Chapter 10 #2
I’m not really prepared for the rush of appreciation at how easy it is to be around Ellis. It feels strange not to have to fight to get some sign of affection from him. It’s not the first time I’ve been struck by how earnestly and simply his thoughts and feelings are available.
“I’m surprised your clingy ex let you out of his sight tonight.”
I wince. There it is. Very available.
“He’s, uh, busy,” I say, and it could be the truth, for all I know. If I tell Ellis I needed to use my friend as a buffer between me and my ex to get some time alone tonight, he’s going to say that’s a reason I need distance.
He must have a dozen reasons to hate Clayton, so of course he would find flaws in anything I told him. Hearing myself when I was telling Ellis everything yesterday at once made it sound so much worse. Then the things he said about Clayton, I just don’t know if I can trust them.
“So, what’s got him so busy?”
“They’re appointing him Protector of the City in some ceremony tomorrow. I’m sure he’ll expect me to be there.”
His sigh echoes off the damp brickwork. “Isn’t the point of vigilante-ism that it’s unrelated to the government? That you’re not putting an unchecked weapon in the hand of a government that could potentially become fascist?”
“Something about the way you talk makes me think that you leave a lot of comments online,” I return dryly.
A sardonic smile tugs at the corner of his mouth as he claps a hand against his chest and feigns being wounded. I roll my eyes and continue shuffling down the grimy path, skirting carefully around a pile of trash.
We come up to a tight corner and stop. His claws curl over the edge for extra balance.
I’m sort of already resigning myself to the fact that I might get at least one foot wet, when Ellis curls an arm around my waist, squeezing me bodily to him. I gasp aloud as the crush of his arm against me lifts my feet off the ground, his tail wrapping around my leg.
The world moves, or maybe he just pivots the pair of us around the narrow corner.
Ellis deposits me on the wider, less questionable ledge, releasing me just as quickly as he’d scooped me up. My body mourns the loss of the firm heat of his body instantly.
And just like that, my panties are drenched, and I’m achingly horny.
His hand remains loosely on my hip. When I lean back against him, he stills against me.
The light behind him carves a sliver of his features out of his silhouette, and I watch the shadows deepen between the cords of his neck as he swallows and says, “Listen, Lacey, I’ve been thinking about our little problem—”
“We have a problem? I wasn’t aware,” I reply, my voice suddenly hushed and whispery.
“Don’t do that,” he groans, closing his eyes and tipping his head back. The dim light catches and caresses the line of his jaw.
“Don’t do what?” I breathe back, injecting a note of innocence into my tone.
“You know.”
“Am I doing something you haven’t also been doing?”
Our bodies are barely an inch apart, hovering on the brink of forgetting what we’re supposed to be doing now. I watch too closely as he wets his lower lip, the movement of his eyelashes as his eyes fall to my mouth.
His forehead presses to mine, and he makes a quiet noise of frustration. “I wouldn’t rely on my willpower to keep us focused, if I were you.”
I sigh and pull back. He’s right. We shouldn’t waste this time getting distracted, even if I don’t know when I’m going to see him again after this. I turn and keep moving on down the tunnel.
Clayton never let me tag along on a recon mission like this. When I insisted I could be of more help, he’d always stress that it was better if he worked alone. Like constantly getting kidnapped meant I was unreliable or something.
It wasn’t something I knew how to bring up to him, that when he reached me, sometimes he forgot to untie me until after everything was finished.
I don’t know how I would tell Clayton about what I’m doing. He’d likely think I was betraying him.
And wasn’t it a betrayal? Did I really owe that to him?
It does feel like cheating. I didn’t speak out loud the idea of inviting Ellis over to finish what we started, but it hovered in the air. I don’t know how I would keep it from turning into one more time, again, and again, and again.
The door at the end of this maze is unimpressive, to say the least. A couple concrete stairs and a steel railing lead up to the plain metal frame, rusty and painted with the same dull industrial gray everything else down here is.
There’s a grate a few feet from the door, overwhelmed with the ooze.
Every few seconds another little piece breaks free from the rest, sliding downstream with the current.
Ellis hangs back at the last corner before the door. “I hate to show you another dead end, but this is as far as I’ve gotten with it before.”
“Maybe I can pick the lock,” I say, with probably still too much confidence, pulling a bobby pin out of my hair from where it was holding my winter hat in place.
“Maybe you’ll gain the ability to pick locks within the next few minutes.”
“I was hoping it’s a cheap enough lock that sticking a hairpin inside would work.”
“We’re pretty close to the east side of Goethal. I don’t know if you’ve seen inside the buildings up there, buuuut . . .”
Even as he says that there’s the low rumble of the subway racing under the city, not too far off.
“You mean I drove an hour out of the city just to crawl back to a couple blocks over from where I started?”
“It took you an hour to get out of the city?”
“Yeah, rush hour is no joke. The bridge floods with commuters at 4:45 every weekday because everyone suddenly thinks if they change lanes enough times they’ll get around everyone else.”
Approaching the door, it quickly becomes clear that it doesn’t even have a door handle or even its hinges exposed. A small panel on the wall next to the door is just as impassive, with no discernible brand, just two LED lights blinking red and green on its side.
“So, you know what street we’re under?” I ask, distracted as I look for anything I can work with.
“Street, building, basement, the works. We could order a pizza if we could figure out how to get upstairs from here,” he jokes.
I blow a wisp of hair out of my face and crouch down to better look at the sliver of space between the door and the frame.
Turning my phone’s flashlight on, I can see the bolt holding the door shut.
I feel silly with my hairpin in my hand, thinking I’d be able to do anything with it.
Still, I look closer, trying to shine the light better on it.
My phone bumps the electric lock panel, and the lights on its side turn blue, a mechanism whirrs and something clicks.
I stumble back to stand as the door falls away under my palm.
“Oh shit, you actually got it? Awesome,” Ellis congratulates me as the door swings open on slow, well-oiled hinges.
I stare blankly at what just happened. Why did that work? I didn’t do anything. Was there a button I missed?
“Did you see that? The lights on the side just turned green and the door unbolted.”
“Yeah, you’re a lockpicking master,” he half-laughs, half-whispers, and slips past me inside. “Looks like the coast is clear, come on.”
His hand snags mine, and he tugs me a few steps inside. I glance back over my shoulder at the door. There’s a sensation of unshakable dread that creeps up my spine. It shouldn’t have just opened like that.
For a moment, we just stand in the center of the room. Inside, the ooze covers the walls like tumors, becoming like some kind of translucent flesh growing in whatever direction it can.
“Alright, this is your investigation. Lead the way. Tell me what to do,” Ellis whispers.
“Right, right. Um . . .” I chew my lower lip, looking around. “Any communication or names you can find are top priority. The more we know about who is running this place, the better. If we can figure out what this stuff is the by-product of, that’s good too.”
I take my phone out, and start taking pictures of anything I see, even if it might not be important. I don’t know how much time we have right now to sort through everything for what will be useful.
There’s a few desks lined with computers, but all of them are either off or logged out. I debate internally if I could just unplug one of them and carry it all the way back out of the storm drains, but they’re each roughly the size of a suitcase.
This part at least seems like a breakroom, where a few lockers line one wall. Ellis has started going through them.
“Maybe there’s an employee ID badge just laying around. And a sticky note with all the passwords,” he says, way too optimistically. I snort.
His tail knocks over a mug full of pens on the surface behind him.
Without turning around, the end of his tail curls around it and sets it back upright in a practiced motion as precise and purposeful as either one of his hands.
And there I go again, wondering a little too much about his tail, getting distracted. Focus, girl.
There’s an old, boxy TV, half-buried under a stack of old paper coffee cups, tuned to the news.
I’d glanced past it initially, but when I see Clayton standing on the steps of what looks a lot like city hall in front of a podium and a swarm of microphones, I find myself automatically peering closer to turn the volume up.
“—the dedication ceremony will be here, tomorrow night—”
I feel Ellis’s presence hovering over my shoulder.
“Manhunt for flying mutant declared,” he reads off the scrolling banner along the bottom and blows out a breath. “That’ll be fun.”
I’ve had bigger reactions over broken nails. “You’re taking the news pretty well.”
“What news? That they’re making it official instead of implicit?” Ellis shrugs, wings flexing out of the way as he leans back against the row of lockers. Then his head tips back in a groan and hits the metallic door with a snare. “Fuck, I’m gonna have to start cooking at home more.”