Liz Jasper - Underdead 02

by Underdead in Denial

  Through the wall? I blinked against dim lights that seemed too bright and realized I’d blundered through one of the hidden exits. I was outside the haunted house, near the side of the stage. I got to my feet and held my breath as Ian ran past me, not five feet away from where I was standing.

  I managed to match my footfalls to his for a few strides until he realized I was no longer racing ahead of him. He stopped and so did I.

  The exit sign glowed red near the ceiling, about twenty yards in front of me. If I could somehow get him behind me, I could make a dash for it. All I needed was a few seconds’ head start and I would be outside in the cool night air, a stone’s throw from the parking lot. I looked around for something to throw behind me for the age-old dodge.

  The little hairs on my arms and neck were standing up like antennae. I could feel Ian getting closer on the other side of the thin black wall.

  A squeak of the gurney was all the warning I had before he burst through, pulling a black sheet with him. It wrapped around his legs and he crashed to the floor.

  I sprinted for the exit and hit the crash bar at a run. Too late, I realized the door was bolted shut. The reverberations shook my arms so bad, I was sure I’d broken a wrist.

  Shoving the sheet aside, Ian cried out in victory and came after me at a sprint. I refused to give in. Biting my teeth against the pain, I turned and started running for the front door. But I didn’t get very far. Blocking my way was Lenny.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ian dodged back into the haunted house. I spun around and disappeared into the curtained wing off the right side of the stage.

  Back when Becky had dragged me to the very first fundraising meeting, the actors had just come off a production and the backstage area had been crammed with junk.

  Some damn anal clean freak had emptied it. There was nowhere to hide. I was trapped. I ran around in fast, tight circles, clutching my aching wrists and sobbing in panic. However hard I wished it to be different, there was nothing there but ropes and scaffolding.

  My eyes followed the scaffolding up to a catwalk above the stage. I wouldn’t make it.

  “Jo?” Lenny was coming up the stairs. “What are you doing?”

  I put a foot on the bottom of the scaffolding and reached up to grab a ladder rung near my head. Sharp pain shot through my wrists and my shoulder felt like it was on fire. But my grip held. I moved to the next rung and the next, biting my lip against the pain.

  “What the—” Lenny sprinted to the bottom of the ladder and made it up about halfway before he emitted a funny, groaning noise and wrapped his arms tightly around the scaffolding.

  I pulled myself up onto the catwalk. Lenny stayed where he was. Not moving. His head was pressed into the crook of his arm.

  Natasha’s vampire arm candy was afraid of heights. I laughed aloud.

  My giggles were reaching a hysterical note when I felt the catwalk shift hard to the right. Ian was coming up the ladder on the other side of the stage. Every step he took made the narrow platform shimmy and shake in the air above the stage.

  I wound my arms through the rope railings to keep from falling. “Stop! Stop it!”

  The catwalk creaked and swung farther to the right. Ian’s head popped over the end of the catwalk. His eyes were dark and fanatic.

  “It can’t hold you!”

  Ignoring my warning, he pulled himself up onto the catwalk.

  “You lied to me. You knew where it was all along.”

  “No!”

  “It’s here, isn’t it?” He scanned the catwalk.

  “Ian, you must listen to me. You have to go down now, or we’ll both fall. The manuscript isn’t here.”

  “Liar! You want it for yourself.” Ian inched closer.

  The catwalk made a sudden, stomach-dropping dip. Lenny was moving again. I couldn’t tell if he was coming up or going down.

  “Ian, please. I swear, I’m telling the truth!”

  I looked wildly around. There was nothing up there but lights and the thick metal scaffolding that ran the length of the ceiling. Thick, burly scaffolding, strong enough to hold columns and canoes.

  Lenny’s voice came from down below. “She doesn’t have it. Ian, why don’t you come down, and then, Jo, you come next.”

  Ian peered over the side of the catwalk down at Lenny.

  It was now or never. I wrapped my right hand around a metal bar for balance, said a quick prayer to anyone who was listening and stepped off the catwalk.

  My foot hovered over empty air. The scaffolding was farther away than I had thought. I was about to pull back when Ian realized what I was doing.

  “Oh no you don’t!”

  Ian lunged for me. With a cry, I let go the catwalk and jumped. My feet connected to the scaffolding and I wrapped my arms around a support bar from the ceiling in time to keep from pitching down to the floor. My stomach lurched sickeningly.

  Ian swiped at air. “No!”

  I shimmied my hands down the bar. Telling myself not to look down, I wiped my sweat-slicked hands, one by one, across my pants and crawled farther into the maze of metal bars. Ian dropped to his hands and knees and reached a hand across the void to grasp the scaffolding.

  “Is it there? Is that where you put it?”

  Ian pulled himself across the gap. Something in the ceiling gave way in a sprinkle of white powder.

  “Ian, stop! It can’t hold both our weights.”

  “You’ll say anything to get it, won’t you?” He reached across to the next bar and pulled himself forward another eighteen inches, into the scaffolding.

  My stomach lurched sickeningly as the entire right side of the structure groaned and dropped a half inch. I tightened my hands around the bars, unable to move in any direction. “You have to go back!”

  Ignoring me, he moved forward, across another set of bars. One of the grommets holding the scaffolding pulled out of the ceiling. I screamed in terror.

  “Jump!” Lenny yelled. He was circling under me like a shark, fifty feet below.

  “Are you crazy?” I asked.

  The scaffolding creaked and jerked and we dropped another inch. A long, narrow box slid across the metal bars and crashed to the floor, scattering plastic swords.

  A gap yawned in front of me and I saw it. A ream of yellowing paper wrapped in bubble wrap. Of course. Every other part of the theater had been crawling with actors and volunteers. The only place no one would go was up. No one ever looked up.

  I spared a thought that Tom could have done a better job preserving an old masterpiece, before fear pushed all nonessential thoughts out of my mind.

  Ian sighted the manuscript. His cackle of victory filled the air.

  “Jump!” Lenny sounded panicky. “For heaven’s sake, Jo, jump!” I realized what he was trying to tell me. But I couldn’t do it.

  I shook my head and gripped harder, unable to move another inch. I had levitated, once. Badly. I didn’t know how I’d done it, and I wasn’t going to step off into air fifty feet above the ground and trust that I’d figure it out again. My vampire stare hadn’t exactly worked to plan, had it?

  Ian crawled out farther.

  “You have to stop!” I sobbed.

  The manuscript was only a few feet from him. He pulled himself across another gap and reached for it. There was a loud, metallic groan. The whole front right corner of the scaffolding pulled from the ceiling. The metal bars tilted sharply toward the floor. For moment that seemed like an hour, Ian’s grasping hand closed on air. He gave a shrill scream and disappeared in a cloud of gray dust.

  I closed my eyes and hung on for dear life. The scaffolding screeched and jerked under me like a living thing.

  And then it stopped.

  Coughing on dust, I cracked open one eye and then the other. Ian lay unmoving on the floor, far below. Lenny had disappeared.

  My section of scaffolding was holding to the ceiling—just. The only reason I had survived was that I had managed to shift my weight close enough t
o one of the attachment bolts that still held. If I’d been a few inches more to the right, the stress would have levered that bolt the rest of the way out of the wall, and I would have gone down faster than a fat kid on a seesaw.

  Who says a science degree isn’t worth its weight in gold?

  I heard sirens and the sound of footsteps pounding toward me from the lobby. Help had arrived.

  *

  I won’t talk about how I got down. Suffice it to say, it involved two ladders and several firemen. I have no doubt a video will show up on the Internet.

  Gavin wasn’t around. I talked to the actual detectives in charge of the case. The fact that the taller one was a dead ringer for Bert from Sesame Street was actually quite soothing, and both officers were very nice. They didn’t mock me in the slightest about how I’d refused to come down. Unlike some detectives I could name.

  Ian had managed to land feet first and was alive but in traction. I don’t know if it was the pain meds they gave him or guilt from killing Tom, but he opened up like it was last confession.

  *

  I left for work a half hour earlier than usual the next morning in the hopes of avoiding everyone, but I hadn’t been in my classroom for more than a few minutes when Roger barreled through the door.

  He brandished a handful of newspapers. I hadn’t just made the local paper, but the Los Angeles Times.

  “This is the last straw, Jo. I can no longer give the administration my recommendation that you continue teaching here. You are consistently unable to deport yourself in the manner expected of a representative of the Bayshore Academy. You had better start making plans for teaching elsewhere next year, for I don’t believe there will be a position for you here.”

  “Stick a sock in it, Roger,” said Becky, coming through the door.

  Carol followed. “You do not have the ability to determine contracts, Roger. That is the middle school principle and the headmaster’s provenance.”

  They came to stand by me.

  Roger turned an odd shade of purple. “The headmaster listens to my recommendation.”

  Carol crossed her arms and glared at him over the top of her glasses. “Headmaster Huntington also listens to mine.”

  “We’ll see about that!” Roger glared at us and swept from the room.

  “Troll,” Becky said, locking the door.

  Carol put a Peet’s bag on my desk and pulled out three giant coffees and an assortment of cookies and pastries. “Can’t compare to anything out of your kitchen of course, Jo, but I thought we needed a treat.”

  I looked at them, confused. “What is all this?”

  Becky spoke first. “I owe you an apology, Jo. I’ve been acting like a pushy, petulant jerk. You did nothing but put yourself out to help me and what did I do but throw it back in your face.”

  “It’s okay,” I said awkwardly.

  “No it’s not. I’ve wanted to tell you I was sorry so many times in the past couple of days, but I didn’t. I thought I saw you heading for the theater last night. Did you know? I decided to wait to apologize until you came back. But you didn’t. And then there was that god-awful noise, like a train had crashed inside, and…” She made a gulping noise and looked away. “I called the cops, but—”

  “That was you?” I felt warmth spreading through me. She had been looking out for me.

  We stared awkwardly at each other for a moment and then hugged tightly.

  “It’s not your fault,” I told her after I blew my nose. “You saw what looked like Dan and me—”

  “And that’s not the worst of it,” Becky said, rubbing the smeared kohl from under her eyes. “I mean, how nutso was I to even think you’d do something like that?” She pointed at me. “Don’t answer that.” She blew out a dramatic sigh. “If I’d known that really liking a guy was this much trouble, I would have avoided it.”

  Carol and I looked at each other. “Uh-huh.”

  Becky didn’t respond with her usual smart comeback. She leaned back against the counter and sighed. “The truth is, Jo, I knew he didn’t do anything. Dan explained it to me the next day. It’s just that…well, I was being an ass.”

  “It’s okay, Becks. I understand. Really, I do.”

  Carol cleared her throat. “I’m sorry too. I didn’t support you like I should have when you needed me and I’m sorry.”

  I hugged her too and had to blow my nose again. The tissue felt like sandpaper. “Why is it that we get such crap tissue?” I asked, fingering my raw nose.

  “Roger probably ordered it,” Becky said.

  I gave a small choking laugh and reached for my coffee. “This is getting a little maudlin. We need to start celebrating fast or my students are going to know I’ve been crying.” I didn’t need to look in the mirror to know my eyes were puffy and my nose was red. I was not a pretty crier. “Er, what are we celebrating?”

  “This.” Becky produced an armful of newspapers with a crinkly flourish. They were all folded to pictures of me.

  Carroll’s brown eyes sparkled wickedly. “It’s not every day our Jo gets her picture in the paper.”

  “Because she’s stuck on scaffolding and won’t come down,” Becky said, pointing to a picture I hadn’t seen.

  “Oh God. I hate you both.”

  “Well, if that’s not reason to celebrate, I don’t know what is. Here.” Becky shoved a thin, narrow package at me. I unwrapped a set of black hair chopsticks. “I’ve lost hope of getting you to stop wearing your hair in a bun. But you might at least go for ‘sexy’ instead of ‘schoolmarm’.”

  The sticks were very cute but obviously made for someone with less hair. I had to supplement with a pencil from the “I heart science” mug one of my students gave me for Christmas last year.

  “What do you think?”

  Becky groaned and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “I give up. You’re hopeless.”

  Carol made a twirl sign with her index finger. “Turn around. Let me see.” I did a spin for her and she smiled. “Cute.”

  “You’re going to believe someone who wears twin sets over me?” Becky said. And then she sighed. “At least, tell me there aren’t chew marks on the pencil.”

  “Of course not,” I said, slapping away Becky’s hand when she reached up to check.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Becky and Carol stuck like limpets to my side all day, but even so, it was an ordeal. Everyone who could find an excuse to come near me did, bombarding me with questions. Everyone else just talked about me in loud voices. As soon as the school day ended, I locked my classroom door and graded papers until it was nearly dark and I was sure everyone had gone home.

  I stopped by the supermarket to stock up on baking supplies. As I filled my cart with chocolate chips, unsweetened chocolate, butter, sugar, cream, and cake flour, I felt my problems start to wash away.

  There is such a thing as too much enthusiasm for dessert. I was so preoccupied with plans of a very elaborate devil’s food cake with chocolate icing and piped whipped cream that I got out of the car without doing my usual nighttime safety scan. I was trotting upstairs, juggling bags and trying to locate my front door keys by feel, when I realized someone was standing in front of my apartment. A sickening, musky scent teased my nostrils.

  Lenny moved to the top of the stairs. The porch light backlit him like a rock star. “Do you need a hand with those?”

  “Is that supposed to be funny?” I demanded.

  “No. I—”

  I put the bags down on the steps. “That is it, arm candy. I’ve had enough of you.”

  I’m not really sure what I intended as I barreled up the stairs after him. All I know is that I’d reached my limit. Lenny stared at me wide-eyed for a moment, and then turned and ran. I chased him past my front door, past Sara’s and around the corner. Lenny reached the dead end a few seconds ahead of me and peered over the railing at the drop.

  Suddenly, he looked down the street and then hurtled over the side as if it were a five foot drop instead of
twenty-five.

  I skidded to a halt and looked over the railing as Lenny hit the ground at a barely controlled run. He disappeared into the dark space between the buildings.

  I couldn’t believe I’d missed his path down. Had he levitated? Part of me still didn’t believe it was possible.

  The sprint had taken the edge off my anger-fueled adrenaline and I realized I was damn lucky that Lenny hadn’t just pitched me over the railing. Reaching for my new phone, which the firefighters had found while waiting for me to come off the scaffolding last night, I flipped through the numbers until I reached Gavin’s.

  I was tired of dealing with vampires by myself.

  And, I admitted to myself, I missed having him to talk to. But only because he was the one person I could level with. I punched the connect button and jogged back along the walkway to get my groceries.

  As I reached the top of the stairs, I heard a car purr up the street. Seconds later, the elegant black Austin Martin stopped in front of my building. Will got out, a tall lean silhouette in black. His gaze fastened on me for a long moment. I punched the end call key without really thinking about it.

  Will turned suddenly to his left, toward something out of my range of vision. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize he could sense that Lenny was in the vicinity, just as Lenny had known Will was coming before he went over the railing. Must be that bat-like hearing.

  It got me angry again. I was tired of being in the middle of all this vampire power-play crap. I stomped past the groceries listing on the stairs and intercepted Will at the mailboxes. He pointed at the overhead apartment windows stretched like a row of unblinking eyes and led me a short distance up the street to the large, landscaped front yard of one of the few houses on my street. The owners weren’t home. Thick, fragrant Mock Orange hedges and a leafy jacaranda tree reaching well into the street, gave us some privacy.

  Will spoke first. “How are you?” He wasn’t offering sympathy. His cheekbones looked carved on his face. He was furious.

  So was I. “How am I? I’ll tell you how I am. I’ve spent the last week and half pulling myself up off the pavement after all those so-called ‘accidents’. I’ve got cuts and bruises on every inch of my body, my left wrist is sprained and my right shoulder feels like it’s on fire when I move my arm. I’m damn lucky I’m not in the hospital or dead. And just when I think I can finally come home and crawl into bed without worrying that someone’s going to come out of the closet with a knife, I find Lenny waiting for me on my doorstep.”