Chapter 16
We sit near the window overlooking the city, drinking some of Eleanor’s top-shelf booze. The liquor goes down smoothly.
"You really had no idea?" Paul says. "About any of it. The building, the books, what she was into."
"My mother made sure of that."
"She sounds intense."
I laugh softly. The whiskey is warm in my chest. The rain is coming back, tapping at the windows.
"She thought everything in the world was dangerous. Especially anything fun."
"That sucks."
"Ride a motorcycle? No. Get a tattoo? No. I asked to dye my hair red when I was sixteen and you would have thought I'd asked to join a cult."
“You’d look hot as a redhead.”
This makes me smile.
"So the kindergarten teaching," Paul says. "That was?—"
"Not my first choice, no."
"What was?"
I look at him. He looks back with a patient expression, waiting for me to fill the silence. Must be one of those reporter tricks.
"My favorite movie growing up was Silence of the Lambs," I say. "I watched it for the first time when I was twelve. My mom found out and reacted the way you'd expect. Naturally I watched it again the next week at my friend’s house."
"You wanted to be Clarice."
"I wanted to be better than Clarice. Study abnormal psychology, shoot guns, learn Krav Maga. Get into the heads of serial killers.”
As I say those words, I can’t help thinking of the irony that I now face a real-life monster.
Paul is quiet for a moment. He's seeing me in a new light.
"You were never scared of the dark," he says. "You were interested in it."
He's not wrong. That's the part that lands.
"My mom used to say I was too wild for my own good."
"Maybe she was trying to protect you."
"Maybe she was trying to protect everybody else."
Paul considers this. Doesn't challenge it. Another thing I'm starting to appreciate about him.
"What about you?" I ask. "Any deep dark secrets that put you on the roof of a murder building with a selfie stick?"
"My dad was a warlock. Journalism seemed like a natural next step after I got kicked out of Hogwarts."
"Fuck you." I laugh despite myself. "Come on. Give me something real."
He looks at his glass. The easy grin fades.
"When I was a kid there was an old woman who lived across the hall from us," he says. "Sweetest lady you ever met."
The rain taps softly at the windows.
“Don’t tell me she turned out to be a witch too.”
“Are you going to let me tell the story or not?”
“Go for it.”
Paul resumes his story. “Her name was Mrs. Morrison. Probably saw her more than my actual grandparents.”
The rain continues to tap softly against the windows.
“Every day after school she was waiting for me to come home. She’d crack open her door, hand me some candy. Until one day she wasn’t there. A day turned into two. Then a week.”
The smile is gone now.
“I told my mom I thought something was wrong. Single mom, two jobs, three kids, she had more immediate things on her mind. I get that now. I didn't then."
I watch his face. I don't interrupt.
"After about ten days I noticed a smell coming from the apartment. I was twelve. I decided I had to do something.” He takes a slow sip of whiskey. "The back window was cracked open. So I climbed in."
A long silence.
"She'd been dead for weeks," he finally says.
"Alone. Nobody had noticed. Nobody had knocked on the door or called the super or wondered where she was.
" He looks at me finally. "That's when I understood how easy it is for people to disappear in this city. Not dramatically. Just quietly while everyone else is busy living their lives, busy surviving.”
I think about Apartment 5A. The stale birthday cake on the kitchen table.
"So now you make people notice," I say.
Paul shrugs.
"I try."
I look at him in the gray afternoon light, and I feel something shift that has nothing to do with grotesques or occult rituals or rooftop murders. Something entirely ordinary and poorly timed.
I’m starting to realize that I like this person.
Paul’s phone chirps. He checks the incoming message.
"I have to go meet someone," he says. He slowly pulls on his jacket, reluctant to leave. "Story I've been working on. Already pushed it twice this week."
"Go."
"You're sure you're?—"
"Paul."
He looks at me. I look back.
"It had chances to hurt me," I say. "On the roof this morning. Last night. The night before. It didn't."
His face goes serious.
"Maybe it wants something worse than hurting you."
"Like what? My immortal soul?"
It doesn't land the way I meant it to. He doesn't smile.
"Sara—"
"I can handle this."
He studies me for a long moment with those careful dark eyes. Then he does something unexpected.
He doesn't argue. Just nods.
"I'll see you tomorrow," he says. “Try to stay out of trouble until then.”
To my surprise he gives me a hug and a peck on the cheek.
It catches me off guard, but I like it, the contact sending a pleasant shiver down my spine.
"I'll try not to get murdered in the meantime."
"I'm serious."
"So am I. Go."
He goes.
The door closes and the apartment expands, the way a space reveals its true size when you find yourself suddenly alone.
I sit on the floor by the radiator for another minute with my whiskey glass and listen to Paul's receding footsteps. The elevator arrives, the doors close, then silence.
I get up and go to the window.
I study the city in its afternoon light. The grotesque is somewhere out there in the gray — patient, waiting, connected to me by something I'm only beginning to understand.
I pick up the binoculars.
And start looking for a monster that likes to hide in plain sight.