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But fine. I’d play along. I had nothing better to do. She looked so different from those other dead-eyed zombie pricks that sometimes came down to do Halliwell’s bidding. I splayed my hands on the glass and drank her in with my eyes.
“Are you real?” I asked.
She reached up to flick the button that opened the mic. “Yes,” she replied.
Well, of course. Any self-respecting hallucination would insist that she was real.
“You’re overdressed for this place,” I told her.
“Underdressed, more like. I was out to dinner with Halliwell’s business partners. He told me to, um… come down here in this outfit. It sure as hell wasn’t my idea.”
“So now he wants to tickle my dick by dangling a beautiful girl in front of me. Devious old fuck. He can go blow himself.”
“Don’t.” Her voice was hushed, intense. “Just listen to me. Please, listen.”
She looked so scared. Maybe Halliwell was punishing her for something. Maybe she was a helpless pawn. Or just an amazingly subtle actress.
Either way, this probably sucked for me. That was the one sure thing.
“Get lost, Red,” I said. “Go home. I got nothing for you.”
She shook her head. “Please. You have to give him what he wants, or you’ll die. He’s out of patience. It’s now or it’s… terrible things for you. Please, give it to him.”
Terrible things? I laughed under my breath. “That’s okay,” I told her. “I’m ready. I’ve been dead for a while now. My body just hasn’t figured it out yet. It’s only pain. It’ll end at some point. And then I’ll be gone. It’s okay. Don’t sweat it.”
That made her lips shake. They were so soft and full, stained red from her worn-off lipstick. “No,” she said. “You are not dead. Don’t give up. I don’t want you to give up.”
Wow. Give the girl an Oscar. “I can’t give him what he wants,” I told her. “Even if I was willing. I have brain damage. I had a fractured skull. I was in a coma. The cupboard is bare. If he wants to cut me to pieces, he can just get on with it.”
We locked eyes, and I felt that tickle in my head again, like she was trying to communicate without words. I leaned my forehead against the glass, while feelings I’d forgotten roared through my system. I’d thought I was dead already, but she’d made a liar out of me. This girl could crook her finger, and I’d sit, lie down, roll over and beg.
But she could not pry SmokeScreen out of me. I had buried it so deep, I couldn’t access it myself. I didn’t know how, but all their drugs and tests had not uncovered it.
Maybe it really was lost. Along with most of the rest of me. The best of me.
My fingers curled like claws, as if they could sink into the glass like it was clay, rip it away, get closer to her. I wanted to touch her skin. Smell her scent. She was a goddamn sorceress.
She was almost as tall as I was, with those towering heels, hair all twirled up into a complicated arrangement on top of her head.
“Take your hair down,” I said, because this was just an overheated fantasy, and I was marked for death anyway. I might as well milk it to the bitter end.
She looked frightened. As if I was in any position to scare someone. “Why?”
“You look like some uptight trophy wife mincing off to have tea with the queen,” I said. “I don’t like it. Take the hair down.”
I didn’t really expect her to do it, but she reached up, and started pulling out hairpins. Unwinding glossy red spirals of twisted hair. An erotic spectacle like I’d never imagined. It made me shake. Sweat broke out on my back.
When her hair was unwound, she ran her fingers through it, loosening the curls into a shimmering red cloud. Oh, yeah. That was the siren I was dreaming about. Her makeup was doing a late-night landslide, but on her, it looked sexy, soft, vulnerable.
Halliwell was one smart son-of-a-bitch when it came to mind-fucking. Pinpoint accurate about what I liked. I didn’t want that bastard in my head, jerking me around.
“What were your instructions?” I asked. “To make my dick hard?”
“He didn’t give me specific instructions,” she said. “He just said to talk to you.”
I abruptly realized that the loosened hair was a big mistake. My ears were roaring. Lust and rage together were a toxic brew. They were probably logging my physiological responses. For all I knew, they had implanted sensors in my body. That was Halliwell’s style, for-fucking-certain.
Fine. I might as well give them a good show.
