by Dylan Newton
Drake looked up sharply at her, and then a grin spread across his face.
“That is an excellent observation. And you say you’re not good with details. Go on. What else would you notice for your client if you were, say, planning something in this burial vault for them?”
Apparently, he’d said her magic word: planning. Kate’s hands lost their death grip on her purse and the lines of her body grew less rigid. He sensed she was moving into a space he used to know really well—the creative space.
She pointed up to the window at the front.
“The stained glass. It’s beautiful.”
Drake came to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with her, directly in front of the window, facing the front of the mausoleum. Realizing the lantern prevented them from seeing the pattern from the sun’s light streaming through, he clicked it off, standing next to her in the semi-darkness.
He stared at the dust-filmed stained glass and cocked his head, still seeing nothing but colored glass held together by black leading.
“How so?”
“Check out how the shapes work together,” she said. Her hand pointed to the interwoven pieces of variously tinted yellow glass, mostly curves and wavy shapes, leading to the window’s center, where four curls of yellow-orange framed an oblong piece of cobalt-blue glass, shaped like a shield. “That blue part, and the way it’s being cradled there, in the center with all of those paisley sort of shapes, looks faintly nautical, and yet medieval at the same time. The yellow and orange fanning out from it is like a sunrise. Coupled with the intricate leading and ironwork on the outside, it all feels like a portal returning us to the age of knights and princesses in beautiful castles. It’s exquisite. Maybe it could be a medieval-court wedding?”
“Hmm. I like it. A portal back to courtly times,” Drake muttered each phrase, his pen flying across the page, barely able to see his scribbling in the dim light. “What else?”
“You know what would be really fun? I’d work with the groom-to-be to design a surprise gift for his bride, and we’d have a jeweler create a necklace pendant inspired by the stained glass.” Kate smiled, her gaze going soft as if she were envisioning the moment the groom gave it to his bride. “My ‘Aww!’ moment.”
“Your…what moment?” Drake asked, captivated by the way her mind worked.
She elaborated.
“Well, I am known as the Queen of Happily Ever Afters, partly because of my fairy-tale weddings. But the details are what set my events apart. I usually don’t tell my clients—or at least, I don’t tell the bride—but there’s always one little detail I plan to surprise them with. It’s something I like to call the “Aww!” factor. I think it’s that, more than the weddings as a whole, which gets me referrals, if you want to know the truth.”
Drake was intrigued. He wondered if Kate had an “Aww!” moment planned for his book launch but decided not to ask. It was best to keep her off that topic until he was ready to accede to the details of the upcoming launch circus. Although he’d only known her for a short while, he guessed Kate was a woman who, once given the reins, would keep galloping until she got to the finish line. He’d give her the project and set her free, but his muse needed more time with her before she became all about business.
An idea flashed in his mind about a piece of jewelry his hero would give the heroine before he went off to war in his historical romance work-in-progress.
“Can you draw what the pendant looks like, in your mind?”
Nodding, Kate took his legal pad and drew a quick sketch, then handed it back to him.
“I’m no artist, but that’s how I’d envision it. The groom would give it to the bride right here. Under the window. Maybe as a part of his vows? That would be romantic—should be enough to elicit some tears from the bride, creating an ‘Aww!’ moment for them and their well-wishers.”
He switched the lantern back on and inspected the paper. Her drawing was quite good—she had a definite artistic streak and a flair for description. He pictured the scene she described, the bride’s face illuminated by the soft candlelight in the room, and the groom tenderly fastening the pendant around her neck, his fingertips brushing auburn hair from her soft, pale skin. Suddenly, he was immersed in the hero’s point of view so firmly, he imagined wiping the tear from his bride’s face, the wonder he’d feel gazing down at the woman he was lucky enough to spend eternity with—
“Why are you grinning? I know it sounds sappy, but in real life, I think it would be sweet.”
When Kate spoke, Drake jolted, as if being woken from a nap. He fixed his expression, embarrassed to have been caught daydreaming about a scene for his romance novel. He cleared his throat, feeling the heat climbing his neck, and looked around for a diversion.
He spotted the empty crypt behind him. “Your description is outstanding. I may borrow it for a book someday. I’m wondering—” He paused, considering whether he really wanted to push her willingness to help him this far. But then, he recalled he’d likely need this detail for the bread-and-butter books he’d have to return to once he got this romance out of his system, and he hardened his heart. Might as well use her fantastic descriptive genius while he could. He plowed on with his request.
“Maybe you’d be willing to help me out? The coffin is too small for me—my shoulders won’t fit inside. Could you climb inside and tell me what it feels like and looks like, just as you did with the stained-glass window?”
“Are you serious? No way.” Kate shook her head. “I didn’t wear appropriate clothes for lying down in a tomb. I don’t even know what the appropriate attire is for lying down in a tomb.”
“I get it,” Drake said, a little disappointed. He’d had an idea to have his heroine hide from the bad guys—he hadn’t really defined the villain yet—in a cemetery that was preparing for a funeral. But he was a writer, after all, and could invent what he didn’t know about lying in a cold, stone coffin. “I shouldn’t have asked you. I realize you’re my event planner and only my research assistant to get your friend out of hot water. Time to get Wendy’s attention and head up for a tour of the grave Curtis is digging. Would you like to try your hand at a backhoe?”
Kate put a hand on her hip. “I feel like this whole day today has been some sort of elaborate punishment. I thought you’d accepted my apology and were ready to move on?”
“Oh, I have. And I am. But I know whatever you’re going to ask me to do is going to be…” Drake searched for the right words. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but he did want to be honest with her—it somehow seemed important. “Well, it’ll be like a circus sideshow.”
She made a sound of offended incredulity. “Let me assure you, I don’t run anything like a circus or a sideshow. I have spreadsheets in my bag here that’ll show you my events are no free-for-all, buy-an-armband-and-ride-all-night affairs.”
“I know you won’t mean for it to be a sideshow, but really, what else can you do?” He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s all about selling me and my freak-show books.”
Kate paused, as if his last sentence totally derailed her prepared response.
“You don’t write freak-show books, Drake,” she said, to his surprise. Her eyes gleamed in the lamplight, and he noticed tiny flecks of hazel in their green depths. “Yes, they are scary. Yet they all have the hero or heroine triumphing in the end. They showcase a person’s extraordinary ability to survive—even thrive—in spite of the ugliness that happened to them. That’s more motivational, and reflective of real life, than other genres. Drake, I think the world needs your books, just to remind us that we’re stronger and braver than we know.”
Drake didn’t know what to say.
His chest was alight with emotion, but he managed to string together a halted response.
“Have you ever actually read one of my books?”
Kate hesitated, licking her lips. “I, um…no.”
Drake burst out laughing, and after a moment, Kate joined in.
“But I did skim the adv
ance reader copy Imani gave me for Halloween Hacker as research for the launch. Your characters are so human, so flawed, yet when they face terror, they show such innate fortitude,” she said, shaking her head as if unable to articulate her feelings. “You don’t write freak-show books, and while I admit I believed some of the rumors about you I read on the internet before I got here, now I know you’re exactly what Imani said you were.”
“Which is?”
Instead of answering, she removed her coat and thrust her handbag at him. “Hold these. The inside of this thing is filthy and God only knows what’s crawled through here in a hundred years.”
“Wait. What are you doing?”
“You’re going to get the whole experience in this crypt so your next book has that ring of authenticity. And when I’m done, we’ll talk plans. Deal?”
“D-deal.” Then, before Drake could trip over any more words, she’d climbed the two steps of the dais, sat on the edge of the sarcophagus, and swung her legs inside. In one smooth motion, she sank into the black interior with no more hesitation than if she were entering a warm bath.
He whistled. “Damn. You’re fearless.”
A wicked laugh rose from the darkness.
“No. I’m dedicated.”
Drake was going to set her coat on the edge of the stone, but recalling the amount of filth on the floors, and the light color of her jacket, he thought better of it. Stripping off his leather coat, he laid that on a diagonal over the corner of the crypt and balanced Kate’s coat and bag on top where they wouldn’t get dirty. Then he snatched up his legal pad and pen, marveling that this woman—basically a stranger—was willing to crawl into a tomb because she believed his books were…good for the world? He knew she was also doing it for her own ends, but still, those words seemed heartfelt. That giddy, too-large-for-his-chest feeling was still there, and he was a little worried he might recognize it.
It felt an awful lot like…a crush.
But that wasn’t quite right. Too sophomoric for what he was feeling. His mind riffled through a mental thesaurus.
Affection? Attraction? Infatuation?
“Drake?” came Kate’s voice from the darkness, jolting him. “Should I start describing it now?”
He cleared his throat, shoving the synonyms out of his mind to deal with later.
“I’m ready. You talk, and I’ll transcribe.”
Haltingly at first, she reported how it felt to lie in the empty sarcophagus, her voice floating, disembodied, out of the dark interior. She noted the chill of the stone, the texture of the rock to the pads of her fingers, and even the disturbing sensation of looking up and seeing only a faint, gray-lit rectangle of the world above her.
Drake’s pen flew across the page. While he might be on a hiatus from horror, he’d be an idiot not to take down her observations. If he decided not to use it in the romance, he could always employ it for the next horror book, or the one after that, or the one after that. Eventually, her transcribed experience would be sucked into the churning gears of the publishing world, chewed up and regurgitated to scare the bejesus out of every possible person on earth.
After a few minutes, Kate paused. Drake heard curiosity mingled with hesitation in her voice.
“Although I know it’s probably my own heartbeat, it’s almost like I can hear something in here. There’s maybe…a whisper of a breeze from the vent up there. It keeps blowing on my hair, almost imperceptibly, moving tiny strands of it,” she said, her disembodied voice sounding puzzled. “Unless…Drake! Knock it off! I can totally tell it’s you trying to scare me.”
At her yell, he swept up the lantern and peered into the crypt. “I’m not doing any—” Drake’s protest froze in his throat.
Kate wasn’t alone.
“What?” she asked, her green eyes wide.
“Kate, don’t move. There’s a bat in your hair.”
Chapter 9
Kate, don’t move. There’s a bat in your hair.
When Drake said those words, it was like she truly had become a superhero.
She’d have sworn on a stack of Bibles that she’d levitated out of that crypt, because before she’d made any conscious decision to do so, she was out of the stone box and halfway to the door, shrieking like a banshee. She slapped at her hair, both desperate to find, yet terrified to touch, the bat that had apparently been hiding in the dark corner of that tomb.
“Kate!” Drake yelled, grabbing her hands, holding her wrists in a viselike grip. “Don’t smack at your head—you’ll scare it or hurt it, and it’ll bite you. Just come here and let me see if he’s still there. I think he flew away when you stood up, but you knocked the lantern over, so I’m not sure.”
The lantern was rolling on the floor, casting crazy, moving shadows all over the marble crypts and walls.
“Can you see anything?” she gasped. “Is there anything in my hair?”
“Come closer. Let me look.” He tugged her to his chest and told her to look left and then right. “I don’t see anything. But let me take your hair down and I’ll look. Just stay still—can you do that?”
She shuddered.
“It’s okay. I’ve got you.” His voice was soothing, like he was willing her calm with his words. “I’m just going to grab the lantern.”
In two heartbeats, he’d snagged it and was back at her side handing her the light.
“Hold this shoulder height. I’m going to make sure nothing’s in your hair.”
Drake worked with careful delicacy, removing each bobby pin with deft fingers, then gently unwound her chignon. His touch felt intimate, and suddenly a whole different kind of shiver went through her body. A strand of hair and his warm breath tickled her neck.
He ran his fingers through her mass of hair.
“Anything?” she asked, her voice practically a squeak.
“No,” he replied, his tone suddenly gravelly.
She turned toward him to find his eyes slightly glazed and his hand still reaching for a curl on her shoulder. He looked…mesmerized.
She felt a rush of heat to her cheeks. Somehow she, Kate Sweet, currently had the Knight of Nightmares silent and spellbound.
In a tomb.
That last realization sobered her, as did the fact the guy happened to be her best friend’s client—one she’d almost lost for Imani due to her lack of situational control.
It wasn’t going to happen again.
“All set?” she asked, her voice bright as she forced herself to pull away from his touch.
“You are officially bat-free,” he said, flashing Kate a reassuring smile. “Here. These are yours.”
Drake took the light from her hands, replacing it with a handful of pins and the elastic that held up her chignon. He stepped back. Suddenly, his smile grew tight, and Drake swung the light higher.
Kate peered fearfully over at the crypt, following Drake’s gaze.
“What are you looking at? Is it still over there, or did it fly out?”
“There’s…a few of them. I think our rapid movements and your…screaming stirred them up.” Drake cast the lantern toward the vent near the ceiling, revealing inky black shadows.
Some of them were moving.
Kate’s stomach clenched, and like a reflex, she crowded close to Drake and the weak, flickering lantern he held.
“Let’s give them some room,” he said in a low voice.
Slowly, like a strange waltz, they backed away from the center of the vaulted ceiling together, toward the structure’s only doors.
“You think loud noises, like the whistle to call Mrs. Scanlon, will stir them up even more?” At his nod, Kate hugged her arms to herself and ducked her chin to her chest, attempting to be as small a human target as possible. She hissed her words. “So, what? We’re just going to chill in here with the bats for the rest of the hour? How much longer do we have?”
Drake looked at his watch, and then winced.
“Twenty-eight minutes.”
“Uh-uh,” Kate sa
id, “No way are we staying in here that long with a bunch of vermin. I hear you on the whistle, but maybe we can use our cell phones? Mine sometimes works in elevators, so—”
But Drake was shaking his head.
“Mine is in my jacket pocket—which I laid under your coat so it wouldn’t get grimy from the sarcophagus. And I’m assuming yours is in your purse?” At Kate’s reluctant nod, he grimaced. “Then we have no choice but to stay put. I wouldn’t want to risk either one of us grabbing our stuff.”
Kate closed the remaining distance between them, crowding so close she could feel the heat radiating through his sweater.
“Oh my God, why did I agree to come in here? Who in their right mind agrees to being locked in a crypt?” Kate tried to focus on the faint, woodsy scent of Drake’s cologne. “I thought yesterday was the worst day in my life. But here I am today, courting rabies and giving myself guaranteed bad dreams about zombies for years to come.”
“You agreed because you’re being a good sport. The last thing I’d hoped to achieve today was to give you everlasting nightmares. But that seems to be my superpower,” Drake said, his lips a thin line in the semi-darkness. “I pressured you into this, and I’m sorry, Kate.”
Although she inwardly agreed that she’d felt pressured to come, she had to admit that the initial thrill had been exciting.
Up until the bats arrived, anyway.
“It’s okay. You didn’t know it would be infested,” Kate said, shivering. Then she snorted. “At least you’re going to have some killer material for your book. A bat-infested crypt, wading through bat poop—surely that’ll appear somewhere in Twisted Twin? It’s horror gold!”
Kate was surprised when Drake didn’t readily agree. In fact, he shifted on his feet, and just as he’d opened his mouth to reply, the lantern in his hand flickered, and then went out.
Kate gasped, closing the last foot between them, her heels accidentally tromping on the tops of his boots.
“Ow, okay,” he said, his hands coming to her shoulders to steady and reposition her so she was standing on her own feet again. “The lantern’s batteries just died. Don’t worry—she will be here to let us out soon. The bats won’t bother us if we don’t bother them.”
