Page 48 of Crazy Spooky Love
We freeze, waiting. Deathly silence. We wait some more. Still nothing.
“Isaac, go and find out what’s happening.”
“I’m not sure I appreciate being used as a go-between,” he grumbles.
“Well, I can’t exactly do it myself can I?” I hiss. “Please?”
“Fine,” he relents ungraciously. “Wait here.”
“I’m hardly likely to go anywhere else, am I?”
I stand back as he disappears through the door and let Marina and Artie, who are by now sitting on the stairs, know what’s happening.
“Can you believe those two?” Marina says, sticking three tabs of gum into her mouth at the same time and chewing aggressively.
“Honestly? No. I really can’t,” I say. I find it hard to imagine the twins doing anything without being expressly told to. I’m guilty of assigning them no free will at all. In my head, they’re Leo’s glamorous autobots, as if he switches them on and off as required. I have underestimated them at my own peril.
Lloyd strolls through the closed door, looking far too smug for my liking. He’s clearly enjoying this.
“Is this a bad moment to mention that those two ladies are leaving and they appear to have taken the key with them?”
“Leaving? They can’t leave us down here!” I practically shout, and Marina and Artie both jump up at the same time.
“Get your scrawny identical arses back here and open this fucking door this instant!” Marina lets rip, but all we hear is the resounding slam of the front door echoing around the high-ceilinged hall.
“Oh shit,” I whisper, clutching my face between my flattened palms. “They’ve actually gone and bloody left us.”
“I wish I’d brought my lunch box with me,” Artie says, and we both stare at him, incredulous.
“Sorry.” He looks crestfallen. “It’s egg sandwiches, my favorite.”
“I think that’s my cue to leave you all to it.” Lloyd gives me a superior little smile before he disappears, marking himself as a member of “Team Leo,” or more likely as “Team Lloyd.” He doesn’t seem to really have much in the way of empathy for anyone.
“Phone reception?” I say, and we all click our screens to check.
“Nothing.” Marina shakes her mobile as if it might help.
“I’ve got one bar,” Artie says, and then his phone promptly dies. “And no battery.”
We all look at my mobile, now officially our last hope. The signal is flickering between no service and one bar when I move my hand around in big circles.
“Okay. I might be able to make a call,” I say calmly. “But who to?”
“The police?” Marina jumps rightin.
“Anyone without sirens?” I’m really keen not to make a scene that will draw Fletcher Gunn’s attention. I fully expect that he has a hotline from the police station set up to give him the juicy goss on all incoming emergency callouts, and there’s no juicier bone for that man than a Bittersweet in distress.
“Well, we can safely cross Leo off the list,” I say. I have no way to know why his minions were here without him or if he even knew anything about it, but he’s the last person I’m going to call right now.
“Your mother? Your gran?”
I consider it: my mother and grandmother closing up Blithe Spirits early to come over here and rescue us. This is my first official case for the agency. Am Ireallyso inept that I need to call my mum?
“Any other suggestions?”
Unusually for Douglas, he hurtles into the cellar at a dash, straight through the locked door, rather than his usual relaxed stroll. “You can get out through the coal chute,” he says quickly. “I snuck out of there enough times to know.”
I stare at him, hopeful. “The coal chute?”
