Stage Fright (Bit Parts)

by Scott, Michelle

  “Crazy, maybe. But not irrational,” I said. Using the realtor to get into my house had been a cunning move.

  “Unless she’s angry,” Isaiah corrected. “Then she’ll act before she thinks and try to talk her way out of trouble. When she was a kid, she used to be able to charm everyone – our parents, her teachers. She always got her way.”

  Apparently, she’d thought she could charm her way out of trouble today at Mercury Hall, too, when she’d attacked me and Andrew. No doubt Hedda’s decision to have her arrested had come as a nasty shock.

  Isaiah’s eyes traveled from one body to the next. “My guess is that she drank the shine from everyone here before moving on.”

  Martin’s severed head leered at me from the limousine. “She’s also sending a message to Bertrand Peabody.”

  “Which is?”

  “Don’t fuck with me.”

  Isaiah’s car turned out to be a green mini-van, a loaner from the auto body shop where his Jeep was being repaired. “I love your new ride,” I said. “The domesticated look suits you.”

  My lame joke wasn’t rewarded with so much as a quirk of his lips. He’d not only rebuilt the wall between us, he’d made it thicker than ever.

  When I reached for the door handle of the van, my fingers brushed wool as Hedda slipped in front of me.

  “I owe you and Isaiah a huge debt.” Hedda’s violet eyes met mine. “You are a very brave, young woman, Cassandra. I will never forget what you did for me tonight. I consider you a friend.”

  I nodded, sobered by the thought of what this might mean. “What will Bertrand do to you?”

  She sighed, a human sound fraught with anguish. “Thanks to you, there isn’t enough evidence to justify my death, but Victor considers me too irresponsible to be on my own. He’s allowed Bertrand to claim to the Widderstrom grieve.”

  They might as well have cut out Hedda’s heart and fed it to her. For a moment, I forgot Hedda was a vampire and held out my arms. She drew back, startled, before accepting my hug. She remained as stiff as steel in my arms, but she patted my back before letting go.

  “What about Marcella?” Isaiah asked.

  Hedda’s eyes remained dry, but a slight tremor in her voice betrayed her grief. “Your sister means the world to me, but I can’t let her continue on.”

  Isaiah nodded. “I agree.”

  “Take care, Cassandra Jaber. I wish you the very best.” Hedda put her hand on Isaiah’s arm. “Thank you.” Then she disappeared like a gust of wind.

  Once we were both buckled into our seats, Isaiah left the parking lot. His silence lay between us like miles of stony desert.

  “Thanks for rescuing me again,” I said. “What’s the total? Three times now?”

  He nodded. He drove with his hands locked on the steering wheel and his eyes straight ahead. Unable to bear the silence, I turned on the radio. Once again, jazz played. “Herbie Hancock,” I said, wanting to impress him. “Cantaloupe Island.”

  He didn’t respond.

  I watched him from the corner of my eye, taking in that perfect jaw, those luscious lips, and the intent eyes. I longed to lay my hand on his arm but was afraid he’d pull away from me.

  “You’re staying at Holy Comics until this is over,” Isaiah said stiffly. “The church is on sacred ground, so you’ll be safe there.”

  “What about you? Where are you going?”

  His lips thinned. “I have some business I need to take care of.”

  My eyes widened in surprise. “You’re going after your sister?”

  “That thing isn’t my sister,” he said. “The vampire may look like Marcella and share her memories, but the real Marcella died the day she was changed into a vamp. I should have taken her out a long time ago.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself. If my sister had been turned into a vampire, I would have protected her, too.” I finally risked laying my hand on his arm. His biceps tightened under my fingers, but he didn’t resist my touch. “Let Hedda take care of this. You shouldn’t have to.”

  He spoke through gritted teeth. “It’s my mess, and I need to clean it up. If I’d done my job at the start, all of Marcella’s victims would still be living, breathing human beings.”

  Isaiah used his guilt like a lash, and he couldn’t stop whipping himself. I, however, was sick of watching him bleed. “So now you’re going to blame yourself for all those deaths, too?”

  He slammed his hands against the steering wheel. “They are my fault! My God, Cassie, I nearly died today when I saw Marcella attack you.”

  “Really?” I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. “Then why did you leave me?”

  His shoulders drooped. “When my sister was hauled off, I worried they would kill her immediately. I wanted a final chance to say good-bye. But believe me, Cassandra, if Marcella had hurt you, I never would have…”

  “What? Forgiven yourself?” I was still angry. “I made the choice to go to Mercury Hall today. I’m the one who insisted on being a spy. If Marcella had killed me, it would have been my own damn fault.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Yes, it is! You blame yourself for everything! Okay, you made a mistake when you told your sister to take Hedda’s deal. But that’s in the past. You need to get over it and move on.” I crossed my arms over my chest and glared out the window. “You know, this guilt-complex of yours is starting to sound a lot like self-pity.”

  Isaiah’s jaw tightened. He jacked up the volume on the radio until the speakers buzzed, cutting off any further conversation.

  When we pulled into my driveway, the Jaguar was nowhere to be seen, and the house was dark.

  “You get fifteen minutes to grab your things,” Isaiah said. “Then we roll.”

  I considered arguing that we should wait for Andrew, but the look in Isaiah’s eyes brooked no disagreement. “Fine. But if Andrew shows up, he’s coming too.”

  As Isaiah and I mounted the steps to the porch, it occurred to me that my keys were still in my purse, and my purse was at my uncle’s restaurant. Since my father had repeatedly drilled into my head that I should never hide house keys outside where anyone could find them, I was locked out.

  I instantly forgot the key situation, however, when glass crunched under my feet. The front window had been smashed, and the door was ajar. My stomach dropped.

  Isaiah ordered me to stay put and entered the house. Ignoring his warning, I crowded behind him. As we passed through the front door, I switched on the living room lights.

  I stared in horror. The couch cushions had been slashed, and the drapes yanked off their hooks. Book shelves were upended. My dad’s collection of mystery novels had been shredded, and the afghan my grandmother knitted for me was now just a tangle of yarn. The mirror above the fireplace mantle was cracked. Maggie’s clay creations had been smashed, and her paper mobiles torn to bits.

  With shaking hands, I picked up the remains of a family photograph that had been taken on my sister’s wedding day. The picture’s frame had been destroyed, but everyone’s face remained intact. Well, everyone but mine. Someone had jabbed a knife into my likeness, and my face was now a jagged hole.

  Isaiah quickly searched the rest of the house, but I couldn’t bear to leave the living room. The idea that someone had penetrated my private space and fondled my personal things sickened me. The house had been pillaged, yet somehow I’d been violated. It was even worse than the ransacking Victor had done in my mind. A sob clenched my chest.

  Isaiah returned to the living room, looking grim.

  “Was it Marcella?” I whispered.

  “I don’t think so. She’s out for shine, and this kind of destruction would be pointless.”

  I headed for the kitchen, but he cut me off. “Don’t go in there. Perry and I will clean everything up for you. You shouldn’t have to see this.”

  I shoved him aside, determined to look. The living room was nothing compared to what had happened in the kitchen. Every dish, bowl, and tumbler
had been torn from the cupboards and smashed on the floor. Crushed eggs were smeared across the countertops. Splotches of ketchup and mustard stained the curtains and chair cushions. The floor was a minefield of broken ceramic and glass.

  The destruction was too much to take in. Every time I looked around, I saw more damage. Pages had been ripped from my mother’s beloved cookbooks. The ceramic soap dish I’d made my mom in third grade was broken. The moose and chicken oven mitts were shoved into the garbage disposal. I whimpered, and my knees wouldn’t support me. Just before I collapsed, Isaiah put an arm around my waist to steady me.

  When he once more tried to stop my tour, I knew the worst was yet to come. I followed a trickle of water to the flooded bathroom where a slurry of wet toilet paper clogged the overflowing sink. The shower curtain had been slashed, and the blinds yanked from the window. Bottles of shampoo and conditioner had been stomped to bits, their contents splashing the tiled walls like finger paints.

  Isaiah gently tugged on my arm. “Let’s go.”

  I pulled away, determined to see what he didn’t want me to. Andrew’s bedroom was eerily untouched, but my own bedroom looked like a tornado had ripped through it. My laptop had been smashed against the wall, and all my clothes were dumped in the corner of the room. I picked my favorite, fuzzy fleece from the top of the pile and immediately dropped it in disgust. It was soaking wet. And was that urine I smelled? I choked back a sob of rage. The defilement was worse than anything I could have imagined.

  I collapsed onto my bed, and that’s when I noticed the three, blackened holes in my pillow. I fingered the pillowcase, horrified. “Those aren’t…” I nearly choked on the word “…bullet holes, are they?”

  When Isaiah nodded, I burst into tears. Someone wanted me dead.

  Isaiah wrapped his arms around me. Sick at heart, I buried my head in his chest.

  “Any idea who would have done this?” Isaiah asked.

  “Caleb,” I said immediately, pulling out of his arms.

  “Isn’t that the man I met on the porch?”

  “Yes.” When I told him the history of Andrew and his psycho ex, Isaiah’s stern expression grew more and more grim. “Pack your things. I’m taking you to the church.”

  “No way.”

  “Cassie… ”

  “Forget it!” I stormed out of my bedroom, Isaiah on my heels. “I’m not hiding out at Holy Comics until I know that Andrew’s safe.” Doing my best to ignore the mess in the kitchen, I tried to concentrate. The Jag was gone, so where was my friend? The gym, maybe? Or the grocery store? Unfortunately, neither of those things seemed right. Andrew’s gym bag sat in the back hallway where he’d left it the day before, and he’d already been to the grocery store. So what had made him leave the house on a nasty night like this? A comic book store? A late-night modeling job? A convention of Portal players who loved to cook?

  I would have used the kitchen phone to call Andrew’s cell, but the thing had been yanked off the wall, leaving nothing but dangling wires.

  A sudden thought made me go hot and cold at the same time. “What if Caleb took him?” I shivered, picturing Andrew being abducted at gunpoint. “We’ve got to find him! If you take me to my car, we can split up and search.”

  I bolted for the door, but Isaiah caught my arm and held me back. “Pack first. Then we’ll find your friend.”

  I discovered a new toothbrush in the back corner of the linen closet and, mercifully, an undamaged change of clothes in the dryer. I threw everything into a plastic shopping bag, and in less than five minutes, Isaiah and I were back in his minivan. I instructed him to take the north way out of the subdivision, figuring Andrew was more likely to enter from that direction. I kept on high alert, praying that I’d see the XKR coming down the road.

  As we rounded a tight curve that hugged one side of a wooded city park, we passed an SUV that had crashed into the side of an enormous oak tree. One of the SUV’s headlights had been smashed while the other tilted at a crazy angle, lighting the branches of the trees overhead.

  “Pull over!” I shouted even as Isaiah eased off to the side of the road. Without waiting for the van to fully stop, I piled out and hurried towards Caleb’s car.

  In the headlights of Isaiah’s van, the smear of blood on the SUV’s door handle looked like red paint. I drew back with a moan. “I can’t look inside.”

  Isaiah reached under his jacket for a weapon before throwing open the door. After a moment that stretched out forever, he said, “It’s empty.”

  The windshield was a web of cracks smeared with more blood, but the rest of the vehicle was blood-free. A quick search turned up nothing but dozens of empty beer cans and a broken hockey stick. A handgun lay on the passenger’s seat like a death threat made real.

  Several scenarios played in my head. In one, Caleb kidnapped Andrew, forcing him at gunpoint to drive, and Andrew had purposely steered into the tree to avoid being captured. But if that was the case, then where was Andrew now? In another scene, Caleb destroyed my house then fled, skidding into the tree when the road became icy. But then where was Caleb? The star in the windshield and the blood on the door handle proved that someone had gotten injured, but I had no idea who that someone was.

  “What now?” I asked.

  Isaiah frowned, thinking.

  I searched the car more thoroughly and still came up with nothing. Just the gun, the smear of blood, and the empties in the back seat.

  Isaiah said, “I’ll bet that Andrew doesn’t even know what his ex-boyfriend did to your house. Caleb strikes me as a coward. Most likely, he waited until Andrew was gone before coming over. All those things he did to your room? He was sending a message to you, not Andrew.”

  It made sense. My room had been desecrated while Andrew’s had remained untouched. No doubt Andrew was blissfully unaware of what was waiting for him at home. My shoulders relaxed a little.

  I followed Isaiah back to the minivan, muttering threats to Andrew’s ex. Threats I fully intended to make good on if I found so much as a single scratch on my best friend.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The moment Isaiah turned right instead of left on Grand River, I knew I was in trouble.

  “Milos Coney Island is that way. You need to turn around.” I gestured at the upcoming median crossover.

  He drove past it without a glance.

  “Hel-lo? I told you, my car’s at my uncle’s restaurant!”

  He remained infuriatingly calm. “If you get your car back, you’ll go looking for your friend.” His eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. “With Marcella the way she is, it isn’t safe for you to be out. You’re going to the church.”

  “Turn around right now!” I demanded. “I’m in no mood to argue.”

  “Neither am I,” he rumbled back.

  “Fine. Then I’ll jump out at the next red light!”

  Isaiah hit the child-safety button on his door, effectively locking me inside the vehicle.

  “You can’t do that,” I sputtered. “It’s kidnapping!” I continued to argue and complain all the way to Holy Comics, but he didn’t rise to the bait. When he parked in the church’s lot, I remained in my seat, folding my arms over my chest. “I am not getting out of this car!”

  “You don’t have to.” He left the van, got into Perry’s car, and drove off.

  I swore at the top of my lungs when I realized I’d been out maneuvered. Isaiah had left me with the van, but had taken the keys with him. Once again, I was stranded. With a final, furious oath, I grabbed the shopping bag with my clothes and toothbrush and stomped towards the store.

  Perry met me at the door with a grin. “I wondered how long you were going to stay out there.”

  I marched past him. “Don’t start with me.”

  “Cassie, don’t worry. The Outfielder will take care of things. C’mon, I’ll show you to your room.” He winked. “Isaiah called and booked ahead, so I got everything ready.”

  My room turned out to be in the basement alongs
ide Isaiah’s dojo. There was a broken-down couch, an old TV, and a beat-up ping pong table. “I think it used to be a youth meeting room,” Perry said. “The couch is a pull-out, so at least you’ll have a bed.”

  A louse-infested bed from the looks of it. The couch smelled of wet dog and mildew. I hardly dared sit on it let alone sleep on it.

  “There’s a DVD player, too,” Perry said. “We can watch a movie if you want.”

  Like I could sit and watch a movie when Andrew was missing, and Isaiah was determined to face down a crazed vampire. I paced the room like it was a cage.

  Perry wrung his hands. “I know you’d rather be with the Outfielder rather than stuck here with me.”

  I stopped pacing, suddenly appalled at my behavior. Both Isaiah and Perry had my best interests at heart. “I don’t mind being ‘stuck’ with you,” I said. “In fact, when this is all over, I’d love to have a movie fest. We could watch back-to-back X-Men or something.”

  He smiled. “I’m holding you to that.”

  I went back to pacing and gnawing my thumbnail. Where the hell was Andrew? I could have endured this imprisonment if he’d been there with me.

  Perry wandered over to a bookshelf that contained several well-worn board games. “Want to play Monopoly?” he asked. “About half the pieces are missing, but we can make do. Or look, Jenga!”

  I shook my head at his offer of games. More pacing. More nail biting. Andrew was one of my major worries, but so was Marcella. No doubt, Isaiah’s sister was out there drinking an ocean of shine. By the time she was finished, she’d be stronger than a normal vampire. Isaiah would never be able to take her out.

  “How about Boggle?”

  Martin had been feeding her, but obviously his soul wasn’t enough to keep her happy. No other vampire – not even the newly created Luquin Astor – was as rapacious as Marcella. Maybe if she had taken more than one blood partner, none of this would have happened.

  I stopped walking. Wait a sec! She did have more than one blood partner. She’d told me so herself when she’d been in my house. At the time, I’d been too concerned about my own neck to pay attention to her prattle. Now, however, I remembered her boasts that her new blood partner could give her anything she wanted. Including her voice.