[19] PERCEPTION

Jane

The party had gone on without me.

People milled around, dressed in every kind of costume imaginable. People in masks. People who could be watching me. People who potentially wanted to blind me to death.

On the bright side, unless a stage light was meant to collapse on me, the opportunities for Kate's warning to come pass at a Hallowe'en party seemed... unlikely in the same way that deep, dark water did.

I tried to fake belonging, attempting to shed the shell-shocked look of someone who just received a message from beyond the grave.

But I heard her before I saw her.

"You're sure?" a woman said. The woman, the owner of a voice recorded on my phone.

In person, she wore an unfestive pencil skirt and heels. The man trailing behind her looked nervously over his shoulder, giving me a glimpse at his familiar face. The last time I saw him, he was staring blankly at me from inside a champagne Buick.

Apparently the owner of the Incendiary office could not be bothered to handle his Hawthorne Hotel business himself, but sent the woman in his stead to take care of things. Much like he must have sent the young man to Boston to try to intimidate me.

I watched from behind a tree—literally from behind someone dressed as a tree—while studying the Incendiary pair. So mundane. The woman: blonde and determined, carrying much more confidence than I heard her earlier. The young man: well-dressed, but lacking the posture of someone in a suit. His shoulders curled in, meek and small.

My heart quickened. I could control this. I could not control what Kate said to Elaine or control what came to Rhys in his dreams, but I could make a choice in the hotel.

"Positive. Connors had eyes on him," the young man answered.

I slipped closer, behind Jack Skellington and Sally to keep close enough that I didn't lose their voices over the ambient, inescapable music.

"Connors' word does not mean very much to me right now."

They stopped in front of the elevator, stabbing abruptly at the button. The elevator came. Doors slid open to swallow them whole, closing up again to separate me from them.

Above the elevator door, the little indicator pointed down. Down to the basement.

I found the emergency stairwell, click click clicking down the concrete stairs. Plenty of things could be in the basement. Recycling, laundry facilities, underground parking, or perhaps the conspiracy to commit conspiracies.

At the bottom of the stairs, the door between me and the elevator had one small window and I waited for the elevator doors to slide open and shut, waiting patiently for the click click click of heels to reach an appropriate distance.

I slipped off mine. Bia's choice of footwear was good for show, but not good for espionage.

Shoes in hand, I creaked the door open as quietly as it would let me, turning toward the clatter of a woman on a mission. She left me a perfect trail without leaving any evidence. The basement halls reverberated each footstep back to me while I padded practically silently at reasonable distance behind them.

Despite the fact that the basement seemed to be the only place in the whole hotel that wasn't decorated, it gave me creepier vibes than all the mood lights blazing above. The white walls and low ceiling very much gave me the impression of a modern dungeon.

"I don't understand why you need me to do this. Isn't this more in Connors' realm?" the young man protested, his voice ringing in the hall even as they turned a corner ahead of me.

"Connors can't even keep track of Niequest," the woman said, "so I'm improvising."

There was a pause. Even the clicks stopped for a moment.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Intimidation didn't work. We're moving onto ransom," the woman answered, "all you need to do is get her into our hotel room."

The clicking resumed toward the rumble of what sounded like washing machines. I inched closer, straining to hear over the dull roar of tumbling sheets.

"What about the extras?" the man pressed.

"Hardy, I'm not going to micromanage you through a kidnapping. We already lost this deal once. There isn't room to let it fall through a second time. Do what you have to do. Do it discretely. Now, put on a uniform and get the job done." The woman's voice was edged in something beyond exercising the authority she lacked in the Incendiary office. The desperation of a second chance? The subtle fear of failure?

Fear of failure didn't really measure up against the fear of being kidnapped.

I stepped back. No heels clicked.

"What about Niequest?" The laundry almost overwhelmed the questions.

That was a question I also needed the answer to. What about Lucas? The mystery man of the hour, entangled in something much deeper than I originally thought. To think, I'd felt bad for dragging him into mine and Rhys' personal typhoon of chaos. He'd already come packing his own.

"Use your discretion. You know more about him than anyone."

And all of a sudden, the clicking resumed. Too close. Too close to a girl sneaking closer and closer to hear over the laundry.

I twisted, taking in the length of the corridor. Too long to disappear down. I ducked into the next available room. Room wasn't the optimal word. It was a janitor's closet. Still, I pulled myself into it, into the dark where a yarny mophead grazed my arm and I almost tripped over a bucket.

Too few seconds passed before the tell-tale tap of the Incendiary pencil skirt passed by the door. 

I let a few more slip by. Maybe a minute. Just me and the dark, long enough to remember how to breathe.

All things considered, I'd had worse circumstances. At least I knew what I was up against, instead of stumbling through Cullfield trying to figure out who it was I needed to be afraid of. The face of my enemy was business casual.

But how was Bia supposed to die when it was me they wanted? If I let them usher me into a hotel room, would that appropriately end the manhunt?

I considered the possibility of playing victim. Bia and Lucas still thought I was contained to the medium session. It would be so easy to just let myself be caught, just to get it over with. No one would be around to try and save me.

I slipped out of the janitor's closet, down the corridor, and back of the eerie stairs. The party had continued unchanged. It made no difference to the Hawthorne Hotel that in the belly of the building a couple of un-costumed office employees plotted a conspiracy to kidnap.

It gave me a chill. The conversation I heard downstairs didn't shake me nearly as much as how the world kept on spinning. Everyone else continued on with their lives, unaware of mine.

It was so easy to suffer in silence.

I roamed through the throngs of people, eyes open for the lackey assigned to apprehend me.

Nothing they could do to me could hurt worse than another loss in my life.