Undertow (The UnderCity Chronicles)

by S. M. Stelmack

  She pulled open the couch into a bed and made it up exactly like when Seline’s friends crashed for sleepovers, complete with soft white sheets, matching pillows and a down-filled comforter in burgundy and gold. Her lips twitched, and she arranged Leo so that he sprawled like a lounge lizard across the covers, belly-up, head on both pillows.

  Humming now, Lindsay slipped into the bathroom and, diverting her eyes from what she knew would be a very clear outline of his body, she scooped up his clothes and tossed them along with hers into the washer. It was only when she was gazing into the soapy churning waters that she realized that she’d left him with nothing to wear.

  She hurried into her bedroom and began rooting through her closet and drawers for something that might fit him and not make him seem a cross-dresser. Nothing. Seline would have something less fancy in her room, all too small. Then she remembered. Inspired she ran for the hallway storage closet and pulled out the box of Christmas decorations, which given that the joyous season had just passed, were thankfully near the front. What she wanted was right on top.

  The shower shut off and Lindsay knocked on the door. “Jack, I put your clothes in the wash, but I found something for you to wear.”

  The door was opened a crack through which Lindsay wedged a pair of boxers. She held them out for an eternity. She gave them a shake. “Uh, they’re new. They were a joke gift at the staff Christmas party. Long story. They haven’t been worn before.”

  “Not by any self-respecting male, at least,” Jack grumbled.

  “It’s either them or your birthday suit.”

  There was an even longer pause. “Jesus, Lindsay, have you looked at what these elves are doing to Santa? It’s wearable pornography.”

  “Honestly, Jack, it’s only you and me. And there’s nothing else. You could wear a towel, I suppose, only as you can see they aren’t exactly…er, masculine colors—”

  Lindsay heard a low growl from a cornered male and then the underwear was yanked from her hand. She retreated down the hallway. Now would be a good time to check her messages. She reached for her smartphone on the kitchen counter, having deliberately left it there that morning.

  Twelve text messages. All from Janice, each one peppered with more and more exclamation marks and unhappy faces. Lindsay grimaced. There was going to be hell to pay.

  And it started halfway through the first ring. “Lindsay! Are you okay?”

  “Yes, Janice. I just got back.” She was fudging on that, though the upshot was the same.

  “So you did go down there. What were you thinking?” She paused. “Did you find her?” Hope and fear were rushed together.

  “No, we didn’t, but we got a lead.”

  “What? A lead? Wait, no, who’s ‘we’?”

  “Jack Cole.”

  “He came with you? You talked him into coming?”

  That would’ve implied some sort of finesse on her part. “Sort of, yeah. Point is, he knows everybody who’s anybody below ground, and the leader of a group down there connected us with people who know who Seline might’ve hooked up with.”

  “Hooked up with? Who?” Lindsay could sense Janice moving to her laptop to google them. That was Janice. Start with a google search and end with a coil-bound report.

  “I don’t think these people are linked into the web. They’re…fringe types.”

  “Fringe? What do you mean? Lindsay. Please.”

  Lindsay heard all that was said in those last two words. Forget about blood and names, Janice was part of their small family. “They’re called APs. Short for aberrant psychology. They came out of mental institutions and there’s one called Randa MacMurphy. We’re going to meet with her tomorrow.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Jack will be getting in touch with her.”

  “You let me know and I can be close by. Okay?”

  “Okay.” The shower stopped. “Listen, Janice, I better go. Jack’s almost done in the shower and we should head to bed.”

  “Jack’s with you?” Shit. Why, why, why did she let that slip?

  “Yes, Janice. He’s sleeping on the couch. I’m sleeping in my bed.”

  “Why isn’t he sleeping at his place?”

  “It’s occupied.”

  “Do you know that for a fact, or did he say so?”

  “Janice.”

  “Look. He seems like an intelligent man but he’s down on his luck, and you’re not doing badly and you were once good friends. He wasn’t interested in helping and then he is. Sounds as if he did his own googling in the meantime and regrouped.”

  “Janice, it isn’t like that.”

  “Then how is it?”

  Lindsay did what she always did when avoiding pain. She got busy. There, for instance, was her pack which needed sorting.

  “Janice, it doesn’t matter what his motives are,” she said, unzipping. “It only matters that he’s doing it.” The pack opened to Dee’s jacket. A perfect distraction. “And like I said he’s got lots of friends who can help. One of them even gave me a gift today, it’s a gorgeous—”

  Was this the same jacket? Under the foyer lights, its colors were dull and mismatched, the mysterious symbols woven into its fabric lost. It looked as if it were cobbled together by a blind man.

  “Pretty ugly, huh?” Jack’s voice came from right behind her and she spun around.

  For a man who’d lived two years underground and the past year only barely skimming the surface, he looked good. He was lean and muscled, with a natural athleticism. Water seemed to steam from his skin, and clung in droplets to his chest hair. Her eyes drifted to his midsection.

  “No, not at all,” she squeaked. “They’re fine. Really.”

  Jack’s eyes narrowed. “I was talking about the jacket.”

  “Is that Jack you’re talking to?” Janice interrogated. “What’s this about a jacket?”

  Okay, she couldn’t manage both Janice and Jack. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” she said into the phone. “Bye.” She quickly disconnected. “That was Janice. A family friend. She was calling about Seline.”

  His answer surprised her. “I remember her. She and your mom were always together, cooking together, yapping together. My dad used to joke that it wasn’t right that your dad had two wives and he had none.”

  Lindsay laughed. “Dad wouldn’t have seen it that way. He always saw himself outnumbered.”

  “I can’t remember your mom without remembering her, too.”

  “Yeah. When mom died, she really stepped up. I don’t think I could have made it without her.”

  She paused, not wanting to drag her sad past out. Instead she held up the jacket. “Look at what Mrs. Moore gave me.”

  He accepted her cue. “Got a couple myself. Warm, but uglier than sin.”

  “It looked different there.”

  “Well, some things that look beautiful underground look ugly up here.”

  And vice versa, she thought, giving his body a sidelong glance.

  “I’ll show you some magic. You have any candles?” He walked into the living room and settled himself down on the couch-bed. He glanced at the playful pose of the huge plush lion, and then up at Lindsay. “You never give up, do you?”

  She wasn’t sure if he was annoyed or not. Either way she wasn’t about to back down. “Not on what matters, I don’t.” She entered into a stare-down with him. Then deep in his eyes something flickered, and taking a pillow from underneath the stuffed head he began smothering Leo with it.

  Lindsay gasped and pounced, landing on the pillow and tussling Jack for it. “That’s cruel, Jack, and you know it.”

  He surrendered the pillow. “Has anyone told you that he’s not real?”

  “I know that!” She tossed aside the pillow and grabbed Leo, dragging his long bulk off the bed, taking him with her to the safety of an armchair. “It’s just that…that Seline really liked him…and…and…haven’t you noticed its eyes are exactly like yours?”

  “What? Fake and unblinking
?”

  “No,” she snapped. “Warm and bright and very nice.”

  He stared at her with eyes warm and unblinking. “Lindsay, get the candles.”

  She dropped Leo into the armchair and exited. The candles were in the bedside drawer as she’d expected, but she couldn’t for the life of her find the holders, which should’ve been there, too. She rummaged through the drawer, bringing to the surface loose foil squares of condoms, a frustrating reminder of how sorry her love life had been lately. She had seriously wondered about going for her next birth control shot. It didn’t help to know that a gorgeous, half-naked man was in the next room, sending off more mixed signals than a broken traffic light.

  By the time she found first one holder, then another, she had become well and truly disgruntled. It didn’t help her attitude any to see him stretched out by the Christmas tree, arm over his face, looking like a holiday centerfold. She unloaded the items on the coffee table with a deliberate clatter.

  He lowered his arm. “I thought you’d wandered off completely. Where were you?”

  Lindsay curled up with Leo and smiled prettily at him. “The bedroom, of course. Where else would I associate magic with candles? I brought a lighter, too.”

  She gloated over his suddenly wary look. Good, she thought, no sense in only one of us being confused. Jack swung himself into a sitting position and picked up the lighter. As he bent over the candles, she noticed on his left shoulder a crimson tattoo…no, a brand. It looked like one of the symbols she had seen in the tunnels, and on Dee’s jacket. The mark was large, about the size of her hand, its shape vaguely resembling that of a spider.

  She instantly rearranged her face into a mask of blandness the second he looked up, a hint of mischievousness playing across his features. “Turn off the lights. The tree, too.”

  She raised an eyebrow, but did as instructed, leaving the room in candlelight.

  “Now look at the jacket again,” he instructed softly. Jack held it up near the flames, and Lindsay grinned. It was magic. Dee’s handiwork had reappeared in the dark, brilliant and beautiful.

  “That’s how it was made,” Jack said, his voice still low. “By candlelight. It’s not meant to be shown on television or in some store window. It’s a work of subtlety.”

  She nodded, understanding. Without thinking she sat down beside him on the makeshift bed to better see the jacket. She became instantly aware that their bare thighs were only a handspan apart. To jump up would appear awkward to say the least, so she focused on her purpose for sitting down.

  “What do all these markings mean?” she asked, running her hand over the woven symbols.

  “They represent places in the underground,” he answered, pointing. “That one is the MTA’s ‘money room’, that’s the gang tunnels under Chinatown, that’s the labyrinth beneath Columbia University. Some are real, like Sumptown. Some, like The Burbs, used to exist once upon a time. And some are legendary, like Beach's City. They all carry a deeper meaning, too. Each place has a certain mood and history and imagery….” He trailed off. “Damn, I’m starting to sound like a professor again.”

  “You know, that’s not a bad thing. You are a professor, Jack.”

  He shook his head, his profile dark and stony in the flickering light. “No. I’m not. Not anymore.”

  “Why not? What’s keeping you from going back to work, or writing a book, or—”

  “Maybe a talk show appearance?” he continued sarcastically. “Or perhaps an article in People?”

  Any urge to wrap herself around his body was utterly gone. Unless it was her hands around his neck. “I don’t get you, Jack.”

  “I know,” he replied. “And trust me, that’s a good thing.”

  She was about to give his attitude a dressing down when her phone rang. Crap, she hadn’t checked her land line. Maybe Seline—. She crawled across the couch bed and picked up the phone on the end table. “Hello?”

  Silence.

  “Hello? Anyone there?”

  She thought she could hear breathing, slow and even, but nothing more. Despite the warmth of the apartment, a chill ran down her spine. She hurriedly hung up.

  Jack was suddenly beside her. “Who was that?” His voice was low, sharp. His tension unnerved her. “Nobody. A crank caller, I guess.”

  “Check messages.”

  One look at his face and she did it. Thirteen messages. The first was silence and static. Same with the second. And the third. “There’s no message. Whoever it is doesn’t—”

  Jack reached behind the table and yanked the cord from the jack. “You have other phones?”

  “Yes. By the door and in the bedroom—”

  “I’ll do the one at the door. You do the bedroom.” He was already walking away.

  “Jack, what the hell is going on?”

  “Move it! They’re listening.”

  Fear and confusion tightening her gut, Lindsay hurried to her bedroom. When she returned she found Jack back at the couch, a brooding look on his face.

  “Jack… what’s going on?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Bullshit!” she said angrily. “Don’t you dare hold out on me.”

  When he spoke, it was in that same low voice he’d used underground, as if they were being spied on. “Every time you pick up the phone you make a connection, Linds, and it’s not necessarily broken when you hang up. Someone’s got your number, and they’ve been trying to eavesdrop on you.”

  “You’re saying I’m being watched?”

  “It’s called a hook switch bypass,” he explained. “They splice into the phone system and call you up. You answer it, get silence, hang up, and after that they can use your phone like a bug, listening in on you and all the calls you make.”

  “It’s them isn’t it? The people that have Seline.”

  Jack rolled his shoulders. “Perhaps.”

  “What do you mean ‘perhaps’? How do you know about this phone stuff?”

  “Calm down, Linds. It’s probably nothing to worry about.”

  If he was trying to downplay the situation to not worry her, he was doing a shitty job. “Oh, right, of course. Someone’s bugging my home, then you act like some guy from Homeland Security with all this unplugging, which is highly inconvenient. What happens if Seline calls? And you’re telling me it’s probably nothing to worry about? How about you humor me, pretend it is something to worry about, and tell me what the fuck is going on?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  She lost it. Making a strangled noise, she lunged for Jack and knocked him back on the couch, her legs astride him, and pounded on his chest. “Fuck you, Jack. You talk to me. Talk!” she screamed into his startled face.

  There was an inhuman snarl, and a second later her back hit the floor, the force of it crushing the air from her lungs. Jack was over her, one hand gripped around her throat, the other raised in a fist. Then, as fast as it had happened, he let go and yanked his body away, a sharp hiss of breath escaping his clenched teeth.

  Her hand on her chest, she gasped for breath. He was at the window, his form silhouetted against the city lights, the muscles of his right arm trembling with unspent force—enough to have shattered bone.

  He didn’t move from there. “You okay?” His voice was hoarse as he choked out the question.

  She could make out the flicker of the candles over the dark wood of the coffee table. Was she okay? What the hell kind of question was that? She drew herself up onto all fours and leaned against the couch bed. Only then did she make eye contact with Jack. He looked away and bowed his head. No matter that her neck was bruised from his grip, she wasn’t the only one in pain.

  “Yeah, Jack, I am,” she replied as steadily as she could. “How about you?”

  There was a long silence. “I know you have questions, Linds,” he said from the shadows of the window, his voice hollow. “For now, I need you to trust me. I told you I’ll help you find Seline, and I will, but we’ve got a long way to go, a
nd I can’t guarantee how this is going to turn out.”

  She sighed. “You didn’t tell me how you were, Jack.”

  She heard the dull thud of his head as it hit the window frame. “I just attacked you after you invited me into your home. A woman who’s already scared about someone else and now I’ve given her reason to be scared about her own life in her own home. How the fuck do you think I am? I’m sick. Fucking sick.”

  “Jack,” she said, “you don’t scare me.”

  He gave a short hitch of laughter. “I should, Linds. You’ve no clue what I’m capable of.”

  * * *

  Lindsay slept poorly that night, her dreams a nightmarish collage of the tunnels, Sumptown and Seline. She woke again and again, each time swearing she had heard her bedside phone ring, and when her alarm clock finally went off she felt more exhausted then when she’d gone to bed.

  She wrapped her housecoat about her, and pulled back the curtains of her bedroom to reveal a dreary, overcast day. “Give me a break,” she muttered and headed into the living room.

  Jack was back in his own clothes, obviously having finished the laundry, and was leaning by the window, looking down at the streets below. In the exact same place she’d left him last night. She wasn’t about to join him. She loved the view from her place, not the fact that she had to be ten floors up to get it. She got vertigo on a step stool, and would bribe Seline to wash the windows.

  “Morning,” she greeted him.

  “You didn’t sleep well,” he responded, not taking his eyes from the scene below.

  “No. I didn’t,” she said, surprised not so much by his observation, but that he would make it.

  “I could hear you last night. Sounded like you were having bad dreams.”

  He was still not looking at her. She leaned her hip against the armchair, her arms crossed over her chest. “That why you have such a nice bed, Jack? You have bad dreams, too?”

  “I need to go and see if I can find MacMurphy,” he replied, changing the subject.

  “How about some breakfast before you leave?”

  He turned to her, and she saw that his amber eyes were as bloodshot as her own. “No, thanks. Not hungry.”

  “I think I figured something out last night,” she said.