Vigil

by V. J. Chambers

  I made another noise. Something in a croak.

  “Oh, he’s got his issues,” she said. “I know that. I know that he’s not exactly the most skilled lover. But I’m willing to overlook that. Because Callum and I are meant to be together. We complete a dynasty. The Monroes and the Rutherfords were meant to be joined in us. It was our parents’ deepest wish. And it will happen. I’m going to marry him. Nod if you understand.”

  I clenched my teeth together. I didn’t nod.

  “I’m willing to do whatever I have to do to preserve my dynasty,” she said.

  And then she swept out of the office, leaving me stuck to the floor, clutching the newspaper.

  I peered down at the article.

  Was it all there? Could Jewel have explained to them why I had to do it? Could she have given words to my desperation, to my loneliness?

  I shut my eyes.

  My throat tightened.

  Fuck.

  I was crying.

  * * *

  As soon as I could make my limbs function again, I went to Lauren’s office. I felt like a wooden marionette, like all of my movements were stiff and forced.

  “Cecily?” she said. “Is something wrong?”

  She obviously hadn’t seen the article yet. Good.

  “I, um, am not feeling too well. I’m going to need to go home. I’m sorry,” I said.

  She made a concerned face. “Yeah, you don’t look good. Knowing you, if you’re claiming you need to go home, you’re practically on death’s door. I swear, Cecily, if we cut you, you’d bleed newsprint. Get out of here.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I turned like a robot and went back to my desk.

  I gathered my things.

  I walked out of the building.

  I took the train home.

  While I was on it, I stared blankly at the faces of the other people in Aurora, all of them going about their business, ignoring me. I wondered how their days were going. How would they react if their deepest, darkest secrets had been revealed to the world?

  Then I saw a look in some of their eyes. And I realized they recognized me. They knew.

  When I got home, I threw myself on my bed, and I cried wildly, with abandon. I sobbed and sobbed, pounding the pillow in my rage and frustration.

  Then I stopped.

  I read the article.

  Because I realized I hadn’t even read it yet. I’d only read the headline. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I was imagining.

  But the article was bad. It made me look like some kind of heartless opportunist, someone who’d only become a stripper for the money, and who’d never been kind to anyone else along the way.

  It wasn’t true.

  It was only that Jewel didn’t like me because I hadn’t partied with the other girls. I hadn’t spent my time getting wasted with them. I hadn’t snorted up all the dollar bills they shoved in my g-string.

  Jewel had always thought I was a snob.

  But Darlene had known the real me. She’d known who I really was. She’d understood.

  Of course, I’d kicked Darlene out of my apartment last spring. She’d come to me, begging for a place to stay. And I’d let her stay. Until she started throwing parties and having guys over and drawing attention to me. Until people started making comments about my trashy friend.

  Then I told to her to get lost.

  And she went back to Hayden Barclay and back to stripping. And then she died. And it was all my fault.

  I cried again.

  This time, I didn’t throw so much energy into it. This time, instead, they were deep, wrenching sobs that seemed to tear me apart inside, even though my body barely moved. I felt like the tears were going to swallow me whole.

  I cried and cried.

  Until I couldn’t anymore.

  I was too tired. I was spent.

  Then I just sat in my room, numb and shocked. I tried not to think.

  Eventually, Airenne came home from work. She came and knocked on my door.

  I didn’t answer her.

  “Cecily?” Another knock. Soft.

  I got up and crossed the room. I opened the door. “Did you see it?”

  “Everyone saw it,” she said. She dragged her toe against the carpet. “You should have told me.”

  That hurt. My face twisted. “Because you wouldn’t have wanted to room with me if you’d known, right? You wish I would have warned you, told you what kind of person you were living with.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Are you afraid that my trashiness will rub off on you, Airenne? You afraid you’ll become a slut by association?”

  She hung her head.

  “You know I didn’t have sex once while I was doing it? The whole time I stripped I was kept my legs closed.”

  “I never said you were trashy or slutty, Cecily,” she said. “I only wish I’d known because it shocked me. That’s all. It hit me out of nowhere.”

  “It hit you out of nowhere?” I laughed in disbelief.

  Suddenly, she hugged me. “I’m so sorry.”

  I wasn’t expecting the gesture of kindness. It startled me into crying again.

  Her arms tightened around me.

  I sobbed into her shoulder.

  Her voice was quiet. “Does Callum know?”

  I shook my head.

  “What do you think he’s going to say?” she asked me.

  That was what I was afraid of.

  * * *

  “I’ve got a lead of this Davy Jones’ Locker place,” said Vigil’s voice over the phone.

  I was lying on my bed in my pajamas, my face still raw and red from crying. “You do?”

  “Yeah, it actually wasn’t hard to find. It really is a storage place. We should check it out, don’t you think?”

  “Um… yeah, I guess we should.” I sat up, clutching the phone. “You haven’t seen the article, have you?”

  “What article?” he said. “Is it more crazy stuff about me? Did you write it?”

  “No, nothing like that,” I said. “Um, it’s not important. Don’t worry about it.”

  But I knew I was playing a ridiculous game here. Sooner or later, he was going to figure it out. And when he did, I had no idea what would happen between us.

  It would change the way he thought of me. I knew it would. He might try to pretend like it didn’t, but he wouldn’t see me the same way anymore.

  He was going to find out. I knew that. But I still couldn’t bear to tell him.

  * * *

  “Look, I can’t just let anyone go riffling through someone’s locker,” said Rick, the man who owned Davy Jones’ Locker. He wasn’t actually named Davy. He’d picked the name because it was a joke. Davy Jones’ Locker was the bottom of the sea, and he had lockers in his storage place. I guessed the idea was that if you stored stuff here, it would be like storing it at the bottom of the ocean.

  No wonder he attracted customers like Hayden Barclay.

  “I’m not anyone,” said Vigil.

  “Right, but you’re like his arch enemy,” said Rick. He was a balding man, wearing a dirty white tank top. His chest hair peeked over the top of it. His gut hung out over his jeans. “I mean, that’s whose locker you’re after, right? The Phantom’s?”

  “The Phantom bought a locker from you?” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Rick.

  “And you let him?”

  “Money’s money, sweetheart,” said Rick. He gestured with his thumb at me. To Vigil, “Who is this broad, anyway?”

  “I’m Cecily Kane, Aurora Sun-Times,” I said. “You are aware that The Phantom is a serial killer, aren’t you?”

  He shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “A serial killer who keeps legs for trophies,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “And yet you let him rent a locker here,” I said. “What the hell you think is in there?”

  Rick’s eyes widened. “You don’t think that…”

  “We do,” sai
d Vigil.

  Rick swallowed. “I’ll get you the key.”

  * * *

  The legs were jammed into the locker, one upside down, toes pointing up, the other flipped.

  I was prepared for them to smell, to be rotting and disgusting.

  But they weren’t. They were mottled and shriveled, but they were preserved somehow. The skin was darker, and it wasn’t uniform in all places, but definitely wasn’t rotting. It wasn’t putrid or swollen.

  Still, it wasn’t pretty to look at. The chipped pink nail polish on one of the toes was obscene.

  “What do you think he did to them?” I whispered.

  Vigil didn’t take his eyes off of the legs. “He dried them out.”

  “Like dehydrated meat?” I said. Immediately, I felt sick for even suggesting it.

  “Probably more like mummification,” said Vigil.

  My stomach roiled. I stepped away. I couldn’t look anymore.

  “Where are the rest of them?” said Vigil.

  “What?” I still couldn’t look at the legs.

  “The rest of the legs,” said Vigil. “He’s had more victims than one. These aren’t the only legs he’s kept.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Rick said that he only had this locker. This is the only thing he rented here.”

  “Damn it,” said Vigil. “Then this is all that Burl gave us.”

  For a minute, I was confused. And then I remembered what had sent us looking for Davy Jones in the first place.

  “You said we need evidence, Cecily,” he said. “Is this enough evidence?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s something. It’s enough for a preliminary article anyway.” I turned around, forcing myself to look at the legs. “We need to know who these legs belong to. Which one of the victims.”

  They weren’t Darlene’s were they? She didn’t paint her toenails that color. If these legs belonged to my best friend—

  I turned away again, overcome.

  “You okay?” Vigil’s hand on my back.

  “Fine,” I choked. This had not been the easiest day of my life.

  “There’s no way that we can determine who they belong to,” said Vigil. “We’re going to need to turn these over to the police.”

  I looked at him. “The police? Can we even trust them? The whole system is corrupt. What if they lose the legs?”

  “You said you’re going to write an article, right?” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, if you suggest that the police might lose the legs, that should motivate them not to do that, right? They’ll know that they’re being watched?”

  I considered. “Okay. That might work.”

  “Good,” he said. “Then you better get writing. I’ll call the cops.”

  “You think they’ll work with you? They hate you. You called them out publicly.”

  “I’ll tell them that I want to give them a chance to prove me wrong,” said Vigil. “Don’t worry about me.”

  “They could arrest you,” I said. “I don’t know if being a vigilante is strictly legal.”

  Vigil smirked. “They could try.”

  Right. I guessed it had been a while since I’d watched him fight with men in the street. I’d forgotten that he was strong and skilled. I took a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll go. I’ll get writing.”

  “Good.” He grabbed me and pulled me close, kissing me hard on the mouth.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “So,” said Henry. “Vigil found some body parts that The Phantom had stashed. Vigil’s playing detective now.”

  “Well, he’s trying to find The Phantom,” I said. “So that he can be stopped.”

  Henry peered down at the piece of paper I’d given him. “It’s a good article, Ms. Kane. Very good.”

  “Thank you.”

  He handed it to me. “Just a few things for you to clean up. Should only take you about five minutes or so.”

  It was a big change from the first article that he’d given back to me. This one only had three red marks on it. “Sure, I’ll get right on it.”

  “One thing about you is that you take direction well,” he said. “I tell you what to do, and you take my advice. You rarely make the same mistakes twice.”

  I ducked my head. “I’m a fast learner.”

  “You are,” he said. “You’re a go-getter. You work hard. You don’t let obstacles stand in your way.”

  “I try not to.”

  “You’re a very interesting person,” he said.

  “Me?”

  He clasped his hands together in front of his body. “You know, I don’t want to bring up anything that’s too upsetting, Ms. Kane. I understand that you had to leave the office yesterday, and I can only assume that this was the cause.” He picked up a folded newspaper off his desk and showed it to me.

  It was the article. The one about my stripping career. My stomach turned over. I’d hardly thought about it since yesterday. Finding the legs had been a wee bit traumatic. Then I’d had to work as quickly as I could on the article about it.

  The article had to strike a delicate balance, accusing the police while not seeming to do so on purpose. It had to make them feel as if the people were clamoring for them to be transparent. It had to inspire them to do the right thing. And if it failed to inspire, it had to frighten them.

  It hadn’t been an easy article to write. And the fact that Henry wasn’t picking up on my slant only meant that my hard work had paid off, and I’d managed to do what I set out to do.

  But the article that outed me? I’d practically forgotten about it. Looking at it now, I felt like I’d been slapped back to reality.

  “Shit,” said Henry. “This is too upsetting, isn’t it?”

  I squared my shoulders. “No, I’m not upset.”

  He laughed a little. “You’re not fooling me, Ms. Kane.” He sighed. “Listen, you’ve become something of a big deal in this city, and you haven’t been here for that long. I think you have a bright future. And I think that part of you wants to crawl under a rock and hide from this story about you. Your past obviously isn’t something that you’ve broadcasted, and I can understand why.”

  I felt on the spot and uncomfortable. I never wanted to discuss this stuff with Henry. Never.

  “Here’s the thing, Ms. Kane,” he said. “I couldn’t care less how you put yourself through college. I know what kind of reporter you are. I read your writing, and I know what kind of person you are. You’re the kind of person who can weather this kind of scandal. But not if you hide from it.”

  I bit my lip. “I don’t understand.”

  “I think you should write a feature story about your experiences. From the stripper pole to the front page of The Sun-Times. This is America, Ms. Kane, and you’re an inspiration.”

  “This is America, sir,” I said. “And there’s a whole lot of Puritan values if you scratch the surface. Nobody finds strippers inspiring.”

  He shrugged. “You might be surprised.”

  “You’re giving me an assignment to write about this?”

  “I’m not going to force you to do it,” he said. “I’m only saying that I think you should, and that if you did, we’d run that story. Don’t run from your past, Ms. Kane. Own it.”

  * * *

  “Cecily.”

  I looked up to see that Callum was standing over my desk. I’d been staring at a blank document on my screen, trying to decide whether or not I should actually write about my past, like Henry had suggested. Thus far, I simply hadn’t been able to muster the effort to do it.

  I gazed up at him. “What are you doing here?”

  He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I, um…”

  And I understood. “You read the article, didn’t you?”

  He nodded. “I did.”

  I took a shaky breath. I searched his face for some sign of what he thought. But his expression was guarded, blank. There was no sign of his emotional reaction.

  He put his
hand on the back of my chair. “We need to talk.”

  Shit. That didn’t sound good. I looked back at my computer screen. “Look, if you’re done with me, I understand. We don’t have to make it a big production or anything.”

  “Can you take lunch at some point?”

  He hadn’t denied that he wanted to break up with me. The thought of losing him hurt me more than I thought it would. I thought of his telling me that he loved me just a few nights ago. I knew he shouldn’t have said it so quickly.

  I wouldn’t look at him. “You’re going to take me to lunch and do it at a restaurant?”

  “I don’t want to go to a restaurant,” he said. “Can you take lunch or not?”

  * * *

  We sat in one of the gardens behind the Rutherford mansion. I couldn’t even see the city. There was nothing around us but trees and flowers. We were in the shade of a tall oak, on a picnic blanket. There was a basket of food too—sandwiches and olives and fruit and a bottle of wine. But I wasn’t hungry.

  Callum hadn’t touched any of it either. “I assume it’s true,” he said.

  “Yes, it’s true,” I said. “I worked as a stripper after I graduated from high school. I did it for three years, until I was twenty-one.”

  “But you never talked to me about this.”

  I looked down at the blanket.

  “A lot of things must have happened in three years. You must have met people and did things and had a whole life. But none of those things were things you ever talked about.”

  “I was ashamed,” I said. “I am ashamed. It’s not something I’m proud of.”

  “There are a lot of things about myself that I’m ashamed of,” he said. “And I’ve told you about them. Hell, Cecily, you know more about me than anyone. Even Nolan doesn’t know about my issues with sex. I’ve never had a reason to talk to him about them.”

  “I know,” I said in a quiet voice.

  “But you didn’t think you could tell me about this part of your life.”

  “No,” I said. “Look, it isn’t like you think. I didn’t just decide on a whim that I wanted to take off my clothes for money.”

  “What’s it like, then?” he said. “Tell me about it. Talk to me.”

  I got to my feet. I went over to one of the bushes. I began to finger the leaves, stroke the flowers. And I started to talk.