her you did something in bed—something so unbelievably mind-blowing… and arousing… like multiple orgasms arousing—that no other man could possibly satisfy me again.”
He stared at her, eyes wide, then grinned big. “Yes! Do it. They’ll go crazy wondering what the hell I did.”
Cynthia laughed.
Emma smiled as they continued to banter and tease each other, occasionally trying to draw her into the conversation and cheer her up. But all the while, she silently counted the minutes, the hours, and wondered how long she would have to wait to see Cliff again.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Something was wrong.
Cliff sat on his sofa, one knee bobbing up and down.
Something was very wrong.
He glanced around his apartment. On the surface, it appeared the same as it had last week. Last month. Last year. But it wasn’t. Everything looked a little too perfect. Too new. And the faint scent of fresh paint lingered in the air.
When he’d asked Melanie about it, she’d broken the news that he’d had not one but two psychotic breaks, back to back. Jared had refuted that, claiming he’d only had one break and that the second time he had merely flown into a rage. But that was just mincing words.
Cliff apparently trashed his apartment so badly that Reordon had to replace every piece of furniture in it and one of the doors. Cliff was pretty sure Reordon replaced the refrigerator and the doors on his kitchen cabinets, too. But Reordon hadn’t complained. He had even upgraded the TV and gaming systems, all while Cliff slept like the dead.
Rising, he crossed to the kitchen and opened one of the cabinets. A graham cracker box stared back at him. He took it down, opened the top, and looked inside. Two sleeves of crackers huddled within, just as they should. When he dumped them out, a cell phone slid after them. Cliff caught it with a spark of hope. But like everything else in his apartment, it looked too shiny and new. When he turned it on, Emma’s face didn’t appear on the lock screen. A generic beach scene did. And every app he opened was newly installed and bore none of the information or progress that should have been stored in them. There were no e-books, movies, or TV shows. No music. And the only photo on the device was the one he’d seen on Emma’s employee ID badge.
He must have broken the other phone. Knowing Reordon, he’d probably had his tech team try to retrieve the photos and other information off the old one. If anyone could do it, they could.
Cliff stared at the new phone in his hands. He must have decimated the old one for them to have failed.
After stuffing the crackers back in the box, he tucked the phone in his pocket and began to pace.
Even that was different. His feet felt weighted, as if his shoes bore concrete soles. His limbs felt heavy. His mind was… quiet. Too quiet. The only voices that filled it were those that carried to him from the other occupants of sublevel 5.
Was this the calm before the storm?
“Knock, knock,” Melanie called.
Cliff glanced toward his open doorway. Melanie and Bastien had thought he’d feel more comfortable resting in his apartment than he would in the infirmary, so they’d let him sleep in here and just kept the door open so they wouldn’t have to keep typing in the code every time they wanted to check on him.
Melanie entered. “How are you feeling?”
“Okay.” He shrugged. “Tired. Out of it.”
Nodding, she approached him. “That’s probably your body still working the last of the sedative out of your system.”
Sounded logical. But doubt assailed him.
“What about your ears? Are they bothering you? Back at the base you said it felt like they were full of cotton.”
He touched one ear. “Yeah. They still feel funny. Everything sounds muffled or something.”
Her look turned clinical. Drawing an otoscope from the pocket of her physician’s coat, she motioned for him to lean down. “Let me give them another look.”
Cliff ducked down so she could peer into his ears.
“I don’t see anything,” she murmured. “Is anything else bothering you?”
“Not really.”
She pressed a palm to his forehead, then touched her fingers to his neck. “No nausea? Swelling of the throat? Fever? You feel a little warm to me.”
The questions struck him as odd. “I’m okay.” Once vampires transformed, they didn’t get sick. Ever.
Tucking her hands in the pockets of her coat, she studied him. “What about the voices?”