Stage Fright (Bit Parts) (35 page)

Isaiah quickly searched the rest of the house, but I couldn’t bear to leave the living room.  The idea that someone had penetrated my private space and fondled my personal things sickened me.  The house had been pillaged, yet somehow
I’d
been violated.  It was even worse than the ransacking Victor had done in my mind.  A sob clenched my chest.

Isaiah returned to the living room, looking grim.

“Was it Marcella?” I whispered.

“I don’t think so.  She’s out for shine, and this kind of destruction would be pointless.”

I headed for the kitchen, but he cut me off.  “Don’t go in there.  Perry and I will clean everything up for you.  You shouldn’t have to see this.”

I shoved him aside, determined to look.  The living room was nothing compared to what had happened in the kitchen.  Every dish, bowl, and tumbler had been torn from the cupboards and smashed on the floor.  Crushed eggs were smeared across the countertops.  Splotches of ketchup and mustard stained the curtains and chair cushions.  The floor was a minefield of broken ceramic and glass.

The destruction was too much to take in.  Every time I looked around, I saw more damage.  Pages had been ripped from my mother’s beloved cookbooks.  The ceramic soap dish I’d made my mom in third grade was broken.  The moose and chicken oven mitts were shoved into the garbage disposal.  I whimpered, and my knees wouldn’t support me.  Just before I collapsed, Isaiah put an arm around my waist to steady me.

When he once more tried to stop my tour, I knew the worst was yet to come.  I followed a trickle of water to the flooded bathroom where a slurry of wet toilet paper clogged the overflowing sink.  The shower curtain had been slashed, and the blinds yanked from the window.  Bottles of shampoo and conditioner had been stomped to bits, their contents splashing the tiled walls like finger paints.

Isaiah gently tugged on my arm.  “Let’s go.”

I pulled away, determined to see what he didn’t want me to.  Andrew’s bedroom was eerily untouched, but my own bedroom looked like a tornado had ripped through it.  My laptop had been smashed against the wall, and all my clothes were dumped in the corner of the room.  I picked my favorite, fuzzy fleece from the top of the pile and immediately dropped it in disgust.  It was soaking wet.  And was that
urine
I smelled?  I choked back a sob of rage.  The defilement was worse than anything I could have imagined.

I collapsed onto my bed, and that’s when I noticed the three, blackened holes in my pillow.  I fingered the pillowcase, horrified.  “Those aren’t…”  I nearly choked on the word “…
bullet
holes, are they?”

When Isaiah nodded, I burst into tears.  Someone wanted me dead.

Isaiah wrapped his arms around me.  Sick at heart, I buried my head in his chest.

“Any idea who would have done this?” Isaiah asked.

“Caleb,” I said immediately, pulling out of his arms.

“Isn’t that the man I met on the porch?”

“Yes.”  When I told him the history of Andrew and his psycho ex, Isaiah’s stern expression grew more and more grim.  “Pack your things.  I’m taking you to the church.”

“No way.”

“Cassie… ”

“Forget it!”  I stormed out of my bedroom, Isaiah on my heels.  “I’m not hiding out at Holy Comics until I know that Andrew’s safe.”  Doing my best to ignore the mess in the kitchen, I tried to concentrate.  The Jag was gone, so where was my friend?  The gym, maybe?  Or the grocery store?  Unfortunately, neither of those things seemed right.  Andrew’s gym bag sat in the back hallway where he’d left it the day before, and he’d already been to the grocery store.  So what had made him leave the house on a nasty night like this?  A comic book store?  A late-night modeling job?  A convention of Portal players who loved to cook?

I would have used the kitchen phone to call Andrew’s cell, but the thing had been yanked off the wall, leaving nothing but dangling wires.

A sudden thought made me go hot and cold at the same time.  “What if Caleb took him?”  I shivered, picturing Andrew being abducted at gunpoint.  “We’ve got to find him!  If you take me to my car, we can split up and search.”

I bolted for the door, but Isaiah caught my arm and held me back.  “Pack first.  Then we’ll find your friend.”

I discovered a new toothbrush in the back corner of the linen closet and, mercifully, an undamaged change of clothes in the dryer.  I threw everything into a plastic shopping bag, and in less than five minutes, Isaiah and I were back in his minivan.  I instructed him to take the north way out of the subdivision, figuring Andrew was more likely to enter from that direction.  I kept on high alert, praying that I’d see the XKR coming down the road.

As we rounded a tight curve that hugged one side of a wooded city park, we passed an SUV that had crashed into the side of an enormous oak tree.  One of the SUV’s headlights had been smashed while the other tilted at a crazy angle, lighting the branches of the trees overhead.

“Pull over!” I shouted even as Isaiah eased off to the side of the road.  Without waiting for the van to fully stop, I piled out and hurried towards Caleb’s car.

In the headlights of Isaiah’s van, the smear of blood on the SUV’s door handle looked like red paint.  I drew back with a moan.  “I can’t look inside.”

Isaiah reached under his jacket for a weapon before throwing open the door.  After a moment that stretched out forever, he said, “It’s empty.”

The windshield was a web of cracks smeared with more blood, but the rest of the vehicle was blood-free.  A quick search turned up nothing but dozens of empty beer cans and a broken hockey stick.  A handgun lay on the passenger’s seat like a death threat made real.

Several scenarios played in my head.  In one, Caleb kidnapped Andrew, forcing him at gunpoint to drive, and Andrew had purposely steered into the tree to avoid being captured.  But if that was the case, then where was Andrew now?  In another scene, Caleb destroyed my house then fled, skidding into the tree when the road became icy.  But then where was Caleb?  The star in the windshield and the blood on the door handle proved that
someone
had gotten injured, but I had no idea who that someone was.

“What now?” I asked.

Isaiah frowned, thinking.

I searched the car more thoroughly and still came up with nothing.  Just the gun, the smear of blood, and the empties in the back seat.

Isaiah said, “I’ll bet that Andrew doesn’t even know what his ex-boyfriend did to your house.  Caleb strikes me as a coward.  Most likely, he waited until Andrew was gone before coming over.  All those things he did to your room?  He was sending a message to you, not Andrew.”

It made sense.  My room had been desecrated while Andrew’s had remained untouched.  No doubt Andrew was blissfully unaware of what was waiting for him at home.  My shoulders relaxed a little.

I followed Isaiah back to the minivan, muttering threats to Andrew’s ex.  Threats I fully intended to make good on if I found so much as a single scratch on my best friend.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The moment Isaiah turned right instead of left on Grand River, I knew I was in trouble.

“Milos Coney Island is
that
way.  You need to turn around.”  I gestured at the upcoming median crossover.

He drove past it without a glance.

“Hel-lo?  I told you, my car’s at my uncle’s restaurant!”

He remained infuriatingly calm.  “If you get your car back, you’ll go looking for your friend.”  His eyes met mine in the rearview mirror.  “With Marcella the way she is, it isn’t safe for you to be out.  You’re going to the church.”

“Turn around right now!” I demanded.  “I’m in no mood to argue.”

“Neither am I,” he rumbled back.

“Fine.  Then I’ll jump out at the next red light!”

Isaiah hit the child-safety button on his door, effectively locking me inside the vehicle.

“You can’t do that,” I sputtered.  “It’s kidnapping!”  I continued to argue and complain all the way to Holy Comics, but he didn’t rise to the bait.  When he parked in the church’s lot, I remained in my seat, folding my arms over my chest.  “I am
not
getting out of this car!”

“You don’t have to.”  He left the van, got into Perry’s car, and drove off.

I swore at the top of my lungs when I realized I’d been out maneuvered.  Isaiah had left me with the van, but had taken the keys with him.  Once again, I was stranded.  With a final, furious oath, I grabbed the shopping bag with my clothes and toothbrush and stomped towards the store.

Perry met me at the door with a grin.  “I wondered how long you were going to stay out there.”

I marched past him.  “Don’t start with me.”

“Cassie, don’t worry.  The Outfielder will take care of things.  C’mon, I’ll show you to your room.”  He winked.  “Isaiah called and booked ahead, so I got everything ready.”

My room turned out to be in the basement alongside Isaiah’s dojo.  There was a broken-down couch, an old TV, and a beat-up ping pong table.  “I think it used to be a youth meeting room,” Perry said.  “The couch is a pull-out, so at least you’ll have a bed.”

A louse-infested bed from the looks of it.  The couch smelled of wet dog and mildew.  I hardly dared sit on it let alone sleep on it.

“There’s a DVD player, too,” Perry said.  “We can watch a movie if you want.”

Like I could sit and watch a movie when Andrew was missing, and Isaiah was determined to face down a crazed vampire.  I paced the room like it was a cage.

Perry wrung his hands.  “I know you’d rather be with the Outfielder rather than stuck here with me.”

I stopped pacing, suddenly appalled at my behavior.  Both Isaiah and Perry had my best interests at heart.  “I don’t mind being ‘stuck’ with you,” I said.  “In fact, when this is all over, I’d love to have a movie fest.  We could watch back-to-back X-Men or something.”

He smiled.  “I’m holding you to that.”

I went back to pacing and gnawing my thumbnail.  Where the
hell
was Andrew?  I could have endured this imprisonment if he’d been there with me.

Perry wandered over to a bookshelf that contained several well-worn board games.  “Want to play Monopoly?” he asked.  “About half the pieces are missing, but we can make do.  Or look, Jenga!”

I shook my head at his offer of games.  More pacing.  More nail biting.  Andrew was one of my major worries, but so was Marcella.  No doubt, Isaiah’s sister was out there drinking an ocean of shine.  By the time she was finished, she’d be stronger than a normal vampire.  Isaiah would never be able to take her out.

“How about Boggle?”

Martin had been feeding her, but obviously his soul wasn’t enough to keep her happy.  No other vampire – not even the newly created Luquin Astor – was as rapacious as Marcella.  Maybe if she had taken more than one blood partner, none of this would have happened.

I stopped walking.  Wait a sec!  She did have more than one blood partner.  She’d told me so herself when she’d been in my house.  At the time, I’d been too concerned about my own neck to pay attention to her prattle.  Now, however, I remembered her boasts that her new blood partner could give her anything she wanted.  Including her voice.

“Cassie?  Everything okay?” Perry asked.

“Could a human blood partner give Marcella back her voice?”

He frowned and set the Boggle box on the table.  “No.”

“Are you sure?”

“If there had been any way to restore Marcella’s voice, Hedda would have done it by now.”

I told him what Marcella had told me.  “This person has Marcella
convinced
that she can regain her voice.”

“Then they’re lying.”

I mulled this over.  Only someone extremely desperate would be stupid enough to lie to a vampire.  And who was that desperate?  Or that good of a liar?

The answer hit me like a lightning bolt.  Who was both that frantic and that convincing?  The award-winning actor who longed to be a vampire.  Charles Corning.

I groaned, sinking down on the stinking couch.  Charles, that duplicitous, egotistical tyrant!  He’d wooed Hedda for a chance to become a vampire.  When that hadn’t worked, he’d turned to Victor, going so far as to pimp out my best friend in trade.  My mind spun furiously as I thought it through.  I would have bet money that Charles had even leaked the secret of Hedda’s play to Bertrand Peabody as a way to curry favor with Hedda’s vengeful, ex-husband.  I banged my fists on my knees, furious that I’d fallen for his charms for so long.

“Cassie!”

I blinked.  In front of me, a worried Perry yanked at his beard.  I offered a weak smile.  “I’m okay.  It’s just been a really long day.”

He sat next to me, making the couch sag.  “Remember that night when you asked what Hedda gave Isaiah and me for taking out the rogues?”

I nodded.

“We said she didn’t give us anything, but that’s not true.  We get the most important thing in the world: revenge.  The vampires who attacked us didn’t just take our shine; they stole what we treasured most on this earth: Isaiah’s career, and my family.”  He clenched his fists, and his eyes smoldered.  “It wasn’t until we started kicking some vampire ass that we felt in control of our lives again.”  He looked at me.  “That’s what I’m seeing on your face right now: the need for revenge.  It’s a scary expression.”

Once again, I attempted a smile.  “I’m okay.  Really.”

“No, you’re not.  Quit pretending.  You’ve made great strides in restoring your shine.  Hell, it took me and the Outfielder years to get where you are now.  But that vengeance thing is still eating at you.  Don’t let it.  It’s a cancer.  Even though I’ve been taking out rogues, I haven’t gotten over my need for revenge.  In fact, I think I’ve been feeding it.”  His shoulders drooped.  “I don’t want to see you become like me and Isaiah, okay?  You’re regaining your shine.  Let that be enough.”

I hugged him awkwardly.  “Thanks.  For everything.”

His cheeks reddened in a pleased blush.  Abruptly, he stood up and clapped his hands together.  “Obviously, you’re not into the whole Monopoly and Jenga thing.  How about some food?”