“Hey, girl!” She clamped a hand around one of Jordan’s arms. “Come on in and join the party.” She giggled. “We’re, uh, just having Todd for dinner now.”
Jordan smelled cooking meat. It made her mouth water, and her stomach rumbled. She hadn’t eaten all day. Another woman inside the apartment laughed. Jordan then remembered seeing Angela Brooks that afternoon. Then she saw Bridget’s friend appear behind her. She grinned and draped an arm around Bridget’s shoulders. Both women were completely nude. They were dripping wet, as if they’d recently showered. Jordan wondered whether they’d showered together. The thought brought forth a strange pang of jealousy. Then she felt something, a slim tendril, curling around her ankle and she snapped back to reality. She kicked loose of the tendril, rushed into the apartment, and threw the door shut.
She sagged against the door, breathing hard. “There’s monsters out there.”
Bridget and Angela exchanged a glance, then looked at Jordan. Bridget arched an eyebrow. “Monsters? Really?”
Jordan heaved another heavy sigh. “Yes, monsters. Look, I know you don’t believe me, but it’s the goddamn truth. There was one in my apartment, a big, skinny, slimy lizard-monster. And now there’s a bunch of them out on the landing. I’m not lying. I’m not hallucinating. I swear to fucking God.”
Bridget shrugged off Angela’s arm and brushed past Jordan. Jordan was pretty sure the brief physical contact was intentional, but she chose not to dwell on that for the moment. She wanted to scream when Bridget opened the door. “Don’t!”
Bridget peered around the edge of the door. She was silent for a while; then she giggled. “Aw, aren’t they cute?”
Jordan’s eyes went wide with disbelief. “Cute!?”
Bridget knelt and picked up one of the creatures. Cradling it in her arms, she came back into the apartment, kicking the door shut behind her. The thing in her arms looked like a mottled beach ball with tiny arms and legs. It had a face like a Halloween pumpkin come to life. Thick strands of saliva hung from the corners of its mouth. The moisture plopped on the floor, sizzling like bacon grease on a hot stove.
Bridget stroked the top of its head. She grinned at Jordan’s horror-struck expression. “Oh, he’s just a little guy.”
Jordan spluttered unintelligibly, then said, “What the fuck is that thing?”
“This?” There was a note of mock innocence in Bridget’s voice as she glanced again at the vile thing nestled in her arms. “Oh, it’s just one of Lamia’s minions.”
Jordan didn’t know what to say to that. She didn’t know this Lamia person. And she didn’t know what to make of Bridget’s nonchalance in the face of something so horrible. She seemed unafraid of the awful creatures. Indeed, she appeared to feel real affection for them. Maybe she really was hallucinating. She’d never taken LSD, but maybe someone at Mondo Video, some hateful asshole, had dosed her coffee. That had to be it. Nothing else could account for what she was seeing, because none of it could be real.
Bridget opened her arms and let the beach ball on legs drop to the floor. It bounced and rolled for a moment before regaining its footing. Then it leered up at Jordan and began to waddle toward her. Jordan screamed and backed away. Bridget and Angela laughed hysterically, like two drunken bimbos clowning it up for a Girls Gone Wild camera crew.
Jordan shrieked at them. “What the hell’s wrong with you!? What is this!?”
The women advanced on her, circling around her as the little creature backed her up against Todd’s overflowing entertainment center. For the first time, Jordan noticed the living room. There was a dried, dark brownish substance all over everything. It looked like it might be blood. Her head snapped toward the kitchen, which was visible beyond a partition separating it from the living room.
We’re uh, just, having Todd for dinner now.
Jordan’s stomach lurched at the memory of Bridget’s words.
Panic gripped her. She was trapped in this apartment with a couple of murdering cannibal women. Murdering cannibal women with a host of creepy-crawly things as pets. Her immediate future was clear-painful death.
Angela Brooks gripped her by a wrist and twisted her arm behind her back. She seized a handful of Jordan’s hair with her other hand and jerked her head back. Bridget put a hand on Jordan’s hip, stroking it with surprising gentleness.
“Oh, sweet, sweet Jordan.” She laughed. “I’m going to make all your dreams come true.” The hand moved up under Jordan’s shirt, caressed her flat stomach. “But you look hungry, so maybe you should have a bite to eat first.”
Angela began to push her toward the kitchen.
The beach ball thing waddled ahead of them.
Jordan sobbed, begged them to let her go.
“Oh, I don’t think so, Jordan, dear.” Bridget picked up a plate, forked a chunk of brown meat, and held it in front of Jordan’s face. “Have a bite of Todd.”
Jordan’s knees buckled, but Angela, stronger than she appeared, kept her upright.
Bridget squeezed her mouth open and pushed the warm meat inside.
Jordan spit it out.
Bridget smiled. She forked another chunk of meat. “That’s okay. There’s more where that came from. A lot more. And we’ve got all night, baby.”
Jordan thought about that.
And she made a promise to herself.
She would wait.
Do whatever these monsters-human and inhuman-demanded of her. Suffer any degradation.
And hope for an opportunity.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Raymond Slater dressed for bed with the numb precision of an automaton. At no point was he conscious of the process. His fingers moved of their own accord, following patterns established over decades, drawing on his silk pajamas, pushing buttons through buttonholes, squeezing a small twist of toothpaste onto a brush that needed replacing. He spit out toothpaste foam in the bathroom sink, blotted his face with a paper towel, and stepped back to appraise his reflection. But the image in his mirror triggered something in the recesses of his mind, a dangerous spark of awareness.
He muttered a curse: “Shit.”
He flicked off the bathroom light and returned to the tastefully, and expensively, appointed bedroom he shared with his wife of twenty years, Patricia Louise Winston Slater. He flipped back the plush Laura Ashley comforter and crawled beneath freshly laundered sheets that smelled vaguely of pine needles. His wife, clad in a blue silk nightgown, set down the latest issue of Vanity Fair and shifted her considerable bulk, rocking the canopied bed as she turned to face her husband.
Raymond sighed. His wife always knew when something was bothering him. She was excellent at reading his moods, almost to a scary degree, but luckily, wasn’t so good at detecting hints of infidelity. He dreaded what was coming-one of those intensely earnest, supposedly heart-to-heart talks, the intent of which was to purge him of stress and set everything right in the world again. It never worked. Oh, he allowed Patricia to think the talks did him some good. He played that game, that age-old conjugal dance of deceit, and he played it well. Normally, he considered it a small price to pay, a necessary hoop to jump through so she wouldn’t suspect his real obsessions.
Patricia Slater made a clucking sound. “Something’s bothering you, dear.”
A statement. Not a question. Words that would brook no denial. He sighed again, an indicator of reluctance, of difficulty finding the right way to phrase how he really felt. It was a stalling tactic. Jesus, what could he say to her? He suppressed an inappropriate burst of laughter, twisting the smile that twitched at the corners of his mouth to look like a grimace of pain (this wasn’t difficult).
He imagined telling her the truth: Well, dear, today was a very interesting day. A truly singular day, in fact. I’ve never quite experienced the likes of it before. You see, a girl, one of my students, is a demon. Yes, a demon. I mean that in the most literal sense. A spirit. An incarnation of evil. A fucking DEMON. And, well, she’s forcing me to participate in something horrendous tomorrow. I suspect I’ll be dead soon. No, there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. And how was your day, dear?