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Emma was facedown across the thin hall rug, moving feebly, glory hallelujah. Bruised and breathless and paralyzed with shock was a good state to be in. By the grace of God, an armored door, a four-second fuse, and yours truly having damned fast reflexes, she’d not been shredded into a bloody corpse by her fiancé’s parting present.
The sheer wickedness of it—and I’d seen more than my share in the last two years—sickened and infuriated me. I wanted to put a fist right through Foxtrot Joe’s face. I nearly put one through the wall, but there was enough damage to the joint.
Shaking as well from unspent adrenaline, I helped a violently trembling Emma to the washroom and put her on the toilet seat before her legs gave out. The light was gone, but I kept flashlights in every room in the place. Myrna’s predilection for playing with the electrics made them a necessity. I found the one under the sink and clicked it on. I can see fine in the dark, but I need help in windowless spaces like this one.
Emma was drained white, her breathing down to little panicky hiccups. I told her everything was all right, because that’s what we both needed to hear, and gave her a glass of water. I had to help her hold it. She got one sip, then turned away, coughing. Wetting a towel, I made her put her head down and eased the towel onto the back of her neck. When I was sure she wouldn’t fall over, I went to check the remains of my office.
The walls were pocked and holed, lath and plaster exposed, dust everywhere. The desk was riddled with shrapnel. The lights were out; anything made of glass was shattered. The liquor cabinet in the corner leaked like a boozy Niagara. It hadn’t been hit, the concussion had been sufficient.
The sofa was inside out, with stuffing all over. Just as well that I’d vanished. The metal shards of the grenade would have gone right through my body—hellishly painful—but wood was deadly. Even if a piece missed my heart or didn’t tear into my brain through an eye socket, I could bleed to death with dozens of splinters piercing my skin.
The two windows overlooking the street had been open to air out the office and had allowed some of the force of the blast to escape. Both swung outward and were wire reinforced and bulletproofed, so they were intact, but the blinds and curtains were shredded. I crunched across the debris-choked floor and checked the neighborhood.
The shops and other businesses were closed and Sunday-night quiet a block either way. There were no residences in the area, so no out-of-place cars or startled pedestrians caught my eye. No watchful bad guys lurked in the false security of alley shadows.
I heard a click from the radio, the sound it makes when you switch it on. The dial remained dark. The speaker had shrapnel stuck in it, and every tube inside the case must now be junk.
“I’ll get you a new one, Myrna,” I said aloud. “Are you okay?”
Not that I expected a reply, but she had ways of making her presence known.
Nothing. Which worried me.
I’m nuts. There was a live dame in my washroom in need of help, and here I was anxious about a dead one. But Myrna was a friend, even if I had never seen her.
“It was a grenade, honey. That’s why I’m asking.”
Total silence clotted the room like a physical thing. For a second I thought I’d gone deaf; it was that profound. The temperate air drifti
ng through the windows turned deathly cold and still. I breathed in to speak again, and it was too thick to use. I had to make do with what was left in the bottom of my lungs, and my voice came out high and wheezy.
“Myrna, honey . . . you okay?”
The chill got colder and colder still. Gooseflesh galloped up my arms and pinched the back of my neck. The feeling in the room turned oppressive, the weight of it so great that if my heart could beat, it might have stopped from the excess pressure. I’d never felt anything like this from her before. Though fairly immune to cold, I gave in to a sudden shiver.
“Myrn—”
Icy wind howled to unexpected life around me, blowing outward through the windows. A terrific cloud of plaster dust and stuffing whipped past, stinging my eyes.
“M-Myrna—calm down!”
Now that was stupid. Never tell an angry female to calm down. It just makes things worse. The lady rattled me through and through.
The door, propped at an angle, suddenly shifted and toppled like a tree, making a heavy, oddly musical whannnng when it struck the floor. The ventilated desk shifted as though being shoved by an invisible Charles Atlas, shooting broadside across the floor until it slammed the wall behind. My sturdy chair, caught between, broke into sticks.
Papers swirled; I grabbed what I could reach, then gave up and fled before any wood shards got picked up in the storm and started slicing me.
“Jeeze,” I muttered, getting out of the line of fire from the gaping doorway. Papers fluttered out and sifted down. All the wind was confined to the office.
The ghosts in movies and plays weren’t like this. They moved ponderously slow or stood in place, looking unearthly. Myrna was throwing things around like an invisible, intelligent tornado.
After all this time, she’d finally scared me.
I shouldn’t have mentioned the grenade. Considering how she’d died, she was bound to be sensitive about that kind of thing.
I hustled toward the washroom, thinking to get Emma out until things settled.
She still had the wet towel on the back of her neck and her head between her knees. She began to straighten.
