“I still live upstairs, but I rent this apartment too,” Daniels said. “And one of the apartments beneath this one.”
“Why?”
“I’ve always wanted to do that,” Cole mused. “Fewer neighbors.”
Daniels had walked up to Cole and extended a hand to be shaken. His friendly grin and rounded face looked like they’d been taken from the kindly malt shop owner of any 1950s sitcom. Long arms sprouted from a lumpy body that came complete with a spare tire. He wore a pair of khaki pants that might have been tailor-made to fit a buoy, and a sweat-stained navy blue dress shirt with sleeves that were rolled up past his elbows. Daniels’s skin fit poorly on his skull, but not because of anything supernatural. His Nymar spore had probably just changed him from an ugly, lumpy human to an ugly, lumpy vampire.
Just when Cole thought he’d adjusted to the strange man in front of him, he noticed something even stranger. At first glance Daniels’s stringy, light brown hair seemed to be capped by a toupee that was several shades too dark. Now that he was closer, Cole could tell the narrow band around the back of his scalp was actually hair and the toupee was really a solid cluster of Nymar tendrils gathered at the top of his head and the base of his neck. He had seen other Nymar with tendrils clustered on their heads, but those seemed more like prison tattoos. Daniels’s tendrils, like almost everything else on him, just didn’t fit.
“Go on and shake his hand, Cole,” Paige urged. “He won’t bite.”
As Cole finally completed the awkward greeting, Daniels’s feeding fangs drooped halfway from his gums. It was difficult to tell if that was a warning or the Nymar equivalent of leaving his fly down. The fumbled attempt at a smile didn’t help much.
“Howdy,” Daniels said.
At least that cleared things up. Not even cowboys said that when they were trying to scare someone off. Cole nodded and shook the other man’s hand just to get it over with. “Hi.”
“So what’s the deal with all the apartments?” Paige asked as she strolled through the cluttered living room and into what was supposed to be a dining area.
Daniels’s head snapped around and he rushed ahead of her to protect one of the stacks of boxes. “Watch your step. There’s a lot of delicate equipment around here.”
“This is where you do your work? How come I’ve never been here? Is that a hole burnt into the ceiling?”
Craning his neck to look up into the closet that Paige had found, Daniels replied, “Yes. I used a torch to burn through the ceiling just as I did to put a hole in the floor of the bedroom. That way I can climb freely between all three apartments.”
“Kiss that deposit goodbye,” Cole chuckled.
“For your information, when I leave this place there will be no need to settle any contracts. I have made arrangements to clear my path and have set aside any funds needed to compensate the management for damages.”
“He’s just flapping his lips again, Daniels,” Paige said as she moved around to get in front of the Nymar inventor. “Tell me, though. Why haven’t I ever been down here? You’ve obviously had this set up for a while.”
“It wouldn’t be secret if I told everyone.”
“Why bother with it at all?”
“Do you know how many times my previous residence was broken into after I started working for you?”
“That was back in the St. Louis days,” Paige said.
But Daniels barely skipped a beat. “Lots. So when this apartment came up for rent, I took it and used it as a storage space. Burning through the ceiling was easier than you might think. It’s a crude access point, but very functional. Whenever someone comes around that I don’t want to speak to, it’s just a simple matter of climbing through the floor of one apartment and pulling a rug over that hole. If someone happens to come in here, I just shut the closet door.”
Cole peeked into the large closet, which was probably meant to hold a washer-dryer unit. Now, it held a ladder and a charred hole in the ceiling. “You could just pretend you’re not home.”
“Pretend?” Daniels sputtered. “What kind of solution is that?”
“And there’s another hole in the bedroom?” Paige asked.
Daniels nodded and ran his hand over the top of his head. His fringe of hair shifted a bit, but not as much as the black tendrils beneath the rest of his scalp. “I got that one for a steal, seeing as how I was already renting these two.”
Paige stopped her pacing at a large freezer that looked more like a plus-size coffin. “You mean the rental office knows you’ve got all three apartments?”
Daniels nodded.
“So if someone wanted to kill you and they asked around your rental office, they’d find out you rented three apartments?”
“Do you really think someone would go to all that trouble?”
The patience in Paige’s tone was no longer there when she asked, “If you thought your would-be attackers were so stupid, why burn through your floors?”
That stopped Daniels cold.
Rather than wait for a response, she waved her arms and stomped toward the door. “Is your lab still upstairs?”
“Yes, but someone’s watching that apartment. Why do you think I pulled you into this one?”
Paige turned and tossed the package from the front porch at the Nymar. Placing her hands together at chin level, she said, “Daniels, I’m begging you. Please tell me you’re not going to make us hide here until some car leaves the parking lot. I’m tired and you knew I was coming. Is the new stuff here?”
“No,” he replied while still trying to recover from clumsily catching the package. “It’s upstairs. I just didn’t want you being watched.”
She looked to the closet and stomped across the floor. “Fine. But before I climb this thing, tell me whether the stuff’s ready or not.”
“It’s…sort of ready.”
“Good enough.” With that, she climbed to the next apartment with a series of sharp, clattering steps on the molded aluminum.
Daniels watched her ascend through the crooked, blackened hole. Tilting his head to keep her in sight as long as possible before she disappeared into the upstairs apartment, he whispered, “Why is she dressed like that?”
Even though Cole was right beside the closet, he wasn’t watching Paige. One of the banker’s boxes was open and something inside had captured every ounce of his attention. Without looking up, he said, “We went to see Stephanie before coming here.”
“Is Paige working for Ste—”
“For the love of God,” Cole said quickly, “don’t finish that question.” Shifting to look up to the top of the ladder, he didn’t speak again until he knew the coast was clear. “Is this what I think it is?”
Stretching out his hands like a monk preparing to grasp an idol that had been sanctified by his favorite higher power, Daniels replied, “It’s very valuable and very delicate. Please…just put it back.”
Cole started to lower the object back into the box from whence it came, but couldn’t bring himself to let it go. Reverently, he raised it up again and gazed upon its divine wonder. “This looks like a pristine, twelve-inch, fully posable Boba Fett figure. Is that—” He snapped his head forward so the toy in his hand wouldn’t have to be moved too abruptly. “Is that a Wookie scalp hanging from his belt?”
Having been fully prepared to use any means necessary, Nymar or human, to get that figure away from Cole, Daniels snarled. “Yes. It is. I don’t have the original packaging, but those are all the original accessories.”
“I used to have one of these,” Cole said. “And not one of the newer ones they made for the re-release of the trilogy. I’m talking about one just like this.” Slowly rotating the plastic bounty hunter, he lovingly soaked up every detail. “I was about ten years old and I had all the Star Wars toys, but only one figure this size. I couldn’t play with it along with all the other smaller figures, so I traded it to my friend for one of those plastic light sabers with the flashlight in the handle.”