Greg, Made

"Isla? You alright?"

"Fine."

No. Not fine.

She was taking too long. What was she doing, hosting a damn wine tasting?

I was exposed. My patience as short as a half-smoked cigarette. Shouldn't have humored the pretend psychic bit. Hell, I shouldn't have brought her along at all. Why even did I? She wasn't wrong. I'd worked with less restricted associates in the past for this sort of thing, but, well... she was right there. Just standing there in my office. Acting mysterious and looking pretty. There, I said it. The woman was pretty. And annoying as a church lady stuck in traffic on a Sunday, and actually quite smart, so it would seem.

"What are you doing in there? Have you found—"

"She ain't home."

Oh fangs. We'd been made.

I turned, slow and deliberate, keeping my body over the crack in the door. An apartment down the hall was open. A middle-aged woman with her hair wrapped in a towel leaned against the threshold.

"Evening," I nodded at the woman.

"One of her boyfriends?" she sneered.

Boyfriends? Plural?

The woman snickered. "I know that look. Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but sorry, honey, tramp already ran off with another."

"Oh," I looked down, avoiding her eye, feigning embarrassment (hiding excitement; she ran off!) and sneaking glances back through the crack in Lily's door. "Oh gosh, I am so sorry to bother you. I just, well I—Lily is a friend of mine and I hadn't heard from her in a few days and got worried."

"Yeah, well," the woman snorted, scratching the underside of one breast. "Like I said, you ain't the first to come knocking on her door at odd hours... were you here last week too?"

I shook my head.

She peered at me, before finally shrugging again. "Hm. Only saw him from the back. Nice hair. Baggy suit. Hm, bit older than you, actually. I think. She, you know, she saw a lot of guys. You're better off. Any-who, take the stairs on your way out. Elevator's been finnicky."

That was a dismissal. Plain as day (or so I assumed, how would I know how plain day was?). I was an unwelcome stranger. Another creepy boyfriend. Too bad my companion decided to take the entire century to search one lousy apartment. Otherwise, I'd be all too happy to save cover and break off.

"When did you see her last?" I said, throwing a quiver to my voice. "I'm sorry, it's just, she hasn't been answering my calls."

The woman raised a brow.

"Maybe she just don't want to talk to you."

She craned her neck, as if to look past me. I shifted.

Dang it, woman. If she'd only stay still and look at me, right in the eye, I could probably enthrall her. She was a bit far away though. What was that, fifteen feet? Never had much luck at throwing the old charm out that far.

"You, uh, you sure you wasn't the one screaming all the way down the stairwell with her on Sunday?"

Screaming!

"Oh no," I rose my voice dramatically. Loud enough for Isla to hear. Hell, she better have heard me. "Was that when she ran off? With the other man? You called him her boyfriend."

I felt Isla's presence behind me before the door creaked. Slapped a hand against the wall, keeping that barrier between her and Lily's neighbor tight. Isla was right at my back. Very still, but her breathing heavy and heartbeat erratic.

"Is that door—" Lily's neighbor reached inside her apartment. "I, uh, think I should call the building manager."

Isla pressed her palm flat against my spine and pushed. I stumbled out the doorway. Isla bumped hard into my hip as she flung herself out the apartment after me, slamming the door shut in the same instance. As Lily's neighbor gasped, Isla twined her fingers in mine and ran for the elevator, dragging me along.

"The stairs!" I jerked her hard to the right and flung my shoulder into the stairwell exit.

Behind us, as its hinges pulled the heavy door closed again, I heard Lily's neighbor shouting.

Isla threw her head back and took a deep swig from a can of wine.

"You took that!"

"Yeah," panting, trembling, she offered me the can. "Want some?"

More shouting, though I couldn't make out the words. Doors slamming open. The elevator dinged. "Fang it." I grabbed the wine and mirrored Isla's drink. I could feel residue from her lipstick rub off on my own mouth.

Eck. The wine was too tart. And fizzy. The fruity and sour odor was so potent it nearly overpowered the slight smell of iron and rot permeating through the stairwell.

Isla took the can back, finished it, tossed it over the rail seven flights and was already trotting her way down at speed in those heels.

"Let's jet," she said.

But that smell... it reminded me of the stench in Lily's apartment. The stench of spoiled blood. Lily's neighbor had mentioned screaming down here, hadn't she? I glanced around. There were drops on the stair. Dark brown, nearly black splattered on the dirty concrete, forming a sporadic trail downward.

I followed it—and after Isla—to the next landing. A bigger smear of filth was on the wall. As if someone, perhaps a bleeding someone, hadn't taken the corner at the bottom of this flight very well.

"Wait," I called to Isla. "Do you smell that?"

Isla spun and glared up at me like I was the dumbest boy that ever unlived. "I'm assuming you don't mean the mold."

"It's fainter than Lily's apartment, but foul." I pressed my face against a dark stain on the concrete wall and inhaled. "This is blood."

Isla bumped shoulders with me as she zeroed in for a closer look at the stain. It was sudden. I may have flinched. I didn't mean to. Her hair curled just under her chin, leaving her smooth neck exposed. She squinted at the stain—pursing her plush lips—and then: "Yep. Come on."

And once again, her warm hand was in mine and pulling me down.

"There's a trail," I said, pointing at the ground but watching the way that hair bounced against her jaw. "Look."

"Yes, nice work, it's a lot of blood."

"I should take photos."

"No time!" Isla grumbled, giving my wrist a good yank, her heel scraping against a brown splotch on the next landing. "I'm not getting pinched cause you needed a favor. You should really see the one I took of her bathroom, anyway."

"What? Why?"

Above us, the stairwell door groaned open. "They ran down there."

My throat sank. Isla was right. We were about to be nabbed cause I was stupid enough to drag an unprofessional out here with no plan. I couldn't let her get caught at this because of me.

"Behind you," I said.

Before she could form any coherent noise to express her confusion, I scooped Isla up by the waist and threw her over my shoulder. She yelped. I picked up the pace, zipping us down to the bottom landing in no time, careful not to hit Isla's head on the corners of the narrow stairwell. Once at the ground floor, I plopped her back on her high heels. She wobbled and latched on to me for balance. But as she said, we had no time for the baby deer finding their footing game. I looped an arm around her back and guided us—at a slightly more acceptably human-passing pace—out the stairwell, into the building foyer, beyond the front door, and around the corner in the no time.

"I'm going to be sick," Isla mumbled against my chest, the steam of her breath catching me in the face. Her mint and orange shampoo tickling my nostrils.

I held tight to her, arm around her soft waist, till she regained her footing. As she dry-heaved into my collarbone I noticed that her arm was latched around my side as well.

A passerby whistled at us and Isla violently thrust her middle finger out from under my jacket. I think I growled. Purely on instinct, promise.

Isla seemed to regain herself, pushing away from me and finding her balance. Odd how cold I suddenly felt without her tucked against me.

She tugged her jacket closed and smoothed her now tousled hair behind her ears. "So, uh, you hungry? I'm hungry."

I cleared the dry, burning sensation in my throat and shrugged. "I could eat."