“I’ve always wondered what you eat down there,” she said.
“Whatever we find,” he said. He seemed to have a grasp of how to use his silverware and napkin. He had even taken off his sunglasses and tucked them into a pocket.
“Probably not the healthiest diet.”
“We live.”
“How do you decide where to look?”
“We keep watch. Take turns.”
“Oh, I guess that makes sense.” She began to butter a piece of bread to jam into her mouth before she inserted her foot in there. As she did, the thought of how to infiltrate TriTech came to her. “I suppose you have friends all over the city, right?”
“Yes.”
“What about inside that building we were in?”
“Not now. They poison.”
“But one of them could probably still get in there, right?”
Jim considered this for a moment. “Yes. Maybe dangerous.”
“I know, but if one of them could get into the building, and if we equipped it with a tiny camera, we could see what’s going on in there.”
“Yes. How big camera?”
“Well, it wouldn’t need to be very big. The size of a button maybe. We could rig up a little harness and then—”
“What happen if he caught?”
Emma thought about this for a moment. If someone from TriTech caught the rat secret agent they sent in and found it in a harness and camera, they would know for sure someone was on to them. Then she might never find out what was going on. “They might close up shop, or at least be more careful.”
“No, what happen to him?”
“I’m not sure. They’d probably dissect him.”
“Then no.”
Emma wanted to press him, to explain it was important for the safety of the city and so forth, but she could see the determination on his face. To ask him to risk the life of one of his rodent friends would be akin to asking her to risk the life of Becky or Aggie—or Dan. She sighed. “I understand. We’ll think of something else.”
The waiter brought their main courses and once again Jim surprised her by the delicate way he picked at the fish with his fork, not at all like the ravenous way she expected someone who’d come from the sewers to eat. Again she wanted to ask him about what had driven him to the sewers, but she told herself he would open up when he wanted to, or when circumstances finally forced him to, as had happened with the death of her parents.
“This fish is really good,” she said to steer the conversation to safer shores.
“Yes, better than from dumpster.”
She put a hand to her mouth, but couldn’t help laughing at this. To her surprise, Jim joined in, his laugh like a stuttering version of the hiss he made. She had never heard him laugh before, but then they usually didn’t meet under the best circumstances down in the sewers. “I don’t think they’d put that review in the window.”
With this exchange, she could sense a change in the air between them. Somehow she didn’t think things would ever be the same.
Chapter 11
Throughout the conference that morning and afternoon, Becky tried to take notes on what the speakers said. She knew Napier would expect her to bring something back, especially after Becky had begged her to go to the conference. Despite this, she nodded off every few minutes as she thought about Dan—and last night.
She wasn’t a virgin by any stretch, but she had never experienced anything like last night. Those other times had been purely sex in the backseat of a car or in a tiny apartment bedroom. For the first time she had really, truly, made love. Dan had been so different from the other men, so caring and tender. He even waited for her to come first.
To her it was the first time they’d ever had sex, but to Dan it was the second time. The first had been a year ago when Emma had switched bodies with her. Dan thought he had made love to Becky, when in reality it was Emma, the one who had loved him for the last six years. He didn’t know either of those facts and still didn’t.
Once they switched back, Becky promised Emma she would break it off. She had invited Dan over to the house to explain it to him. They sat down on the couch, she took his hand, looked into his eyes—and couldn’t lower the boom. The way he looked at her was the way Steve had looked at her. He loved her, though it might not have really been her he fell in love with.
Maybe it was a lie, maybe it wasn’t, but she couldn’t bring herself to end things with him. So she had convinced him they needed to take things slow and to be discreet. “We can’t let Emma find out,” she said.
“Emma? Why?”
“It’s kind of hard to explain.”
“I hardly even know her. We’ve only met a couple of times at the museum.”
“Yes, well, she’s very protective of me. She’s like my sister.”
“You think she’d have a problem with me seeing you?”
“It’s hard to explain. I think she has a little bit of a crush on you.”
“Oh. I see.” Dan considered this for a moment and then smiled at her. “If that’s what you want then we don’t have to let her find out.”
To convince Dan they needed to take it slow in the bedroom was a little more of a challenge, but in the end he was too nice to insist they have sex. For the last year she had put it off; she saw sex as the final betrayal of her friendship with Emma. After a year, she finally couldn’t stop herself last night.
A few drinks with dinner had helped to steel her resolve to finally go the distance, though not enough that she couldn’t remember it and how wonderful it had felt. Now as she sat in the hotel conference room, she couldn’t think of anything besides how much she wanted to get into bed with Dan again. As some speaker droned on about urban farming, Becky’s mind slipped away, back to the bedroom.
She could feel her body turn warm and sweat form on her forehead. She had deliberately taken a seat in the back of the room so she could easily sneak out and hurry across the lobby to the bathroom. She stopped at the sink to splash cold water on her face, to snap herself out of it. She was twenty-seven years old, not seventeen anymore; she couldn’t let these thoughts derail her life. She still had a job to do for Councilwoman Napier.
After she wiped her face off with a towel, she looked up at the mirror and gasped to see someone behind her. “Sylvia?” she said.
“Hello, Becky,” Sylvia said.
Becky turned around to face the witch. Sylvia’s eyes were red with dark circles around them and her hair fell in greasy tangles as if she hadn’t slept or showered in days. “Is something wrong?” Becky asked.
“Not anymore,” Sylvia said. Before Becky could react, the witch leaned forward and wrapped her arms around Becky. But it wasn’t a hug; Sylvia’s good hand pressed against Becky’s cheek. “Go to sleep now. Everything will be fine when you wake up,” she whispered.
“What the—” Becky managed to get off before she sagged to the floor.
***
Dan checked his watch again. Becky was twenty minutes late already. The maitre d’ shot him a dirty look to indicate he would give the table away soon unless Becky showed up. “Just a few more minutes,” Dan said. “It’s probably traffic.”
He didn’t know what could be taking her so long. Her hotel was only three blocks away; she could have walked here by now. That is if she’d left right from the conference. Probably she went back to her room to change and put on fresh makeup. At least that’s what he hoped.
The other explanation he didn’t like to consider—that she had stood him up the day after they made love for the second time in a year. He had thought she’d enjoyed last night—she certainly had sounded like she did—but that might have been an act.
His friends in subtle and not-so-subtle ways had told him he could do much better than her. He had the looks and the money to attract someone who weighed less than two hundred pounds, someone who didn’t come from a trailer park in Parkdale, someone who would “put out” far more easily. They had gone so far as to introduc
e him to various actresses, models, and businesswomen to draw him away. His assistant at the Plaine Museum had even said, “You and Dr. Earl would make a cute couple.”
He had rejected all of these to stay with Becky; he insisted no one knew her like he did. She was so sweet and gentle and sad. Perhaps the latter had really drawn him to her; they had both lost a spouse through violence. At least Dan had been married to Isis for nearly a year; poor Becky didn’t even get to leave the church with her husband. His friends couldn’t understand what it was like to lose someone you loved that way, but Becky did.
He looked at his watch again and hoped nothing had happened to her. After their first date, she had wound up in trouble with the Russian mob, who had wanted to find her friend Emma Earl. The Scarlet Knight had saved them from the gangsters, but what if they’d tracked Becky down in Chicago? This didn’t seem likely, as they could have easily gotten to Becky in the last year if they’d wanted. No, it was more likely she had simply decided to break things off after last night.
He was about to tell the maitre d’ to give their table away when she finally appeared in the doorway. She wore a black dress with a silk wrap over her shoulders, not the kind of thing she would wear to a conference he was sure, which confirmed his first instinct had been right. Her chubby face lit up in a smile. “Sorry I’m late,” she said.
“It’s fine. I’m not that hungry anyway.”
“Well I am,” she said. “All they had at that conference were tuna sandwiches. Yuck.”
“They didn’t let you go to the restaurant in the hotel?”
“No. Probably afraid we wouldn’t come back.” She laughed at this, but he could sense a hollowness in it. She was hiding something from him. What was it? She took his arm and pulled him along as the maitre d’ finally led them to their table.
“Is something wrong?” he asked her after the maitre d’ had gone.
“No, not at all.” She reached across the table to take his hand. “Not anymore.”
“You seem a little—nervous.”
“Nervous? Why should I be nervous?”
“Well, I know this sounds crazy, but I thought after last night maybe you’d decided to make a change.” Becky stared at him blankly. He lowered his voice to say, “You know, after we did it last night? I thought maybe I’d done something wrong.”
Her eyes widened for a moment and then she began to laugh. “Oh, that. No, don’t be silly! You were great. Just great.” She looked around the restaurant. “Where is that damned waiter? I am parched. You know I ran all the way over here in these heels?”
“You didn’t take a cab?”
“For three blocks? That’d be a waste of money.” She raised one arm and snapped her fingers. A waiter appeared almost instantaneously. “Bring us a bottle of your finest white wine. And make it snappy, would you?”
“Are you sure you’re feeling all right?” Dan asked.
“I’m great. Just great.”
He waited until the waiter returned with their wine so he could take a shot of courage before he said what he had practiced earlier at the museum. “Becky, there’s something we need to talk about.”
She drained her glass and then reached across the table to pour another. “Do we have to do it now? Can’t we just enjoy the evening?”
“This is important.” He took her hand and squeezed it. “Becky, I think it’s time we stopped all this sneaking around. I know Emma’s your friend—”
“What does Emma have to do with anything?”
“You said she might be jealous of you, that’s why we had to be so secretive.”
“Oh, right.” Becky gulped down another glass of wine. “Hey, great, let’s tell Emma. If she don’t like it, then fuck her.”
“Are you drunk? Were you drinking before you came here?”
“You caught me. I stopped at the bar to have a few before I came here.”
“Why would you do that?”
“I don’t have to answer your damned questions. You’re not my father!” To his surprise, Becky stood up from the table. She staggered backwards a step; her large frame wavered as if she were about to fall down. To right herself she grabbed the edge of the table and then leaned forward to glare at him. “I don’t have to take this from you.”
She stomped out of the restaurant, to leave him at the table alone, his entire body suddenly numb. He could feel the other diners looking at him, though they all pretended not to. When his mind finally caught up to what had happened, he tossed some money onto the table and then ran after her.
She must have caught a cab, as he didn’t catch up to her until he reached her hotel even though he ran the entire way. She was getting into the elevator, the doors halfway closed; he threw himself into the doors and collapsed on the floor of the elevator as it began to go up. “That was graceful,” she said.
He picked himself up off the floor. “Becky, what’s going on? Why did you do that?”
“Oh, you’ll see.”
“I don’t understand. Becky—”
She put a finger to his lips to silence him. “I thought we’d skip dinner and go right to dessert.” Before he could say anything else, she kissed him. Something about the kiss felt different than what he remembered from last night, or even this morning before they went off to their separate jobs. He couldn’t put his finger on it exactly, but it felt as though he were kissing another woman.
The elevator doors opened and she pulled him out; she practically dragged him to her room. Once she opened the door, he understood what she had meant. A bottle of champagne sat in an ice bucket beside the television and the covers had been pulled back from the bed, rose petals scattered over it. She giggled as she pushed him onto the bed. “And you thought I was serious, didn’t you, silly boy?”
“Becky—”
“Hush. You just lie right there.”
He was too surprised by Becky’s sudden aggressiveness to do anything but lie there on the bed as she’d instructed. He heard the bottle of champagne pop, followed by two glasses being poured. When she returned, Becky held out a glass for him to take.
He saw that underneath the black dress she wore only a pair of lacy panties. “A toast,” she said. “To us.”
“Right.” He took a sip of the champagne and grimaced. He had tasted a number of vintages of champagne before and none of them had tasted this sour. He wanted to ask Becky about this, but found his mouth wouldn’t move. None of his body would move.
She plucked the glass from his hand and then gently pushed him down onto the bed. As his eyes began to droop, he noticed two very strange things: first that a thin woman with dark red hair stood where Becky had been and second that he was growing breasts.
***
When Becky woke up she found herself facing another woman. Despite the longer brown hair, the wider hips, and of course the breasts, she could still recognize the man she loved. “Dan?” she whispered. She reached out with a hand to touch the ends of his waist-length hair to make sure it was real.
Only then did she roll over to see they weren’t in either of their hotel rooms. They weren’t even in Chicago anymore; they were back in his bedroom in Rampart City. She remembered she’d gone to the bathroom during the conference and then seen Sylvia behind her. The witch had hugged her and then Becky had passed out—
She sat up on the bed and took a look at herself to make sure that she was still herself. With a sigh of relief she pushed off the bed and hurried to the door only to find it locked. She found the window frozen shut as well. They were trapped!
A flash of light came from behind her. She saw Sylvia there; the witch looked even more tired and haggard than she had in the bathroom at the hotel. Becky pointed to where the young woman who looked like Dan lay on the bed. “What is going on?” she asked. “Did you do something to him? If you did—”
“It’s just a side effect of the potion,” Sylvia said.
“Potion? What did you give him?” Becky started to charge forward until Sylvia produce
d a gun from her purse. The revolver looked ancient but still lethal. “What did you do to him?”
“It’s a sleeping beauty potion. Never tried it on a man before.”
“When he wakes up—”
“He’ll be fine. He probably won’t remember anything.”
“Probably?”
“That’s how it works on the women.”
“You’ve done this before?”
“Me? No. It’s one of Glenda’s recipes. They did that thing all the time back in the old days. Did you think that was just a story?”
“You wake him up, right now.”
“I can’t. Only his true love can wake him with a kiss.”
“Emma. She’s his true love.” Becky tilted her head back up to glare at Sylvia. “You bring her here right now.”
“I can’t do that. Not yet. Not for a few days.”
“A few days? You can’t leave him like this for a few days!”
“I’m sorry about all of this, Becky. I am. But it’ll all be over in a few days. Once I know he’s safe, I’ll bring Emma back here and she’ll kiss him and everything will be fine. Until then, you just keep an eye on him.”
“Have you lost your mind? Soon as I find Aggie—”
“She’s gone. So’s her friend.” Sylvia put her hook hand into her pocket and took out a pink vial. “We can do this one of two ways. Either you can stay here for a couple of days and play nursemaid to him or I can use this on you and you’ll spend the next few days in a crib, wearing a diaper and sucking your thumb. The choice is yours.”
Becky winced at this. She had briefly become an infant again when a crazy old witch had changed her and Emma back to their rightful bodies. Being so tiny, so helpless, had nearly driven her insane. She didn’t want to go through that again if she could help it. And she knew she’d be able to do a lot more for Dan if she were still a grown-up. “Fine, I’ll take care of him. Just promise you aren’t going to hurt him.”
“I don’t want to hurt anyone.” She raised the pistol in her hand. “But I will if I have to. Like if you get cute and try going to the police or anyone else.”
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 41