The sun was down. Hackett’s parking lot was empty, windows, dark, and the street silent except for the train whistle a block away.
Max couldn’t remember how she’d gotten there.
The afternoon was a blank, as if she’d hidden next to the stairs outside Hal’s office building in a daze until dusk. But no, there had been a panicked flight, Wendy’s heart pounding in her ears, Wendy’s hands on the steering wheel, and Wendy’s frantic breath in her chest.
If spirit possession was real, not a product of her own fractured mind, then Max was well and truly possessed. She went with it. She had no choice. Together, she and Wendy rushed toward a goal like that train out there on the tracks.
The problem was that Max had no idea where to stop. She wasn’t sure Wendy did either.
She climbed from her car, rooted around in her purse for the key she kept on a separate chain. The shop closed at five on a Saturday and was empty by half-past. Deserted. Cold and creepy, like Bud Traynor’s voice along her nerve endings.
In her office, the fronds of Wendy’s spider plant crawled toward non-existent sunlight and water. She stroked a leaf, felt it with the tenderness of a mother.
Inside her, Wendy was pleased.
With the greenery once again happy, Max sat at the desk, stretched, and reveled in the silence. Pulling open a drawer, she ran her fingers across the tabs of the folders, flashes like a rainbow. When she closed her eyes, prisms of color danced against her lids.
She turned on the computer, went into the word processing program, and started her list.
Bud Traynor. She left the text black. For evil.
Carla Drake. She turned it green. For envy.
Hal Gregory. She chose yellow. For being the pale angry shadow of Wendy’s father.
Remy Hackett. Red. For draining the life blood of the people who worked for him.
Nicholas Drake. Blue. For sadness.
The computer froze. Her cursor stopped blinking. She hit the escape several times. Nothing. Damn thing. Remy wouldn’t spring for an updated model. Max crawled beneath the desk and reached for the power button. The CPU beeped, and the fan whirred.
“What’s going on here?”
She shrieked, jumped, rammed her head into the underside of the middle desk drawer, and flopped over onto one hip.
Remy.
“Jeez, you scared me.” She rubbed the bump on the top of her head, tried backing up, then wriggled around to peer out at his legs. She couldn’t see past his abdomen.
“What are you doing under there?”
I knew you were coming, and I hid.
Wendy’s words, just like the Closet Dream.
With them, Max tumbled straight into yet another of Wendy’s nightmares. This time, she was wide awake.
She slammed the phone down, anger and impotence shuddering up her arm and coming to rest in some soft, squishy part of her mind, diminishing her resolve. Father’s voice had always done that to her. Weak. Weak. “God, I hate you,” she whispered. Her father. Her husband. Herself.
Wendy’s office. Wendy’s voice. Wendy’s slight hand still on the receiver. Max was just along for the ride. Again.
She didn’t turn when she heard him breathing at her door. The dragon was out. Remy was pissed. Always. Endlessly. There’d never been a time she hadn’t done something wrong, hadn’t screwed up, hadn’t been stupid. Not before Remy came into her life, not now, and probably never in the future.
She seemed destined to gravitate to men like Remy. Like Hal. Like Father.
Remy hovered close to her desk. “Theresa says the copy machine’s broken.”
“Marvin isn’t answering his cell phone.”
“Call again.”
She looked at him, gut protruding, smile triumphant, and pinkie ring glinting under the fluorescent light. Some synapse in her brain misfired. “You want him here, you call him.” She never spoke to him like that, never braved the retribution.
She didn’t care anymore.
For Remy, that was the beginning, middle, and end of the argument. “In my office. Now.”
For Wendy, it was a divine revelation.
Something happened to her body. A dampness between her legs. A subtle contraction of her muscles. A pleasurable tug of heat. They were signs she used to ignore. She knew what he wanted. This time he would get so much more.
She rose, looked down at the coral polish of her fingernails, imagined them a crimson red. The color of his blood.
Theresa the viper stood just outside the office door, a self-important, back-stabbing smile on her freshly painted lips.
Trailing Remy down the hall, Wendy saw him disappear into his office. He didn’t turn, didn’t bother to see if she did as he ordered. He was so sure of her.
If she’d had a gun, she’d have shot him in the ass.
“Shut the door.”
She did.
“Lock it.”
She did that, too.
He stood in the middle of the room, just in front of his desk, legs spread, paunch resting on the top of his belt buckle. His pants wrinkled at the crotch.
“Get over here.”