Parts & Wreck Page 3

“But the doctor said it was—”

  “I know,” Luce said, cutting Hitch to the quick. “You don’t have to repeat it. Let’s go.”

  She pushed into the glass-and-steel lobby.

  The white noise of the street was rapidly eclipsed by the echoing of wingtips and high heels scuttling across marble, businessmen and women barking directives into cellphones at self-important volumes, and the hissing of milk steamers from the not one or two but three espresso stands pegging the lobby like islands of addiction, each surrounded by squadrons of the lanyard-clad screaming orders like panicked stock brokers.

  Not a greasy jumpsuit in the crowd. Luce shook her head, she’d better be for figuring out what she was walking into. Lord knew, Mr. Thorwald had been absolutely useless on that front, merely giving her addresses to show up to without any real preparation.

  She’d have gotten better headhunting in the Amazon. Plus, actual headhunters waited for you to come to their giant cauldrons in the jungle. They didn’t show up to your apartment unannounced.

  Luce stepped into the first open elevator and scanned the rows of buttons, deciding, finally on the sixth floor, for obvious reasons. The doors slid closed and Luce sagged against the wall, let the vibration soothe her frayed nerves. It was all happening so quickly, Thorwald, the interview, the man from the alley she couldn’t stop thinking about.

  Pull it together, she thought. No big deal. Focus on the mission. Focus on the mission.

  One more…focus on the mission.

  Luce found it beneficial if she said and did things in threes, especially the important stuff like confidence-boosting mantras, smelling clothes before putting them back on, or sex with new partners (you never know, that first shitty/lazy/jackhammery screw could have been a complete fluke). It’s better to be safe than sorry, her mother always said.

  Except, Becca Montgomery had never had a safe day in her short life. Accident-prone was an understatement—she met her fate in the form of a rusty can of bad Clamato. Luce always dreaded explaining the incident, usually offering up, “influenza” or “stomach cancer” rather than, “Mom never could resist the scratch-and-dent shelf at the grocery store.”

  So, she probably should have taken her adages with a grain of salt.

  New salt at full price.

  Just to be safe, Luce hit the button for the sixth floor two more times and immediately felt better. The car came to a smooth stop and the doors rolled open depositing her into a small, empty waiting room.

  One very much in need of a decorator.

  The place was wood paneled and lit not by overhead fluorescents, but by a single avocado-green lamp that really showed off the shaggy carpet and ratty, deflated couches. The effect was scary basement rec room, like the kind you’d end up in at a junior high party, right after you noticed that the hand cupping your breast didn’t belong to the boy you had a crush on but the creepy kid who wasn’t invited in the first place—you know the one: messed up Brillo Pad hair, crooked glasses, dried mucous accenting the corners of his jack-o-lantern smile.

  The desk opposite the doors was clear accept for a table tent that read: In Ceremony.

  “Ceremony?” she muttered.

  What kind of Parts Department required a ceremony? Her mind started to ponder, which was rarely a good thing, often ending in dwelling and or…

  “Hitch?” she whispered, but he seemed to be on sabbatical.

  Just like a man.

  Luce scanned the room for pamphlets, statuary, anything that might identify the purpose of the suite and finding nothing, crept forward toward the single door embedded in the wall, shut tight as a crypt. As she got closer, she could have sworn she heard the low, monotonous tones of men…chanting.

  For prosperity? she wondered.

  She’d heard of companies engaging in pretty bizarre team-building exercises to boost morale or amp up salesmen for big money days—tightrope walking, yoga boot camps, hug-ins—but the chanting sounded like something else. Something out of a horror movie, a seventies one like Rosemary’s Baby or The Stepford Wives. Although the room decor may have had an effect on dictating the decade, it didn’t date the sentiment. Creepy chanting, plus dated furnishings in a modern office building equaled sinister.

  But who was she to judge? There wasn’t time for that anyways. She needed to put her best foot forward and get a job. There was rent to pay and psychiatric diagnoses to stave off.

  Luce reached out and rapped on the closed door lightly.

  The chanting continued.

  She knocked harder this time and stood back, fumbling for the button at her collar. She couldn’t do anything about the length of her skirt but hopefully they’d get an air of propriety from a firmly fastened neckline.

  An amber refraction of light caught on the doorknob as it turned. As the door drew inward into darkness, Luce began to think she’d made a serious mistake.

  Another one.

  Possibly her third of the day. This seemed to be especially true when an ominous figure in a black hooded cloak stuck its head out sideways and the chanting grew to operatic levels. “Hear our plea!” The voices didn’t so much chant as scream, the sound earsplitting.

  That’s a really great door, she thought, very muffling, but all she could manage was a weak, “I’m sorry,” and an “I didn’t mean to—”

  Back away, she told herself. Back away. Back away.

  The cloaked figure strode forward, closing the door behind them with a sharp click—never a good sign. Luce was leery of several things—touristy suspension bridges, men with soul patches, seasonally available pressed meat items at chain restaurants—but up until that moment she wouldn’t have added hooded cloaks to the list.

  Maybe it was the looming—have you ever heard of non-hostile looming? Didn’t think so.

  Hoods secret a person’s face away into shadow, and who needs to shield their identity? Superheroes and villains. Luce didn’t believe in caped crusaders—other than in comics and TV, obviously, or those ridiculous folks who pop up in major cities along with their Twitter accounts getting themselves in all sorts of trouble/media attention.

  Villains, on the other hand.

  This one appeared to be firmly in the late sixties, early seventies Satanic cabal variety, what with the chanting and the shitty decorating.

  So Luce did what any self-respecting—and obviously sane—person would…

  She gasped, pivoting on heels too high for a high-tension chase sequence, and stumbled. The shag carpet didn’t cushion her fall nearly well as she’d have expected and her knee banged roughly.

  “Ow!” she cried but kept crawling. If she could only reach the elevator, she might stand a chance of avoiding the altar of doom that clearly sat in the other room. She clawed at the aging carpet as she propelled herself, but when she got to the closed elevator doors realized her error. The button seemed so far away, as though she’d have to traverse a cliff faced with wood paneling.

  She didn’t have time, even now the carpet was likely muffling the approach of the Satanist who’d be sacrificing her later.

  If only she’d thought to find the stairs, to secure an exit strategy. She would have needed one if she’d done something ridiculous during her interview and had to run from the scene, windmill arms and weeping.

  Any minute the bad man’s clawed fingers would be on her shoulders, pulling her toward the closed door, toward the chanting. The rest of the parishioners’ pleas would soon be answered. “Here’s your fresh meat,” he’d exclaim and then one of those squiggly antique daggers would be in her heart.

  She had to fight.

  Luce clambered to her feet, pressing the button calmly before spinning to confront the religious fanatic, and when she did, the lamp went out, pulling the blinds on all the light in the room.

  The chanting quieted. The only sound was her own panting and the—thankfully—grinding gears of the elevator behind her.

  And then, to her left, the squishing of a cushion, the thump of a foot against a
table. What was happening? She pressed herself against the elevator door, her head twisting away from the new sounds. The door across from her creaked open and whispers spilled out, a thin waller of amusement.

  Of desire.

  Of bloodlust. She was certain of that last one and tensed against whatever attack was about to happen.

  But then, from behind her, the elevator door opened and Luce threw herself inside. She slapped her palm against the bottom button, eyes wide with horror and staring out into the darkened office, sure that she’d be pulled kicking and screaming to her doom.

  As the doors shut—infuriatingly slowly—Luce watched in horror as the lights flicked on and the person threw their hood off revealing an average-looking woman gasping for air in silent laughter. She slapped her sides and threw her head back, bellowing—seriously, she looked like she could pee herself.

  Bitch.

  …

  Sister Mary-Agnes Albright goggled at Wade through her morning buzz. Her hair essed around her face in a style more suitable to a gangster movie involving tommy guns than an office setting, or an ex-nun for that matter, but perfectly in step with the men’s suit she wore, tailored in such a way that the masculinity was stripped out of it. Though it really could have been Albright’s aura that did that, not the tailor. Emasculating was one of her specialties. The defrocked mother superior was all business, and she did it in spite of a gimlet haze.

  “Did you get a load of this?” Sister Mary-Agnes slapped Thorwald’s assessment of the potential onto the conference table.

  Wade tapped the cover and slid it back. “I did. I have some concerns, chiefly the scores on the MMPI, but we’re running out of time. We’ll have to give her a shot, work out the kinks as we go.”

  “Kinks are normal, but this one, she’s as crazy as a shithouse rat, which.” She poured another martini, took a sip. “Might be a good thing.”

  “You know, for an ex-nun you’re pretty damn judgmental.”

  Sister Mary-Agnes pouted sympathetically. “Oh. Did I offend you, princess?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact—” Wade began, ready to rail. He was used to the nun’s insensitive nature, but he could only take so much turbulence before he needed an airsick bag.

  “Make you want to curl up in your afghan and rock away the trauma of the bad lady’s words?” she blurted, chewing at her cheeks.

  Wade sighed. “Are you almost done?”

  “Hold on.” Grinning wickedly, Sister Mary-Agnes stretched across a few seats and dug in her purse. “I think I have some salve for your tender pucker.”

  “Really?”

  She shrugged nonchalantly. “All I’m saying is, the mentally ill are notoriously difficult to control. No self-respecting demon would want to possess this one.”

  Wade shook his head and pushed himself away from the table, snatching his empty mug. “Because demons are known for their self-respect?”

  “I’ve met some pretty egotistical demons.”

  “Well, regardless. She’s all I’ve got. And speaking of demons…I have a lead on the one behind the attacks.”

  “Oh yes?” Her voice tippled at the end, the martini talking now.

  “Astaroth. Archduke with a long memory and a passion for revenge.”

  “Astaroth, huh? He’s been pretty quiet this decade. I thought he was busying himself twirling his crown on his choad.”

  Wade winced at Sister Mary-Agnes’s hand gestures. “Got a definite pull from the Dictionaire Infernale. So he’s my target until I get a better one.”

  Plunging her finger into her martini, she gave it a swizzle and a slug. “Well, it beats shooting blanks into a mole hill.”

  Wade cringed.

  Having swallowed not nearly enough coffee and about as much crap as was humanly possible for one morning—and it was only nine fifteen—Wade wasn’t about to sit in the cramped conference room listening to Sister Mary-Agnes mix metaphors.

  He wadded up the standardized questions in front of him, tossed it into the corner of the room, and strode out.

  “Where do you think you’re going, mister?” Sister Mary-Agnes asked, pointing at him with a recently emptied martini glass. “It’s you that needs an assistant. Last time I checked you’d burned through another one. Like a baby goes through diapers.”

  Wade slouched against the doorframe. “I’m going to grab some coffee and some pipe cleaners to scrape your voice out of my ears. Do you want some? Might help.”

  “Might help what, exactly?” The woman’s eyes tapered to slits.

  Wade shrugged and backed out.

  “Might help what?” she cried.

  Wade knew better than to keep engaging and he wasn’t kidding about the coffee. He was already kicking himself for not picking up a thermos full of Asterisk’s French roast on the way in, but the break room swill would have to do. Despite the fact that it meant he’d have to brave the gauntlet of the bitterest clerical department known to man. He called them the Weird Sisters, like the witches in Macbeth because they always appeared together—although by those terms, he supposed he could have been referencing the Olsen Twins. Also, none of the clerical staff appeared particularly talented at anything but getting on his damn nerves. So, yeah, Olsen Twins over Macbeth.

  Wade stayed close to the walls as he passed the wide alcove that housed the trio’s cubicles. He could hear their random chatter and crouched as he picked up speed, gaining momentum as the doorway to the break room came into view.

  “Wade Crowson!” It was the middle Weird. Jessica. She stood with her hands on her hips and a conspiracy darting in her eyes.

  “Yes, Jessica.” Wade straightened.

  The woman pushed a lock of dirty blond hair behind her ear and leaned in. “We’re not talking to Shelly. Just so you know. She’s on the way out.” She pointed to the front of the office, to the door presumably.

  “She’s been sacked?”

  “No, no, not yet. But we’ll get something on her soon and then…” Jessica drew a finger across her throat and made a gesture like Shelly’s tongue would fall through the gash. She jiggled it wildly.

  “I don’t think it would do that.”

  “Well, you’d know.” She rolled her eyes.

  Wade hated to ask, but occasionally he had to engage with the other employees or they started to get squirrelly. “What did Shelly do this time?”

  “She forgot to buy coffee.”

  “What?” The word blasted out of him like a train whistle.

  “I know!” Jessica shouted, prompting her compatriots, Elissa and Marissa to prairie dog in their cubes.

  “Right?” They cried in unison.

  “So you’re telling me, if I go into that break room. That one right there. I won’t find any coffee?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  “Shelly’s got to go,” Wade grumbled.

  Jessica poked him in the chest. “Just keep quiet and let us handle it.”

  Wade narrowed his eyes and nodded.

  A man in his position didn’t get as far as he had in the demon game by not thinking fast on his feet. Wade cut bait on the break-room drama and made a beeline for the one person at The Parts Department that could most certainly hook him up.

  He felt a hitch in his chest when he found Quince’s door closed. She hardly ever worked in secrecy—just didn’t give a shit. Knocking quickly, he tried the knob and finding it unlocked, pushed in quietly.

  Quince glanced up from a black trunk the size of a coffin and gave Wade a curt nod.

  “Hey, Quince, you got some stuff.”

  She grinned. “Oh yeah. I got some stuff. Look at this.”

  Sinking her hand into the luggage, her eyes grew wild and devilish as she withdrew an enormous hunting knife, jagged and sturdy enough to saw off tree branches, though Wade was pretty sure it’s purpose was dismemberment. “I’ve got some new tools for your trade.”

  Wade peered over the lip of the trunk into a blinding array of medical equipment, the ove
rhead fluorescents sparkling off polished chest-spreaders, trays of scalpels and bone saws, speculum and forceps.

  “Whoa,” he said. “You raid a hospital?”

  Quince stuck her tongue out through a wide grin and dropped into some hip-hop moves. “Aw yeah!”

  Wade laughed, clapped his hand on her shoulder. “You’re a bad-ass.”

  She nodded and retreated to her desk and a blissfully full pot of coffee. “You want a cup?”

  Wade relaxed into relief. Reaching for the mug with clawed fingers, grasping like a street urchin. He nursed on the hardy brew, and groaning, slouched into a chair next to Quince’s desk.

  “Now.” Quince kicked her feet up onto the edge of her desk. “It’s your turn for show and tell. How did it go with that sweet little monkey you snuck out of speed dating with?”

  Wade scrambled for an answer. He’d certainly thought about the girl, Lucy, since they’d parted under…stiff circumstances. There’d been something about her that sucked him in, a look in her eyes, a lack of pretense. She’d been so aggressive verbally. He wasn’t used to it.

  And more than anything, he’d wanted her.

  She had proved an immaculate distraction. The feel of her in his hands, her body pressed against his.

  “It was nothin’.”

  Quince rolled her eyes, shoulders, and spat, “Bullshit. That response took you way longer than it should have. She had you sprung and you know it! And so tiny, I bet she crawled up in your pants like a baby kangaroo.”

  Sprung? No. Absolutely not.

  Horny, quite possibly. But relationships were not in the equation.

  Wade would never describe himself as a lover rather than a fighter. That would be bullshit. Wade was a fighter, he had to be, that was his job. He enjoyed women…as exercise.

  “You know, Quince. Your animal references worry me.”

  “Then don’t let me get started on the non-domestic cats.”

  Wade, laughing again, suppressing the need to rebut Quince’s assertion, looked at his watch.

  Nine thirty.

  It was time.

  …

  Luce’s head lolled to the side. She was relieved despite the humiliation, and just in time to see Hitch pop into view. He slid down the elevator wall and pushed up next to her, crossing his feet at the ankles.