Before You

by Jenna Bennett

  “That’s weird.”

  “It gets weirder,” Juan said with a scowl at his sister. Carmen grinned.

  “After two years, Karl took Elena’s body out of the tomb and into an old airplane fuselage behind the hospital, where he began to ‘restore her to life’ with wire and plaster of Paris and glass eyes.”

  Eww!

  “And when he learned that the military was planning to get rid of the old airplane, he moved her to his house on Flagler Avenue. And lived with her there until 1940.”

  Double eww! “Lived with her? You mean, her corpse?”

  “Held together with wire and plaster of Paris,” Carmen nodded. “And dressed in a wedding gown and veil.”

  “That’s...” Unbelievable. Disgusting. Grotesque. I lowered my voice. “He didn’t... sleep with her, did he?”

  “I imagine he did,” Carmen said calmly. “Apparently he inserted a paper tube for easy access.”

  Oh, gack. That went well beyond eww. I was practically gagging, and I swear all the blood drained out of my head.

  “Eventually people caught on, of course, and he was arrested and charged with grave robbery and abusing a corpse. But because the statute of limitations had run out, he wasn’t convicted.”

  “That’s sick.”

  Juan nodded.

  “After he got out, he charged people twenty-five cents to tour his house and see the lab where he’d worked on Elena.”

  I stared at Carmen.

  “And the authorities decided that there was so much interest in the remains, that they put them on display to let people see them.”

  “Ghouls,” Juan muttered.

  “And after that, they put Elena in a metal box and buried her in an undisclosed location, so Karl wouldn’t dig her up again. He ended up blowing up the mausoleum he’d built, and then moving to Zephyrhills, where his ex-wife lived. He died in 1952, supposedly clutching a life-size replica of Elena. Some people say it was suicide, but he was in his seventies by then, so I’m not sure.”

  “That’s...” I shook my head. I had no words.

  “I know.” Carmen grinned. “Isn’t it great?”

  Sure. Great.

  “I think I should go home now,” I said, sliding off the stool and onto the floor. It tilted, and I had to brace myself on Carmen’s shoulder. “Sorry.”

  “You OK, Cassie?” Juan asked, his brows lowered. “Maybe you should go with her, Carmen.”

  “She’ll be fine,” Carmen said. “Just as soon as she gets outside.”

  Juan contemplated her, then nodded. “If you say so.”

  “Trust me.”

  He obviously did, because he nodded. “Come back and visit, Cassie.”

  I promised I would, and then I made my way across the floor toward the door while I wondered what that last exchange had been all about. I mean, of course I was fine. I could walk a fairly straight line, and I was certainly no worse off than a lot of other people. I was considerably more sober than most.

  I hiked my purse more firmly over my shoulder, pushed the door open, and stepped through.

  WAKING UP hurt. My head felt like the entire UC drum line was practicing inside, along with the cheerleaders, and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth like it was glued there.

  But I drank the water.

  My brain stuttered for a second.

  What water?

  I hadn’t been drinking water. Or even Sprite. Juan had served me some sort of pink drink with a blue umbrella.

  So much for his assertion that whatever it was, was practically virgin.

  Except... I’d only had a tiny little buzz on when I left the bar, hadn’t I? It wasn’t like I couldn’t remember everything that happened. Juan had been serving me drinks on the house, and Carmen had been talking about ghosts and then told me that awful story about Count Carl and Elena. I’d decided to go home—back to the hotel—before she could come up with something even more horrible, and Juan had suggested that maybe Carmen should go with me.

  She’d said no; that I’d be fine as soon as I got outside.

  And I had been fine. The cooler air had helped to clear my head. I’d set off down the street toward the hotel, and...

  Everything after that was blank. If someone had given me water between there and here—and I did have a vague mental image of a voice telling me, “Here. Drink this. You need to rehydrate”—I didn’t know who it was.

  But maybe it was just a dream. Shades of Karl Tanzler making Elena drink his concoction of gold leaf in water to cure her tuberculosis.

  That’d explain why my mouth felt like the Dust Bowl in August.

  I slitted my eyes and peered out. The sunshine hit my eyeballs like a laser scalpel, and I squeezed them shut again with a moan. But I’d seen enough. I was in my own room in the hotel. The bedside table had the same glass lamp with an orange shade, and over in the corner was the same chair with pink and orange flowers.

  Somehow I had made it here, even if I couldn’t remember how.

  And I guess I’d managed to get out of my shoes and jeans on arrival, although I was still dressed in underwear and my T-shirt.

  A soft sound tickled the edge of my consciousness. The rustle of fabric. Or maybe a careful tread on the fluffy rug.

  I forced my eyes open again. If I wasn’t alone, I’d like to know about it.

  A dark figure loomed over me. I squeaked and flopped over on my back, clutching my blanket to my chest for protection.

  “Good,” a voice said. “You’re awake. Finally.”

  That voice...

  “What are you doing here?”

  Speaking of voices, mine was a croak. And using it made my head pound. I whimpered.

  “Here.” A glass of water and a couple of pills appeared on the bedside table. The glass hit the hard surface with a click, and the pills rattled. The tiny sounds were magnified to roars in my pounding head. The voice continued, “Take this. You need to rehydrate. And the aspirin will help with the headache.”

  “That’s what you said last time,” I whispered. “And look what happened.”

  “What?” Ty said.

  “I’m not sure I trust you.”

  He took a step back, and I got a better look at him. He looked tired, like he hadn’t slept. Maybe he hadn’t, if he’d been here all night.

  I did a quick scan of my body, but best as I could tell, the only thing that hurt was my head.

  His T-shirt was white today, with red letters above and below a red cross.

  Not a religious cross; the square kind. A Red Cross kind of cross. At first my eyes refused to focus, but after a few seconds’ concentration I could make out the words. Virgin Search and Rescue Team.

  “Appropriate.” I flopped a hand at it.

  He glanced down, and then up at me. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m still a virgin, right?”

  Ty’s eyes widened. “What?”

  “Nothing.” God, how stupid can you get?

  He sat down on the edge of the bed next to me. The mattress gave a little, and the letters swam in front of my eyes. “If you were a virgin when I put you to bed, you’re still a virgin.”

  Figures. “What are you doing here? Why’d you put me to bed?”

  “Take the aspirin,” Ty said, “and I’ll tell you.”

  Fine. I reached for the glass and then hesitated with my hand halfway there.

  He watched me. “You want me to dump it and fill it again?”

  “No. I trust you.” I did, even though I knew I shouldn’t. Probably shouldn’t. Didn’t know enough about him to trust him.

  But whatever else had happened last night, I was still intact this morning. He’d had his chance to do whatever he wanted to me, and he hadn’t. So the water in the glass was probably just water.

  I forced the pills down. The cold liquid slid into my stomach, leaving a chill through my chest on the way. I scooted up against the pillows and hugged one to my chest. “What happened?”

  “I was hoping you’d
tell me,” Ty said.

  I shook my head, and then wished I hadn’t. “I have no idea. I don’t remember anything after I left Captain Tony’s. I don’t even know where you came from.”

  He lowered his brows. “How much did you have to drink?”

  “Not much. I started with Sprite. About halfway through the evening, Juan started feeding me these pink drinks with umbrellas. But he said they were mostly virgin.”

  “So d’you remember leaving Captain Tony’s?”

  “Sure.” I nodded, very carefully. “Juan thought that maybe Carmen should go with me, but she said I’d be fine as soon as I got outside. And I was. I remember walking down the street, and then... nothing.”

  “You don’t remember me? Or the cop?”

  I shook my head. “What cop? Stan?”

  “I guess that’s his name. Tall, skinny guy with a big nose. He was at the beach that morning.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I remember him. He sat in the bar for a while. Had a Coke.”

  “But you don’t remember seeing him after you left?”

  “No... Did I see him after I left?”

  He sighed. “When I caught up to you, he was walking you home. You were stumbling and slurring your words like you were bombed out of your mind.”

  “I wasn’t! You can ask Juan if you don’t believe me.” Unless Juan had lied about how potent the drinks were.

  But I remembered leaving the bar. I’d been fine then. A tiny bit tipsy, but fine. It was what happened afterward that I couldn’t remember.

  “Stan said he’d seen you stumbling down the street and he thought he’d better take you home. But he didn’t know where you were staying. He was going in the wrong direction when I saw you. So I took over and got you here myself.”

  He paused. I wondered whether I ought to thank him, but I wasn’t quite ready for that yet. Especially since Stan would have gotten me here too, once he figured out where ‘here’ was.

  “What were you doing there?” Coincidence, or...?

  “Carmen called me,” Ty said.

  And that was another thing we had to talk about.

  “You told me her name was Charisma. And that she was a drama student from Syracuse.”

  He ducked his head, and I swear his cheeks flushed. “Sorry about that.”

  “Why would you lie about something like that?” Whether her name was Charisma or Carmen, and whether she was a college student from Syracuse or a local here in Key West, it made absolutely no difference that I could see.

  “I can’t tell you that,” Ty said.

  I stared at him. It hurt my eyes to open them that wide, but I did it anyway. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I can’t tell you why. Just that it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “Did you think I’d be jealous, or something?”

  “No,” Ty said, his lips curving. “Were you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Of course.” But he was still grinning.

  “You have a girlfriend in Washington,” I reminded him. “It doesn’t matter whether I was jealous.”

  The smile dropped off his face. “Right.”

  “Unless you were lying about that, too.”

  And it was embarrassing how much I wished he’d tell me he was.

  He didn’t. “Why would I lie about something like that?” he asked instead.

  “I have no idea,” I answered. “Why would you lie about Carmen’s name?” Especially when there was a good chance I’d find out.

  He sighed and shoved a hand through his hair. “I need you to trust me, Cassie. OK?”

  “I do trust you,” I said. “Why d’you think you’re still here?”

  I hadn’t called the cops and had him dragged out yet, had I? And I totally could. He was in my room. Had maybe—probably—spent the night in my room.

  And I wasn’t even freaking out. Much.

  “Then just...” He stopped and shook his head. “I was stupid, OK? You asked and I panicked, so I made up a story, because I couldn’t tell you the truth.”

  I blinked. “Why not?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  Of course. “So why should I trust you? If you lied to me then, and you’ll keep lying to me now?”

  He leaned forward, those green eyes intense on my face. “I won’t keep lying to you. I still can’t tell you the truth—at least not right now—but I’ll try not to lie again.”

  After a second he added, “Although maybe it’s best if you don’t ask too many questions.”

  Right.

  I thought about it. It would have to be acceptable, since it was the best I was likely to get. “So Carmen called you. What did she say?”

  “That you were at Captain Tony’s sucking down Sex on the Beach, and I should come take you home.”

  I nodded. He hadn’t had any problems answering that, anyway, and he sounded like he was telling the truth. Then again, he’d sounded like he was telling the truth when he told me about Charisma, too.

  “But you weren’t there when I left,” I said.

  He shook his head. “I got... delayed.”

  “By what?”

  “That’s another thing I can’t tell you.”

  I tilted my head to look at him. The aspirin had kicked in and the drummers in my head had marched off across the field. I could still hear them, but faintly now. “I went looking for you yesterday. At Richardson’s.”

  “You did?” He looked surprised, and not necessarily in a guilty way.

  “I wanted to talk to you about something. But you weren’t there.”

  I waited for him to volunteer where he’d been, but when he didn’t, I added, “The guy at the front desk said the police had picked you up.”

  He nodded.

  “Can you tell me about that?”

  He shook his head. “Afraid not.”

  “Do they think you had something to do with the girls they’re finding?”

  “No.” And from the way his lips twitched, it looked like he thought the question was funny.

  “Do you?”

  The smile slipped. “No. If I did, you wouldn’t still be a virgin this morning.”

  Right. “It could just be that I’m not your type.”

  He didn’t miss a beat. “Then those other girls wouldn’t be my type either. They both looked like you, Cassie. Blond and sweet.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Sweet?” Not sure whether to take that as a compliment or the opposite, but I suspected it was an insult.

  “Virgins,” Ty said.

  “Tattooed across my forehead. Right. I forgot.” I rolled my eyes. It only hurt a tiny bit. Yay for aspirin.

  His lips twitched. “You don’t have ‘virgin’ tattooed across your forehead. You just don’t have ‘do me’ written across your chest.”

  “If I did, I’d probably get laid more.”

  “Probably. But—” He stopped.

  I squinted at him. “But... what?”

  “Nothing.” His cheeks were flushed. “You’re missing the point, Cassie. They were virgins. Both of them. Young, blond virgins.”

  Like me.

  “So what happened last night?” I asked.

  He ran a hand through his hair, frustration rolling off him in waves. “I don’t know. Sometime between the time you left Captain Tony’s and when I caught up with you, someone got something into you.”

  “A drug.”

  He nodded.

  “So why wasn’t I raped?”

  “Dunno,” Ty said. “Whoever did it lost control of you? The drug didn’t work as fast as he’d expected? Or someone interrupted him before he could get you somewhere out of sight?”

  Pick one. Any one.

  I grabbed my head with both hands. “I wish I could remember. It’s so frustrating not to remember! But after I left the bar, it’s all blank.”

  “That’s not unusual,” Ty said. “None of the others remembered anything, either.”

  We sat in silence for a
moment. “So where was I when you caught up with me? How far from Captain Tony’s?”

  “Couple blocks,” Ty said. “Just a few minutes’ walk if you didn’t stop anywhere. Down past Sloppy Joe’s a bit. Did you stop in there?”

  “I could have. Although I was there in the afternoon. I don’t see why I would have gone back at night. I remember wanting to go home. There was this story Carmen told me that totally freaked me out. About this local guy who dug up a corpse and lived with it in his house for years and years...”

  He was nodding before I’d finished speaking. “I know the story.”

  “It’s true, then?” Part of me had really hoped it wasn’t, that Carmen had been yanking my chain, making up ghost stories for fun.

  “Afraid so,” Ty said. “But if it helps, neither of them is rumored to haunt the place.”

  “Good to know. Anyway, I decided to leave. Juan asked whether Carmen should go with me, but she said no; I’d be fine once I got outside...”

  “She’d texted me,” Ty said. “She knew I was on my way.”

  “I remember walking out, and turning right, but after that, there’s nothing.”

  “So you don’t know where you were when Stan the cop found you, or how you’d gotten there.”

  It wasn’t a question. I shook my head anyway. “I have this vague memory of someone giving me a water bottle and telling me to drink, that I needed to rehydrate. Was it you?”

  He shook his head. “By the time I caught up, Stan was practically dragging you down the street. Getting you to drink anything was the last thing on my mind. I just carried you here and put you to bed.”

  “Thank you.”

  He shrugged. “You’re gonna have to go to the hospital, you know.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, and he talked over me. “I know you don’t think you were assaulted, but they have to check. And they have to draw blood and try to figure out what it was you were given. And you have to do it right now.”

  There went my day of sightseeing. “What time is it, anyway?” I asked.

  “Twelve-thirty,” Ty said.

  “In the afternoon?”

  He nodded. “This stuff makes you sleepy. But if you wait much longer, there won’t be any sign of it in your bloodstream.”