Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set

Chapter 22

Grant had just thrown up for the third time in the last hour, and he was still hunched over the toilet in the downstairs bathroom, gasping for breath while Paige patted his back.

“You’re going to feel better soon,” she said. “I promise.”

Grant wiped his mouth as an intense shiver wracked his body.

“How long until your client—”

“Anytime.”

“You ready?”

“Yes.”

She looked the part at least, having changed back into her kimono.

“Got your phone set up?” he asked.

“I didn’t want to go in there alone. I’ll do it when I take Steve up.”

“You be careful. Guy could flip out he catches you trying to record him.”

“I will be.”

Grant struggled onto his feet and flushed the toilet. The spinning of the water made him queasy all over again. He ran the tap, bent down, rinsed and spit until his mouth no longer burned with bile.

Already, it was dark outside and even darker in the brownstone. By the illumination of the candle on the sink, Grant studied his reflection in the mirror. The soft light should have knocked off ten years, but instead he looked worse—pallid and sweat-glazed and thinner.

Eyes as dark as pits.

The headache raged on—felt like his frontal lobe had been dropped in a food processor.

“What time is it, Paige?”

“Six fifteen.”

Through the pain and the fog, Grant registered the distant, manic anthem of an alarm, although it took him a minute to land upon the crisis that had triggered it.

He staggered out of the bathroom and into the kitchen, steadying himself against the island where his phone waited. There were candles everywhere—in the living room, dining room, at least a half dozen casting a flickering warmth across the kitchen.

“Stu was supposed to call me fifteen minutes ago,” he said, picking it up.

He held the power button down for several seconds.

Nothing happened.

He tried again, pressing harder and longer, his thumbnail blanching from the pressure.

Might as well have been trying to power up a brick.

He finally dropped the phone and put his head on the counter, the chill of the tile providing the briefest flash of relief.

“Grant, what’s wrong?”

“Battery’s dead.”

“So your friend can’t call you?”

“Right.”

“Just use my phone.”

“I don’t know his number off the top of my head, and he’s not on the Internet.”

“So what do we do?”

Grant looked up from the counter.

It felt like someone was prodding around in his head with a screwdriver.

“I don’t know. That was our best chance.”

Paige came over, laid a cool hand on the back of his neck.

“We’re gonna get through this,” she said.

A noise reverberated down the hallway—someone pounding on the front door. It seemed to shake the entire building.

“That would be Steve,” Paige said.

Grant choked down the despair, the exhaustion, the agony.

No time for pain.

He pulled himself up.

“I’ll be in the closet by the bar.”