I thought about the ladder. Oh, shit. Did I break a wall?
“I work a lot of places. But yes, that’s one spot the ghost tour hits.”
The guys all exchanged a look, except Mooney, who was cleaning something from under his fingernails.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “What are you trying to say?”
Zack just shrugged. “I don’t know. But I do think you should let one of us tag along with you tonight if you’re doing another ghost tour.”
“I don’t need an oversized babysitter.”
“The fact that you came home with three strangers and can’t remember anything from last night suggests otherwise,” Niles noted.
I finished my coffee, then went to gather my things for the day. “You know,” I said, shouldering my bag. “Try getting four hours of sleep a night. You’ll probably forget a thing or two.”
Niles narrowed his eyes. “Wait. Is that supposed to convince us you don’t need someone keeping an eye on you? Because it’s having the opposite effect on me.”
Zack nodded. “I’ll go with her tonight.”
I stared at him. “Seriously?”
Zack bent down, picked something up from the floor, then popped it in his mouth with a cocky smile. “Seriously. I’m going to keep an eye on you tonight, like it or not, Care Bear.”
I grinned. “Great. I’ll let the alley cats and rats know there will be less food to go around, then.”
5
Cara
I found myself checking my phone all day through my classes. The demolished wall and the curiosities on the other side had ignited a bit of a local firestorm of interest. I figured it was only a matter of time before the media got a hold of the names of the tour guides who had access to the Mercer house last night. I considered coming clean when they reached out.
I could just tell the truth. It had been an accident. I must’ve hit my head, and I don’t remember anything else.
Except I did know three mysterious strangers had escorted me home afterwards, according to my roommates.
Anya lobbed the crust of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich at my head. “Focus, Cara Skies. Samples will not look at themselves.”
Startled, I looked up and realized I’d been in the middle of moving a sample of blood to a slide, but it had sat on the little clear rectangle of glass too long and coagulated in the open air. I swore to myself, then went to clean up my mess. “Sorry,” I said. “I had a crazy night last night.”
Anya was absorbed in what she was doing at the computer and waved her hand in dismissal—either of my apology or that she could possibly care about how my night had been.
A short while later, there was a loud knock at her door. We both looked up, then Anya made a “don’t just stare at me, go get it” gesture with her hand.
I set down what I was doing and hurried upstairs toward the sound of more insistent knocking. I hadn’t realized how late it was until I saw there wasn’t even a hint of sun coming through the windows upstairs anymore. That meant I needed to leave soon for my tour-guide gig, assuming I wasn’t going to get fired the moment I arrived.
I opened the door.
I was expecting a delivery guy or maybe even a resourceful news anchor who had thought to contact the tour company and ask who had been working yesterday.
Instead, I saw a mountain of a man flanked by two women. The man was huge with nearly black eyes, hair, and pale skin. The man was dressed like some kind of biker king with a thick leather jacket despite the heat and pants that hugged long, powerful legs.
The two women at his side wore disinterested, annoyed looks. One had short cropped hair and high bangs that managed to put an exclamation mark on her perfectly sculpted features. The other woman wasn’t blessed with the same genetics. She had a too-wide mouth, eyes that were a little too feral, and a cruelty to her face that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
“Um,” I said. “If you guys are selling Girl Scout cookies, we already got some last week. So…” I started to close the door, but the man planted a huge hand in the center of the door and shoved it open.
“Where are they?” he asked. His voice was deep and growly.
“We ate them all?”
“Where are the Undergroves?”
I let out a sigh of relief. “You guys are lost? Is that what this is? I’ve never heard of ‘the Undergroves’ but it’s probably a lot easier to just plug it into your phone.”
The man took a step forward. I was struck by the fact that he didn’t appear to be sweating even in the slightest. If I wore that getup for two minutes I would’ve been dripping. “I’m not playing games with you, Cara Skies. Tell me where they are. Give me the Undergroves, and I’ll consider letting you live.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Okay. Clearly you have the right name, but the wrong person. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
The man let out a low growling sound. He stared into my eyes—into my soul, actually. He seemed to come to some kind of conclusion that pissed him off, because he broke eye contact and turned toward the women.
“I think he wiped her,” he said.
“I wipe myself, thank you very much,” I added.
The look he gave me over my shoulder was a healthy reminder to keep my mouth shut. I wondered if I could close the door and they’d forget about me but decided staying perfectly still was probably the safest bet. Maybe creepy people in the night were like dinosaurs. If you don’t move, they can’t see you.
Wait, had I heard that was just a myth they made up for a movie? I couldn’t remember but did my best statue impression to be safe.
“We could use her as bait,” the woman with the cruel eyes suggested.
Nope. Not liking the sound of that. Maybe I could run. But something about the force I’d sensed when he pushed the door back open made me wonder if a simple locked door would do anything more than piss this guy off.
“If he planned to keep her as a pet, he wouldn’t have wiped her,” the man said, as if he was explaining something very simple to somebody stupid.
Why is this guy so obsessed with wiping? Maybe it was some kind of disgusting kink of his.
“Can we have her?” the pretty one asked. She had a tinkling, high-pitched voice with a lilting edge of a southern accent.
The man eyed me. “No. Jezabel will keep an eye on her for the time being. There’s still a chance the Undergroves might decide to come back for her.”
The pretty one rolled her eyes. “Can’t Leah watch her? I’m hungry.”
I took a slow, shuffling step backwards. Maybe if I move slowly enough, they won’t realize I’m moving. I tried to be molasses. I was the line at the DMV. I was—
“Where do you think you’re going, human?” The cruel woman asked. Leah—I thought it was.
The man faced me. “Come.” he said, curling a finger in my direction.
I was about to make a smart assed comment about how it was just like a man to think the female orgasm was voice activated when I realized I was walking toward him. No. I definitely hadn’t decided to do that.
He fixed me with those black, empty eyes and stared. “You don’t remember us. You never met us.”