worn area rug with thick wall-to-wall plush, she made her way to the walk-in closet where Henry had been spending his days. After a moment's groping to find the switch, she flicked on the closet light and closed the door silently behind her.
It was, as Henry had said, just barely large enough for a not-so-very-tall man. Or a not-so-very-tall vampire. A pad of bright blue compressed foam, the sort commonly used for camping, lay along one wall under the rack of woman's clothes. On it, a neatly folded length of heavy blackout curtain rested beside a leather overnight bag. Another piece of curtain had been tacked to one side of the door which itself had been fitted out with a heavy steel bolt.
Henry must've put it up. Vicki touched the metal slide and shook her head. She hadn't heard hammering but, given Henry's strength, hammering might not have been necessary. We'd better remember to take it down or it'll confuse the hell out of the next tenant.
The next tenant. It was the first time she'd considered the apartment as anything but her mother's. Only reasonable, I suppose. She let her head fall back against the wall and closed her eyes. My mother's dead.
The scent of her mother's cologne, of her mother, permeated the small enclosure, and with her eyes shut it almost seemed that her mother was still there. Another time, the illusion might have been comforting, or infuriating. Vicki was honest enough to admit the possibility of either reaction. At the moment, though, she ignored it. Her mother wasn't the reason she was here.
Opening her eyes, she dropped to her knees beside the pallet and lifted the makeshift shroud to her face, breathing in the faint trace of Henry trapped in the heavy fabric.
He wasn't dead. She refused to believe it. He was too real to be dead.
He wasn't dead.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm not entirely certain." With knuckles white around the folds, she set the piece of curtain down and turned to face Celluci, standing outlined in the doorway. He'd opened the blinds in the bedroom and the morning sun behind him threw his face into shadow. Vicki couldn't see his expression, but his tone had been almost gentle. She didn't have a clue to what he was thinking.
He held out his hand and she put hers into it, allowing him to pull her to her feet. His palm was warm and callused. Henry's would have been cool and smooth. With her free hand resting on a crumpled expanse of shirtfront, she had the sudden and completely irrational desire to take that one extra step into the circle of Celluci's arms and to rest her head, not to mention the whole mess she found herself in, if only for a moment, on the broad expanse of his shoulders.
This is no time to be getting soft, Vicki, she told herself sternly, fighting the iron bands tightening around her ribs. You've got far too fucking much to do.
Celluci, who'd read both the desire and the internal response off Vicki's face, smiled wryly and moved out of her way. He recognized the growing strain that painted purple half-circles under her eyes and pinched the corners of her mouth and knew that some of it needed to be bled off before it blew her apart. But he didn't know what to do. Although their fights had often been therapeutic, this situation went a little beyond the relief that could come from screaming at one another over trivial disagreements. While he could think of a few nontrivial disagreements available for argument, he had no intention of hurting her by bringing them up. All he could do was continue to wait and hope he was the one in the right place to pick up the pieces.
Of course, if Fitzroy's actually bought it... It was a dishonorable thought, but he couldn't stop it from taking up residence.
"So." He watched her cross to the open bedroom door and wondered how long he'd have been content with the status quo had Fitzroy not come into their lives. "What do we do now?"
Vicki turned and stared at him in some surprise. "We do exactly what we have been doing." She jabbed her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose. "When we find the people who have my mother's body, we'll find Henry."
"Maybe he just went to ground, got caught out too late and had to take what shelter he could."