“Cola,” Gaby said, no longer feeling the need to rebuke Mort’s every gracious effort.
They passed through the front door and Gaby paused inside, looking at the stairs that led to the upper rooms where she used to stay. Much had happened here, and she felt a poignant loss for what she used to be. Her life back then had been stark and bleak and simple.
Now the complications filled her with fear at what she was becoming.
“Gaby?” Mort touched her shoulder, startling her and drawing her from her thoughts. “You okay?”
She jerked away from long-dead memories and nodded toward the upstairs apartment. “Bliss cooking anything? I could eat.”
He frowned in concern. “You all right?”
“Just hungry, that’s all. Luther and I missed both breakfast and lunch.”
Assuming they’d been pleasurably occupied, Mort smiled. Gaby didn’t bother to tell him that in their urgency to hunt down clues on a cannibal, they hadn’t thought about food.
“She’s out interviewing for jobs, but I can put together a sandwich for you.” Mort turned to lead the way toward his kitchen.
Thanks to Ann-the-fucking-paragon, Mort’s place was now tidy and organized. Everywhere Gaby looked, she saw Ann’s influence. The old kitchen table remained, but now it looked pristine, matching the rest of the kitchen. Place-mats decorated the tabletop, with matching curtains at the window.
It made Gaby want to puke.
She jerked out a chair and dropped into it. “So Bliss wants a job, huh?”
Mort nodded. “Sure, why not? Ann set up interviews for her with several nice places. We’re hoping she lands a job today.”
Getting colas from the refrigerator, Mort said, “It’ll really help Bliss’s self-confidence to earn her own way, instead of relying on friends to help her. Not that I mind having her upstairs.”
“But you need the money,” Gaby said as he handed her a frosty can.
Confusion stalled him. “You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Luther pays her rent, so I’m not out anything.”
Gaby paused with the foaming can almost to her lips. No, she hadn’t known that. But this added example of Luther’s compassion warmed her. True, in the depressed area with an apartment so small, the rent wasn’t much at all. That’s how Gaby had afforded it. Still, it was a real kind thing for Luther to do.
To hide her surprise, Gaby took a long drink, burped, and set the can on the table. “I suppose Luther can afford it.”
“He says he can. I tried to tell him not to worry about it. Truth is, I like having the company here, whether Bliss could pay or not. She’s a nice girl. But Luther insisted.” He gave her a look. “He knows you care about Bliss, and he doesn’t want you to worry.”
Gaby grunted. “So it’s my fault he’s spending his life savings?”
Sticking his head in the fridge again, Mort ignored that to ask, “Ham and cheese okay?”
“Anything’ll do.” Along with now being sensitive to cold, exhaustion, and despair, Gaby grew ravenous several times a day. Feeding herself was a pain in the ass, but it beat the growling in her stomach.
Mort set out pickles and chips, too. “Don’t worry about the rent, okay? I doubt Luther will let himself go broke.”
Gaby set out the cell phone. “He might if he keeps buying me stupid gifts.”
Mort glanced at the phone. “Nice. Now I can call you to chat.”
Just peachy. That probability hadn’t occurred to Gaby. “I’m not real used to it yet,” she hedged. “Don’t count on me answering all the time, okay?”
Mort laughed. “Here, I’ll get your number and program in mine for you. If anything comes up, you know, like with Bliss or whatever, I can let you know.” He cast her a quick smile while fidgeting with the phone.
Mort made it look so easy as he pushed buttons, clicked here and there, and then put her phone back on the table.
“I’m getting your number, too. I can share it with Bliss.” He opened a drawer and got a slip of paper, wrote the number on it, and put it on the front of his fridge with a magnet shaped like an apple. “Bliss will love being able to reach you.”
Double fuck. The last thing Gaby wanted to do was indulge small talk on a phone. “Make it clear that the phone is only for emergencies.”
“Got it.” Grinning, Mort went back to the food preparation. It occurred to Gaby that he was now a multitasking man, when he used to be pathetically ineffective at all he did. He was different, better, but still the Mort she knew and felt comfortable with.
If Mort could change so easily, then maybe she could, too.
But then again, Mort wasn’t a freak of nature.
“So,” Gaby said, harking back to his earlier comment, “what’s special about today?”
He glanced at her between layering meat and cheese on white bread. “I was talking about the investigation and everything.”
“Some creepy shit, that’s for sure.” To a guy like Mort, the grisly murders had to be scary.
He glanced up. “I know it’s routine for Ann and Luther, but aren’t you worried about tonight?”
Trying to hide her ignorance, Gaby narrowed her eyes. She didn’t know about anything happening tonight.
Hedging, she asked, “Is there some reason I should be?”
He withdrew a butcher knife to slice the sandwich in half. “I forget that you don’t freak out about stuff the way the rest of us do. But let me tell you, I’m plenty spazzed about it. I looked it up on the Internet, and those underground raves are nothing but sex, addiction, and perversion. A lot of people go into those things and never come back out.”
Mort handed her the sandwich, and before he could step away, Gaby caught him by the upper arm.
Slowly, she reeled him down so that he bent at the waist, his nose almost touching hers. “Okay, Mort, one time, and one time only.”
His brows went up. “What are you talking about?”
“That’s how many times I’m going to ask. Just once. Got it?”
“Um . . . yeah.”
It burned her ass to admit Luther had left her in the dark. But if she wanted details, and she did, she had no choice. “I don’t know shit about a rave, or about what Luther and Ann have planned for tonight. But you’re damn well going to explain it all, every detail, and you’re not going to make me ask twice. Understood?”
Mort puckered. “Uh . . . Luther didn’t say anything to you?”
Her hard stare proved answer enough.
“Right.” Sighing, he pulled out a chair, sat down, and propped his head in his hands. “Ann told me, so I just assumed . . . ”
The mention of Ann kindled Gaby’s smoky temper. “What? That Luther and I share the same kind of relationship? Get real, Mort.”
Mort flopped back in his chair and gave in with enthusiasm. He seemed more than gleeful to share what he knew. “Ann said they’ve been keeping tabs on a few gang members with these weird tattoos. She said they have this vampire obsession that she’d always considered harmless, but now . . . ”
“What kind of tattoos?”
“Ann said that one of them has this huge, vicious bite mark tattooed on his shoulder, like maybe someone tried to take a chunk out of him. She said it looks totally real and is pretty sick. Another one is a set of perfect fang marks on a woman’s neck, with blood dripping all the way down over her chest.”
“What does that have to do with this underground party you mentioned?”
“It’s called a rave. According to Ann, all raves have two main ingredients—loud music and plenty of drugs. They keep breaking up the raves when they know about them because there’ve been so many rapes, and a lot of deaths.”
“Yeah, sounds like a party to me.” Gaby rolled her eyes. “So people go there and get murdered?”
