“It really is the best thing, Greg.” She slipped out of the apartment, almost glowing with the energy that suffused her so soon after absorbing the matter and essence of a human. This time she thought she might retain her substance long enough to walk all the way back to Elliot’s place. Then again, the demon always felt invigorated right after an absorption. But it wasn’t enough, would never be enough, until the ritual cycle was completed.
Ever since her second husband, Ben, had passed away, Lois Laulicht had had trouble sleeping. She managed to make ends meet, living off the widow’s share of his pension and the rental income from the tenants in the renovated apartment house she owned and called home. It would have been more than enough had it not been for the second mortgage Ben had taken out on the place a few years before his death. As it was, she had to be careful with her spending and avoid extravagance.
Ben had lived long enough to see the renovations completed but not long enough to reap the rewards of the higher rents. Someday the second mortgage would be settled and she wouldn’t have to worry so much. Yet she often wondered if she would live to enjoy those carefree days.
When she had trouble sleeping, she would take to the hallways, leaving her first-floor apartment behind as she climbed the stairs and moved, quiet as a ghost, through the building that had been Ben’s life’s work. Most of her tenants were young, for she loved to be surrounded by the vitality of youth. Somehow they made her feel just a little bit younger herself. Not that her nocturnal wanderings were meant to spy on her young tenants. No, on her late night walks, it was Ben she sought. Seeing his hand in all the loving details of paint, paneling, wallpaper, and baluster soothed her nerves, made sleep fall within her grasp again, if only for one more night.
As Lois climbed the stairs to the third-floor apartments, she noticed something out of place. Dim lighting spilled across the hallway, reaching the top of the stairs and coming from the open door of apartment 300B.
That was Greg’s apartment, Lois reminded herself, and Greg often entertained late at night. “Greg,” she called, padding down the hall in her fuzzy bathrobe and floppy slippers. It wasn’t like him to leave his door unlocked, let alone standing open. While her own generation had been unafraid to sleep with the doors unlocked and the windows open to catch the slightest breeze, Greg’s generation had learned fear and caution at an early age. They welcomed powerful computers into their homes, watched in expectant awe as the riddle of the human genome was solved, yet they never forgot there were predators, human monsters roaming among them, ready to strike the weak, the defenseless, and the unwary.
Lois pushed open the door and heard instrumental music playing softly on the fancy stereo as she stepped into the dim lighting of 300B. “Greg,” she called again. Then in a louder, more assured voice, “Greg, are you okay, dear?”
Her gaze was drawn to the bottle of wine and the pair of wineglasses on the coffee table. So he was entertaining, she concluded. Then she saw a pile of clothes lying on the floor in front of the sofa. Dear heavens! What if they’ve retired to the bedroom?
Deciding to back out of the apartment quietly and close the door behind her to avoid an embarrassing scene, Lois happened to notice something near the clothing, something . . . hairy.
With a cautious glance down the short hallway to the bedroom, she strode quickly to the coffee table to have a closer look at the hair. It sprouted above the collar of a green shirt. She dropped to one knee, determining that there was only one set of clothes on the floor, an outfit she’d seen Greg wearing several times. With trembling hands, she lifted the mound of hair and realized it was attached to something shriveled and translucent, which was stretching out of the collar of the shirt. A gold necklace with a scorpion medallion clinked, and fine powder sifted down from the . . . skin! It was Greg’s hair that she held in her hands, she realized, and attached to the gray-streaked hair was his eyeless face, skin as thin as wax paper, stretching like warm taffy.
Lois screamed and kept screaming until Trish from 300A came to investigate and called the police.
With Angel downstairs in his living quarters, Cordelia had removed the hefty library books from her bottom desk drawer, stacking them one on top of the other on the corner of the desk.
A few more books, Doyle thought, and the whole desk will tip over. He grabbed one from the top of the pile, saw that it now sported a few bumps and nicks as a result of Cordelia’s rough treatment, and flipped through it. He shook his head. “How can they possibly use the words ‘made easy’ in the title of a book over a thousand pages long.”
“True, this is not exactly beach reading.”
“I’d say they’d be a fine cure for insomnia if just looking at them didn’t give me a thunderin’ head—”
Doyle dropped the book and pressed the heel of his hand hard against his forehead. Pain! Overwhelming and sudden. He staggered back, eyes clenched shut as a vision, courtesy of the Powers That Be, nearly knocked him off his feet. Wouldn’t be the first time. Images flashed though his mind faster than he could process them, leaving him breathless and stunned.
As abruptly as it had begun, the vision ended. Cordelia was at his side, steadying him on weak legs. He could smell her perfume. Jasmine. For the moment, at least, he was too rattled to entertain any pleasant thoughts about Cordelia. He let her help him to a chair.
“That’s gotta hurt,” Cordelia commented.
“You’ll never know . . .” Doyle said. “Sorry I dropped your book.”
“Lucky you missed your toe,” Cordelia said. “I found that one on a shelf in the blunt-instrument aisle.”
“Better hide it again, Cordelia,” Doyle said. “I need to talk to Angel.”
“Yeah, I pretty much figured it was the whole bat signal thing again.”
Sitting at the computer desk in his bedroom, Elliot faced the fact that he wasn’t much of a hacker, nor was he much of a programmer. All the cheese curls and cola in the world weren’t going to make him something he was not. He’d suffered derision throughout his teen years despite his sure and certain knowledge that he was destined for great things. Screw ’em all, he’d often told himself. Someday, when I’m rich and famous, they’ll come crawling to me for a job. Problem was, he would never become rich and famous on his own merits, and he wasn’t about to luck his way into it since he never played the lottery. All that life, school, and endless days of torment inflicted on him by his socalled peers had prepared him for was beating the final boss in Super Dragonoid: The Ultimate Challenge.
Ultimate challenge, my ass, he thought. So he beta-tested a video game here and there. What had it gotten him except more video games? The Web sites that actually paid for reviews or tips paid so little it felt like charity work for the game-playing dweebs who couldn’t even beat a level-one boss.
Now he was in his mid-twenties and stuck in a rut. Just about every paycheck he received from CompAmerica he spent on computer equipment purchased through his employee discount. Even after the discount, the bastards were still making money off him. He recalled with mixed feelings that fateful day when everything had changed, when an agonizing moment of humiliation at work had led to violent frustration and a sweet bit of inspiration.
Trudy Ryan, a nineteen-year-old redhead with a pale complexion and a fine spray of freckles over the bridge of her nose, had been a cashier at CompAmerica for less than a week when Elliot decided to ask her out. No easy thing. He’d been sneaking glimpses of her, waiting for just the right opportunity, since the day she started. She had seemed friendly enough, with an easy smile for everyone. Fooled him into thinking he actually had a shot. The day came when Elliot noticed a lull at the checkout lines just as Bernardo, the store manager, stepped outside for a cigarette break. With an armful of closeout items destined for the bargain bin, Elliot approached Trudy as she flipped through the pages of People magazine with only casual interest. After a few minutes of awkward small talk, Elliot mustered enough courage to ask the cute redhead if she’d care to have a burg
er with him and maybe catch a movie afterward.
In a sickening instant, Trudy’s easy smile became a sneer. “Wait a minute. You’re asking me out on a date?”
Elliot’s burden of discontinued items shifted in his arms. A generic box of floppy disks fell to the tile floor with a loud thud. “Only a movie.”
“Sorry, Elliot, you’re just not my type.”
Elliot had to press. “So what is your type?”
“Non-losers.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“What’s to know?” she said. “Look in a mirror. Hop on a scale.”
Bitch, Elliot thought, but bit his tongue.
“Get away from me, creep, before I charge you with sexual harassment.”
Red-faced, Elliot flung the discounted merchandise into the wide bin and stormed off to the back of the store. Fifteen minutes later, while carrying a computer monitor box from the warehouse to the store shelf, he let out a scream of frustration and rage and tossed the box across the aisle, toppling and busting a computer system that had been running a game demo. Glass shattered, sparks flew, and Elliot kicked the debris.
Elliot heard Bernardo, the manager, shouting as he ran to the aisle. That was when inspiration struck. He clutched his back, cried out in fake pain, and staggered into a shelf. To add a bit of dramatic flair to his performance, he swept two dozen modems off a neatly stacked shelf.
Crippling back injury. Oh, yeah. He’d fooled them all. Even Bernardo. So for a while at least, he’d stepped out of the rat race, collecting disability checks in the bargain.
It was during Elliot’s life time-out that the demon had begun to visit his dreams. The appearances were no more than dreams, Elliot thought initially. But then the voice began coming to him during the day, during his hours at the computer. And the demon voice made him an offer—an incredible offer. Maybe it wasn’t too late for him to achieve fame and fortune after all. There was more than one way to reach the finish line. As the old adage said, when opportunity knocks . . .
Somebody was knocking on his door.
Elliot stopped typing, wondering for a moment if it was the police. No way they could tie the murders to him—obviously, since he wasn’t responsible; the demon was. Let them try to arrest a demon! “Ha!” he said aloud.
More knocking, a little louder this time.
Elliot’s attention was drawn to something on his keyboard, wedged down between the Q and the A. He reached in and grabbed it, realizing belatedly that it was a complete fingernail, his fingernail. It had fallen off his little finger, just like that. The skin where it had been was dry and smooth. And now that he examined his left hand, he noticed the fingernail on the ring finger had moved laterally. A little pulling and it lifted off, just like what happened to the guy in the remake of The Fly, but without the goo. “What the hell . . . ?”
“Anybody home?” a voice called from the hall, a woman’s voice.
Elliot walked out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him, and yelled, “Just a minute.” He crossed to the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet, and took out two Band-Aids. After crumpling up the paper trash, he tossed it toward the small wicker wastebasket—and missed. With a silent curse, he strode to the door and looked through the peephole. “Oh, wonderful,” he whispered sarcastically to himself.
He removed the chain and pulled the door open. “Hi, Shirley.”
Shirley Blodgett was, in Elliot’s eyes, plainlooking. Nothing hideous about her, but she seemed to go out of her way to look, well, plain. The most she ever did with her naturally frizzy hair was slip a headband over it. Never wore makeup because, she said, she was allergic. She had never had her ears pierced because the thought of the pain was “too much to bear.” Never mind that five-year-olds had no problem lining up to have their ears pierced. Even Shirley’s clothes were plain. She wore flannel or cotton shirts, sleeve length varying by season. The one time he’d seen her wearing a sleeveless shirt at work, he’d caught a glimpse of her bra and hadn’t been surprised to see it was basic white. She also tended to favor cargo pants except on the hottest days, when she put on shorts—Bermuda-length, naturally. He couldn’t remember ever having seen her in a dress or skirt.
In addition to living in the apartment beneath him—she’d been the one to tip him off when his unit became available—she still worked at CompAmerica, so it was necessary to keep up the fiction of his back injury whenever she dropped by his place. And she was always finding excuses to stop by. This time she was carrying a tall blue vase sprouting an assortment of flowers whose names, if told, he would never remember.
“Hi, Elliot!” In her perkiest voice, no less.
“What’s the occasion?”
“I stopped at the Friendly Gift Shop after work and picked these up for you,” she said, hoisting the vase higher, as if he might not otherwise notice.
“I can see that,” he said bluntly. “Why?”
“To brighten up your apartment.” She side-stepped him, entering his apartment without invitation. He rolled his eyes as she walked toward the kitchen. “And to add a little woman’s touch to the place.”
“It won’t work,” he said after closing the door and following her. “I’m bad with plants. I’ll forget to water them. Or water them too much. They’ll die. You’ll cry. I’ll feel bad. Spare me the inevitable guilt trip and take them down to your place where they’ll receive all the love and attention they so richly deserve.”
She laughed. “Stop being silly. They won’t be a problem. They’re silk.”
“Silk? Then they probably need bottled water or something. I can’t afford that on disability.”
“No, you goof,” she said, putting them in the center of his small, round kitchen table and fluffing them a bit. “They’ll just sit here and look lovely. All you need to do is dust them every week or two.” She turned to face him, smiling. “Think you can manage that, Grundy?”
“Well, I’m not completely helpless.”
She sat down in one of the two wicker-backed kitchen chairs. “How’s your back, Elliot?”
“Still sore,” he replied and, as if to demonstrate, rubbed it with the knuckles of his right hand.
She shook her head. “When I first heard you’d hurt your back, I couldn’t believe it.”
For a moment he thought she was accusing him of faking the injury, but how could she know? It wasn’t like he was moving furniture on the weekends or taking tango lessons. He hardly ever left his apartment, so unless the management had installed hidden cameras, he felt safe in his ruse. “Hey, those seventeen-inch monitors are way heavy,” he said, to fill the silence if nothing more. “Accidents are bound to happen.”
“Well, everyone always asks me how you’re doing,” she commented. “Because, you know, you live right above me.”
Elliot seriously doubted if Trudy, for one, looked forward to his return. “Right,” he said. “Only makes sense they’d ask you.” Sure, Elliot thought bitterly, I can hear them now: “So, Shirley, how’s that loser Grundy these days?”
Shirley nodded. “They know we’re not soul mates or anything like that. Just because we work at the same store, live in the same apartment building, and have the same exact birthday.”
“Well, you’re the one who told me about the apartment,” Elliot pointed out. “The birthday thing is just coincidence.”
“Kinda freaky, though,” Shirley remarked. “Like fate was drawing us together.”
“I totally believe in free will,” Elliot said.
Shirley stood up, looked around the room as a way of avoiding eye contact. “I’m sure they know we’ve never even been out on a date.”
“You bet,” Elliot said, quick to agree with her.
She nodded. “Well, if all’s well, I’ll head back downstairs. Let me know if you need anything. I can always—”
A familiar pain flared in Elliot’s head.
A crash sounded from the bedroom.
“What was that?” Shirley asked.
; She thinks I have somebody in there, Elliot realized. That wasn’t a charade he wanted to create or maintain. Better she think he was simply up here alone all the time. Made it easier to play on her sympathy for the occasional errand. “Oh, that’s—just a computer game. I guess I forgot to hit Pause when you knocked. My guy probably just got blown away.”
“Oh, good,” Shirley said. “I mean, not good on your guy getting blown away, but good on the nothing broken in there.”
Elliot had to get rid of her. The demon had returned, and it might not realize he had a visitor. “You know, standing around is making my back throb,” Elliot said. “I’d better turn off the computer and get some rest. But, hey, thanks for the flowers.” As he talked he was ushering her toward the door. Since she’d been about to leave anyway, it was a simple matter of her following him.
“Hope they cheer you up,” she said as he was closing the door. “And get some rest. I hate to see you suffering.”
“Thanks,” he called through the closed door, turning the dead bolt and attaching the chain.
Elliot hurried to the bedroom to confront his demon.
CHAPTER FOUR
Even with Shirley gone, Elliot shut the door as he entered his bedroom. The demon had reappeared on the far side of the bed, knocking over a table lamp. “Who’s out there?” the demon asked, an incongruously deep voice rumbling out of the mouth of the woman form he had assumed for the evening’s kill. Around Elliot, the demon used minimal glamour.
“Just Shirley from downstairs,” Elliot said dismissively. “She’s like a dog with a bone. Just because we have the same birthday she thinks it means something special or gives her the right to drop in unannounced and pester me.” Elliot shook his head, as if the motion would dislodge her from his thoughts. He walked around the bed to set the lamp in place. “How’d it go?”
ANGEL ™: avatar Page 5
