Dead Waters - Anton Strout [43]
I helped Jane squirm out of her coat and hung it next to mine. “You really ought to have a chute installed that drops straight down to the incinerator.”
“I don’t think that would be such a great idea,” I said, crossing over to my sofa. “I’d be half tempted to throw myself down there, if only to dry off.”
I started off down the main hall that led back to the other rooms of the apartment. “I’m going to change.”
“I’m going to shower,” Jane said. She kicked off her shoes and squelched down the hallway behind me in her wet socks on her way to the bathroom. “If you could just pull something out for me to wear, that would be great.”
“Sure,” I said.
I continued down the hall to my bedroom and changed into something less soaking wet. One Ramones T-shirt and a fresh pair of jeans later, I hit my couch out in the living room, opening up my satchel and pulling out the now-soaked books that Jane had picked for me from Redfield’s place. The distraction of trying to read them with my powers if only to identify students from his lectures was a welcome one after the night we had been through, and I was thrilled to see that exhaustion seemed to be keeping any untoward flare-ups at bay. NYU lecture halls filled my mind’s eye as I pushed into the visions of the professor educating his students on the history of film. While engaging, it hardly was anything I imagined someone killing him over. Eventually the drone of his voice and the subject matter became too much and I decided to switch up books.
When I pulled out of the vision, it was to a different sound entirely. Jane was screaming from the other room.
“Jane . . . ?” I said, my voice and body both weak from the hit my blood sugar took with the vision. I grabbed a pack of Life Savers from a tray of them on one of my end tables and opened it, popping them in my mouth and swallowing them whole.
“Simon!” Jane called out from the bathroom.
I rose from the couch and ran on unsteady legs down my hallway toward the back of the apartment. I threw open the bathroom door, startling her. Her hair was hanging down, wet, and Jane was wrapped in a white towel. Her eyes were so bugged out I thought they might pop.
“What is it?” I asked. I looked around the bathroom for any sign of trouble.
“I just got all the ick off me from tonight,” she said, “and when I was drying off, I found this.”
Jane pulled aside her hair and spun around, facing her back to the bathroom mirror. She lowered the towel so it exposed just below her shoulder blades. Set between them was what looked like a tattoo of a dark green swirl of symbols with words circling them in a language I didn’t know. The outer edge of the swirl was a ring that was composed of what looked like writhing snakes that were, in fact, writhing.
“What the hell is that?” Jane asked, her voice on the verge of slipping into full-blown hysteria. I had to calm her, and quick.
I walked over to her and put my hand over the mark. It was below the skin, but the snakes were definitely moving within the pattern itself. I pressed my hand down harder, trying to feel for them, but it was like trying to touch a projection on a movie screen.
“Odd,” I said, feeling the rise and fall of her chest as she panicked. I traced it with a gentle touch. “Does it hurt at all?”
“No,” she said. “Does that really matter? It’s on me. Isn’t that enough?”
“Calm down until we have something to panic about, okay?” I asked. Jane nodded. “Good. Now, do you feel any different?”
“You mean other than freaked-out?” Jane asked, sharp.
“Yes,” I said. “Other than that.”
“Nope. Just freaked-out.”
I looked her in the eye and gave her a smile. “So I take it you didn’t get this from a wild night out with the girls, then?”
“What?” she said, missing my attempt at humor and snapping at me instead. “No, Simon! Get it off of me!”
“Hold on,” I said. I grabbed the edge of the towel,