pass.
“I wonder if it could do that when it was alive,” Abel said.
“The tendrils only become gray when they’re drying out. If all the plumbing was still connected, it may cover this thing in some sort of black … cloak?”
Abel pressed his head against the bars to get as close a look as possible without crawling through the muck. “Pretty smart. I see why Paige kept you around. Well, apart from the obvious reasons. A living Nymar may even be able to control when those tendrils spread out like that. He could damn near go invisible if he was in the shadows.”
“That’s pushing it, but it might help him stay hidden. There’s something else that’s strange. This thing isn’t tripping much of anything in my scars. What about you?”
“It’s dead, Cole. Just like damn near everything else down here. That’s why everyone’s upstairs. I bet Lancroft just set this place aside as a dumping ground.”
Something at the far end of the hall growled at them. More than a simple animal’s snarl, it directed itself at Cole and Abel as surely as if it had known their names.
“Let’s get the fuck outta here,” Abel grunted.
Cole dug his phone from his pocket and took a few pictures of the dead Nymar. The tendrils still had some flex to them as he passed the light back and forth, so he got some shots of that as well. “Check the rest of the hall, Abel.”
“You check it.”
“Just go!”
Cole didn’t care if Abel did the job or not. All he really wanted was to get the other Skinner to move away from that little door when he crawled through. There wasn’t a way for him to exit without making himself vulnerable to a quick downward stab, and more than likely, Lancroft had constructed the doors with that very purpose in mind. Either that, he thought, or he was getting too paranoid for his own good.
Once he was outside, Cole checked on Abel. Nothing else struck him as more peculiar than it had been the last time he was down there. Whatever was caged at the farthest end kept its back against the wall and stared at the Skinners with glittering eyes. It was a shapeshifter. He could tell that much from the way it swelled or contracted, as if its entire skeletal structure was an illusion. Finding out any more than that would have required getting much too close to the thing, and despite their differences, all the Skinners agreed that the creature at the end of the hall was best left alone where it was.
On their way back up the stairs, Cole asked, “What’s the word with the cops? Is there going to be a problem?”
“Nah. Selina straightened it out. A few of the officers know about Nymar, and they’re glad to let us take care of ‘em. Since there were two feeding on someone in that house, we got a pass. Still, tell Paige to rein it in when she gets back.”
“Tell her yourself.”
Abel chuckled all the way up the stairs. Although Cole tried ignoring him when he asked some of the others in the workshop about where Paul and M had gone, the greasy smile plastered on Abel’s face made that task next to impossible.
“I remember Paul coming through,” a Skinner from the West Coast said. “He was a quiet guy who’d come alone to poke through the house.”
“Where did they go?” Cole asked.
Pointing to a stack of crates filled with old baby food jars containing a multitude of fluids that most definitely should not be fed to babies, he replied, “M went straight for that pile there and left with half a milk crate full of stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“Don’t know. Without Lancroft’s journals, a lot of this is being filed in the unknown category.”
“And they just walked out with it?”
“M’s supposed to be with Paul, and Paul is a Skinner,” the guy pointed out. “Why would I stop him? Is there some sort of pecking order I don’t know about?”
“No,” Cole grunted. Of all the things that were bugging him, not one of them had to do with the guy from the West Coast. In fact, most of the Skinners who’d drifted in had been content to take a few supplies or one of the old weapons and be on their way. The ones that grated on Cole’s nerves the most were the ones that refused to leave.
As if picking up on his chance to grate some more, Abel asked, “Where’s Paige?”
“Not sure,” he lied.
“You’re not sure? You don’t keep track of your partner?”
“No,” Cole snapped. “Do you?”
When Cole walked over to the crates of jars along the opposite wall, Abel stuck with him. “Jory and Selina are pretty close,” Abel said, “but not like you and Paige.”
The words didn’t bug Cole so much as the creepy way Abel said them. Crouching down to pull some of the crates away from the wall so he could get to the back stacks, he found a few that weren’t quite in line with the rest.
Either Abel was used to being ignored or he took Cole’s silence as an invitation to continue. “From what I seen, you two are
“And what have you seen?”
“You know. The way you look at her. That sappy shit when you touched her hair.”
Cole gnashed his teeth. He’d forgotten about the hair thing. His phone rang, saving him the trouble of continuing the conversation. When he saw who was calling, it was even easier to pretend the other man didn’t exist. “Hey, Paige,” he said into the phone. “Where are you?”
Screaming over the thumping tones of a remixed version of Duran Duran’s “Rio,” she replied, “Some club in Miami. Did you find anything?”
“I think so. There’s some kind of—”
“I can barely hear you. Are you finished with everything over there?”
Abel grinned and nodded as if he’d paid five bucks to sit on a sticky chair and watch the show. “Yeah,” Cole grunted. “I’m through here.”
“Then head to Chicago.”
“Actually, there are a few loose ends I should wrap up here.”
“Fine,” she said. “I’m headed home now. When you’re about to leave, give me a call and I’ll pick you up at the subway station.”
“Will do. ‘Bye.” He hung up, put the phone in his pocket, and found Abel still looking at him with that same grin. There was a renewed speed in Cole’s movements when he picked a sample jar from each of the crates that looked as if they’d recently been moved.
“So,” Abel sneered, “you’re hittin’ that, right?”
“Shut the hell up.”
Abel smirked as if his clumsy attempt at slang was too cool for the room. “You two aren’t just close. You’re like,
Once again Cole’s silence didn’t deter the other man in the slightest.
“Not that I blame you,” Abel continued. “She’s got a sweet little ass. Kind of a butter face, but—”
“Wait,” Cole said as he straightened up and turned to face the other Skinner. “What the hell did you just say?”
“Butter face. You know, like she’s got a nice body, but her—”
His fist slammed into Abel’s jaw as if it had a mind of its own. After taking a moment to think, he did the right thing and hit Abel again, this time with enough force to knock the little prick onto his ass.
Chapter Seven
