“Do you watch TV?” he asked.
“My television broke two years ago, and I never replaced it.”
“You must do something for fun.”
I thought about it. “I collect toy penguins.” The minute I said it, I wished I hadn’t.
He grinned at me. “Now we’re getting somewhere. The Executioner collects stuffed toys. I like it.”
“Glad to hear it.” My voice sounded grumpy even to me.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
“I’m not very good at small talk,” I said.
“You were doing fine.”
No, I wasn’t, but I wasn’t sure how to explain it to him. I didn’t like talking about myself to strangers. Especially strangers with ties to Jean-Claude.
“What do you want from me?” I said.
“I’m just passing the time.”
“No, you weren’t.” His shoulder-length hair had fallen around his face. He was taller, thicker, but the outline was familiar. He looked like Phillip in the shadowed dark. Phillip was the only other human being I’d ever seen with the monsters.
Phillip sagged in the chains. Blood poured in a bright red flood down his chest. It splattered onto the floor, like rain. Torchlight glittered on the wet bone of his spine. Someone had ripped his throat out.
I staggered against the wall as if someone had hit me. I couldn’t get enough air. Someone kept whispering, “Oh, God, oh, God,” over and over, and it was me. I walked down the steps with my back pressed against the wall. I couldn’t take my eyes from him. Couldn’t look away. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t cry.
The torchlight reflected in his eyes, giving the illusion of movement. A scream built in my gut and spilled out my throat. “Phillip!”
Something cold slithered up my spine. I was sitting in my car with the ghost of guilty conscience. It hadn’t been my fault that Phillip died. I certainly didn’t kill him, but… but I still felt guilty. Someone should have saved him, and since I was the last one with a chance to do it, it should have been me. Guilt is a many splendored thing.
“What do you want from me, Richard?” I asked.
“I don’t want anything,” he said.
“Lies are ugly things, Richard.”
“What makes you think I’m lying?”
“Finely honed instinct,” I said.
“Has it really been that long since a man tried to make polite small talk with you?”
I started to look at him, and decided not to. It had been that long. “The last person who flirted with me was murdered. It makes a girl a little cautious.”
He was quiet for a minute. “Fair enough, but I still want to know more about you.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
He had me there. “How do I know Jean-Claude didn’t tell you to make friends?”
“Why would he do that?”
I shrugged.
“Okay, let’s start over. Pretend we met at the health club.”
“Health club?” I said.
He smiled. “Health club. I thought you looked great in your swimsuit.”
“Sweats,” I said.
He nodded. “You looked cute in your sweats.”
“I liked looking great better.”
“If I get to imagine you in a swimsuit, you can look great; sweats only get cute.”
“Fair enough.”
“We made pleasant small talk and I asked you out.”
I had to look at him. “Are you asking me out?”
“Yes, I am.”
I shook my head and turned back to the road. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“I told you.”
“Just because one person got killed on you doesn’t mean everyone will.”
I gripped the steering wheel tight enough to make my hands hurt. “I was eight when my mother died. My father remarried when I was ten.” I shook my head. “People go away and they don’t come back.”
“Sounds scary.” His voice was soft and low.
I didn’t know what had made me say that. I didn’t usually talk about my mother to strangers, or anybody else for that matter. “Scary,” I said softly. “You could say that.”
“If you never let anyone get close to you, you don’t get hurt, is that it?”
“There are also a lot of very jerky men in the twenty-one-to-thirty age group,” I said.
He grinned. “I’ll give you that. Nice-looking, intelligent, independent women are not exactly plentiful either.”
“Stop with the compliments, or you’ll have me blushing.”
“You don’t strike me as someone who blushes easily.”
A picture flashed in my mind. Richard Zeeman naked beside the bed, struggling into his sweat pants. It hadn’t embarrassed me at the time. It was only now, with him so warm and close in the car, that I thought about it. A warm flush crept up my face. I blushed in the dark, glad he couldn’t see. I didn’t want him to know I was thinking about what he looked like without his clothes on. I don’t usually do that. Of course, I don’t usually see a man buck naked before I’ve even gone out on a date. Come to think of it, I didn’t see men naked on dates either.
“We’re in the health club, sipping fruit juice, and I ask you out.”
I stared very hard at the road. I kept flashing on the smooth line of his thigh and lower things. It was embarrassing, but the harder I tried not to think about it, the clearer the picture seemed to get.
“Movies and dinner?” I said.
“No,” he said. “Something unique. Caving.”
“You mean crawling around in a cave on a first date?”
“Have you ever been caving?”
“Once.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“We were sneaking up on bad guys at the time. I didn’t think much about enjoying it.”
“Then you have to give it another chance. I go caving at least twice a month. You get to wear your oldest clothes and get really dirty, and no one tells you not to play in the mud.”
“Mud?” I said.
“Too messy for you?”
“I was a bio-lab assistant in college; nothing’s too messy for me.”
“At least you can say you get to use your degree in your work.”
I laughed. “True.”
“I use my degree, too, but I went in for educating the munchkins.”
“Do you like teaching?”
“Very much.” Those two words held a warmth and excitement that you didn’t hear much when people talked about their work.
“I like my job, too.”
“Even when it forces you to play with vampires and zombies?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“We’re sitting in the juice bar, and I’ve just asked you out. What do you say?”
“I should say no.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“You sound suspicious.”
“Always,” I said.
“Never taking a chance is the worst failure of all, Anita.”
“Not dating is a choice, not a failure.” I was feeling a wee bit defensive.
“Say you’ll go caving this weekend.” The leather coat crinkled and moved as he tried to move closer to me than the seat belt would allow. He could have reached out and touched me. Part of me wanted him to, which was sort of embarrassing all on its own.
I started to say no, then realized I wanted to say yes. Which was silly. But I was enjoying sitting in the dark with the smell of leather and cologne. Call it chemistry, instant lust, whatever. I liked Richard. He flipped my switch. It had been a long time since I had liked anybody.
Jean-Claude didn’t count. I wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t. Being dead might have something to do with that.
“Alright, I’ll go caving. When and where?”
“Great. Meet in front of my house at, say, ten o’clock on Saturday.”
“Ten in the morning?” I said.
“Not a morning person?” he asked.
“Not particularly.”
“We have to start early, or we won’t get to the end of the cave in one day. “
“What do I wear?”
“Your oldest clothes. I’ll be dressed in coveralls over jeans.”
“I’ve got coveralls.” I didn’t mention that I used my coveralls to keep blood off my clothes. Mud sounded a lot more friendly.
“Great. I’ll bring the rest of the equipment you need.”