“What deal?”
The corners of her lips went up. “Information is a commodity.”
Guess I should’ve figured that. I grunted and turned my mind to the deal. Time wasn’t exactly of the essence here, and if she really had been waiting for me for two hours in those heels, she could stand to wait a few more minutes. If I was going to have to make a deal in her favor, it was jolly well going to be the least in her favor as possible—and was going to leave absolutely no possibility of outstanding debt.
I went over my words about a hundred times, while the proprietress added “inhuman patience” to her list of annoying traits. Then I spoke slowly, making sure I was saying exactly what I meant to say and leaving nothing out.
“Here is the deal I offer you,” I said. “On my side of it, I’ll never use the logic I used against you here again; nor will I share it with anyone who does not already know it. On your side, first, you will fulfill your side of your deal with Jon Nordfeld as he would want it fulfilled but without any payment outside this deal; second, you will not seek any form of retribution or recompense, directly or indirectly, for anything either Jon Nordfeld or I have ever said or done, and you will not prevent us from leaving.”
“Agreed,” snapped the proprietress, almost clipping my last word, and I knew I hadn’t asked for nearly enough. “You may depart.”
“Not without Sr. Nordfeld,” I said. “Where is he?”
She considered me, pale eyes glittering, and for a second I thought she was going to say that information was a commodity. But getting a good deal must have put her in a generous mood, because she said, “Walk directly out of this building, the way you came. Do not look back until you get outside. If you follow my directions exactly, you will see Jon Nordfeld then, in the parking lot with you, unfettered and unharmed.”
This struck me as unnecessarily complicated, and was probably another way of her getting one up on me, but it also had a certain mythological ring to it.
I sidled back to the door, unwilling to turn my back to her, and the knob turned easily under my hand. She watched me, head tilted, expressionless, distant and delicate in the moonlight but making no attempt to augment her beauty. I wondered what she was.
My boss would know.
I nodded to her in acknowledgement, because it didn’t hurt to be polite, and shut the door after me. It stayed shut as I tiptoed down the whitewashed stairs and into the gold room.
It was empty.
I mean empty. The walls and carpet were still there and still gold, but a faded and tawdry gold, the lights dimmed by half. But the golden people had vanished along with the bidding papers, the tables, and the pedestals. It smelled of dust.
I started across, neck hairs bristling, and about jumped out of my skin when a second set of footsteps began behind me, not in time with mine, soft against the carpet.
I didn’t look back, but it was a close thing.
The red room was empty too. Dark stains outlined the tile floor where some of the heavier objects had rested, but they were old stains, and this room was as unused as the gold one, with its musty smell tinged with the astringent edge of chemical cleanser. Odd, considering how not-cleaned this place looked, but I wasn’t in a mood to be impressed or even particularly interested.
The pink and purple rooms lay likewise: as empty, dull, and disused as a childhood dollhouse left in an attic while the decades sloughed by.
I quickened my pace and listened for the footsteps.
After a beat, they sped up also, but their nature changed. Before, the footsteps had been soft, measured—the steady steps of a confident man in expensive leather shoes. Now, they shuffled and limped with effort, and I became aware of another sound: a slithering, swishing, as if the walker were dragging something.
I stopped, and the footsteps stopped with me.
What, exactly, had the proprietress’s instructions been? Go directly out the way I came and don’t look back before I get out. Nothing there about not speaking to my boss.
If it was my boss. “Are you hurt?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. The urge to turn around screamed up another whirlwind. I nearly gave in to it there and then, but managed to grab my phone again and call my boss instead.
Voicemail.
“You could turn your phone on,” I said. “Send me a text. She never said you couldn’t. And part of the deal was that she couldn’t prevent us from leaving.”
Still no answer. I replayed the footsteps, the slithering back in my mind, and visions of what might be following me swirled into the screaming whirlwind. Heat rushed into my forehead and trembled my hands with adrenaline. I shoved my phone back into my pocket before it slipped from sweating fingers.
“Bluebeard.” “East of the Sun and West of the Moon.” A dozen other half-remembered stories from my childhood cried, Don’t look! Never look. Never indulge your curiosity. Never—
I started to turn.
“Don’t.”
The word was barely a whisper, but it was in my boss’s voice. He sounded like he was in pain, like that one word had almost been beyond him.
I clenched the strap of my purse to shut myself up. As the proprietress had given me rules for leaving, so too must she have given him, and I would not cause him any unnecessary suffering by demanding answers.
I walked on, slowly, so that he would have no difficulty keeping up. I didn’t have a single doubt about him throughout the blue room or the green room or descending the lower set of stairs. I proceeded with confident determination down the short hall and into the lobby. The milling people in that lobby had disappeared with the rest—but the glass-protected desk island had not. The clerks remained there, unmoving. They did not turn as I entered, and the one already facing my way had his eyes closed. He didn’t look asleep, because I couldn’t see his chest rising or falling. They looked like mannequins, and I had a sudden vision of the proprietress winding them up before guests arrived.
I didn’t speak with them; I kept walking. I came to the double front doors and put my hand on the cool metal.
This wasn’t part of the deal.
Never in my deal had we specified that I had to leave in a certain way, only that she would not prevent us from leaving. Nor did she have any right to cause my boss pain, as she had no hold over him. What right did she have to dictate to me that I could not turn around—or that he could not speak?
None. She had merely ordered me, and I had obeyed like a good little girl. And once I had left, as she had instructed, what then?
Then I would not be able to get back in. No matter how desperately I tried. I probably wouldn’t even be able to find the auction house again.
Oh, I don’t think so.
I turned around.
Chapter 5:
Arson
The thing following me wore my boss’s face, if you count holding a printed cardboard oval on a stick as wearing a face. The suit was better: it was the suit my boss had been wearing, although it was far more wrinkled than my boss would’ve allowed. The shoelaces had been tied incorrectly, and the tie had a standard knot instead of a Windsor. The voice, when it spoke, was his exactly, but it said a word he would never have permitted to sully his lips.
The thing was humanoid, but I wouldn’t have called it human. Starvation had withered it to emaciation; its legs were short and spindly as a child’s; and its dangling fingers nearly brushed the carpet. A fat, pulsating umbilical cord stretched from its belly back through the door to the upper rooms, glistening sickly white. There was exactly zero probability I could ever have mistaken the thing for my boss, even in the dimness of a nighttime parking lot.
But maybe, outside this building, the illusion would have become convincing. Maybe I would have happily driven this creature to my boss’s apartment to live his life.
“I told you not to look,” the creature whined in my boss’s voice. “Why can’t you people follow directions? I didn’t want to kill you. This is your fault.”
“An
external locus of control isn’t healthy,” my mouth murmured as my brain rearranged itself. The adrenaline was back, but I welcomed it this time. I had a feeling I was going to need it. “You can’t hurt me; I made a deal with the proprietress. She isn’t allowed to seek revenge on me.”
The creature shifted its shoulders, squaring itself at me. It wasn’t exactly Herculean, and I didn’t see any weapons.
“Who said anything about revenge?” it asked. “It’s trespassing I’m concerned with. The sun has set. You had her protection as long as you followed her directions, but you had to go and look around. And you almost made it, too! You still could make it,” it added cunningly. “You could open that door and disappear before I finished getting ready.”
The creature wriggled as it talked, muscles contorting and bulging. It wasn’t growing bigger or sprouting talons, but clearly something was changing. Whatever it was doing to prepare, it’d be done soon. I could act now, or I could turn into a horror movie victim, the really dumb sort who squanders her only chance to run.
Or to attack. I lunged at the thing, arms extended toward it. It reached out automatically, snagging my wrist. I stopped dead, planting my feet. Keeping my body relaxed, I rested my opposite hand over its in a wrist lock and turned under its arm.
Classic self-defense move. It flipped over my arm and thudded to the ground with a satisfying grunt. The cardboard mask went flying.
“Hey!” it protested, voice muffled by carpet. “I wasn’t ready!”
I knelt beside it, up on my toes for leverage. In a practiced, controlled movement, I twisted its arm up and back, and locked it into place. No matter how strong the creature was, no way could it get up without dislocating its arm at the shoulder and elbow and probably breaking a bone or two.
That’s when I realized I had no idea what to do next. I have a couple of self-defense moves up my sleeve, but I’m not what you’d call a martial artist. In the normal way of things, this’d be a perfect time to a) run away, b) shout for help, or c) ring the reeves. None of those were options here, not if I wanted to find my boss.
As I hesitated, the creature’s free arm contorted in ways no human arm could and grabbed at me. I yelped and leaned back, off balance—giving it the space it needed to turn its head and snap, teeth grazing my knee as I flinched away.
I could see now why it had kept its face covered: it didn’t have a face. Its eyes and nose had gone on vacation or possibly been devoured by the mouth, which stretched over the entire front of the head. A snake tongue flickered out, tasting the air, but the teeth were the semi-translucent needles of a deep-sea fish.
That was bad. What was worse was that I recognized it from the pictures in the red room. This had been among the “after” photos for available procedures. This creature was human, or it had been.
I still had a hold of its hand. It was struggling upright, snapping at me. Instead of scooting further away, I threw myself across its back, hanging on to that hand. The creature’s muscles rippled in ways no muscles should ripple, its elbow and shoulder joints popping out and back in like they were on a spring, its bones collapsing and reforming instead of breaking.
Not that I was sticking around to watch. I somersaulted forward and ran for the Upper Rooms door.
The creature’s hand lashed out and caught my ankle. I tripped, sprawled, and rolled until I hit the umbilical cord.
I almost didn’t make it. The creature flung itself at me, chomping wildly. I grabbed hold of the pulsating umbilical cord and shoved it blindly upward, between those needle teeth.
Foul, gelatinous blood gushed out over my face. I squeezed my eyes shut and held my breath. If this worked, I’d rather not contract any diseases. If it didn’t work, I’d rather not watch myself be eaten.
The flow of blood slowed to a drizzle, but I didn’t yet open my eyes. The creature had fallen over me, its body quivering and twitching as it died. I rocked side to side to dislodge it, then crawled away, taking off my blazer and wiping my face and hands with the back of it. I had to crack an eye to find the bathroom, but otherwise I kept my face closed up until I’d scrubbed it clean. My blouse was beyond salvaging, and I tied the blazer around my waist rather than leave it for the proprietress to find.
I didn’t waste a lot of time on primping. I didn’t know what else the proprietress had up her sleeve, and I wasn’t keen to find out. But more than anything, I didn’t want to give myself too much time to think. If I did, I knew I’d run straight for the car and burn rubber to get away, boss or no boss.
On which note—where was he?
I checked the men’s bathroom just in case he was there (he wasn’t), the office (likewise), and the auction hall (nope).
That left one option, and I didn’t particularly want to take it, so I banged on the safety glass surrounding the central island desk. This close up, I could see the clerks were breathing very shallowly, and that they were propped upright by metal poles that might, in the spirit of optimism, be called chairs.
They had not moved when I was in danger of being eaten by Maw-face, and they didn’t move now. But it seemed to me that the clerks’ eyes weren’t quite closed anymore—that I could see a wet gleam behind the lashes.
“Stop it,” I told them. “I know you’re faking, and I want to talk to you.”
Not a tic, twitch, or jerk. I hadn’t really thought they’d help me; if anything, they might alert the proprietress that I’d neither left nor been eaten. I was just putting off trying the last door: the basement.
I hate basements. I’ve always hated basements for the same reason I’ve always hated subways. The air down there is stale and unnatural, not meant to be trapped below mounds of earth. And you can feel the weight of that earth pressing down upon you, ready to collapse. Crushing, suffocating. Trapped.
I opened the door labeled Basement, and looked down.
Stairs fell away from me, sharp edges outfitted in plush cerulean. A switch by my hand illuminated everything in a warm glow: satin-swirled cream wallpaper, clean and crisp and new, without a hint of dust. A step in the ceiling blocked my view of the basement itself, but the smell wafted up nice and strong: lavender and more lavender.
Behind me, the creature was already shriveling, its umbilical cord flaccid, its blood dyeing the red carpet darker.
How long before the proprietress came downstairs and saw her pet leaking and a black Mercedes-Benz still in the parking lot?
I stepped onto the top stair and closed the door behind me.
It got much warmer as I descended, and the lavender smell kept growing stronger. I’m not against lavender, but I couldn’t help wondering what it was trying to cover up. Beyond that, I was so done having expectations about this place that I wasn’t surprised when the lavishly carpeted stairs led down into an equally lavish hotel lobby—complete with marble floor, overpriced and overstuffed armchairs, hideous statuary, and gold foil inlays. Wide vents in the white ceiling pumped in hot, lavender-heavy gusts, in case we hadn’t enough of that. The heating system also provided a rhythmic thumping and thudding to put the worst plumbing to shame.
I walked around and craned my neck at black-and-white striped armchairs and over the reception desk. There was a door beyond that desk, presumably leading to an administrative room, but the other exit struck me as more promising: out the left end of the lobby stretched a wide corridor carpeted in a thinner version of the cerulean on the stairs. This too looked either brand new or properly kept up. It wasn’t any more tasteful than the faux-opera-house aesthetic upstairs, mind, just cleaner.
Sticking with the hotel theme, the corridor showcased a door every fifteen feet and always on the left. I tried the first door and found a generically decorated bedroom: double bed with pale green carpet and dark green coverlet. No windows or curtains, obviously. No other doors, not even for a bathroom or closet. Empty, unused. Move along.
I opened the next door upon an identical setup, except that the carpet was powder blue and the coverlet navy. The room a
fter that was lilac and violet.
“I’m sensing a theme here,” I muttered. Maybe there was a legitimate reason for the heavy-handed color coding; who knew? But nothing otherwise coordinated with the rooms above, that I could see.
The pink room was the last before I turned the corner. Red came after that, but it showcased nothing more gruesome than poor taste, and I’d seen plenty of that already in this building.
I blinked sharply as I shut the door. The lavender was dizzyingly strong back here, as far from the hotel entrance—and fresh air—as one could get. It had lost its pure floral essence in favor of a chemical undertone. There was some other smell as well, buried under the eye-watering lavender, but I couldn’t identify it. If only it weren’t so hot. The combination was stringing my nerves and plucking them one by one.
Gold room next. White-gold carpet and brown-gold coverlet. Clean and pressed and empty.
I rubbed my hands together and rolled my head. Thick umbilical blood stuck my starched shirt to my skin, and rivulets of sweat crawled down my neck.
This is an evil place.
I don’t know where the thought came from, but it clung to my temples like claustrophobia. I tried to swat it away, but the heat made me slow, the smell stupid.
I opened the next door. White carpet, white walls, and there—lying on a bobbly white coverlet, head sunk in a white pillow—was my boss. He wore nothing but undershirt and briefs, his limbs splayed and his feet bare. None of his carefully cultivated dignity modified the pose; none of his intelligence lit his face. I hardly recognized him.
Averting my eyes from the hair on his legs, I rushed to his side, calling him. He looked ghastly, feverish. He did not awaken. I shook him and slapped his face and called him, daringly, by his Christian name.
Not a flutter. Not a sigh.
Luckily for my boss, if not for my brother Luc, I’m proficient at dragging unconscious and/or recalcitrant men from bed. I bunched the four corners of the coverlet, checked to make sure my boss’s head was cradled, and ducked under the covers, corners hoisted over my shoulder.
Bargaining Power Page 7