“Sure it is.”
“Billy,” I said, “I saw you with the corpse!” Or saw it with you, more properly, but whatever.
“Corpse? What corpse? I think I’d remember a corpse, Maddy,” he said, with a mocking grin.
That made me want to punch him. The hell? How could he not remember a corpse, especially one that came to life and bit him? I frowned. I needed to clock in for my shift. “You stay right there,” I said.
He held his hands in the air. “Whatever you say, officer,” he said. “No problemo.”
I opened the door to the office. “Hi, Mac.” Preoccupied with our next week’s comics order, Mac grunted in response before I walked back to the front of the store.
“Okay, out with it,” I said, giving Billy my fiercest look. “Tell me what really happened to you.”
“There’s nothing to tell, Maddy. I split and started hitchhiking my way back to the city. Got a lift and here I am.” He fiddled with a playing card half while he spoke. The King of Hearts, also known as the Suicide King because the king appears to be sticking a sword in his own head. I’d played a lot of card games at Spring House. There’d been many arguments about whether the king was killing himself or being assassinated. Crazy people like to argue about odd, morbid things.
“Why are you being so weird about this?” Billy asked.
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because my friend disappeared in the middle of a ghost hunt?” Not to mention got kidnapped by a vampire, I didn’t say. “You really don’t remember the corpse?”
“Corpse? Are you kidding me? I think I’d remember a corpse, Maddy.”
“You said that already.” He’d said it in the exact same way in fact, with the same emphasis on my name at the end. Which was creepy. It sounded . . . off. Like a phrase he’d practiced, trying to make it sound natural.
“What?”
“You already said that you’d remember a corpse.”
“I did?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I would.”
“It was Michael Adderly, Billy.”
He gave me a skeptical look as the front door opened and a customer came in. Billy collected the guy’s backpack and handed over half of the King of Hearts, carefully clipping the other half of the card to the backpack and stowing it beneath the counter.
“Wow, your imagination has really gotten the better of you,” Billy muttered, coming out from behind the counter and sauntering in the same direction as the guy who’d just come in. It was Mac’s policy. If there was no one working the back, whoever was on bag check needed keep an eye on the customer to make sure he didn’t steal anything. Our conversation would have to wait.
I stood behind the register and tried to consider Billy’s version of what had happened.
No. I’d seen Michael Adderly. I’d recognized those eyes, that nose, the hair. It was him. And he wasn’t just a corpse. Michael Adderly was, well, if not quite alive, at least he was walking around.
Just say the word, Maddy. Vampire.
If Michael Adderly was a vampire, didn’t vampires spread their vampness by biting people? Maybe Billy was a vampire right now, and just didn’t know it. I searched my brain for what I knew about vampires. All I could think of, aside from being dead, having fangs, and drinking blood, was powers of mind control. But what else?
I went to the comics and graphic novels. Morbius: The Living Vampire. Vampirella. Man-Bat. Greenberg the Vampire. Dracula: A Symphony in Moonlight. Vampires: The Living Dead. I flipped through the pages looking for commonalities. Lots of capes. Lots of fangs, and pale faces, and bloody necks. One black and white image showed a fierce-looking vampire dude. His piercing eyes stared over the edge of a black cape, his eyebrows like evil caterpillars. Whoever that was supposed to be. Dracula, probably. In the next frame, a frail maiden in a white nightgown swooned. The vampire mind-whammy. Total hypnosis. Like Obi Wan saying, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.” Except that Jedi aren’t vampires. At least, I don’t think they are.
From my skimming, it seemed like my knowledge lined up with what pop culture had to say: all vampires drank blood and were super strong. All of them were pale, too. Michael Adderly definitely fit the profile. But Billy had always been pale. Weirdly, he looked slightly less pale now. In fact, now that I looked more closely at him, Billy looked kind of healthy. The dark circles that usually lingered beneath his eyes were gone. He had a bit of color in his cheeks, if such a thing were even possible.
The customer he’d followed came up to the register with a few comics. I hit various keys on the register and took his money, then collected the half King of Hearts and returned his backpack to him. He left.
“Are you feeling okay?” I asked Billy when we were alone.
“I feel fine,” he said.
“You never feel fine.”
“Since when?”
“Since as long as I’ve known you.”
“Maybe it was the winter doldrums.”
“Winter doldrums? Who are you?”
“I’m Batman.” He grinned.
“Hey, speaking of: who are you? Do you really have amnesia? Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“I’m sorry I never told you. There just isn’t really anything to tell. I really have amnesia. I have hospital paperwork to prove it.”
“So you aren’t on the run from someone?”
“What? No! What would make you even think that?”
“I don’t know. No reason.” Billy shrugged and put his hands in his pockets.
A customer came in, then another. Multiple customers came and went, so I had little opportunity to question Billy further. Mac left an hour before closing, leaving Billy in charge.
Moments after Mac left, Billy sidled up next to me at the register. “Oh, uh, are you still dating Derek?” He said it casually. Almost too casually.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I don’t think he’s any good for you, Maddy.”
“Really? I thought you got along with him.” There was something off about the way Billy was behaving—strangely curious and conspiratorial. It wasn’t like him.
“Yeah, I don’t know. Personality type. Kind of a boring dude. You can do better. I’m just looking out for you, you know?”
“You’re being weird,” I said. “And I don’t want to talk about it with you, okay?”
Then a regular customer came in to pick up the comics we’d been holding for him for a while and we dropped the subject.
He counted my register while I swept up, and we left together. He was wearing an olive green hoodie over his Ant-Man t-shirt. Something about the hoodie struck me as off, and then I realized why: he’d left his signature leather jacket behind in Sleepy Hollow. I’d last seen it hanging on the coat rack right before I’d left.
Now I had him.
“Hey, where’s your Wolverine jacket?” I asked.
“It’s at home,” Billy said.
“But I saw it at the Adderly House after you disappeared.”
“Nah, I went back for it. It’s at home.” His voice sounded dull and affectless. Almost robotic.
He pulled the security gate down across the storefront while I waited awkwardly, trying to figure out why he was lying. “What are you up to tonight? Going to Doc Holliday’s again?” I asked.
“Nah, I’ve got class tonight.” Again with the same dull, rehearsed tone.
“Class? At, what, 2am?” I asked, immediately suspicious. The Billy I knew didn’t take classes. The Billy I knew said college was for suckers.
“Yeah, you know New York. The city that doesn’t sleep? I’m taking it at King’s College.”
“Taking what?”
“English.”
“What kind of English?”
He frowned. “I don’t know, just English.”
“Billy, you speak English. It’s not like taking a foreign language. What are you reading?”
His face took on a vacant stare before he shrugged and answered, “Books.”
<
br /> “Books? What books?”
He blinked a few times, and said, “I don’t know, there’s this book I have to buy. I didn’t get it yet. Why are you asking me all of these questions anyway?” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Man, you’re giving me a headache.”
“Billy, you don’t believe in college.”
“Well, college believes in me, maybe. I don’t know. I’m into it.”
“You’re into it,” I echoed.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it.”
“Suit yourself.”
“Suit yourself!”
“I will!”
“Good!”
Billy walked away from me on Christopher Street without even saying goodbye.
So I followed him. Because what else was I going to do?
I wanted to shadow Billy surreptitiously, hiding behind an open newspaper, stooping behind mailboxes, and jumping inside phone booths, but it wasn’t necessary (and there aren’t any phone booths in the West Village anyway). Billy never looked behind him once.
Staying about a hundred feet back, I trailed him into the subway, where I jumped on the same train but in an adjoining car so I could keep an eye on him through the window. He sat staring straight ahead with his hands on his thighs. He didn’t take out his phone and play with it. Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t seen him check his phone all night long, which was definitely not like Billy.
He exited the train at the 34th Street station at Madison Square Garden and began walking east. Throngs of drunk tourists in black concert shirts crowded the station and sidewalks. I almost lost him, but then caught a glimpse of his olive green hoodie and rushed ahead to catch up, weaving in and out of the crowd like a frog dodging cars in a video game.
A few blocks later, at the corner of 35th and 5th, Billy passed a pair of fancy art deco revolving doors and went in a side door. The words EMPIRE STATE were carved onto the building. Wait a second. Had Billy just walked into the Empire State Building? It was hard to tell from street level. I couldn’t even see the top of the building from here. What the heck was in there? Could there really be a college inside? I waited a minute and went in through the same door.
The brown marble lobby shined as if it’d just been polished. All very brown, with streaks of cream throughout. Who thought brown was a good color for the lobby of the most famous building in the world?
A gray-haired security guard in a blue uniform sat behind a desk, looking tired. “Um, hi?” I said. I hated how nervous I sounded.
“The tours are closed. Are you visiting someone?” he asked. I nodded. “Sign in, please,” he said, pushing a clipboard at me. A chained pen hung from it. The form had multiple columns labelled NAME, VISITING, ROOM, TIME IN and TIME OUT. The last entry on the list was Billy Stickler, written in a spidery handwriting. Beneath “Visiting” he’d written “Kris Kong” and beneath “Room” it read “SB2.”
Who the heck was Kris Kong? Maybe his professor? I dutifully wrote my name under Billy’s with the same name and room. “I’m going to need to see some ID,” the guard said, stifling a yawn. His shiny blue name tag read “Sgt. Keene.”
“I’m sorry, but can you tell me how to get to SB2? Is that King’s College?”
“King’s College? Nah, it’s not here anymore. They moved downtown a few years ago. It’s right by the New York Stock Exchange now.”
“So what or where is SB2?”
He squinted at me. “Do you have ID or not?” There was no way this guy was going to take my Spring House Resident Pass as ID.
“No, I . . .” I shook my head frantically, thinking quickly. “My boyfriend has my wallet. Billy. We had a fight. He just came in here and—”
“No ID, no entry. You’ll have to wait for him.”
“But—” I began, as the shrieking of a klaxon alarm jolted him out of his seat.
“You stay right there,” he ordered, pointing at me. He picked up a walkie talkie and jogged down the hallway to the right, barking questions into it as he ran around a corner.
Fuck it.
I hustled down the corridor to the left and then to the right, following arrows to ELEVATORS. A brass mural of the building flanked by American flags stood at the end of the hall. The klaxon continued screeching as I passed an alcove housing a large potted plant.
A very large potted plant. It struck me as odd. And I had a very strong compulsion to go back to that plant and alcove. Even though I’d already passed by, it was like my feet were already trying to get me to turn around. I felt that the plant and the alcove were important somehow. It was eerie. I can’t explain it any other way. So I went back.
The big green plant held many leafy fronds. Plastic or real? I grabbed a lower leaf and it felt fake. Plastic and smooth. Below it, I could see scratches in the gloss on the brown marble floor. Dull scratches in a semi-circle, as if the planter had been dragged repeatedly from the alcove. The alarm continued its wailing. I looked back and forth down the hall, but no security guards were coming this way.
An unobtrusive brown curtain hung behind the plant. The color matched the walls perfectly, down to the marbled cream pattern. I almost hadn’t realized it was there. I pulled the plant out and pushed the curtain aside to find a door-sized wall of brass Xs. It was the metal cage door of a small old-fashioned elevator, its door only about three feet across.
I slid the accordion-style door open and stepped inside. The elevator was small, with enough room for maybe four people if they all squished together uncomfortably. For some unaccountable reason, the flutters in my stomach began to move into my chest—a migration of butterflies into my heart. This was excitement and anticipation, not fear or worry.
There were three black push buttons marked B, SB1 and SB2 respectively. The alarm suddenly stopped. I could hear the squawking of walkie talkies in the distance. I quickly pulled the plant back into the alcove and closed the metal gate as quietly as I could. Then I hit the button for SB2 and felt my stomach give a little lurch as the elevator slowly began its descent.
The B level looked vaguely like an old mall, with wide hallways, glass storefronts, and an escalator going up. The lights were on, but the storefronts and halls were completely empty.
Brightly lit by fluorescent bulbs, SB1 level revealed an area under construction, with slabs of particle board covering the partially built walls. A faint scent of sawdust lingered in the air as the elevator car continued downward. It reminded me a little of the scary basement bunker we’d found under the Adderly garage, and I shivered.
And then there was SB2. A long, brown-tiled hallway lit at intervals by bare bulbs from the ceiling. Closed doors lined the hallway, a new one every ten feet or so. The elevator came to a shuddering stop, and I pulled the door aside. It was surprisingly quiet; the door, I mean. You’d expect an ancient metal elevator gate to squeal, but it slid silently, as if it’d been oiled recently.
I stepped out and caught a whiff of musty odor that wasn’t quite covered by a lingering scent of bleach. The hallway of doors and bare bulbs loomed, almost seeming to stretch like I was looking into a funhouse mirror that made things look farther away than they really were. I listened. I heard nothing except for the squeak of my sneakers on the tile.
The first three doors on either side were unmarked, but the fourth one had a placard that read KRIS KONG, ESQ. I hesitated, then put my ear against the door. Nothing. Either the door was too thick to hear anything, or no one was home. I slowly tried the knob. It was locked. I wondered if I should knock.
The door on the other side of the hall was marked JANITOR, which seemed to explain where the bleachy smell came from. But once again I had a weird, nagging feeling that there was something important here, something hidden. It didn’t make any sense. There was no way I had ever been down here before, was there?
That knob turned, and a buttload of mops, brooms, and buckets crowded the small closet, all leaning right. Shelves of cleaning products, brushes, and boxes lined the rig
ht wall. The left wall was strangely bare. Why? The butterfly migration swirled in my chest once more. Then I saw it: a small rectangle, barely noticeable, at waist height. I traced its raised edges with my fingers. It was about the size of a credit card. I touched the top center, and it flipped open with a metallic clink, exposing a small metal lever, like an awkward handle. First I pulled, then I pushed, but nothing. Then I slid the handle to the right, and the whole wall moved, revealing a dark passage. A secret door. In a janitor closet. In the sub-basement of the Empire State Building. That I had maybe somehow known was there. I could hardly believe it.
I heard a tinny, jazzy instrumental version of “Pop Goes the Weasel” playing softly somewhere. The dark passage opened into a much wider room, dimly lit. I took in an impression of ripped fabric-covered pillars, a tarnished tin ceiling, faded red banquette seating with dusty tables, a ruined parquet floor, a crystal chandelier covered in cobwebs, and a long bar with a complement of stools on the back wall.
Sitting on the bar inside a glass was a brightly lit smartphone, and the tinny music seemed to emanate from it. Two feet away, Billy sat on one of the stools, his mouth feeding from Michael Adderly’s wrist.
Chapter Twenty
Adderly’s eyes were closed and Billy was utterly focused on his task. Suddenly the vampire’s head turned toward me and his eyes flew open. I must have made a sound. I mean, he hadn’t smelled me, had he?
In a split second, Adderly grabbed Billy, pulling him behind the bar. The two disappeared into a dark doorway I hadn’t noticed. The smartphone still lay on the bar, continuing to play its song.
I used a stool to leapfrog the bar and lunged through the doorway. Stairs led upwards and I climbed them. I heard a door slam somewhere above. Three flights later, I emerged into the shiny brown lobby again. DING went an elevator down the hall. I ran again, my sneakers screeching on marble as I rounded the corner. Outside the elevator bank stood Sgt. Keene. With his mouth agape and his eyes staring wide, he didn’t react to me at all.
The display above one set of elevator doors marked OBSERVATION DECK showed the numbers going up. I entered the next one and pressed the button and the car shot upwards, leaving my stomach in my Converse All-Stars. Come on, come on. I breathed deep and fast, winded after my run. The elevator took about a minute to reach its destination, slowing at first before stopping. The doors dinged open and I spilled out into a glass box. The walls were glass and the observation deck was outside. Billy, his back to me, stood at the protective fence at the edge, looking out over the city lights.
A Shade in the Mirror Page 20