Doctor Who_ Blue Box - Kate Orman [60]
In the end she rang him up and asked him to meet with her right away. When he went out, she went in and stole the monster.
Luis had given her a duplicate key to his apartment when she had first arrived in DC; she had stayed with him for a few weeks while house-hunting. (As far as I’ve been able to find out, romance did not bloom as a result.) She had a heart-in-mouth moment when she pushed the key into the lock – had he changed it? But the innocent door opened up for her.
Swan stalked into the apartment and into the bathroom.
The creature was sitting happily in the tub, playing with Lego and munching on breakfast cereal. She stuffed handfuls of Lego and half a box of cereal into her backpack, plucked Luis’s dressing gown from the back of the door, and wrapped the monster in it. It didn’t react in any way when she touched it, stuffed it into the threadbare fabric, and hoisted it into her arms. It was too busy pushing two blocks together and pulling them apart again, over and over.
Swan locked the door behind her, walked down the back stairs to her station wagon, and drove off with the monster hidden under old clothes in the back. It was as simple as that.
Luis waited for her in a nearby coffee shop for fifteen minutes until he realised what was going on. He sprinted back to his apartment, faster than he had ever run anywhere, arriving on the stoop with lungs wheezing and legs trembling. He still loped up the stairs two at a time.
When he saw the empty tub, he actually screamed. The sound was forced out of him involuntarily, the way it had been just once before when, as a child, he had been riding his bicycle and turned to discover an immense dog trying to bite his leg.
He searched the apartment, knowing full well that Swan had come and taken the creature, hoping like a lost child that he would find it if he only kept looking for long enough. It was not under the bed or behind the sofa and it certainly wasn’t in the fridge.
Luis sat down for a moment. He felt sick. Not just queasy at this betrayal by an old friend, nor shaken by his hyperventilating race home. His hands trembled, he couldn’t focus on anything, and the floor felt as though it was falling out from under him.
After several long moments in this limbo, he realised why Swan had done it. The craving he felt for the monster had overcome her. She had not been acting out of her own will, any more than he was when the urge to find the child propelled him up from the sofa and made him pace the flat, forcing himself not to just run outside and search and search at random until he found it. Swan didn’t mean to deprive him of the child, she couldn’t help herself. In fact, she needed help.
And he was the only one who could help her.
Luis’s fists clenched and unclenched. He went out, slamming the door behind him, unlocked. There was nothing left worth stealing.
He sat in his car for five minutes before he realised that he had no idea where Swan lived these days.
Two
And so we were on the road again, leaving a trail of mayhem behind us. Around four hours later, we picked up Bob from his motel room. We could have used some rest, but the Doctor insisted we keep on the move. Peri drove while the Doctor navigated. They argued pretty much constantly about where we were and which road to take. Bob and I exchanged a smile; it was like being the kids of an old married couple, listening to them bicker from the front of the car.
I held the radio from the police car in my lap. The Doctor ran a cable from the cigarette lighter to power it. So far I hadn’t heard anything to suggest our little encounter at the lookout had sparked a state-wide search: it was always possible that an embarrassed Officer Moustache had decided to keep the details to himself. I was still nervous as hell tooling around in such a conspicuous vehicle.
Exasperated, Peri said,’It would help if I knew what you were trying to find!’
The