The door chimes rang a fourth time.
Only when Brad was out of the shop did Isobel feel the shakes begin to subside.
She looked around, but Varen had vanished.
She bent to retrieve the money, stuffing it with trembling fingers haphazardly into the cash drawer and shoving it closed again, as though it could contain what had already gone awry.
She gripped the sides of the register and stared at the numbered keys, trying to anchor herself, trying to decide if the here and now was too impossible to be real.
She flinched when Brad’s headlights sliced through the front windows, as bright as search beams. They swiveled violently away, tires screeching. Isobel shut her eyes. She listened as he peeled out of the parking lot, the blast from his modified muffler sounding a roar before fading into the night.
Numb, she turned in a slow circle, opening her eyes again to pan the destruction around her. Chairs overturned, ice cream melting on the floor, and still no sign of Varen.
She shuddered, overcome with something akin to relief. She couldn’t have faced him in that moment. She couldn’t face him ever again. Not after this.
Moving on impulse, Isobel hurried to the door.
Her hands on the push bar, she stopped, her gaze catching on the table, on the folded slip of paper Brad had dropped there. Suddenly she realized what it was. It was the note from Varen, the note he’d written to warn her, the one that she’d tucked into the pocket of her sweater.
The sweater she’d left in Brad’s car.
8
Ligeia
Her back pressed to the wall, Isobel lingered just outside the staff door. Finally, steeling herself with a shuddering breath, she pushed away from the wall and gave the door frame a timid double knock. “Hello?” she called into the pitch-blackness. “You—you back there?”
No answer.
Isobel reached a tremulous hand inside and patted the wall. Her fingers fumbled over a light switch and she flicked it upward, causing fluorescents to sputter on with a soft clink.
Inside, shelves packed with boxes of ice cream cones, packages of napkins, and cartons of paper cups lined the hideous lime green, cracked plaster walls. Her searching gaze traveled past a dark gray locker cabinet and the rear exit, stopping to rest on the door to the walk-in freezer. It stood ajar, mist whispering through a slim gap.
Isobel stepped into the room. She moved to the freezer and glanced down to find it propped open to a slit by a small wooden crate.
She put her hand to the latch and pulled, surprised when it opened easily, sending huge gales of cold air tumbling out over her sneakers. She peeked her head inside first, sliding in only when she thought she saw, through the veil of fog, one black boot.
“What are you doing in here?” was the first thing, the safest thing, she thought to ask.
He sat in one corner, lounging on a bench composed of shrink-wrapped ice cream canisters. She inched farther into the cold, suddenly glad of the turtleneck and the pair of blue sweatpants that she’d brought to throw on after the game. She let the freezer door thud back against the wooden crate, her shoulders hunkering, and wrapped her arms around her middle.
His visor sat on the floor between his boots, and his hair once again hung in his face so that she couldn’t read his expression.
“I . . . ,” she began, groping for the next thing to say, the right thing to say. “I’m sorry,” she said, the words sounding lame in her own ears, and she knew that, on their own, they weren’t enough. “I . . . didn’t know they—”
“I know,” he said.
She hugged herself tighter. “I—I put the money back in the—”
“Thanks.”
Isobel pressed her lips together in a tight frown, a wad of frustration knotting itself in her chest. “Look—I’m trying . . . I said I was sor—”
“Why?” He looked up at her sharply, anger etched on his features. “Why did you do that?”
“I—,” she stammered, entrapped once again within the force of those eyes. “What do you mean? I couldn’t just—”
“Those were your friends, right?”
“Yeah, but—” Her gaze dropped to the frosted metal floor. She shook her head furiously, though more to combat his questions than to answer them.
“What do you think you proved, cheerleader?” He rose suddenly, and Isobel felt herself shrink back with an involuntary step.
“N-nothing,” she stammered. “It just . . . it wasn’t right.”
“Why do you care?” he demanded, drawing close enough to stand over her, close enough for her to feel the anger rolling off of him, washing over her.