Dying Is My Business

Fourteen

The bathroom at the end of the hallway was filled with pink bottles of hand lotion, baby-blue tubes of facial cleansers, and hanging sponges that looked like great puffs of lace webbing on a string. As I washed the last of the blood and dirt from my hands and face, I noticed the shower curtain was decorated with images of giant sunflowers. The whole room smelled of perfume and powder. It was hard for me to imagine it belonged to the same woman who had once fought and defeated a giant six-armed lizard-man from another dimension. And yet, despite the strangeness of it, it was also oddly comforting. This was a home, a real home, and a far cry from the cold cement walls of the fallout shelter. This was how people were supposed to live.

Walking back to my bedroom, a flash of light in the darkened hallway caught my eye. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the door to Bethany’s room was slightly ajar. Through the sliver of open space between the door and the frame, I caught a glimpse of her moving through the room. She’d taken off her cargo vest. I’d grown so used to seeing its bulky form covering her that I was surprised at how slim she was without it.

She turned her back to me and pulled her shirt off over her head, revealing a tattoo of a fiery bird that covered her entire back. Its burning wings reached across her shoulder blades, its talons framed the base of her spine. Was this the work of the nine-hundred-year-old shaman with the L.A. tattoo parlor, I wondered? The ink work was so vivid that even from where I stood I thought I could make out the shape of each feather.

I caught myself staring and continued the rest of the way into my room. I closed the door as quietly as I could behind me.

As the hours passed and the moon traveled across the night sky, I lay alone in my room and tried not to think about her. I didn’t know many women. It wasn’t like I had the opportunity to meet them through work like a normal person. The criminal underworld was still mostly a man’s world, and the few women I’d crossed paths with would just as soon stick a knife between your ribs as look at you. The only woman I saw with any regularity was the creepy, dark-haired woman who was always with Underwood, and I really, really didn’t want to think about her just then.

Bethany was different. I’d felt a connection with her from the moment we met, and yet we came from completely different worlds. Bethany risked her life on a regular basis trying to do good. Me, I was a thief. I stole things. Sometimes I stole lives. She was about rules and protocol. I was dumb muscle, paid to do, not think. We couldn’t be more different if we tried.

In my mind’s eye, I saw her pull her shirt up over her head again, saw the fiery bird inked on her back …

Annoyed at where my thoughts were headed, I got up from the bed. The night was creeping by at a snail’s pace and I needed something to distract myself. Things were complicated enough as it was, I didn’t need to add any more wrinkles by wondering what other parts of Bethany’s body might be covered in tattoos.

I didn’t have The Ragana’s Revenge with me to read, so I decided to rummage through the wall closet instead, hoping I’d find some clothes to replace my ruined shirt and jeans. Like most New York City closets, this one seemed to have been added as an afterthought to the already cramped living quarters. It was just a foot and a half deep. The shelf up top was cluttered with dusty old hats, a stack of ashtrays, a battered suitcase, and an awkwardly shaped object I couldn’t make out at first. I pulled it off the shelf for a closer look. It was a primitive wooden idol shaped like a man, but with hundreds of iron nails hammered into it from top to bottom. I shuddered and put it back on the shelf quickly. I didn’t know what it was. With some things, I figured it was just as well not to know.

Hanging from the wooden bar under the shelf were Morbius’s old clothes. I tried on a variety of the shirts and pants, but he must have been more broadly muscled than I was. They were all slightly too big for me. I was about to give up when I finally found a shirt that fit, and shortly after, a pair of pants. Hidden under some folded bedsheets I found a box containing a pair of black leather boots. I grabbed a coat as a replacement for my ruined leather jacket. Once I had them all on, I looked at myself in the mirror on the back of the closet door.

Black linen shirt. Black jeans. Leather boots. Long brown trench coat.

Now that’s more like it, I thought, beaming at my reflection.

A sudden creak of the floorboards outside my door made me freeze. Dim light from the hallway spilled through the crack under the door, along with the shadows of two legs. Someone was standing right outside my room.

Bethany? No, my instincts told me right away it wasn’t her, or any of the others. But that was impossible. No one else—nothing else—could get into the safe house. I kept my eyes on the shadows under the door and didn’t make a sound.

Then came the faint but persistent scratching of what sounded like a single fingernail on the door.

Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

A chill crawled up my spine. Slowly, quietly, I pulled my gun out of the leather jacket on the chair and crept toward the door. In the light underneath, the shadow legs moved off. Footsteps traced the floor outside, heading away from my room.

I opened the door slowly. In the hallway, the overhead lights were still out, but now there was some kind of faintly glowing ball hovering low on the floor by the baseboard. The magic version of a night-light, I supposed. Across the hall Bethany’s door was still ajar, a strip of pitch black space showing between the door and the jamb. My gut clenched. Had whoever was out here gone into her room? I heard the wooden steps creak under someone’s weight. I looked quickly and thought I saw a shape on the stairs that led down to the second floor, just a brief flash of silhouette, no more discernible in the dark than a shadow. I would have thought it was my eyes playing tricks on me if it weren’t for the odor lingering in the air. It was sickly sweet, like rotting meat. My first thought was Thornton, but this scent was different. It wasn’t him.

I reached the landing and looked down into the living room. The lights were off, but the bright glare of the streetlights bled through the curtained windows. It gave me just enough light to see a dark shape move across the living room floor in silhouette. It was a man, short and wearing a blazer that looked ragged around the shoulders.

I lifted my gun and hurried down the steps, but when I got to the bottom he was gone. No, there he was, descending the flight of stairs at the other end of the room, the black blob of his head and shoulders disappearing into the dark stairwell. Holding the gun in front of me, I crossed the living room and risked a quick glance down the stairs. Below was only an inky pool of darkness. I couldn’t see a thing.

The stairs creaked under the intruder’s weight, and then stopped. He’d reached the bottom. I strained to listen, trying to discern which direction he was moving in now, but I didn’t hear anything.

I started down the stairs slowly. I tried to be quiet but the steps creaked under my feet. I might as well have used an air horn to announce my approach. As I descended, the darkness swallowed me. I hoped if I couldn’t see the intruder, he couldn’t see me, either.

When I reached the bottom, I stayed by the stairs, listening for any movement. My eyes adjusted slowly to the dark, helped by the diffused haze coming through the curtained window near the front door, but I didn’t see anyone.

The doorway to the kitchen was on my right. It was the only place the intruder could have gone. Holding my gun with both hands, I crept into the room.

The stench of decay was stronger here. I felt along the kitchen wall for the light switch, and flipped it. The overhead snapped on and flooded the room with light.

I didn’t see anyone.

Just as I began to wonder if I was imagining things, he rushed me from my blind spot, little more than the dark blur. He slammed me up against the kitchen wall and put one forearm across my throat. He used his other hand to push my gun hand to the wall and pin it there.

When I finally had a chance to focus on his face, I gasped in surprise.

“Hello, errand boy. Long time no see,” Bennett said. His skin was pale and waxy. His lips and eyelids had darkened to a bruised purple. He was wearing the same blue pinstriped suit he’d worn last night, though now it was stained and torn. There was a long, straight gash across his neck. Beneath it, dried blood painted a trail down the front of his shirt. I stared at the wound in horror. God, was that what Underwood had done to him behind the black door? Slit his throat?

Except, now Bennett was here in Ingrid’s kitchen. Did nothing stay dead the way it was supposed to in this damn world? Was the barrier between life and death really so weak that anyone could just come and go as they pleased? He wasn’t wearing an amulet like Thornton, so what was he doing walking and talking when he ought to be six feet under? How the hell had he even gotten inside? Bennett wasn’t a ghost. He felt solid, real. Wasn’t there supposed to be a ward around the safe house to keep everyone out? If Bennett was here, it meant either the ward had stopped working or he’d walked right through it like it wasn’t there. Neither answer was comforting. But then, there was nothing comforting about being held against the wall by a walking corpse, either.

“You’re dead,” I managed to croak, like it would be a news flash for him.

“As a doornail. You should try it sometime.” His cracked, dry lips spread in a grin, and for the first time I noticed pinpoints of brilliant red light shining inside the pupils of his eyes like finely focused lasers. “It’s not like you think. Death is so different from what I expected. No pearly gates. No light at the end of the tunnel. Sully was full of shit about all of that.”

I struggled to free my gun arm, but he was strong, even stronger than he’d been when he was alive. He banged my wrist against the kitchen wall until the gun slipped from my hand and dropped to the floor. He kicked it to the other side of the room.

“You made a big mistake, errand boy,” he said. “You pissed off the wrong people. Now something’s coming for you, something real bad. When they get here, everyone in this house will die. Even you. Do you understand? This isn’t like getting shot in a playground in Queens. This is a whole new ball game. They will take you apart in ways you can’t come back from. So listen good: You can’t stop them. Don’t even try. If you fight them, you’ll lose.”

He let go of me. I doubled over, holding my throat and coughing. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Consider it professional courtesy, one dead man to another.” Bennett looked over his shoulder at the kitchen window. Outside, the sky was growing lighter. “The sun will be up soon. They’re coming at dawn, which means you’re running out of time. If you want to live, you better start running now.”

“I have to warn the others,” I said. “I have to get them out of here.”

I turned to the door, but he was already there, blocking my path. I glanced over my shoulder at the empty spot where he’d been standing. I hadn’t even seen him move.

“Fuck the others, they’re irrelevant,” Bennett said. Before I could protest, he pulled a small object out of the inside pocket of his blazer and put it in my hand. “Here, take this.”

It was a small cloth pod, curved like a kidney bean and rough like burlap. Its surface was speckled with tiny dots of metal. It felt warm, and something thrummed inside it like the gears of a machine.

“What is it?” I asked.

Bennett ignored me. He picked my gun up off the floor and handed it to me. “You’d better take this with you, too. You’re going to need it.”

“Take it with me? I’m not going anywhere until—”

White light burst out of the object in my hand. It was blinding, filling the room until everything—the walls, the floor, the kitchen table, even Bennett himself—was obliterated from view. A moment later the light faded.

The kitchen was gone. So was Bennett. In fact, Ingrid’s whole house was gone. I was standing alone on a circular patch of cement and grass in the middle of a big, empty traffic circle. I glanced around in a desperate panic, trying to get my bearings, but saw only empty sidewalks, shuttered storefronts, and darkened windows.

I looked at the strange little object still in my hand, and understood then what it was. A magic charm, like the ones Bethany carried in her vest. Bennett had tricked me. The son of a bitch had used a charm to transport me away from the house against my will.

I looked up at the tall granite column that rose out of a dry fountain bed beside me. Perched seventy feet atop it and lit by floodlights against the night sky was the unmistakable marble statue of Christopher Columbus.

Shit. I was in Columbus Circle, nearly a mile from the safe house, and from whatever was heading there now to kill everyone inside.

“Send me back!” I shouted into the empty street. “Damn it, Bennett, send me back!”