Chapter One #2
They turned the corner, Jenna and Barbara holding on to each other as they traversed craters of ice formed on unshoveled sidewalks.
The enormous oaks and skeletal sugar maples on the riverside were cramped, their roots pushing through the sidewalks, adding to the treacherous footing.
The larger homes were interspersed with small apartment buildings and a Donuts Delite hunkered down at the end of the street, its cheerful white-and-blue facade loud against the fading charm of the older structures.
Nodding along as Barbara complained that the drier her insides, the wetter her outsides, Josie drew in a deep breath. She exhaled a wish, one of many unheard pleas to the universe that she could find a safe place and the world would be gentle with her child.
Gradually, Barbara and Jenna ran out of complaints so only the shushing sound of tires over wet snow accompanied them.
Waiting back on Josie’s desk were three more hours’ worth of work, a slew of emails from her insurance company about her son’s latest checkup, and her boss’s infernal premeeting packets.
Just another day in the fascinating world of student financial aid at a private university.
None of that was going anywhere, so she slowed her pace, even though her toes were turning numb.
Until her phone pinged in her purse.
She couldn’t ignore the pings. Not with Amos’s finicky heart.
That wasn’t his official diagnosis but try saying “tetralogy of Fallot” to a four-year-old and all you get is a blank stare.
Josie pulled the phone from her purse and paused.
She’d set up notifications for an apartment search when she found out the rent on her place was going up.
There had been nothing for three weeks and Josie was pretending not to panic. This notification said…
“Guys?” Josie looked up. Her walking companions were half a block ahead of her.
Jenna and Barbara turned around. The cowlick in the back of Jenna’s white hair stuck up over her knitted ear warmers, and with her monochromatic white snow pants and parka, she looked like a stork.
Next to her, Barbara’s long gray locs were wrapped in a multicolored crocheted turban, and her green wool coat and red moon boots contrasted violently with both Jenna’s ensemble and the gray-on-white snow covering everything.
“I got a notification of an apartment matching my requirements,” Josie told them.
“Probably something wrong with it,” said Jenna.
“Did you hear about that landlord hiding a secret camera in his tenants’ bathrooms?” Barbara asked.
Josie nodded. “So, it turns out it’s on this block. Can you believe the luck?”
“You’ll be two minutes away from work. Don’t think the boss won’t take advantage of that,” said Jenna.
“That’s suspicious you got a notification of an apartment on this block while you were walking by. How do you know it’s not a cyberkidnapping?” asked Barbara.
Again, Josie nodded. The best part about Jenna’s and Barbara’s intense absorption with the worst case was Josie didn’t have to argue with them about the likelihood of either of those things happening.
“I’ll only take ten minutes,” Josie said, walking backward and waving at them as she squinted at address numbers on the buildings. “No one will miss me.”
“Okay, no problem,” said Jenna.
“Don’t die,” Barbara called, and the two of them turned their backs to Josie and started walking again.
That was Barbara’s standard goodbye.
Even at Christmas.
Josie counted the building numbers as she walked down the sidewalk. “Here’s 4473…4481…5555. Oh, would you look at that?”
That was the six-story wine-colored brick building sitting far back from the sidewalk. A blanket of untouched spring snow covered the front lawn, and the walkway had been neatly shoveled.
The notification had said apartment tours were available today, beginning every half hour in the front lobby. Josie sent Barbara a text as she walked up to the building, telling her she would let her know as soon as she finished.
Better to head Barbara off at the pass. Josie didn’t want to come back to work only to find search parties assembling.
Hedges of waist-high holly bushes flanked her at the entrance. The outside doors were made of a heavy, dark wood, and two brass knockers in the shape of opened eyes hung on each door.
Josie’s skin tightened over her bones and her stomach flipped like it did at the slow climb of a roller coaster.
Something was very right about this place, on this day.
Pushing inward on the dulled brass door handles revealed a high-ceilinged lobby with black-and-white-tiled floors.
A bank of stairs at her left had wrought iron banisters twisted in the shape of birds, roses, and fleurs-de-lis.
The stairs stopped at a landing, where a tall, thin table held a vase of dried flowers before it continued out of sight.
A wall of mailboxes stood to the right and the elevator was directly in front of her, flanked on either side by two niches holding truly hideous gargoyles.
“How…whimsical,” she said aloud; her voice bounced briskly off the walls and ceiling in a satisfying echo.
The lobby had an air of faded grandeur. Beneath her feet, the tiled mosaics were dulled by blackened grout and the walls needed a good scrubbing.
The floor lights above the elevator lit and Josie checked her watch.
The heirloom had been a gift to her great-grandfather during the war from a family he’d rescued from a camp.
Josie had never seen it anywhere other than her grandfather’s wrist until the day he died.
That day, he’d taken the watch off and handed it over to her, unable to speak, but making his wishes known by gently curling her fingers over the watch and wrapping her fist in his hand one last time.
God.
Where had that memory come from?
Before Josie could decide if it was a good or a bad sign, the elevator doors opened with a melancholy shushing sound.
“…don’t care what you say. I heard what I heard. You can’t tell me the noise was anything other than—” A pasty, nervous-looking man stepped off the elevator and tripped, nearly landing facedown in front of Josie.
“This place is a deathtrap,” he complained as he straightened. When he noticed Josie he paused, a greasy leer spreading across his face like an oil spill.
“Do you live here?” he asked.
Before Josie could answer, the elevator doors closed, and a shadow fell over them both.
“You are here for the tour?” the shadow caster asked.
Josie looked up to meet the eyes of a tall man who’d exited the elevator after Pasty-Face.
Impossible to say exactly how dark a brown they were in the low light of the lobby, but his eyes were bracketed by starbursts of tiny wrinkles in his deeply tanned skin. His eyelashes were long, as long as a child’s, and the dip beneath his cheekbones slightly shadowed.
A sense of safety so strong her bones hummed with it washed over her in that moment—could have been two moments, ten minutes, an hour, Josie had no idea.
However long it was, it was too long. The tall man cleared his throat, one thick eyebrow rising into a triangular question mark.
“The tour?” he asked again.
Those eyes were set in a ruggedly handsome face. He looked like a hero from an old black-and-white movie, broad-shouldered with a strong, squared chin. Two scars ran parallel to his right eyebrow, ending at the streak of white hair at his temple.
“I’ll take your tour again,” said Pasty-Face. He sent Josie a tight, hungry smile.
Before Josie could speak, a high tinkling sound echoed through the lobby.
Pasty-Face spun around.
“Did you hear that?” he hollered. “This place is haunted. Haunted, I tell you!”
The tall man ran his fingers through thick black hair long enough to reach his chin and grimaced at Pasty-Face’s voice. His brows rose and he looked at Josie as if asking for help. She shrugged and the tall man’s head dropped to his chest for a moment in exaggerated defeat.
“I hear them laughing at me.” Pasty-Face pointed at the staircase. “Girls. Teenage girls. I can’t see them, but I know it’s me they’re laughing at.” His voice thinned to a whimper. “Haunted by teenagers.”
Again, the tall man glanced at her, tilting his head to the right as if asking for a favor. Josie wanted to smile but this unspoken conversation made her nervous.
Was he flirting?
No. Why would he?
“Yes,” Josie said, the word barely making it past her thick tongue and dry lips. She pulled her scarf to her chest and cleared her throat. “Yes, I am here for the tour.”
The tall man nodded, his eyes crinkling. “This is the lobby. Over there are everyone’s mailboxes, and packages are left on that ledge.”
Josie took a step toward him, but Pasty-Face set himself between her and the man, and gripped her upper arm tightly.
“Don’t go with—I can take you, I mean, can I take you for coffee?” the man asked. “You wouldn’t want to rent an apartment here anyway; it’s creepy and you can’t get cell phone reception in the lobby.”
Josie’s mouth opened in astonishment, but nothing came out. Twenty-eight years old and still conditioned to react quietly and politely no matter what the circumstances.
What she wanted to do was tell Pasty-Face where to put his hand and what to do with it but her inbred instinct to avoid unpleasantness kicked in. Josie smiled instead.
“Thank you for your invitation, but I’ll take the tour,” she said, stepping back so it wouldn’t be obvious she was pulling her arm away.
Why? Why couldn’t she be more like Barbara and call the guy on his rudeness?
With a meaty thud, the tall man’s hand landed on Pasty-Face’s shoulder. “Your tour is over.”
There was no hint of menace in the tall man’s voice, but still, his dismissal was final. Pasty-Face turned a sickly gray color and sidled out of the front doors without another word, leaving Josie alone with this man. A stranger. A tall stranger with kind eyes.
“Who are you?” she blurted out.
The giant cocked his head and Josie blushed.
“I meant, um, do you work for the management agency or for the building? Not that you don’t appear trustworthy, but…”
But she’d listened to Barbara’s and Jenna’s horror stories for too many years to trust her instincts.
Monsters come in all shapes and sizes.
“My name is Pax,” the man said. “I am the building superintendent.”
Josie waited a beat, but he said nothing else.
“Just Pax?” she asked.
He gestured at the gargoyle to the left.
On the wall, next to the gargoyle’s head, were two frames, below which were small brass tags.
The first tag was engraved President, Tenants’ Association, and above it was a picture of a beautiful Black woman in a white-and-gold headwrap.
Above the brass tag reading Building Superintendent was a picture of the man standing next to Josie, his sympathetic eyes seemingly fixed on the woman in the picture next to him.
“If you feel comfortable following me, we will take the stairs,” he said quietly.
Outside, the clouds lifted, and the tepid sunlight warmed the lobby’s dingy walls to the color of a candle flame. A sound like the shushing of wings came from somewhere and it smelled like violet gum.
As Josie followed the man up the stairs, a scraping noise came from behind her and she whipped her head around.
Huh.
She would have sworn one of the gargoyles had moved.