The next day, we suited up to investigate the note Angel left. Blake knew where the warehouse was, so he would lead the charge. After violently throwing up the night before, I was otherwise unaffected by Ryan's attempted cure. We both agreed the whole scenario was something that nobody else had to know about.
"Ellie!" Blake called. "We're heading out!"
Well, sort of otherwise unaffected.
I stared down into the sink, hands braced on either side, staring at the blood I had just coughed up. I wasn't sure what to think. Coughing up blood had never been a symptom of my condition before.
"Ellie!"
"Coming!" I called, rinsing the sink and rushing down the stairs. Everybody else was in the car. I laced up my boots and left the house with Blake. It was an all hands on deck situation, but I still hoped we didn't run into any unwanted surprises.
"Everybody ready?"
"Sir, yes, sir!"
"Shut, up, Ryan."
"Sir, why, sir?"
"I will punch you in the mouth."
"Okay!" Jessica exclaimed, breaking August and Ryan's bickering. "Let's just drive, yeah? I don't want all of us to be in the car together longer than is necessary."
Blake nodded, squirming around in the seat, futilely trying to make more room out of nothing. Augie was driving, Jessica was in the passenger seat, and I was squished in the middle between Ryan and Blake. My lungs were nearly crushed. "That's a good thing," I gasped. "I'll be out of oxygen in ten minutes."
In response August floored the pedal, zooming us out of the drive and down the unfinished road to Denver. I thought it such a dramatic change between our woodland landscape and the city lights. Almost too abrupt to be real. But it happened right before my eyes, a gradual change to industry and urban living, and the toxic fumes of one too many vehicles jamming the streets.
August sighed from the front seat, holding his head in his hands. "I freaking hate traffic."
Ryan patted his shoulder. "You'd be a weirdo if you loved it."
"Hand. Off."
"Jeez, mate, what crawled up your ass and died this morning?"
His eyes flickered up to the rearview mirror, locking on my face for a split-second. Only I caught it. "Nothing," he grumbled. "Where is this warehouse, anyway?"
"Mid-Denver, next to some lousy convenience store with outrageous prices and a salon that seems to only cater to people with New York accents."
Jessica turned in her seat to cast Ryan a funny look. "How in the hell would you know that?"
"You know, I get around."
"Uh-huh."
"What?"
Blake leaned toward me, his breath fanning across my neck. The action caught me off guard and I nearly jumped. "Ryan used to work as a tour guide for extra money," he whispered. "Born and raised in Denver, this one was. He hates it when anybody brings it up, though."
But a tour guide sounded cool. Cooler than running for your life twenty-four-seven across the country.
So I turned to Ryan smiled, and said, "I think being a tour guide is really cool."
He threw his hands up. "Okay, who told her?"
Silence.
"I demand answers. I will slip an unknown substance in all of your meals until one of you caves."
"She was bound to find out eventually," Blake confessed.
Ryan looked stricken. "Blake? How could you, man? I thought . . . I thought we were closer."
I frowned. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you . . ."
"I'm ruined!" Ryan groaned, head falling against the window.
"Jeez, Ryan, I'm so sorry . . ."
August's hand dropped hard against the steering wheel. "For the love of God. Ellie, they're just being asshats. Blake, look out the window. Ryan, shut up and twiddle your thumbs. You're giving me a migraine."
Surprisingly, everybody did as he ordered. Ryan grumbled and cupped his chin in his hand. "Who died and made you king?"
"My foot, which will go up the ass of whoever pisses me off next."
Jessica laughed, stroking his arm. "Look at you, all tough and taking charge."
My hands curled into fists.
Her voice lowered. "I like it."
It was unintentional. I didn't mean to force her away from him; the command just happened. An unseen force wedged between them and created space. I blushed, quickly averting my gaze to my hands in my lap. Nobody questioned it. I could feel August's eyes burning through me, though.
"Hey, look! Traffic's moving again!"
The rest of the ride into the city was silent.
"So, what now?"
We stared up at the tall building, edged by overgrown weeds and old, molding bricks. There was a huge lock holding both doors closed, along with a warning notice for people not to enter or face legal consequences.
"I got the pliers right here."
Of course, we didn't always follow the rules. And Ryan had much too big of a smile on his face for breaking into an abandoned and unauthorized building.
August scratched at his hair. "Where did you get those?"
"Your car."
"I don't keep pliers in my car."
"Uh . . . you do now?"
"Son of a-"
"Boys!" Jessica cried, always the peacekeeper. "Seriously, can we just do this?"
"Yes, ma'am."
After three attempts and a fine sheen of sweat, Ryan managed to break the chains. They piled to the floor, causing a loud raucous. I looked around us to make sure nobody grew suspicious, but we were in a rundown part of the city with hardly anybody around, so at least we didn't have to worry about any witnesses.
August pushed passed Ryan. "You touch my car again, I'll kill you," he warned.
Ryan shrugged. "Sorry, man. Came in use though, right?"
"Shut up."
Everybody filed in. Jessica stayed back to walk beside me. "You have no idea how good it is to have another girl around," she muttered. "I've been with Moron Ryan and Idiot Blake for years, and trying not to drown in testosterone. Why couldn't you have come sooner?"
I smiled. "Sorry?"
She laughed. The sound was beautiful and perfect, just like her. "Don't be, El. Gosh, you sound so innocent sometimes."
I said nothing, because I hated that.
I hated never fitting in quite right with the world.
"Damn, this place is big," Blake said, whistling lowly. "How are we going to cover everything?"
"We split up," August answered, eyes falling on me. "Except for Ellie. Somebody has to go with Ellie."
Blake all but leapt to my side. "Got it."
August's eye twitched, but I didn't think he noticed, so I left it alone. He certainly didn't have anything to angry about, except for Ryan's antics. He just seemed to be in a generally sour mood for the day.
Ryan, Jessica, and August went their separate ways, and Blake and I went another. The building was creepy and dark, even in the daytime, and dangerously falling apart in places. I stepped through a bad floorboard and tripped over a random bucket, all in the first five minutes.
"Careful," Blake chuckled, grabbing my elbow to steady me.
I blushed. "Sorry."
"Don't worry about it-hey, a ladder."
Sure enough, when I craned my head to peek around him, a tall and questionably durable ladder stretched through a hole in the floor. "That doesn't look safe."
"It doesn't, does it?"
"No. Maybe we should go somewhere else?"
"Psh." He flexed his fingers and shook the ladder. It creaked but didn't give way. "It's pretty stable. You go first. That way if you fall, I'll catch you."
Somehow that did not make me feel better. "Are you sure?"
"More than sure. Come on."
So I put my foot on the first rung, and when it didn't crumble beneath my weight, braved the next one. I focused on my hands as I climbed up, and the reassurance of Blake right behind me, breath trapped in my throat. I didn't dare breathe, blink, or speak. If I did any of the three I feared the ladder would shatter and we'd dropped the certainly fatal distance to the ground.
"What do you see?" Blake asked, coughing as dirt from my boot showered in his face.
"Sorry," I said. And then, "Not much. A lot of darkness."
"Great. The ladder to nowhere."
"Wait, it stops here. I'm not sure how substantial the floor is, though."
"Try it out, anyway."
I did. Parts sagged, but others seemed more substantial. Clearly we pulled the short straw in investigating the non-renovated part of the storehouse. The place looked like it hadn't been touched since the 1800s.
"Ellie? Everything good? Because, I really don't want to die falling off a ladder."
"Oh, yeah, sorry. Come on. Just be careful."
Blake hauled himself up, shaking his head like a dog to remove the dust clinging to his shaggy blonde hair. "That was an adventure."
One word for it. "Your hand is bleeding."
He looked down. "Oh, hey, look at that."
"Does it hurt?"
"Didn't even notice it. Must have been a loose nail, or something."
"Hm." I squinted around the space, eyes quickly adjusting to the darkness. "I have no idea where we are."
"Second that. What are we looking for, anyway?"
Shrugging, I crept slowly and cautiously across the unpredictable floorboards. "I have no idea. If it's my sister, it could be anything." Just nothing good. Irrelevantly, it still felt weird saying the word, 'sister'.
I pinched my nose, eyes watering from all the dust moats billowing around. From the way Blake sneezed and cursed behind me, he was having an equally difficult time.
"Hey, Ellie?"
"Mmhm?"
"What, um . . . what's it like?"
Casual conversation. This was casual conversation. I hardly thought it the place and time, but figured it was polite to at least respond. "What do you mean?"
Another sneeze. "You know." Sneeze. "To do what you do. What's it like?"
I avoided a particularly soft area of flooring, beckoning Blake to do the same. "I'm not sure how to answer. It's horrible. I hate it."
"Oh."
His voice fell. I was getting better at understanding implications, and clearly that wasn't what he was looking for in an answer. But I had no idea. Why would he even ask such a thing? Great, now I was too focused on the meaning behind his small talk rather than not falling through the floor.
"Ellie."
"Yes?"
"I think you're really pretty."
Bam. My foot crashed through a loose board and I barely caught myself in time. My cheeks burned with a vengeance. "Th-thanks."
"You okay?"
No. Not at all. I wished I understood what was happening right now but I just don't, because I'm socially incompetent. "Fine."
"It looks like this room ends up ahead. Dead end. I'll call August and see if he got anything."
Blake pulled out his cell phone and settled against the sturdy wall-the original brick foundation of the building-to keep his balance. I kept moving, needing to figure out what Angel meant in her note.
"Hey, August. Yeah, she's fine . . . no, we haven't found anything. You?"
It was a dead end, just like he said. I pushed against the wall, and it gave. Interesting.
"Of course you would search the renovated part, you asshole. Better be looking, too, and not christening the place up with Jessica."
I frowned. What was that supposed to mean?
"Jeez, sorry, sorry, please don't prevent me from having children, I want four. And you wouldn't find anything there because it's too brand spanking new. Any update on Ryan?"
Weird. I skimmed my fingers along the wall, able to dig my fingers beneath a mismatched section of walling. My heart pounded faster. I tore it away and . . .
Nothing.
My shoulders drooped. I turned to face Blake, but a couple things happened in that one moment.
The floor beneath me groaned, shuddering dangerously. Blake, engrossed in his conversation with August, didn't notice. I didn't dare move, but it turned out my decision to be mobile or stationary was of no importance.
Everything gave way and I was sent spiraling through time and space.
Blake's loud, "Ellie!" followed me like a haunting echo, a desperate plea spoken a little too late. I hit the floor beneath, and then the next, and fell through floor of the room we had entered in. When I finally hit the bottom, there was some moldy padding to cushion the fall, but my shoulders still screamed out in agony.
I gritted my teeth, wiggling my body, making sure nothing else was broken or immoveable. When the rest of me proved okay, I cradled my arm close against me and rolled off the pile of rubble, hissing in pain as the movements jarred my shoulder. I hadn't felt pain so bad since being shot in the leg back in Schenectady, and when August had to remove the bullet without anesthesia.
The memory was painful, but nothing like the present moment.
"Ellie!" Blake called, somewhere far, far above me. "Are you okay? Please don't be dead!"
"I'm fine!" I shouted, as loud as I could, choosing to opt out on mentioning the possible dislocated soldier. My extreme threshold for pain was a gift a higher being knew I would need.
"I can barely hear you! Just hold on, I'll figure a way down!"
Instead of answering, I reasoned with myself the pros and cons on going off alone through the apparent basement of the building. It was dark but for the light streaming through the hole I created, and most likely creepy. But we were looking for any hint of Angel, and this was the only way.
You can do this. Been through worse, right?
My shoulder pulsed with pain. Right. Worse.
Every step was difficult, but I shuffled further and further into the darkness. I wasn't sure what I would find, pretty much prepared myself to expect anything. The ceiling shifted and creaked every so often, caused by, I assumed, my group of friends. I wondered if they found anything . . .
"Oof," I gasped, stumbling forward a few steps when my boot hit something large. "What the heck?"
Crouching down, I reached a hand toward the object. I touched something, and promptly froze.
A foot.
That was a human foot.
Oh, God.
A foot connected to a leg, which was connected to a hip, and at that point I took my hand away. It was too dark to see the body clearly. The only thing I could be sure of was its lack of life, because the stench was horrible. Almost as bad as my screaming shoulder.
Oh, God.
"Ellie!"
Augie. That was Augie. He would know what to do. "In here!" I called.
Said man entered the vicinity at a flat-out sprint, skidding to a halt when he spotted me. He was armed with a flashlight, illuminating me with the orange glow. "Blake mentioned you fell through the floor," he said, out of breath.
I nodded. "Yes."
"Multiple floors."
"Yes."
"Are you okay?"
"My shoulder might possibly be dislocated, but that's not important. I found a body, Augie. A dead body."
His lips pursed. "That weird lumpy thing below you that I really don't want to shine my light on?"
"Yes, and I would appreciate it if you would. If Angel left it for me, it might have another note."
After a long sigh, he dropped the light to outline the body. The face was sunken in and bloody, but after a few passing moments the identity registered just like that.
And I had to pause, recalculate, and redo the process three times, because that just couldn't be right. Not again. Not in such a short amount of time.
"Ellie? What is it?"
"No," I whispered, stopping him. "Don't come closer."
"Why?"
At that time Blake ran in, eyes wide, looking guilty as hell. "Oh, my God, Ellie. Are you okay? I'm so sorry. I should have-"
"Shut up, moron," August snapped, effectively silencing the other man. His eyes remained on me. "Ellie, who is it?"
The anger I felt first. Red-hot, more intense and driving than the pain in my shoulder. It spread through my body like a disease, removing common logic and replacing reasoning with fury.
No.
"What's going on?" Jessica asked.
Another pair of footsteps.
Ryan: "Is everybody okay?"
August: "No."
And then me, just staring, shaking with rage, crying from the emotions and the fatigue and the pain.
No.
Somebody walked closer. Nice perfume. Jessica. "Oh, shit," she hissed. "Shit."
"What?"
No.
Somebody else. Familiar. Powerful. August.
"Who is it, Jess? I can't tell."
That was what broke me, right then. I turned to August and with all the force in me, slapped him with my good hand. His head snapped sharply to the right. He worked his jaw back and forth.
"Jeez, El, what the hell?"
"How could you?" I screamed, the tears falling faster. "You said she would die? You promised!"
"What-"
"You lied to me, August! You lied!"
He turned to Jessica, lost. "What is she talking about?"
Jessica flicked her own tear away, discreetly, not wanting anybody to see. "It's Esme," she murmured, nodding toward the body. "Decomposed, but it's definitely Esmeralda."
And that was when it hit Augie.
Us in the rain, by Jim's grave.
Me wanting to go and find Esme, having a horrible gut feeling she was next.
August assuring me-promising me-nothing would happen to her.
Lies.
"Fuck," he said
I couldn't take it. I tightened my hold on my arm against my body and darted off into the darkness. There was no aim, no goal, no endpoint. Just keep running until I somehow escaped my pain. Even if it was impossible.
"Ellie!"
"Let her go, man." Blake. "This is hardest on her. Let her go."
"But I can't just-"
"Yeah, and you'll have to. Just give her some time."
I didn't hear the rest, because their voices faded away. I kept running until the tears blurred my vision and I tripped, and landed right on my shoulder.
And the blissful pain knocked me right out.
****
Hey all! I'm actually headed out to the first day of school this morning (senior year woo!) so sorry if uploads become less frequent. I wish it were still summer, but it's not! That being said, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and be sure to show and share the love! For any of you going back to school today, good luck! And for anybody already there, we're joining the charge! :D
-EJ