He looked up at her, confused but no longer raging. “What?”
She hooked an arm around him and half-dragged him until he finally stood up. “I have to get you out of here. Now. Come on.”
Ellis walked over to the small door. Now that she’d broken open the wall hiding the vent stack, he could smell the strong, sharp, unmistakable tang of mold.
By the time he got downstairs to the kitchen, he found the door standing open and her sodden, soaked T-shirt and Brad’s jeans and briefs on the floor in a pile. He stood in the doorway and watched as, in the reach of the security light, Mandaline and Brad stood in the rain. She made him hold up his arms as she ran her hands all over him, the rain sluicing down their bodies. Brad closed his eyes and turned his face to the sky, a serene smile on his face.
“Fuck it.” Ellis pulled off his shorts and joined them. He shivered a little until he grew used to the temperature and walked over to them.
Now it was Mandaline who wore a nearly wild look as she scrubbed her hands all over Brad’s body. Not sexually, and Brad wasn’t aroused anyway, but as if washing him. Truth be told, as beautiful as Mandaline’s naked body looked, even Ellis wasn’t in a mood to feel aroused.
Ellis heard her muttering under her breath the entire time. Then she stopped and held her hands skyward, her eyes closed. “Thank you, Hecate! Thank you, Julie! Thank you, Goddess!”
Weeping, she fell into Brad’s arms. He stood there, eyes closed and the serene look still on his face. Ellis felt like he was intruding on their moment until Mandaline reached behind her, her hand extended to him.
He took it and stepped forward, letting her draw him close until she pulled his arms around both of them.
Standing there with his arms around both of them felt good.
Felt right.
Felt like the most natural thing in the world, as if his soul was now complete.
“He’s allergic to black mold,” she mumbled against Brad’s chest. “He’s reacting to the black mold. It’s worse up in the attic. And he sleeps on the couch, which is right next to the worst of it. And probably some of the spores were getting on his clothes in his closet, too.”
Ellis closed his eyes as he rested his chin on Mandaline’s head. “Son of a bitch.”
“She showed me,” she sobbed, her words barely understandable. “The dreams. Julie was showing me the closet and papers. I didn’t understand until tonight’s dream. He’s worse today because of all the rain. It’s concentrated it in the attic and he’s been up there yesterday and tonight.”
He didn’t know how long they wanted to stand there, but he’d stand there until they were ready to move.
Eventually, Brad mumbled, “Hey, Ellis?” He sounded tired and hoarse, but back to normal.
“Yeah, buddy?”
“I forgot to take my evening meds.”
“That’s okay, buddy. I’ll get them for you when we’re done. Then I’ll find a hotel for us.”
“No,” Mandaline said. She looked back at him. “You’ll come stay with me.”
“We can’t impose like that.”
“It’s not an imposition. You’ll be four blocks from work. He cannot go back into that house until the mold’s cleaned up. Not without protective gear and a respirator, at least. We’re going to need to pull all his clothes from the closet and his room and wash them, too.”
He stared down into her brown eyes. He couldn’t say no to her, couldn’t ever refuse her. Especially not now, not after this. “Okay. Thank you.”
She nodded and closed her eyes again as she let out a relieved sigh. “Can you get me my keys? I think I dropped them in the kitchen when I came in. I’ll take him back with me while you get whatever you need.”
“Let me at least grab you a T-shirt or something.”
She laughed and stared down at her naked body. “Yeah, guess that would be helpful.”
He ran back into the house, dripping water all the way upstairs. He grabbed one of his T-shirts for her, and a pair of his shorts for Ellis, and a few towels from the linen closet next to the bathroom, before running back to the kitchen. He finally found her keys under the pile of clothes.
They had gotten into the Element. He stood there in the rain next to the vehicle as she quickly toweled off and pulled the T-shirt on. She started the engine and let the heater run while Brad got the shorts pulled on.
“Crap, wait a minute,” Ellis said.
He ran into the kitchen again. He grabbed the bottle of Brad’s medicine, as well as a bottle of water from the fridge, and took them back out. “Here, take it now.”
Brad shook one out into his palm and swallowed it, followed by a long swig of water. “Thanks.”
“No problem, buddy. Feeling better?”
“A little. My throat’s all sore and scratchy. And my head hurts.”
“I’ll leave the back door unlocked for you,” Mandaline said. “Whenever you get there.”
“But if I’m not allergic to it—”
She shook her head so hard he thought it might fly off her shoulders. “It doesn’t matter. You can’t keep exposing yourself to it. You might be allergic to it, too, but you’re gone all day at work during the week. And you don’t spend as much time in the attic. Plus it’s not behind your closet. Maybe you aren’t reacting as badly as him.”
Come to think of it, he had been having headaches off and on the past few weeks, but he’d attributed it to stress over worrying about Brad.
“Okay. Let me get dried off and dressed and pack some things.”
She nodded. He stepped back as she turned the SUV around and drove off.
He realized he was standing there, butt naked, in the middle of the yard.
“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” he mumbled as he returned to the house.
Chapter Sixteen
“Mandaline?”
“Yeah, sweetie?”
Brad stared out the windshield at the rain. “I don’t hear Julie anymore. It’s not like the other times, when she went quiet. It’s like she’s gone for good now.”
Mandaline nodded and wiped at her face with the towel as she slowly drove down the driveway. “I know, sweetie. It’s all right. Everything’s going to be okay now. In a couple of days, you’ll feel good as new.”
He rested his head against the passenger window and shivered. She cranked the heat up to full and set it to blow to the floor and the defroster.
“Is Ellis going to be okay?” he asked.
“I think so. I think we’re all going to be okay now.”
He was quiet for most of the drive. As they neared town, he asked, “Mandaline?”
She couldn’t help but smile. He almost sounded like a kid. “Yeah, sweetie?”
“I forgot the condoms. They’re in my dresser with my wallet.”
She burst out laughing. “Honey, it’s like three o’clock in the morning. I have a full schedule today. I’m sure Ellis does, too. And you’ve had a pretty rough couple of days. I think we all need sleep.”
“Oh. Okay.”
When they reached the shop, she got him out and inside and upstairs to her bathroom, where she made him strip. She climbed into the shower with him and thoroughly shampooed and scrubbed him and her both, with the water as hot as they could stand it. She scrubbed their bodies with a washcloth and a loofa to make sure no trace of the mold remained on either of them.
As she ran her hands over his back, for the first time she got a clear look at his old injuries. Up his entire back pink, twisted skin marked the path the explosion had ripped into his flesh. With his hair wet and plastered against his skull, now she could see a couple of the bare patches, especially at the base of his skull, where hair didn’t grow and white, gnarled scars remained.