“Fuck,” he muttered on a recoil.
The smell was god-awful. Like a lesser, but without the sweet overtones.
And then he didn’t worry about his nose’s problems.
“No,” he said as he started to read the words. “That’s not what I want. I need something else.”
The Book fluttered, like it was disagreeing with him.
“I’m not looking for . . .” He shook his head. “I’m not looking for love. You’re nuts. I’m actually looking to get rid of a . . . woman.”
He couldn’t say the d-word—
“Don’t move! I have a gun!”
At the sound of the booming male voice, Balz rolled his eyes and turned around, putting his body between his Book and the triplex’s Mr.—who was standing in the archway of the room of shelves, a shiny little poodle-shooter in his doubled-up palms.
Like he’d seen a lot of Roger Moore-era 007 films.
Goddamn it, Balz was so fucking distracted, he’d missed the scent—
“I’m calling the police!”
The Mr. had had a lot of Botox, so his eyebrows were locked in the down position, even though he was panting from shock and super flushed. Guess only the bottom half of his puss was capable of exhibiting surprise. Oh, and those plaid pajamas? Not exactly a vibe if you were trying to be taken seriously as a protector of your happy home.
Rolling his eyes, Balz froze the human where he stood—and then had to wonder if the Mrs. was in res as well. Not that it really mattered.
“Put that thing away, for fuck’s sake,” Balz muttered.
On command, the Mr. lowered the gun and then blinked like he was waiting for further suggestions as to what he needed to be doing.
Glancing back at the Book, Balz frowned. “Lemme ask you something. Where’d you find this thing?”
“It’s a new acquisition.” The Mr. looked around Balz’s body, and the instant his eyes rested on the Book, love poured out of his stare. “I just knew I had to have it. It was like . . . it was destined to be mine.”
As Balz’s dagger hand snuck to his own gun, he told himself to fucking relax. Was he really prepared to shoot this motherfucker over a book—
The Book, he amended.
The Mr. continued: “There’s a rare book dealer here in town. He knows that I buy the unusual, particularly if it has—shall we say, an edge?” The man smiled in an I’m-a-naughty-boy kind of way, those brows moving not in the slightest. Then he dropped his voice and tilted forward. “My seller told me it’s bound in human flesh.”
So much about this sonofabitch made Balz want to kick him in the nuts. On principle.
“So where the hell did it come from?” he demanded of the guy.
“It’s very old.”
“No shit.”
“And it’s written in Hungarian.”
Balz glanced behind himself at the “NSFW.” And all the English words underneath that heading. “No, it’s not.”
The Mr. puffed up his chest. “Are you saying I do not know the first language I learned.”
Pointing at the Book, Balz said, “No, I’m saying that’s English.”
“You, sir, are wrong.” If not for the Botox, there clearly would have been a serious arch over one of those eyeballs. “But as it is my book, I’m not going to argue about it with a stranger.”
“What do you use it for?”
“Use it . . . ?” That stare went hard upper right. Which was what liars did when you got inside their little games. “You don’t use a book like this. It’s for display only.”
“You’re full of shit, but I don’t care about your answer.” At least not to that. “I need to know when you bought it?”
“About two weeks ago. It’s my newest acquisition.”
“Yeah, you already said that. Did the dealer tell you where he or she got it from?”
The Mr. smiled and nodded. “Such a crazy story. Some lowlife brought it into the bookshop and dropped it off. Said he found it in some back alley downtown. He refused to take any money for it—he said, and I’m not sure whether this is true, but he said it told him to bring it to the shop. Can you imagine?”
“How much did you pay for it?”
The Mr. inflated his chest again, like he was used to telling people how much he paid for his shit. ’Cuz he liked making those kinds of reports. “It was in the six figures.”
“Well, you better get ready to put a claim in on your insurance.”
“Why?”
Balz reached out for the Book. “Because it’s coming with me—”
Just before his hands made contact with the ancient tome, the lights flickered—
And then everything went black.
Mae came back to consciousness because she dropped to the floor—and the sudden impact hurt. But it was also a case of her being able to breathe again.
Gone. The crushing, invisible pressure was gone.
As she started to cough and gag, she rolled onto her back and shoved her hair out of her face with a loose, flappy hand. Staring up at a bald white ceiling, she was confused about where she was, but then her brain began tossing context into the boat of her consciousness, the images and sounds and smells of her short-term memories like dry-dock fish flipping around, spastic and overlapping.
The brunette—
With a shot of adrenaline, Mae shoved herself into a sit-up and put her hand to her head. Even though everything went around in a circle, she managed to track enough so that the racks of clothes registered and so did the purses and the shoes . . . the kitchen area. The bed.
She was alone.
The brunette woman—or whatever she was—was nowhere to be seen.
Mae’s legs were loose as she stood up, and she needed to brace a hand on the wall to keep vertical. Looking around, she expected the evil woman to jump out from behind the partition over by the bathroom area . . . or re-form right in front of her.
When neither of those happened, Mae stopped thinking about immediate self-defense and possible weapons—and started worrying about survival and getting the hell out of wherever she was.
With a lurch, she headed off to the door on the other side of the—what was this, anyway? An apartment in a converted warehouse? It had to be underground given the no-windows, and she tried to scent things to get some clues, but whether it was all the perfume or that her nose was broken, she couldn’t smell anything except that Macy’s-counter stuff.
The only exit she could see was solid steel. With reinforced bars riveted in place.
It didn’t budge as she pushed at the handle, but like that was a surprise? And there was going to be no dematerializing for her. She had no clue where she was or what was on the other side of any of these walls or that door. Plus, with how much pain she was in? No way she could calm herself—
Phone!
Mae shoved her hand into her pocket—her phone. She still had her phone! Yanking the thing out, her hands trembled.
No service.
“Shit.”
But at least it was three in the morning. She had been gone for hours. Surely Sahvage had noticed her absence? Surely he was looking for her? And even though she had been unconscious for a while, there was still enough time before sunrise to get home.
Holding the cell phone out straight, she walked around and hoped to pick up a bar. When that didn’t happen, she circled the perimeter of the space, looking for any viable option to get out.
There was nothing. No other feasible way to leave except for that one bank-vault-worthy door. Yes, there were a couple of vents over the stove, and in the bathroom area, and two heat exchangers in the corners that pumped in warm, dry air. But that was too suicidal. You dematerialized and tried to travel through a venting system you weren’t familiar with?
All it took was one steel-based air filter and you were Swiss cheese.
For a split second, her brain fritzed out with panic, and the gonowhere buzz got worse as she glanced at the dog cage she’d broken free of.
But losing focus was not going to help.
She reminded herself that Sahvage would know she should have been long home by now. He would look for her. He might even find her car at the side of the road—
Oh, God, that poor human man who had rear-ended her. He was dead because he had tried to help her.
She had to get out of here—
A low rumble emanated from somewhere above—no, not above. All around. Terrified, Mae covered her head and ducked down, her injuries screaming at the awkward position as whatever it was came to a culmination of volume, with a vibration that emanated up through her legs.
And then . . . it faded.
As Mae straightened and dropped her arms, she looked around.
The subway, she thought.
She was definitely somewhere underground.
• • •
“No, no, I’m happy to . . .” Nate glanced at Elyn and decided not to finish that thought out loud.
I’m happy to go anywhere with you seemed a little intense.
“It’s a nice idea to walk outside,” he concluded as he made a point to look up at the starry sky. “And get some air.”
The two of them had spent most of the night setting up all the furniture in her bedroom. They’d been a good team, following the directions, using tools, figuring out where everything needed to be arranged for best effect. The fact that Elyn had nothing to put in the drawers of the bureau or hang in the closet hadn’t been lost on him.
“You know what we could do sometime?” he said as they ducked under the top rail of the fence in the side yard. “There’s a place to go shopping. A mall? It’s like a bunch of shops that are under the same roof. People say they’re dying out, but the Caldwell one is still going strong.”
One thing he’d learned about Elyn was that she wasn’t familiar with so many things he took for granted. Apparently, she hadn’t called him because she wasn’t sure how to work a phone. He’d thought it was a joking excuse, but as she’d stared into his eyes, he realized she was dead serious. And then, when they’d taken a break at midnight for a snack, she’d had no idea how to use a microwave and the juicer had scared her as it buzzed. Oh, and the TV had captivated her.
To the point where she’d gone around and looked behind the flat screen, as if she couldn’t figure out where the images were coming from.
When she’d asked him to take a breather from the house just now, he’d totally gotten it—
Abruptly, Elyn stopped and looked up. The moon was bright overhead, stripes of clouds drifting over its face.
“When I got out of the lab,” he heard himself say, “everything was too much. Too loud. Too many. My adoptive parents helped a lot and I did get used to it. But for a good month or two, I had to decompress every once in a while. I’d go lie down in my bedroom with the lights down low and some classical music playing. It helped.”
As she focused on the night sky, he studied her profile, and the sadness on her face was something he knew all about. Mourning looked the same on everyone’s features, no matter whether they were old or young, male or female.
“Who did you lose,” he said in a low voice.
“I cannot . . .”
Her words drifted, and he was not surprised that she didn’t finish the thought. Or, more likely, couldn’t.
“I won’t say anything to anyone,” he vowed. “I promise.”
The assurance seemed like the only thing he could do to help her with wherever her mind was at.
With a shake of the head, she started walking again, her eyes down, her hands tucked into the pale gray parka she’d been given at Safe Place. She’d been provided with the whole outfit she had on, too, the jeans, turtleneck, and cozy sweater fitting for the weather. And out of that draping black robe thingy she’d been wearing, she was a lot smaller than she’d seemed—and that just made him feel worse about whatever had been done to her.