Forever and a Knight

by Bridget Essex

Granite can’t conduct electricity, right? I mean, it’s a rock, right?

  But when I reached out and touched her gravestone, it was as if a surge of electricity had moved through the rock and into me, as if I got a sudden charge of electricity. Like a really strong static shock.

  That shock rushed through me for only an instant. Only an instant, and then it was completely gone. And I don’t feel it anymore...but I can’t explain it away. I don’t know how it could have possibly happened. All that I know is that it happened.

  I frown and hover my fingers over the top of her gravestone again. I take a deep breath, and I press my hand to the sun-warmed granite.

  But absolutely nothing happens. The granite is hot because of the heat and sunshine. But that’s it.

  No static electricity.

  God, I need more coffee; I must be missing something very simple, a very easy explanation for what just happened. Hell, maybe there’s electricity pouring through the ground from some faulty wiring or something. That must be it. And maybe I missed the science class where we learned that granite conducts electricity just a little.

  I shrug and, slinging my book bag over my shoulder, I turn to head out of the graveyard.

  Weirdly, the hair on the back of my neck stands up at that moment. Like someone’s watching me.

  I turn and glance casually behind me. There are some birds singing in a nearby tree, cicadas screaming their little insect heads off all around me, and a delivery truck that whooshes by down the side street, going way faster than the speed limit.

  But there’s no one watching me, because there’s no one there.

  Weird. But, then, I’ve not had the most normal day. I scrub irritably at the back of my neck, raise an eyebrow and make my way back to my apartment building.

  Still, that odd, surreal feeling of being watched doesn’t go away until I’m actually in my apartment building, the door swinging heavily shut behind me. It’s only then that the hairs on the back of my neck go down, only then that my hackles go down, too, my shoulders drooping. That was really weird. But, again, I've got to remember: it’s been a weird day.

  I put it out of my head.

  I trot up the three flights of stairs because it’s good for me to get some exercise, and because Mrs. Thorton was headed into the elevator on the ground floor, and if I have to be stuck with her in an elevator even for just three floors, I might be convicted of homicide.

  For the record, Mrs. Thorton is the peach who tries to convert me to her brand of born-again Christianity every single time she sees me. No exceptions. For Christmas last year, she gave me a dozen Christmas cookies, which is nice, right? But they came with a Biblical tract slipped into the wrapper. The tract had a picture of Santa Claus on the front sporting horns and went on to talk about how the devil is actually Santa Claus. Or something. I used the tract to line my cat’s litter box, so I’m kind of hazy on the details.

  Once I get to my floor and reach my door, I slide my keys into my front door’s lock and sigh, leaning my forehead on the cold metal door and feeling the chill of the metal bring me back to reality.

  Home sweet home.

  I don’t even get the door open a crack before my loudmouth cat, Wonder (short for “Wonder Woman,” but if I called her that all the time, she’d get a bigger head than she already has), is meowing very (very) loudly as she sticks her paw through the opening in said door and tries to push out onto the landing.

  The thing about Wonder is that she really and truly believes that she is some enormous wildcat who belongs out in the untamed wilderness of the jungles or desert, certainly not cooped up in a pretty nice apartment in Boston where her every need is taken care of, night and day. She protests her cruel and unusual captivity by flinging herself out the door every time it’s open even a quarter inch.

  “Wonder, no,” I sigh as she somehow (because she’s made of liquid, I’m certain of it) slips past my leg that I’ve wedged into the opening of the door and out into the hallway. She bolts down the stretch of dirty gray carpeting toward the elevator.

  Exactly as the elevator doors ding open, and Mrs. Thorton steps out.

  Wonder is a gorgeous dark gray tabby, which is just fine on any normal day and is utter crap when she’s out in the dark hallway of my apartment building and blending seamlessly in with the dark gray carpeting of the floor. Thankfully, even with her superior camouflage skills, we’ve both been through this too many times for me to not spot her, her fluffy little ass prowling down the side of the hallway like she owns the place.

  “Gotcha,” I mutter, sprinting after her and scooping up my bad cat as Mrs. Thorton begins to make a bee-line toward me down the hallway, closing in like she’s the big cat on the prowl now.

  Well, damn. It’s too late. She’s spotted me, and the inevitable is at hand...

  “Hello, Miss Beckett,” Mrs. Thorton purrs, sugar dripping off her words as she smiles at me a little too widely. Mrs. Thorton always dresses to impress, with suits bearing shoulder pads that make walking straight through doorways slightly difficult. Today she’s wearing a beige pants suit with shoulder pads so wide, she had to step sideways to get off the elevator. Her enormous, permed brown curls are struggling out of their loose ponytail toward me, and her makeup is overly done but utterly perfect for a preacher’s wife...which she is.

  “Hi, Mrs. Thorton,” I manage, before Wonder starts to insert her claws into my shoulder like she’s intent on ripping out my heart. “Sorry,” I mutter, trying to detangle my cat’s razor-sharp claws from my skin (good God, I’ve got to trim her nails). “I’ve just have to get her inside... She’s such a little stinker!” I say, with hopefully toned-down sarcasm. I turn to get Wonder back into the apartment.

  “I heard your radio station went off the air today, dear,” Mrs. Thorton says now, her smile never wavering an inch.

  That smile is starting to look a little deadly.

  I shake my head, wincing a little as Wonder digs in deeper. “Yeah, but we’ll get it back. Don’t you worry about that,” I tell her, pulling one of Wonder’s sharper claws from my shoulder with a grimace.

  Mrs. Thorton’s eyes glitter in the dark hallway as she gazes at me, and with dripping condescension, she says, “I don’t know about that.”

  And that’s when I realize there’s something slightly fishy going on.

  It’s no secret that the Thortons are the king and queen of one of the larger born-again gospel-type churches in Boston, Great Hope Church (they have actual commercials, they're so big and well known). I don’t have anything against religion and am really a live-and-let-live kind of lady, but they’re the type of mega-church I can’t stand: the one with parishioners who hold up angry, hate-filled signs and protest everything fun and wonderful in this big world. The entire church heads up to Salem every year to protest at their Halloween celebration; they protest (pulling out the big guns like bullhorns and the really big hate-filled signs) at Boston’s gay pride parade. Hell, they even protest at the annual vegetarian convention. What vegetarians ever did to piss off Great Hope Church, I’ll never know.

  And, as Mrs. Thorton stares me down now, I’m beginning to get a sinking suspicion...

  “Mrs. Thorton,” I say, taking a deep breath and speaking with as much civility as I can muster, “is there something you’d like to tell me?”

  “Liberal media is dying, dear,” she says, her smile actually deepening. She’s starting to look a little like a shark, actually, all big, sharp teeth and deadly grin. Mrs. Thorton does a little sniff, then, her nose in the air, as she straightens. “And I think we both know that the Moran grant is better allocated to entertainment that doesn’t corrupt the family values America was founded on.”

  I stare at her. I’m pretty sure my mouth is open and my jaw is on the floor, but I don’t give a damn, because then my quick mouth takes over.

  I could say anything in this moment. I could tell her how outdated her views are, how most of America no longer agrees with her last-century way of thinking.
I could tell her that the Moran grant was well utilized by the station and that we’ve done a hell of a lot of good for Boston.

  But I don’t say any of that.

  “You've got to be fucking kidding me,” is what I so eloquently tell her.

  The color drains from her face, and her expression changes from acute smugness to disgust in a single heartbeat. It might be my imagination, but I think I see her shoulder pads deflate a little at the expletive. But then she straightens up again, like a marionette whose strings have been pulled tightly, and I think I begin to see steam pouring out of her ears.

  “I...I...I’m going to lodge a complaint with our landlord,” she snarls then, turning on her heel and beginning to stalk toward her apartment door, at the other end of the hallway.

  It’s not a complete lie when I tell you that my grip on Wonder somehow just...slips in that moment. It slips pretty deliberately, actually, as I set my tabby on the floor and stand up, crossing my arms.

  Wonder had been terribly fascinated with the shoelaces on the sneakers Mrs. Thorton had changed into after a day of work. Wonder, in fact, had been so fascinated with those shoelaces while Mrs. Thorton and I had been having our little “discussion” that, free, she now makes a beeline for Mrs. Thorton’s feet.

  Mrs. Thorton, not expecting my tiny tigress to be anywhere in relation to her feet, doesn’t look when Wonder darts in front of her. Nothing actually happens—Mrs. Thorton doesn’t step on my cat or any part of my cat. But she does brush her pant leg lightly against the fur of Wonder’s tail as cat and woman cross each other's paths.

  Wonder is a lot of things, but—first and foremost—she is utterly in love with her tail, spending about nineteen hours a day grooming it until it shines like the sun. If you touch Wonder’s tail, she will tell you, in no uncertain (and often violent) terms, that such a gesture is completely off limits.

  This is something that Mrs. Thorton could never have known, of course.

  Wonder rounds, instantly a ball of hissing, spitting rage—the personification of everything I’m feeling inside, quite honestly. My cat lunges, paws wide, claws extended...but Mrs. Thorton is quick, and reacts almost instantly, leaping out of the way as Wonder dives for her.

  “You’ll be hearing about this!” is screeched at me, and then Mrs. Thorton’s door is opened and slammed shut, and she is safely in her apartment, my cat clawing at her door, for once her claws utterly useless against the metal barrier.

  While I could swear that Wonder can occasionally walk through walls, this is probably not the day for such things.

  “Come on, Wonder... There’s my pretty kitty,” I purr at her, scooping up her fluffy, yowling mass and holding it close to my stomach. Wonder goes a little limp at that (despite her aggression and temperamental personality, and though she’d never admit it under oath, Wonder’s always had a soft spot for me) and allows me to carry her, unprotesting, into my own apartment, shutting the big metal door behind us.

  I sigh and lean against that door as Wonder begins a deep, rumbling purr, pressing herself against me and rubbing the top of her head snugly against my chin.

  “Thanks for trying to help, babe,” I tell her, knuckling her gently behind the ears.

  My cat’s smug, blissful expression conveys that she would have killed Mrs. Thorton for me had she been given half the chance.

  And I appreciate that.

  I set Wonder gently on the floor and go through the motions of opening up a can of wet food for her while she aggressively rubs herself against my legs, purring like a motorboat. I’m lost deep in thought, and I almost cut myself on the can’s lid as I wash it in the sink, ready to toss into the recycling bin. I set the plate of gooey food down in front of Wonder and am instantly my cat’s hero. I grab myself a beer from the fridge and pop open the top, hooking one of my kitchen’s stools out with my foot and sinking down onto it.

  Truth be told, my head’s reeling quite a bit at this moment.

  Honestly? I can’t believe this. Either Mrs. Thorton was on the trust committee at the Moran group, or she had her claws into someone who was, someone who could influence where the committee allocated their funds. I feel sick to my stomach now when I think about tomorrow and going in front of said committee, trying to plead a case that may already be—to them, at least—a completely lost cause.

  Liberal media, really? What a stupid-ass reason to remove funding. I take a sip of my beer and bury my other hand in my hair, tugging at the ends of it. I’m so frustrated in this moment, I could scream. Or take out my aggression on my punching bag that sits gathering dust in the corner.

  But, instead, I decide that I’m going to do what I always do when I’m angry and frustrated. It also helps that pretty much the only clean clothes I have left at this point are a gigantic shirt with Scooby Doo’s face on it and some leopard-print pajama bottoms. Hardly the stuff to strike respect into the hearts of the Morgan trust committee tomorrow morning.

  So it’s time to do laundry.

  Laundry in Casa de Beckett is a time-honored tradition that involves a lot of expletives. Honestly, I hate doing laundry. Granted, it’s not one of the most beloved chores on the planet, but that’s not the main reason for the hatred.

  Mostly, it’s because the washers and dryers in our apartment building are located in the Basement of Evil.

  Okay, so you may think “Basement of Evil” is a little strong, but then you’ve probably never visited the Basement of Evil. Let me paint you a picture: long-standing water on the floor, one guttering light overhead in the entire expanse of the basement, the scent of the dead mouse that’s been stuck under Mrs. Dalton’s washer for the last month providing a rather atmospheric perfume to the whole scene. There are holes in the concrete walls that lead back into crawlspaces in the ground, not totally unlike holes that would store bodies, and I’ve had more than one nightmare where I’m stuck down in the basement, that one lone light guttering overhead, and zombies start crawling out of those holes.

  No one in my entire apartment building ever comes down to the basement. Only a few tenants have washers and dryers down there, not because we can’t afford them, but because everyone thinks this place is haunted, even the guy on the third floor who’s an ex-Marine, and thinks—in his words— “everything is bullshit.”

  Even that guy thinks this basement is haunted.

  Don’t ask me how the rumor of the basement being haunted got started in the building; it began long before I got here. There are stories that a murder actually did take place down there, and the murderer stashed the body in one of the holes in the concrete wall. But then there’s also a rumor that a killer clown lives in the farthest hole from the door, so I don’t know how much stock I put in these stories.

  Either way, doing laundry down in the basement is enough to give you nightmares. So when I’m pissed, it’s the perfect time to do it.

  Because if there was a murderer (or, you know, killer clown) hiding out in the basement, waiting for a victim, he’d have to contend with me.

  I’m not a betting woman, but my wager would be on me winning that one right now.

  I still haven’t unpacked my dirty clothes from the short vacation to Provincetown I took last weekend (don’t ask—it was a royal bust, and the most action I got was the bed-and-breakfast owner patting my arm when she told me that “you’ll find the right girl someday. Don’t lose hope!”), so the suitcase full of dirty clothes is as good a place to start as any. I grab some more clothes from my hamper and stuff them into the laundry basket, and then I just grab my suitcase’s handle. With my basket balanced on my hip and lugging my suitcase behind me, I exit my apartment (narrowly closing the door just in time to keep Wonder in captivity) and begin the long haul down to the basement.

  “Hello, highly esteemed board members,” I mutter under my breath, my mind racing as I try to figure out an eloquent way to address the Moran board of trustees. Nah, “highly esteemed board members” sounds too formal (and a little too much like I’m trying
to kiss their asses, which—admittedly—I am, but still). I get into the elevator and press the grimy “B” button while watching myself in the floor-length mirror of the elevator’s walls.

  God, I look like hell. My long highlighted blonde hair, normally straightened to within an inch of its life, is sticking out in all directions (because I keep running my hands through it in agitation), and my makeup is beginning to smear at the corners of my eyes.

  Honestly, I look like I’m in need of a stiff drink. But there’s no time for that now.

  “Hello, board members,” I mutter again, as I punch the elevator door's “open” button, as the elevator drifts gently (and with a great deal of creaking and groaning) down to settle onto the basement floor. Even though the elevator has come to a complete stop, its door opens only partially (another lovely basement “perk”), and my suitcase gets stuck in the door opening as I try to wrestle myself, my laundry basket and the suitcase through the narrow gap.

  I get through it somehow, and the elevator dings pleasantly closed behind me.

  So. I’m in the Basement of Evil.

  The dead mouse smells especially pungent this evening, as I lug my laundry through the puddles of standing water and set my suitcase on top of my dryer. I’m purposefully trying not to figure out what else I think I might be smelling as I open my washer, toss in the clothes from my laundry basket, and grimace as I gingerly set the basket on the ground, managing to avoid setting it in a puddle.

  I unzip my suitcase, trying to figure out what I’m going to wear tomorrow, thinking about a million things, actually, as I begin to pull my underwear out and toss them one by one into the washer. I have to call Deb and get Carly’s number, because I want to go over some last minute things with her...

  But I stop cold in the middle of my very long train of thought.

  The light overhead is guttering a little more erratically than usual. That’s the first thing I notice. Also...when the hell did it get so cold?

  As I breathe out one long breath, I stare in shock as I watch that exhale hanging suspended in the air in front of me like smoke.