Chapter 2
R EALIZATION CRASHED OVER Sam, mortification hot on its heels.
Of course she’d gone viral. With her luck, she’d be a meme come morning, a reaction GIF by noon, doomed to join Bad Luck Brian and that poor Ermahgerd Girl in internet infamy. Assuming she wasn’t one already.
“Don’t worry,” the perfectly-pulled-together stranger standing across from her assured her, as if reading her mind. “You haven’t quite gone viral. Not yet at least.”
What a cold comfort that was.
“Just between us, I think you dodged a bullet. Your girlfriend, or, sorry, I guess I should say your ex ? She seems a little …” She tapped a finger against her chin; her polish, the same shade as her lips, fresh blood spilled on snow, gleamed. “Bitchy?”
Sam’s hackles rose, bitter indignation clawing up her throat. “You don’t know her.”
One perfectly sculpted brow rose. “And you do?”
Sam scoffed. Of course she did. “Not that it’s any of your business, but Hannah and I have been together for over two years.”
She knew Hannah. She loved Hannah, loved her so much that it hurt sometimes. An ache between her ribs, a stitch in her side that stole her breath. Growing pains.
“Interesting.” Corn-silk hair spilled over her slender shoulder as she cocked her head.
“I imagine you proposed because you believed she’d say yes and not because you wanted to, I don’t know …
” The corners of her mouth quirked in a smile, the pretty bow of her lips notching an arrow aimed straight at Sam, pinning her in place.
“Torture yourself? Honestly, though, as a chef, dating a … what is she this week? An ovo-lacto, gluten-free vegetarian who eschews sugar? You must be a little bit of a masochist, mustn’t you? ”
“Keto,” Sam murmured, perturbed that this stranger knew as much about Hannah’s diet as she did. And who the hell said mustn’t ? “She’s doing keto.”
She snapped her fingers. “Keto! That’s the one where you eat stupid quantities of meat, isn’t it?” Sam’s stomach swooped as the woman bared her teeth in something too vicious, too sharklike to pass for a smile. “She certainly chewed you up and spit you out, didn’t she?”
Sam took a step back that didn’t exist, her hip pressing painfully against the handrail. She didn’t know who this woman was or where she got off, but—
The elevator lurched to a sudden stop, her stomach lurching with it. The canister lights overhead flickered ominously seconds before extinguishing altogether, plunging them into total darkness.
Sam cast around inside her pocket for her phone, finding it, fumbling it, and recovering it, all within the span of a few heart-stopping seconds. A cracked screen was all her broke ass needed.
“Ch ch ch ah ah ah.”
A giggle followed, sending a shiver skittering down Sam’s spine.
“Would you stop ,” she hissed, heart jackrabbiting painfully.
No amount of jabbing her thumb against her screen caused it to light up.
The damn thing was deader than dead. Her fault for forgetting to charge it this morning, too nervous for tonight to think straight.
That she’d remembered the ring was a miracle. Or not. “You’re not funny.”
“You’re not afraid of the dark, are you?” the woman taunted.
With shaking hands, Sam reached for the zipper of her purse, an illicit canister of pepper spray buried somewhere in its depths in case of emergency.
For the record, no, the dark had never frightened her; bayous and backwoods didn’t come with streetlights.
What lurked in the dark was a different story.
Right now, Sam’s fears were much more tangible and far too close for comfort as she started to worry that the woman standing only a few feet from her was a few fries short of a Happy Meal.
Before she could unzip her purse, the elevator’s lights flickered, strobe-like flashes of too-bright fluorescent light illuminating the space, reflecting off the mirrors, distorting her vision, making her see things, impossible things, things that couldn’t be real.
The byproduct of an all-too-active imagination and not enough sleep was that, for a split second, Sam could’ve sworn that nestled between her blond bangs and beehive bump, the woman across from her had actual horns jutting from the top of her head.
An ominous grinding noise filled the air, followed by a low hum, the sound of the backup generator kicking on. Seconds later, the striplights at Sam’s feet lit up, bathing the elevator with a warm amber glow.
From the corner of her eye, she chanced a glance at the woman standing across from her, an irrational part of her afraid of what she’d see.
Horns, a tail, a dark, velvety aura clinging to her closer than a shadow …
Sam scoffed softly, feeling silly. For a moment there, she’d thought the stranger’s eyes had been black.
Entirely onyx, sclera and all. Ridiculous, considering now, like before, they were blue.
Strikingly sapphire, but not exactly supernatural. Nothing to wig out over.
There was nothing strange about her, nothing stranger than there’d been before the elevator had plunged them into darkness.
“Something funny?” The perfectly normal woman standing in front of Sam asked.
“I thought …” Sam sighed and dragged a hand through her hair, mussing her already messy braid. “I thought I saw something.”
The woman rocked forward on her toes, her big blue eyes unblinking. “Like?”
“Forget it. It’s nothing. Just my brain playing tricks on me.”
“Ah.” She nodded sagely. “We all go a little mad sometimes.”
Sam bristled. “I’m not crazy.” She gave the woman her most withering glare. “Jury’s out on you, though.”
A bright peal of laughter burst from the blonde’s lips, sending another shiver skittering down Sam’s spine, goose bumps rising along her skin. “It’s from a movie. Psycho ? There’s no way you haven’t heard of it.”
Sam ignored her in favor of shuffling over to the elevator’s control panel, jamming her thumb into the elevator’s call button, and waiting impatiently for the dial tone, some sign that someone—building maintenance?
the fire department?—was going to answer.
The ensuing silence made her heart beat faster.
“Come on,” the blond woman prodded, seemingly unaffected by the emergency situation at hand.
“Hitchcock? The boy has serious mommy issues and Janet Leigh gets slaughtered in the shower. All eek, eek, eek .” With one hand raised in a fist, she mimed what Sam could only imagine to be either a dramatic stabbing or an extremely aggressive hand job.
“Ringing any bells?” At Sam’s horrified stare, she tutted.
“Kids these days don’t have a clue that Jamie Lee Curtis’s mother was the original scream queen.
It’s all Halloween this and Halloween that, and, look, don’t get me wrong.
I love an eighties slasher as much as the next person, but new doesn’t always mean better. ”
Kids these days. Along with cardinal directions and heights, Sam had never been good at guessing ages, but the woman looked younger than her by three, maybe four years.
“I’m not really a fan of scary movies.” She gave the call button another press, still nothing happening.
“Pressing it harder’s not going to make it work, you know.”
She was right, but Sam still gave the call button one last hard, petulant press, really putting her weight behind it, her thumb bending from the force.
Their gazes clashed in the mirror and the stranger’s lips curved in a smile that all but screamed I told you so .
Heat gathered in Sam’s face, and even without the mirror, she’d have known there was a splotchy blush spreading down her throat, that the tips of her ears poking through her hair had gone scarlet.
She turned, averting her eyes, avoiding her own reflection and the woman’s, too, that smirk infuriating, the sight of it doing little to quell the boiling of Sam’s blood.
“Can you call the management company or something?”
“Who? Me?”
“No, I was talking to the other person in the room.” Sam glanced pointedly around the otherwise empty elevator.
“Yes, you . The call button’s not working, clearly.
Seeing as you and I are the only two people unfortunate enough to be trapped inside this elevator, someone should call for help. And considering my phone is dead …”
“Oh, I don’t live here. I’m just visiting.”
Sam rolled her eyes, what little remained of her patience wearing thinner by the minute, practically cheesecloth by this point. “Okay, well, could you call 911?”
“Sure.” She grinned. “What’s the number?”
Sam’s jaw dropped.
Another laugh escaped the stranger’s lips, sparing Sam the trouble of coming up with a reply. “Geez, lighten up. I’m fucking with you.”
“I’m not in the mood,” Sam snapped, frustration reaching fever pitch. “Could you just—Jesus, could you please just call somebody?”
“Would if I could, but alas …” She grabbed at her poofy pink skirt. “No pockets, no phone, no dice.”
Sam only barely resisted face-palming. “That’s just—that’s great.
Awesome. Fan-fucking-tastic.” She gestured to the panel of unresponsive buttons in front of her, which might as well have belonged to her nephew’s pop-it for all the good it did.
Freaking useless. “My cousin and I watched that Disney made-for-TV movie Tower of Terror when I was a kid, and personally I’m not keen on having my spirit trapped in some malfunctioning elevator, so if you have any bright ideas as to how we’re supposed to get out of here, feel free to chime in. ”
“Yeesh. Scary movies really aren’t your thing, are they?”
“I never claimed to be a connoisseur of the genre, that’s for sure.”