Chapter Six
When she came around, she was lying on the floor behind the service desk, her cheek pressed to the low-quality, well-worn carpet. It stank like mildew and she turned her face hastily away and sat up, biting back a groan.
Her boss stood over her, looking down at her without even a hint of sympathy, and Lucien crouched next to her, his eyes wide with . . . Was that enjoyment on his face?
Bella blinked, trying to clear her head. It still ached, but not like it had moments before. The spiking agony that she had felt seemed to have lessened.
Suddenly remembering the shadow leaping toward her, she shot to her feet, then swayed dizzily. She didn’t see the shadow, or Mr. Eckles, anywhere. In fact, the store was completely empty except for her, Lucien, and their boss.
Lucien rose to his feet beside her, the strange expression of secret enjoyment gone. Had he only hidden it, or had it ever really been there? She wasn’t sure.
She closed her eyes against the spinning in her head and said a prayer of thankfulness. She didn’t know what she’d have done if her hallucination of the red‑eyed shadow had remained present.
“You’re fired, Bella,” her boss said, his tone hard and filled with an unexpected malice.
Her eyes snapped open.
“What?” she gasped out. Fired? For fainting?
“You’re obviously on illegal drugs. Can’t have you scaring away any more customers. I doubt Mr. Eckles will ever come back in this store after the way you screamed in his face. And the others”—he made a gesture encompassing the empty store—“they left, too, after you screamed.”
Bella felt herself sway again, her balance even more compromised by the shock of suddenly losing her job.
Beside her, Lucien reached out a supporting hand, a strange smile upon his face, but Bella couldn’t stop herself from cowering away. She didn’t want to be touched just then. Not by anyone. She was just trying to sort out her thoughts and she didn’t need anything else to deal with. She especially didn’t want his touch. And she didn’t want to think about why he was enjoying her situation.
She felt off. Out of sync with her surroundings. Everything seemed odd, as if there was something that she should be able to perceive, something just out of sight or barely beyond human hearing, but it remained faintly veiled to her senses. She didn’t know what it was. It felt like a pressure, but one that came from inside her.
Her fingertips tingled oddly, shocks of sensation darting down her arms like electric current flowing through a damaged wire. Her head throbbed in time with them.
What was happening to her?
She felt tears of frustration at her lack of knowledge sting her eyes.
“But, I just fainted. I’m not on drugs,” she said quietly, trying to salvage her job, or at least make sense of things. “You know I don’t do drugs.”
Her boss snorted through his large nose, eyeing her snidely, his steel gray eyes hard with derision.
“That’s what they all say. Get your things. And get out. I won’t have an employee who comes to work high.”
His reaction seemed extreme to her. He was usually a taskmaster of a man, but a fair one. She’d always done her job, and done it well, and she’d thought that he appreciated her efforts to always be there, show up on time, and do a good job. He’d never been this unaccountably brusque to her before.
“But I’ve worked here for seven years, Mr. Bouthar,” she whispered, cowed by his unwavering tone, but unwilling to give up her only source of income quietly.
Her headache was beginning to worsen again, and she could barely maintain her shaky grasp on composure.
“I don’t care,” Mr. Bouthar hissed, a strange, unexplainable viciousness in his gaze when he looked at her. “I want you out.”
Bella gasped as he took an unexpected, threatening step toward her, and to her horror, a shadow began to rise up behind Mr. Bouthar, drifting up out of the floor as if it were the tapped source of his maliciousness and he was drawing it nearer to him.
The shadow was enormous, yet strangely insubstantial, with red eyes glowing as brightly as hot coals and long hands tipped with scythe‑like claws. It slowly flickered into existence, as if materializing out of nothingness. The murky gray that composed its body seemed to have no substance, yet its vaporous shape drifted closer and closer to Mr. Bouthar until it was nearly snuggled up against the man’s side.
Her boss seemed unaware of its presence.
“No,” Bella whispered to the shadow, and to herself, unwilling to believe her eyes. “No.”
“Yes!” Mr. Bouthar bellowed into her face.
Bella felt as if her mind was splitting. The ache in her head wasn’t even the worst of it. She could not comprehend what was happing to her. Why was she seeing these hallucinations? Why was everyone acting so oddly?
Mr. Bouthar was so angry, unaccountably so, out of proportion to the events that had just taken place. So she’d screamed and passed out. He’d be justified to call an ambulance, maybe, but not to get this angry, accuse her of being on drugs, and fire her.
And Lucien, why was he enjoying this so much?
She glanced at him. He was still standing there beside her, but he was no longer looking as if he was having a good time at her expense. Instead, he was staring at the shadow.
“You can see it?” Bella gasped. “You can see it too?”
Lucien did not reply but his gaze snapped to her face.
“If you stay in my store one more minute, Miss Thompson, I’m going to call the police and have you arrested for trespassing.” Mr. Bouthar shouted, a vein throbbing fiercely in his temple.
Behind him, the shadow grinned, reaching out a vaporous hand to stroke Mr. Bouthar’s bald pate, the gesture much like a loving owner would bestow on a pet that had just successfully performed a trick.
That was enough for Bella. Crazy or not, hallucinations or not, she couldn’t take another moment of trying to figure it all out. With panic riding her, she pulled the store nametag from her jacket, flung it onto the service desk, and turned to run into the break room, where the locker checked out to her held her purse.
She fumbled with the combination lock on the locker, her hands shaking so badly she could barely turn the dial. She felt a presence at her back and jerked around, expecting to see the horrendous shadow, but she found Lucien there instead.
“Let me help you, Bella,” he purred, smiling again.
“No,” Bella said, her voice quivering with emotion. “Just get away from me. You’re enjoying this for some reason. You’re a part of this somehow. I don’t know how, but you are!”
“Now, Bella, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lucien said, his tone meaning just the opposite of his words.
His overly familiar, oily manner sent shivers up her spine. They joined the gooseflesh puckering her neck in foreboding.
With a cry, Bella turned back to the combination lock, her fingers frantically seeking the correct numbers. The lock chittered metallically as she repeatedly knocked it against the locker in her haste. After several failed attempts, during which time her panic seemed to grow exponentially, she finally managed to unlock it.
She flung the lock aside and jerked open the steel door, ignoring the loud bang as it rebounded against the locker next to it, and reached in with both hands to grab her purse.
Without another word to Lucien, she raced for the front door, passing Mr. Bouthar and the shadow on her way out.
Fleeing down the sidewalk, she let a sob escape her as she ran toward her apartment in defeat. First Derek and then her only source of income. She was losing everything. Even, it seemed, her grasp on sanity.
“I don’t care. I don’t care,” she mumbled to herself as she ran. “Nothing matters. Nothing really matters.”
Please help me, Lord, she prayed silently. Please help me.
She jogged down the sidewalk, clumsily jostling other pedestrians in her haste.
“Hey, lady, watch it! Are you crazy
?” one groused at her as she stumbled against his arm, crowding him hard enough to make him spill the precious contents of the Starbucks cup that he held.
She ignored him, and muttered to herself, “I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy.”
Several blocks from the cell phone store, she slowed her frantic pace, her breath sawing out of her lungs in great, heaving gasps, her whole body a jumbled mess of raw nerves.
She tried to calm her pounding heart, but it was no use. Fear, loss, and horror still rode her hard. Head down, avoiding the other pedestrians on the sidewalk, Bella watched her boots as they tapped out a fast tattoo against the concrete beneath them, taking her closer and closer to the haven of her apartment.
I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy.
But, maybe she was crazy, Maybe she was. Who else saw red‑eyed shadows that weren’t even real? Besides Lucien, that is.
Trust me, Bella, you’re not crazy. But you are in danger.
It took her a moment to realize that the whisper of thought was not hers.
Gooseflesh once again prickled the skin of her nape, and she stopped walking, keeping her head down. Afraid to look up.
She was fairly certain that she would see another hallucination standing there. Only now, it was going to talk to her. In her mind.
I am not a hallucination, Bella. Look up, I’m standing right beside you. You are in danger.
Filled with dread, scared nearly out of her mind, Bella raised her head.