The Ripmender

Chapter 7

I think I almost passed out. I knew that the other girls were gazing at his dreamy eyes and curls, and the delicious mouth that could curve into a smile sweeter than candy floss. I knew that their hearts were probably beating a little faster than they had been a minute ago.

My heart, however, was ready to go into anaphylactic shock, and I had to press my lips shut to stop myself from screeching hysterically. He was actually in my room, less than three metres away from me, and there was nothing I could do about it. My body had turned into terrified granite.

“I was walking past and heard screaming,” he said. “I was, like, woah! I’d better see what that is. Your front door wasn’t locked.”

The other three girls seemed to have been turned to stone as well.

“Can I help at all?” he asked again, and gave us the smile; the Nathan Jake smile that had incapacitated females from Los Angeles to Papua New Guinea.

“I’m Nathan Jake, by the way,” he said, taking a few steps closer.

He must’ve known that his introduction was totally unnecessary, given the large section of wall in the room devoted to his face.

“We know,” Aldytha breathed.

The other two seemed to have forgotten how to speak. I managed to get a grip on my hysterical inner screaming, and calmed myself down to a level of panic that would enable me to think.

I had to think, or I would find myself dead.

He took a few more steps into the room, and I involuntarily shrank back against the wall behind me. How come he had flung himself through a glass window pane and fallen three storeys, and there wasn’t a scratch on him?

“You shouldn’t be here,” said someone, and I realised with a shock that it had been me who said it.

“Oh, I’m sure they’ll understand,” Zama said, suddenly coming to life. “This is an emergency.”

“Can we get you some coffee?” Tenley asked, as if it was a charmingly social occasion, and she wasn’t dressed in her pyjamas.

Nathan gave them another devastating smile that ordinarily would have reduced me to a jelly-like pulp. “No thank you,” he said. “What do you think happened here?”

He wants to know if I’ve told anyone, I thought. I still had his taser gripped in my hand, so I slid it into the waistband of my sleeping shorts and pulled my shirt down over the top part of it. My stomach lurched as he walked towards the window and looked out of the gaping hole.

“We don’t know what happened,” Tenley said. “We were asleep, and someone must have thrown something through the glass.”

Nathan ran his eyes all around the room, scouring the floor. I bit back the urge to ask him if he had lost anything. He might see from the look on my face that I had found it.

“Did you find anything strange in the room?” he asked. “Anything that might give us a clue as to who or what it was?”

“Not that we’ve seen,” Aldytha said. “We had a quick look.”

“Maybe we can find something if we look together,” he said, and the other three obediently scoured the floor with him.

“It’s a mystery,” he said finally. “I’m glad you girls weren’t hurt.” He smiled at us again. “Maybe you should sleep somewhere else for the rest of the night. It’s kind of spooky with the window smashed like that.”

Clever, I thought. The room would be deserted, and he could make a really good search of it. The phone thing must be important to him, if he would risk coming back inside the room to find it.

Okay, it could be that it had his fingerprints on it, but he would surely know that it was unlikely there would be a forensic investigation done on a case where nothing had been stolen.

Maybe he was powerless without it. If he couldn’t get it, and needed it to create that crazy purple fire, then my life was suddenly looking a whole lot better.

“They can sleep with us in the next room,” said Zama.

“That sounds good,” he said, still looking like a pleasant young man who wanted to help ladies in distress. “Can I carry anything for you?”

“The mattresses, please,” said Tenley, in a quivery little voice that sounded like she had no air around her.

The four of us watched as he tugged at Tenley’s mattress. The other girls admired the flexing of his arm muscles as he heaved it up. I, of course, noted how he scanned the bed for any sign of his weapon.

“You all look very comfy,” Nathan said once everything was in place in Zama and Aldytha’s room.

I cringed, and wondered if he was making sure which bed was mine so that he could return later and finish the job.

“I’m sorry. I’ve been very rude,” he said. “I haven’t asked your names.”

I wanted to scream that they mustn’t tell him, but it would look suspicious if I yelled at him.

“I’m Aldytha, and this is Zama.”

“Aldytha and Zama,” Nathan said, gazing at them with an expression that was guaranteed to make any woman’s knees tremble.

He turned towards Tenley and looked at her enquiringly.

“I’m Tenley,” she blurted out.

“Tenley. A lovely name for a lovely girl.”

Tenley blushed, and looked like she would be in a daze for the next three days.

“And you are …?”

I remained silent as he stopped in front of me. I fixed my eyes firmly on his expensive casual shoes, and wondered if he could hear my heart slamming against the inside of my chest.

“She’s Cathy,” Zama managed to say.

“Cathy …” he repeated slowly.

He moved a step closer and I jerked back, my eyes coming into contact with his. The moment I had dreamed of for years.

“Cathy,” he whispered, leaning towards me.

I held my breath, afraid that he could suck the life out of me.

“I’ll see you soon.” He breathed the quiet threat into my hair, then left the room.

“What did he say to you?” Zama asked as the door closed behind him.

I stumbled and sat down on the nearest bed.

“What did he say?” Aldytha asked.

“Uh … He’ll see me soon,” I stammered.

“Ooh, isn’t that romantic!” Tenley squealed. “Maybe you’re the reason why he came to help us.”

“Tenley, have you been smoking something?” Zama asked. “That fine white boy wouldn’t want one of us.”

“Yeah, like that’s ever going to happen,” Aldytha laughed. “Imagine Nathan Jake going out with a Fine Arts student.”

“It would do something astronomical for our reps,” Zama agreed. “But that’s basically like believing in unicorns.”

After what I had seen in the last few hours, I wouldn’t have been surprised if a unicorn came walking through the door!

“He doesn’t like me,” I said, then hesitated.

I needed to think first before I made the decision to tell them everything. It was so far-fetched, that Zama would ask me if I’d been smoking the same thing Tenley had.

“Well I can’t bloody imagine why else he would whisper that he would be seeing you again,” Aldytha said. “But anyway, we really should hit the sack. At least it’s Saturday tomorrow.”

I would lie down and wait for the other three to fall asleep before I made my escape to the bus station.

I must have closed my eyes for a second, because when I opened them again, it was already morning.