
* * *
“Oh wow, what a great shot,” breathed a voice behind Alex. He blinked, turning slightly from his computer terminal, and became very aware of long, curly black hair and pale, luscious cleavage framed in black fabric all looming thrillingly close to his left shoulder. He recovered quickly and looked up at Onyx’s blue eyes.
The picture of the angel statue on his screen enthralled her. He’d gotten the shot almost perfectly. There was just enough ambient light from the street and the exterior of the funeral parlor to let the angel’s features show.
“Aw, thanks,” he smiled.
“Alex, where did you do this?” she asked, still looming. She seemed a bit closer than necessary. Onyx was a walking, talking work of delicate beauty wrapped in black satin and lace and knee-high Doc Marten boots. She was a little older, at least as far as Alex knew. She’d been in school before he’d gotten there, anyway.
He was just pleased that she remembered his name. He had only managed passing conversations with Onyx and her apparent partner in crime, at least until now. “Uh,” Alex replied, “promise to keep it quiet?”
Onyx’s eyes slid down to look at his, a conspiratorial smile playing at the red lips on her porcelain-perfect face. “How quiet?”
Alex smirked. He kept his voice low. “Well, I guess you can tell Molly. She seems cool.”
Onyx hissed Molly’s name without a second thought. Molly paused only to save her work before coming over.
Where Onyx was beautiful and delicate, Molly struck Alex as a girl whom he’d be happy to make out with in a mosh pit. Her fire engine red hair was cut short. She wore no make-up and hardly needed any. Molly was all torn black band t-shirts, dark cargo pants and spiky jewelry, and never failed to look good for it.
He was probably wrong in labeling Molly as a Goth. He was probably wrong in that with Onyx, too, but it wasn’t like he’d throw the labels at them directly. Really, he just found them both enchantingly hot…hot enough to do silly things-no, dumb things, and he knew it-in the hopes of even marginally impressing or interesting them. Yet his graveyard stunt seemed to have turned out wonderfully despite its inexcusable stupidity.
They weren’t on his mind when he woke up that morning. Lorelei saw to that. He didn’t think about them until he got to his photography class. Alex knew he had more than enough on his hands with Lorelei and Rachel. But then Onyx flashed him a wave and a smile as he entered the class, and every enabling comment Lorelei had made echoed through his mind.
“What’s up? Oh, shit, that’s nice,” Molly said as she came over to the screen.
Alex just smiled, clicked over to the previous picture, and waited as they looked over his shots of the mausoleum.
Molly’s grin was unrestrained. “Where did you get these?”
“Keep it to yourselves?” Alex asked. They both nodded. “Sacred Heart cemetery.”
“No shit?” Onyx asked. “They just had a big fire, burned down the chapel.”
“Yeah.”
“Did you get permission to shoot on their property?” Molly asked.
“Uuhhh…no. They don’t allow you to get in there at night,” Alex said, dropping the line as nonchalantly as he had rehearsed it in his head several nights past. “But if you climb the fence and stumble around in the dark anyway, you can get a cool shot of this statue here.” He clicked over to another picture. “And you can sneak up on the chapel and get a pic of the steeple with the moon overhead, and it feels totally creepy. And there’s this mist and stuff, and you almost feel like you can hear ghosts.”
“Um,” Onyx said, “that’s the chapel that burned down?”
Alex just nodded. “Yeah. Freaked me the hell out, too.”
“Holy fuck, you were there that night?” Molly asked.
“I left about an hour before,” Alex fibbed. “If I’d seen anything, I’d have called 911,” he added, which wasn’t entirely untrue. He had indeed called the cops that night. He just didn’t wait for them. “I mean, yeah, I was trespassing, but that chapel was kind of a nice building.”
Molly snorted, but Onyx just looked at Alex. The redhead noticed the change in the way her friend looked at him, and flashed a quiet, knowing smile at her.
A great deal passed within each glance between the two. Molly flashed a wordless query. Onyx gave a small, tentative nod of confirmation with bashfully eager eyes. Molly smirked in approval. Alex missed almost all of it.
Almost. Without realizing that the two threw signals to one another with a sharp clarity just short of telepathy, Alex knew that they both looked at him differently than they had before. What’s more, he knew it was an encouraging sign.
“What’re you doing after class?” Onyx asked abruptly. Molly headed back to her workstation.
Alex blinked. “Um. I’ve got my first aid class after this. Normally I work on Friday afternoon after that, but today my plans are pretty much flexible. Why?”
Onyx shrugged, smiling a bit shyly. “Figured we could hang out. You seem cool.”
“I’d like that,” Alex smiled back.
“Molly’s got a ton of mid-terms coming up, so she’s stuck here for awhile. I’m on my own.”
“I’m free.”
“I mean, I don’t have anything in mind. Like, no plans to go do anything interesting.”
“Cool.”
“I’m not saying it’s a date or anything,” Onyx said. “I mean. Um. I’m not sure what I’m saying right now. Do I sound like a babbling idiot?” Several workstations away, Molly faked a cough that sounded suspiciously like laughter.
“Onyx,” Alex said calmly, “I’d love to hang out with you after class. We could go do whatever. Or nothing at all. You just seem really cool and I’d like to get to know you better.”