by Liana Brooks
I turned away from the candy-colored carnage spread across the white carpets of my floor like a broken rainbow. “Yes, detective?”
Dan Kim wasn’t as tall as Seth, or as young, but he had classical appeal. Dark eyes, dark hair, with a healthy tan from his genes and his habit of running near Lake Michigan every afternoon. Our paths crossed on a semi-regular basis, so I knew his story. Married his college sweetheart, lost her twelve years later to cancer, started dating again three years later, hated it, mostly permanently single but he wouldn’t mind having a weekend brunch with me.
And now he was looking around my bedroom.
For the moment, plans for murder would have to wait. I smiled and let Detective Kim get an eyeful of my room. “Is it what you expected?”
“Not at all,” he admitted. “Anything missing?”
I kicked at the fallen dresses. “Probably a few buttons. Nothing I can’t get fixed.”
“I didn’t see any electronics.”
“I have a laptop, nothing else. And that’s in my car.” Seth had taken me past the studios last night to collect the car, including my laptop and, more importantly at the time, my gym bag.
“Any jewelry?” Dan asked as he walked out of the bedroom. “Files? Anything at all?”
I followed, taking in everything I’d missed when I’d rushed to check on my dress collection.
All my drawers had been pulled out and slammed to the floor.
The one dish set I had was in the kitchen smashed to smithereens.
The couch had been flipped over and a plant knocked down, but... I shrugged. “Maybe they took some of the silverware? But it’s the cheap stuff I had since college. It’s worthless. There’s damage, but I can’t see anything missing. Maybe a kitchen knife? I haven’t counted yet.”
“Let the crime scene techs go over it.” Dan motioned for me to exit. “We need to photograph this, just in case.”
A cold chill settled over me. “Is that absolutely necessary? Even in the bedroom?”
“It won’t be the first time your panties have been in the public domain,” Dan joked.
I froze. Even if a trial didn’t make those photos public domain—which it might—my past was well known enough to the Chicago PD that pictures would get passed around. People I had to work with on a daily basis would see my private place, my room, my clothes, my underwear, my bed... I absorbed the chill, let it soak into my bones and fill me so that when I met the detective’s eyes, he withered and stepped back in fear.
“Sorry. Sorry. Bad joke.”
“As a general rule, detective, it is considered poor form to harass the victim of sexual assault, even if it was a virtual assault. I was attacked when I was seventeen. It’s not a joke to me. It never will be.” I took a deep breath, shaking off the residual shame and anger. “Please leave.”
“What?” Dan shook his head. “This is—”
“I’m not filing a report,” I decided. “There was a noise complaint. I’ll pay the fine, if there is one. But I’m not pressing charges. So you can leave.”
“Merri, this is serious.” Dan chased after me as I walked out. “I don’t want the next crime scene I find to be one with your corpse!”
“And I don’t want pictures of my lingerie shared with the police departments of seventeen counties.” I didn’t want to repeat the nightmare of my teen years. I didn’t want to go to court and have the defending lawyer ask me if I was wearing a flirty Fleur du Mal thong under my A-line skirt. I didn’t want everyone mentally undressing me.
Dan pressed his lips into a grimace. “Fine, how about a compromise? We won’t take pictures of your private areas.”
“My house is all a private area.”
“Just the front door, kitchen, and living area,” Dan said. “I’ll give you a written apology if you want.”
I smiled. It was a cold, dark, cruel smile that made his eyes widen in panic. “I do not want your apology. I want you out of my house. All of you. Now.”
“Compromise, Merri!”
“A compromise would mean you were giving something to me, detective.”
“Peace of mind?” he suggested.
I put my hands on my hips and sharpened my smile. “Really?”
The detective stomped, turned, swore, and turned back to me with a placating smile. “Let’s try this again. I will....” He sighed. “Let’s just sit down, go over the list of recent threats to your life, and go through a list of top ten most likely suspects. Just give me enough that—if you wind up dead—I have somewhere to start.”
His pleas didn’t move my heart.
“Sure,” I said sweetly. “Let me offer you a place to sit and make you a snack but—oh!—wait. Right. I can’t. Perhaps we can reschedule and do this tomorrow at the office. I’ll have the interns send you a list.”
Storming out of my own apartment would have been nicely theatrical, but it wasn’t really Dan I was angry at. I was angry at myself for not having this all figured out.
There is no such thing as Coincidence. That’s simply the human brain trying to find the pattern between events. Sometimes there is one. Sometimes there isn’t.
Today, there was definitely a pattern.
I could feel it, but I couldn’t see it yet.
I blazed past the various police flunkies and went to the small, communal laundry room to sit in the gloom of the broken lights. A faulty wire needed replacing, but the super kept putting in new lightbulbs instead, so only the back wall was lit. A wall of silver washers on one side, a wall of black dryers on the other. The wobbly table between the two was black faux wood bracketed by two plastic chairs with twiggy legs.
Dan followed me in, shutting the door with its small, glazed window quietly. “Merri, I know you. What’s up?”
“It’s been a long week,” I said, sitting with my back to the wall so I could see the door and window clearly. “Really, I just want my house back.”
“Give me twenty more minutes,” Dan said as he sat down across from me with a tablet and stylus out. “I’m serious, this is the kind of escalation that ends with tragedy. Give me a few minutes. Walk me through what’s happened recently.”
I shrugged. “I spent the week at Windy City Security looking into an embezzling case. It was fairly clear cut. Dulcie Waterhouse left Thursday afternoon. I got a call from the office saying a friend was looking for me.” I stared past Dan to where the glow of his screen reflected off the tinted window of the laundry room.
“Friend?” Dan sounded suspicious.
“Ellen Berry from Cozy Studios. I’ve know her since grade school.”
“Cozy does the romance movies, yes?”
“Yeah. They were bought by Slasher Studios in January and there was a hiccup in the accounting department when they merged. I went to do some pro bono work and help out.”
Dan switched his screen to dark mode and white lines of script appeared on the window. “Any problems there?”
“None.”
“No pushback from the Slasher CEO? What’s his name? I saw him in the news.”
“Seth Morana? He’s a marshmallow.”
Dan gauwffed at my word choice. “Horror’s hottest actor is a marshmallow? Doubt it.”
I let the comment pass. “Yesterday I went to Oretega Mineral Exchange to look at engagement rings—”
There was a snap and a ping.
I blinked. It took me a moment to realize Dan was holding half a stylus in his hand. He’d broken it.
“Engagement?”
“It was a scouting expedition,” I said. “Oretega has hires Markham and Sloan to come in every five years for an audit. This is routine. Nothing important.”
“Okay, but a fake engagement?” I could see Dan’s screen change as he pulled up the public listing of company connections. My office used the same one, but only the public edition. His looked like the government edition. Dulcie’s company had a lot more connections there. Interesting.
“It wasn’t a fake engagement. It was ring
shopping before the engagement,” I said.
“Ah.” Dan pretended to make a note but nothing new appeared in the reflection. “Has he picked a day to propose?”
“I’m getting him a custom ring, so I’ll need to wait until it’s done and then figure it out. I was thinking of waiting a month or two.”
Maybe in October. The Halloween decorations would be up for the engagement photos. Or we could steal a set from Slasher.
My mind ticked over the possibilities as I watched Dan scroll morosely through his list of companies I was connected to.
Windy City Security and Anderson Financial and Darab Industrial and Slasher–Cozy and Oretega and...
Why was there a line between Windy City Security and Oretega? There was no reason for there to be a connection.
Unless Windy City Security installed the new systems for Oretega.
Details slotted into place.
The green car at Dulcie’s office, the one that nearly ran me over the day I’d fired her, while she was holding a coffee cup from Heavenly Monday’s and a bag of their macarons. The same macarons Yerke loved so much.
The car belonged to Yerke, the immoral jeweler.
Yerke had come to see me at Cozy.
Yerke knew Dulcie.
Someone had installed fake accounting software on the Cozy company computers. Someone with access to a company like Windy City Security.
I’d gotten Dulcie fired Thursday.
I’d talked to Yerke at Oretega Friday—after the incident with the green car, after the incident at the pool.
...And Yerke thought I was engaged to Seth.
Several very ugly words came to mind.
I guess even villains have grapevines.
“Merri?” Dan sounded concerned.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialed Seth’s number.
“Everything okay?”
“Sure.” Nope.
“You need anything?”
“My purse and some water, if this is going to drag on.”
Dan stood. “I’ll go get that.”
“Thanks.”
Seth’s phone went to voice mail.
I dialed again.
One of the rookies returned with my purse and mumbled something about Dan needing to take a call for a lieutenant that might take a while.
Seth’s phone went to voice mail again.
I dialed Alisson.
Her phone was off.
My car was at Slasher studios, and there was a good chance Seth was too.
Which gave Yerke multiple targets.
I texted Dan from the elevator. He could meet me at the corner of Hooker and Weed.
The storm had shut down power to half the city and canceled all the outdoor filming for the day. I ran into a rain-soaked Nicah—three neon green stars matching his bright green, high-heeled boots—outside the main building as he waited for someone named Willa to come get him.
“Have you seen Seth?” I asked, taking as much shelter as I could under the eaves of the building.
Nicah nodded. “He’s over on the big set prepping castle scenes for tomorrow.”
Seth hadn’t talked much about castles, sets, or any of the Slasher productions. “Where is that? Who’s he with?”
“Nobody!” Nicah shouted over the rain as it grew heavier, the sound of it hitting the roofs and pavement almost defeaning. “Ianira sent everyone to get some sleep so we can shoot tonight!” A yellow sports car pulled into the gravel lot with a splash. “That’s Willa. Got to go!” He took a half step and paused. “Seth should be over in the North Cherry building. Look for the zombie Santa!” He waved goodbye, sparkly black and purple bracelets flashing.
Zombie Santa. Right.
I tried Seth’s phone again to no avail, and sighed. Was I being paranoid? Maybe.
But the incident at the pool hadn’t been an accident. The attack on my apartment looked angry.
I tried Dan’s phone, but all I got was a busy signal that shunted me to voicemail. I left a quick message in case he checked that before reading my text, then tucked the phone into my pocket.
I needed to know Seth was safe, that I hadn’t killed my first chance at happiness by dragging him into the messy world of Merri Kriesmas.
Running through the pelting rain, I crossed the Cozy backlot full of cheerful small towns filled with ghosts of movies past and into the large sets of Slasher’s Holiday Of Horrors. As if Santa Claus wasn’t sinister enough—knowing when you were sleeping, knowing when you weren’t—Slasher had taken the idea of the enslaved elven population of the North Pole and turned them into flesh-eating zombies wearing candy-striped rompers.
I know horror is social commentary about the fears and anxieties of the majority populace played out in a monstrous, allegorical way.[33] The Christmas elves were undoubtedly representative of the downtrodden workers abused by an all-controlling, all-seeing, judgmental demigod figure, with the presents representing the distractions of mass entertainment—which made the whole ‘mass entertainment is a disease’ message a little ham-handed—but stopping in the workshop of death with a life-sized model of the actors sprawled across a reflective pool of fake blood was still a little unnerving.
Especially Mrs. Claus in her twee red-and-white A-line and apron, with her head fractured because of a fall.
I paused to take a breath and looked into the gloom as lightning split the sky.
The building was huge, home to the interior sets for at least three movies, plus the storage for other sets and workrooms for the props department. It had all been explained in the budget sheets Alisson had showed me, but seeing it was something else.
It was endless darkness, lit only by multi-colored ever-glow holiday lights running off solar panels, and what little light snuck through the skylights high overhead.
“Seth?” Every sound was swallowed up, erased almost as soon as I heard it. My blood drummed in my ears as my breathing echoed the dripping of my clothes on the warehouse floor. There were baffles... Baffles? Was that the word? It sounded like the word. Pieces of soundproof material dividing the stages, because Slasher relied on on-set recordings, while Cozy favored dubbing.
Right.
I could do facts.
Facts were good.
So was finding Seth.
The set wasn’t perfectly soundproof, not with the wide, rolling walls pushed aside so sets could be moved between stages. I closed my eyes, trying to focus like I did in yoga class since seventh grade: listen and forget.
One by one I eliminated sounds: the rain drumming on the roof, the heaving sigh of the overworked air conditioning, the creaks and groans of the walls battered by the wind, until all that was left was a hushed, scrabbling sound like sandpaper brushing across starched fabric. I ran after that sound.
Lightning illuminated a path through the wonderland of Slasher nightmares. Twice I slowed for a prop corpse, only to dash on again looking for Seth.
There was an inarticulate shout and a thump up ahead.
And a wall.
The wooden wall of the church set for Ellen’s follow–your–heart holiday movie, currently being borrowed for a jilted–at–the–altar lover scene by Slasher, stretched from the anchor wall of the building to the door. I tried the stained-glass door first. It was locked.
When the lightning flashed again, on the other side of the stained glass I could see Yerke standing behind Seth.
Seth slumped to the floor, lips blue.
I banged at the door, unheard over the rain.
Where were the police? Dan should be here by now. This wasn’t complicated.
Fighting the locked door was no good, and Ellen would kill me if I ruined the stained glass. I ran back to the fake church wall, pushing with one hand at the reinforced Styrofoam as the other fumbled for my blue clutch. Wallet, phone, perfume, lip gloss—and wool socks I kept for days when the office was chill. My eyes fell on a pile of rubble. I nudged one of the fist-sized rocks with my foot and felt actual stone. Good. So
cks and rocks. Not a perfect weapon, but mass and velocity would be on my side.
I found a weak point on the wall, pushed my through, and found myself boxed in on three sides, watching helplessly through another fake stained glass window as Seth struggled to breath in front of an old-fashioned street lamp on a small-town street dusted with fake snow.
Seth kicked his feet, one hand tugging at whatever Yerke had wrapped around his throat, and the other trying to push off the ground.
How the ever lovin’ eff was I supposed to get out of this box? Running through the studio was like jumping between parallel universes and always landing one thin veil of reality away from where I wanted to be.
“Seth! Yerke!” I pounded my fist on the wood of the window frame. If nothing else I could let Yerke know there was a witness. Maybe he’d back off.
Maybe he didn’t hear me at all.
Along the set of the small-town street, the soft glow of the lanterns illuminated a nightmare. Seth’s lips were turning dark. He was dying and I was trapped, watching.
Seth twisted, grabbing Yerke’s arm.
Yerke jerked as if shocked. The older man’s face went slack.
Seth’s face looked like a skull, sunken cheeks and dark eyes unnaturally wide. He held Yerke as the older man slumped slowly to the ground. In the next flash of lightning, Seth looked skeletal. And furious.
His grasp on Yerke tightened, then he pulled his hand away as if burned. Clutching at his neck, Seth stumbled forward, crashing against the wooden wall between us.
The wall between us withered. Aging and cracking under Seth’s touch. The glass fell with a crash and spun in place before falling over in the otherwise silent room.[34]
Color returned to Seth’s face as the wood rotted, leaving nothing but air between us. His eyes widened with fear and pain. “Merri?”
Outside, the howling wind died.
The rain stopped.
All that was left was me and Seth, standing in the middle of a winter fantasy with a dying man sprawled in front of Santa’s throne.
Seth shrank in on himself. “Merri.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“You—you said you were a Grim Reaper.” Seth was inching away from me. “You’re... you’re not this kind of Reaper, are you?”
