“I’ve never taken off someone else’s belt before! You have no idea how uncomfortable this makes me!”
I stared beyond the arch. Was that a rustling of a thousand tiny legs?
“Holly…”
“There! I’ve done it! Quick! Pull! Pull!”
I heaved once more. This time Bobby Vernon came free like a knobbly-kneed knife through butter. He popped out so fast, I fell over on my back.
A moment more, and I was scrabbling for Holly, helping her up too. Her clothes were oily, her sleeve torn.
Vernon was lolling on the floor. He was in a bad way, eyes tight shut, and moaning. I grasped him under the arms. “Holly—stairs. We need to go.”
Through the arch the shuffling sound and its soft, attendant scuffling were growing very loud. I knew that at any moment something hateful would emerge into the light.
She grasped Vernon’s ankles, and together we picked him up. He didn’t weigh too much, but it was difficult enough. It was a good thing it was him, and not George.
A few spiders skittered through the arch, out into the lobby. Then we were around the corner and starting down the stairs.
In Men’s Wear, on the floor below, we stopped, shoulders aching, desperately out of breath. We put Vernon on the floor in the center of an aisle, midway between clothes racks and a checkout counter. The air was brittle, cold; the fog high enough to wind around our calves. Vernon lay in it as in a milk bath. I took a small lantern from my pack; we lit it, looking at the oily pallor of his face. It was quiet. There were Shades clustering far off among the aisles, but they kept their distance as before. Both Holly and I stood rigid, staring, letting the panic wash over us; the adrenaline ebbed quickly, leaving us weary and irritable.
“He’s bleeding,” Holly said. “I have a first-aid kit. Shall I—?”
“Oh, you might as well, yeah. You’re the expert.”
She did swift, efficient things with bandages. I stood with my jaw clamped, guarding them both, watching the way the shadows moved inward, pressing in against the lantern.
Holly was deft, careful, and knew what she was doing. It gave me a sour feeling to watch her. Lockwood had said we complemented each other. Yet another way in which he was just so wrong.
Vernon coughed again, said something unintelligible.
Holly stood up, put her bandages away. “Do you see that thing?”
“No.”
“Do you hear it?”
“No! I’ll tell you if I do.” I shook my head. “God. Can’t you use your own senses for a change? What are you even doing here?”
“Lockwood asked me to come, didn’t he? It’s not my fault my Talent’s not as sharp as yours.”
“Well, you could always have said no to Lockwood.”
“Like you do?” She gave her trilling laugh.
“What?” I stared at her. “What does that mean?”
“Like you ever do that.” She waved her hand as if it would magically dissolve the words she’d just said. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter. We should get going.”
It was the little gesture that did it, the wave of the hand. All at once, the rage I’d been chewing on for so long was too big for my mouth; it was all I could do to spit it out. “Don’t talk to me about Lockwood in that airy-fairy way,” I said. “You know nothing about him. You know nothing about me. How about from now on you keep your patronizing comments to yourself?” The verbal onrush felt so good, I was giddy with it.
Her eyes were hot and wet then. I didn’t care. It was good to see. “Oh, that’s rich,” she said. “That’s rich. You’ve been patronizing me ever since I arrived!”
I blinked at her, genuinely taken aback. “Sorry? Me patronizing you?”
“There you are. You’re doing it again!”
“What? That’s not patronizing you. That’s just me doing a verbal backflip because you’ve said something so astronomically wrong and dumb. There’s a difference, you know, Miss Munro.”
She gave a hoot of rage. “See? You can’t open your mouth without doing it! Patronize, patronize, patronize. What’s wrong with you? You’ve been hostile to me from the word go!”
“Me? I’ve been a model of self-restraint!”
“Oh, sure. All your snorting and tutting! All your eye-rolling whenever I tried to contribute.”
“Guys, guys…” It was Bobby Vernon, clutching at us from below. “I’m only half-awake and probably a bit delirious, and was just in the middle of a dream about a goldfish, but even I know this isn’t a good idea.”
“On the contrary.” This was the skull. “You’ve waited long enough for this, Lucy. Don’t forget the coat hanger garrote. It’s an option.”
I listened to neither of them. I was too busy laughing in her face. “See, Holly?” I said. “This is a classic example of what you do! You stay all sweet and perfect, and twist things around magically so I’m the one to blame! You’re the one who patronizes me! I can’t blow my nose without you telling me I’m doing it wrong.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dare do that!” she said. “What, and risk getting my head bitten off?”
“I can’t stand the way you criticize everything,” I cried, “without actually saying so! You’re like a prim, uptight little schoolteacher, looking down on everything I do!”
She stamped her foot. “Well, you—you’re like a…a stupid little dog, always yapping and growling. You made it plain from the first you didn’t want me there. Every time I said something, you’d start sneering and rolling your eyes, and spitting out the sarcasm. So many days I could hardly bear to come in. I almost quit a couple of times.”
There it was again! This is what she was so good at doing. Twisting it, giving you the guilt. But it didn’t work this time. My discomfort fueled my fury. “Rubbish! I always tried to be friendly and welcoming, even when you started going into my room and doing those weird things with my clothes!”
“It’s called folding!” Holly shouted. “You should try it sometime! You lived in a hellhole before I came! It was disgusting!”
“I was happy with that hellhole! I was happy with the way it was!”
Someone tugged my arm. “This isn’t good,” Bobby Vernon croaked. “Can’t you give each other girly smiles until we get out of this place?”
I shoved his hand away. “Shut up, you.”
“Yes,” Holly Munro snapped. “It’s your fault we’re still here.”
“Hey, see? You agree about that,” Vernon said. “Come on. It’s not so hard….”
“You think I’m just a dumb assistant! You can’t cope with the fact I saved your life!”
“Oh, you’re wrong there, buddy. I can cope with that. What I can’t cope with is your endless sniping, your chipping away at me continuously while staring at me with that super—super silly—with that bloody thing you do with your eyebrows!”
She gazed at me blankly. “Super silly?”
Bobby Vernon lifted a hand. “Supercilious.”
“Thanks.” I put on a stupid voice. “‘No, Lucy, not like that. Rotwell does it this way. Rotwell does it that way.’ If you like Rotwell so much, go back to that agency!”
“I didn’t like working for Rotwell! He was disgusting. He’s violent and ambitious and he doesn’t treat his employees well. But don’t pretend you’re so caring, Lucy Carlyle! I told you about what happened to me at Cotton Street, and you couldn’t have cared less!”
“That’s not true! How dare you say that?”
“Then why didn’t you show it, Lucy?”
“Because…because the same bloody thing happened to me! I lost my team as well! They all died too! All right? It upset me!”