by Lisa Sanchez
The officer chewed on the inside of his lip and wheezed. “Things have been pretty busy down at the station. Whoever took the report last week most likely hasn’t gotten around to finishing it up.” He stared down the hallway toward Martha’s room. “And what about your roommate’s room?”
“Her room was empty last week. She just moved in a few days ago,” Jessica said, casting a sideways glance toward Martha’s door, a look of concern etched across her face. “Look. Nothing was taken or moved this time. Whoever broke in didn’t touch anything but Ryann’s mirror.”
The officer scribbled some more at his notebook and ignored Jessica completely. “And where is your new roommate? Do you know?”
“Haven’t got a clue,” Jessica said while I just shrugged. I never knew where Martha was or how she spent her time. She was somewhat of a mystery.
“I was at the library,” a soft voice replied smoothly.
I turned to see Martha closing the front door behind her as she stepped into view. She might be a phantom roommate, but her timing was impeccable.
Her voice, though soft, carried across the room. “What happened here?”
“Break-in,” Jessica said coolly, leveling a harsh glare at our macabre roommate. Girlfriend’s dander was up for sure. “But don’t worry. None of your,” she busted out the finger quotes, “shit was touched. You won’t have to hex anyone today.”
My eyes widened in surprise. Jess had actually used the “s” word.
Martha glared at Jessica, chin held high, a look of pure hatred swathed across her pale face. Though partially obstructed by a long sweep of mahogany bangs, her hazel eyes held a staggering amount of contempt.
Thank God the officer decided to pipe in. I really didn’t want to find out what Martha did to people she was angry with.
“Did anyone see you at the library, Ms…?” The officer stared at Martha expectantly, waiting for her answer.
“Stewart. Martha Stewart.” She looked completely un-phased by the break-in. Either nothing scared her, or she didn’t care. “Yes. Plenty of people saw me. I’m not exactly hard to miss,” she said, sweeping her arm out in front of her, drawing attention to her somewhat unorthodox wardrobe choice.
She’d hit the nail on the head for sure. No one would forget the sight of her dressed in a black corset top, plaid skirt and knee high Doc Martens.
“Here,” she said, pulling a small stack of books from her bag. “I checked these out this afternoon. I’m sure if you speak with the librarian, she can verify my presence in the campus library.”
The overweight officer scratched his head before scribbling a few more notes onto his clipboard. “I’ll do just that, Ms. Stewart. Thank you for your cooperation. Now if you’d all excuse me, I need to have a few words with Ms. Pierce.”
Jessica nodded and gave me a hug before heading off toward her bedroom. The icy look she sent toward Martha did not go unnoticed, and my stomach tightened. The last thing I needed to deal with was warring roommates.
Martha stood for a moment, staring at me with her brows knit together and her jaw clenched. With a scowl, she shoved her books back into her bag, spun on her heels, and walked out the front door.
I swallowed hard and stared at the portly officer. Why me? What had I done to deserve the boatload of crap currently being dealt to me? And why, oh why, did I get stuck with Elmer Fudd for an officer?
He scratched at the side of his nose for a minute and cast me a contemplative look. “Do you have any idea who might have done this?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head, somewhat surprised by his question. If I had any idea who the douchebag was, I would have said something. This guy had eaten one too many donuts and had gone soft in the head.
“I’m not going to mince words, Ms. Pierce. I believe you’ve got yourself a stalker. Nothing was taken from the home during either break-in, and your room seems to be the main focus of the intruder’s attention. Is there someone at school or your workplace that’s been giving you trouble?”
I racked my brain, trying to remember if I’d dealt with any disgruntled patrons from the bar recently. Aside from the asshat who’d grabbed my butt the other night, there was no one.
About two seconds later, I had a lightbulb moment. You know what I’m talking about, right? Your mind is blank one moment and the next—BINGO! Realization hits you like a Mack truck square between the eyes. Quinn. His friendship was the only recent change in my life. But he couldn’t possibly be the intruder, could he? No. I’d only just met him a few days ago, and the first break-in occurred well over a week ago. I’d have sensed his presence if he’d been in my room, or anywhere in the apartment, for that matter. I had some sort of sixth sense where Quinn was concerned, a built-in radar of sorts. My body tingled and my kitty flamed up anytime he was near. My nether regions were stone cold right now. Quinn hadn’t been here.
Besides, Quinn himself said he sensed an evil presence near the bar, and had been watching over me like a hawk the past few days. He had ample opportunity to hurt me if he wanted to, but had never been anything but protective toward me. Not to mention annoying, crass, and full of himself at times, but fiercely protective and hot as hell.
No. I was certain Quinn wasn’t responsible for the ominous message left on my mirror. “No. There’s no one,” I replied quietly and shook my head.
Officer Ate-One-Too-Many-Donuts appeared stymied. “What about an ex-boyfriend? A new admirer?”
I shook my head. Somehow I figured telling him about the five-hundred-year-old faerie I’d recently befriended and secretly had a crush on was liable to get me thrown into a padded cell. I decided to keep that little gem to myself for the time being.
The officer gave a small grunt and shoved his pen into his pocket. “Well, then, I suggest you change your locks, make sure they are secure each and every time you leave your home, and seriously consider getting yourself some type of surveillance system.”
Yeah, okay. I could have come to that conclusion on my own. Frustrated, I took a deep breath, blowing it out forcefully, and took the business card the officer handed me.
“Make sure you give me a call if anything else happens. Watch yourself, Ryann,” he said as he strolled to the front door and let himself out.
I wasn’t worried about watching myself. I was worried about the creep watching me. I dropped the officer’s card onto the nearby coffee table and slumped down into the large brown chair that sat next to the sofa in our front room. Resting my elbows on my knees, I dropped my head into my hands and rubbed slow circles at my temples, trying to rid myself of a pounding headache brought on from my recent bout of tears.
“I cleaned the writing off your mirror for you.” Jessica’s worried voice startled me as she entered the room.
“Thanks,” I said weakly. I felt like I’d run a marathon and came in dead last, spent, on my knees and bleeding. In other words, I felt like absolute crap.
I heard her shuffle into the kitchen as I sat, lost in thought, trying to figure out why I was the focus of some nut job’s unwanted attention. It had to be someone from the club. There was no other explanation. Working in a bar put me in close contact with all types of unsavory people, one of which no doubt spawned some sort of sick attachment to me and thought it funny to scare the living piss out of me. I groaned.
Sick bastard. Get a life!
“Here.” Jessica thrust a plate under my nose, complete with sandwich and cut fruit. “You need to eat something. I called the club and told them what happened. You don’t have to go in to work tonight.”
Crap. I’d completely forgotten about work. “Thanks,” I said, grabbing the plate from her hands, not hungry in the least but taking a bite anyway to show gratitude for her nice gesture.
Jessica sat on the couch opposite me and watched quietly while I ate, taking the plate from me when I’d finished and disposing of it in the kitchen.
I grabbed a nearby throw pillow and fiddled with one of the frayed edges as Jessica walked back into
the room. “So…you wanted to talk about Martha?”
She shook her head. “It can wait. Trust me. After the day you’ve had, you don’t need anything else to worry about.”
“Worry?” I clutched the pillow to my chest and hung on for dear life. God, what else could there be? Famine? Pestilence? A horde of ravenous vampires lying in wait to bleed me dry? “Just tell me, Jess. What exactly is it about Martha that I should be worried about?”
She raised her eyebrows and sighed deeply. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. C’mon,” she said, motioning for me to follow her.
I chucked the pillow aside, stood up from the chair, and walked down the hallway, stopping in front of Martha’s closed door. We were about to invade her space. Disrespect her privacy. I didn’t care.
Grasping the brass handle, Jessica opened the door, placed one hand on her hip, and pointed into the dark room. “That. That is what we need to be worried about.”
“Holy…crap,” I said as I stepped foot into the Twilight Zone.
Chapter 8
WHERE OUR ROOMS were light and airy, Martha’s was stygian, dank and devoid of any color. Scary looking posters and drawings of pentagrams adorned the walls surrounding her bed, which was also bathed in black. Stacks of archaic books, both large and small, riddled the floor around her living space, and there was a considerably large trunk situated at the foot of her bed, with a substantial looking lock keeping it safely closed.
I stood for a moment, my mouth slightly agape, taking in my bizarre surroundings.
“See what I mean?” Jessica said, wearing an I-told-you-so look. “I told you she was a weirdo freak.”
I looked back at her over my shoulder, mouthing a giant “wow” before walking over and gingerly swiping a book off of one of the many stacks that lay before me. Turning the small leather bound book so the binding was visible, I read the title out loud. “Le Grimoire.”
I turned to face Jessica, eyes wide as I spoke. “Shit. You weren’t kidding. I think our girl practices witchcraft.” I returned the aging book to its stack posthaste, rubbing my hands on my pants as if to remove any traces of evil, and secretly hoping Voodoo Martha never found out I had my curious hands on it.
A wave of dizziness washed over me as I absorbed the reality of our roommate situation. “You’re right. I don’t think I’m up for dealing with this right now.” Weak and jittery, I flashed Jessica a look of apology and hurried out of the creepy room and into my own, avoiding eye contact with the mirror over my dresser. I knew the words were no longer there, but just the same, I was still spooked.
Jess followed me into my room, taking a seat at the foot of my bed.
I desperately needed to talk about something to get my mind off the break-in and Martha’s nightmare room. “So…you up for some interesting gossip?” I was dying to tell her what little I could about Quinn. He was just too damn yummy to keep completely to myself. Besides, if you couldn’t share deets about a hot guy with your best friend, then who could you share with?
Jessica perked up, her eyes bright with excitement. “Does it involve you and a certain muscular, sexy, tatted up Casanova?”
“Possibly.” I kept my answer evasive, trying to make her crazy with curiosity.
“Spill,” she squealed, and chucked one of my throw pillows at me.
“All right, all right,” I said, trying to dodge the flying pillow. “So…Quinn might not be as big of a jerk as I originally thought.” I sat quietly for a moment, letting her mind chew on my statement for a bit before continuing.
“Really?” Jessica narrowed her brows at me dubiously. “Wasn’t it just the other day you referred to him as a…a…”
Oh, Good Lord. “Pompous ass-munch? Yes.” I chucked a pillow at her face. “I meant it when I called him those names. When I first met him, he totally came off as a womanizing jerk. Then I ran into him yesterday at work, and well…I saw a different side of him.”
I spent the next few minutes filling her in on my embarrassing collapse, Quinn’s timely rescue, and his stubborn insistence on walking me to both school and work. Of course, I left out the part about the ominous black dog and the fact that Quinn was indeed a centuries old faerie who couldn’t touch me, though I desperately wanted him to. Basically, I left out all the good stuff. I didn’t know what else I could do, though. If I told her everything that actually happened, she’d probably act reassuring and supportive while secretly calling the men in white to come and carry me away in their paddy wagon. Not wanting to spend the rest of my life in a round room, I edited my story a little.
Jess didn’t look convinced. “So he went from a complete…”
“Fastard,” I interrupted.
She frowned. “What I was going to say was that I find it hard to believe he’d change from a jerk to a good guy in one day. And fastard? What is that?”
I looked at her with a smirk. Jessica knew I lived for slang, adopting new words weekly into my large vocabulary. I shrugged. “Fucking and bastard all rolled into one. I’m lazy, what can I say? I need my profanity to be quick and easy.”
We both broke out into a fit of laughter.
Our amusement was short-lived as Voodoo Martha sidled into the room, an air of gloom traveling in her wake.
She eyeballed me sharply, with her lips pressed tightly together and her arms crossed over her chest. “Someone touched my shit.” She glared at Jessica for a moment before turning her attention to me. “I’m new here so I’ll let it slide this one time. Nobody touches my shit without my permission, which is something neither of you will ever have. Do it again and you’ll be sorry, got it?”
I sat quiet, silently aghast at how deadly serious she appeared to be. Now I understood Jess’s earlier reference to people “touching her stuff.” Hell, I’d only looked at one book. Jessica had told the truth before. This girl was a certifiable freak. What the hell had we gotten ourselves into with her?
“Sorry,” I said, feeling more than a little afraid. “Won’t happen again.”
She continued glaring at me with her face scrunched up like she was concentrating particularly hard, or trying to figure something out. If she was trying to psych me out, she was doing a great job.
“What?” I asked, completely rattled by her unyielding gaze.
“Your aura is shrouded in darkness.”
My aura? Okay, sister thinks she’s Sylvia Browne, I guess.
“My aura is dark? What exactly does that mean?” Why I was continuing to converse with her was beyond me, but given everything that took place in the last couple of days, I was strangely curious. The weird stuff was becoming alarmingly less shocking, much to my dismay.
Martha gave an aggravated sigh, letting me know in no uncertain terms she really didn’t want to be talking to me but would answer my question anyway. “It means you’re evil, or you’ve recently been near an evil presence.”
I stared at her like a mute idiot.
Well, hell…
Jessica stood up from the bed and cast Martha a look of pure hatred. “She’s not evil. You, on the other hand, I’m not so sure about.”
Martha ignored Jess altogether and shrugged. “Well, then she’s been around an evil presence recently.”
Jessica turned to face me. “Ignore her, Ryann. She’s just trying to scare you. I don’t believe in that aura garbage anyways. It’s just a bunch of bunk.”
I only half heard Jessica as she tried to dissuade me from listening to Martha’s disturbing observation. Her voice sounded muffled and distant, like she was talking to me through a thick door. Her words barely registered. My mind was focused on one thing, or should I say, one person. Someone I’d been spending the bulk of my time with the past forty-eight hours: Quinn.
He couldn’t be evil, could he? I felt so safe when I was with him. Not only that, but he was so overly concerned with my safety, confessing that he himself felt a dark presence near me in the alley behind the coffee shop. No, Quinn was not the evil presence Voodoo Martha referred to. He just
couldn’t be. Who, or what, was it then that was stalking me?
“Ryann? Ryann? Did you hear me?” Jessica waved her hands in front of my face. “She’s just trying to scare you. Ignore her. I plan to.”
Martha delivered a particularly menacing scowl in Jessica’s direction before heading for the door. She looked over her shoulder once more at me, uttering a quick warning. “I don’t care whether you believe me or not. Something dark is seeking you out. What you do with that knowledge is your business.” And with that, she was gone.
Jessica let out a loud sigh. “Oh…my God. She is such a freak. Contract or no contract, we need to find a way to make her move out.”
Nodding, I stood up from the edge of the bed. The staggering urge to flee, run, get the hell away from everyone and everything was more than I could handle. Anxiety reared its ugly head and I knew if I didn’t get out of the apartment I’d lose my shit altogether, go postal. “I need to get out of here.” My head spun from the crapload of garbage I’d been dealt over the past few days. Escape was all I could think about.
“Yeah, okay. Where do you want to go?”
I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Just out.” Anywhere but there was all that mattered to me at the moment.
“Okay. Let me just freshen up.” Jessica strode out of the room toward her own.
On edge and full of anxiety, I dug through my closet with shaky hands, changing into a pair of low-rise jeans and a grey, sleeveless top. My rationale was that if I looked good on the outside, maybe, just maybe I’d feel better on the inside. I know. My reasoning sounded stupid. Probably was too, considering my inability to breathe in the tight pants. Still, I was willing to do just about anything to make myself feel better at that point. I slipped on a pair of silver flip-flops and pulled out my cell phone, throwing my bag over my shoulder.
My skull pounded and felt like it might splinter from all the overtime my brain took on trying to figure out what Martha meant when she said something dark was after me. Nervous, despite the fact I wasn’t alone, I gripped my cell phone, turning it over in my hands anxiously. I let out a loud sigh of relief as Jess entered my room, fresh and ready to go.
