“Can I help you?” the woman at the desk asked in a bright, cheerful tone that was completely at odds with the look in her eyes. It wasn’t even a customer service I-don’t-want-to-be-here-dealing-with-you look, it was a straight up just-who-do-you-think-you-are expression. A big part of Melanie wanted to stick her Doc Martens right up this woman’s backside, but since she hadn’t bothered tarting herself up, she had to admit that her outfit was more rabble-rouser than serious academic.
“Uh, yeah, I hope so. I’m—” Melanie caught herself. Admitting any kind of familiarity with the Institute, even if it was just to ask for a department directly, would bring the wrong kind of scrutiny on her. She couldn’t even claim she’d been here as a student. If this woman was Rosie, mentioning Martin might be good enough to get her past the door, but she couldn’t risk bringing him to the wrong person’s attention.
And if he wasn’t here after all…
“I’m here to make a statement,” she said, hoping she hadn’t paused long enough to be suspicious.
It wasn’t technically a lie, she thought as she waited for the woman to contact the Archives and get her an escort down there. She could probably give them something. Describe an encounter that hadn’t gone the way they expected. It didn’t have to have a paranormal explanation. From what Martin had said the last time they’d actually talked—which admittedly had been a while—his boss would probably enjoy having a live statement he could easily disprove as a genuine supernatural encounter.
She should have known before she sat down that she wasn’t going to get away with that.
“And your statement is regarding…”
“What I saw at the abandoned Cambridge Military Hospital when we were filming there in January 2015.”
Shit.
Melanie found herself getting progressively angrier as she related the story, both at the fact that she could feel it being dragged out of her and at the look on Jonathan Sims’ face—half skeptical, half intrigued. He had no bloody clue what he was doing, or what he’d got himself into.
“Interesting,” he said at last. “You say you recorded video of this event?”
“Yeah,” Melanie said. “I’ll get your guys a copy, but watching it back, the recording is so messed up you can’t make anything out.” A lot of things were like that, she knew, they resisted modern recording efforts. Probably why Sims had had to close his laptop and pull out this tape recorder to get her statement. She didn’t bother pointing that out, though, since he’d obviously figured it out for himself.
And then he slid straight into challenging her, and her anger notched steadily upwards. She barely managed to contain herself from ripping his head off, but it was a struggle, and when he issued his curt statement ends and clicked off the recorder, she didn’t even bother waiting for him to dismiss her before shoving out of the chair and stalking out of the office, slamming the door behind her.
Screw him. She’d talk to the assistants instead.
The woman who’d brought her down—Sasha, Melanie remembered—was gone, possibly just leaving—at the very least, somebody was—but there was someone else standing at the cluster of desks. Melanie took one look at the man shrugging out of his jacket, strode up to him, and punched him in the stomach hard enough to make him double over.
“Where the hell have you been?” she snapped, shoving his chest to punctuate her remark.
“Good to see you, too, Neens,” Martin wheezed, straightening up and rubbing at his abdomen.
“Do you have any idea how worried I was?” Melanie slammed at his chest again, but this time he caught her hand. She yanked it back and threw her arms around him in a tight hug. Martin hugged her back just as hard, almost desperately. “I went by your place yesterday and found your landlady tossing all your things out in the street, she said you’d been gone for ages—”
“Wh—oh, Christ, the rent. I forgot about the rent.” Martin’s sigh seemed to come from the depths of his toes. “God. I knew relying on phone alerts to keep up with things would come back to bite me.”
“Quit regurgitating Lily’s abuse and tell me where you’ve been, dammit.”
“Here. Which you’d have known if you ever bothered to—you did look at your texts. She sent you an all-clear, didn’t she?” Martin sighed again. “I like it better when they haven’t got far enough into it to be a nuisance.”
Melanie pushed back and looked Martin up and down. He looked good, if you didn’t look past the facade he put on. But she knew him well enough to pick out the little things—the cracks on the sides of his hands, the sticking plaster peeking from under his shirt cuff, the slight pink tint to the edges of his upper incisors. “Martin Blackwood, what is going on? And does it have anything to do with the worm infestation outside?”
“You didn’t get bitten, did you?” Martin’s face shifted to all-out anxiety.
“No, I’m fine…shit. It’s Corruption, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Martin rubbed his forehead. “Her name’s Jane Prentiss. She’s…it’s a long story. What are you doing here?”
“It’s the eighteenth,” Melanie reminded him.
Martin groaned. “I knew it was Monday, but…damn. Lost track of time. Also, that explains why you’re here, but why were you in there?” He pointed at the closed door to the Archivist’s office. “And more importantly, is he going to bite my head off if he comes out and finds you still standing here?”
“Probably not. I told them up front I had a statement. It was the only way I could think of to get down here without…you know. Not like I don’t have spooky-sounding stories that don’t have actual supernatural explanations at the root.” Melanie shrugged, hoping it came off as casual. “I figured I’d give him some enrichment, you know? Like tossing a pumpkin stuffed with raw meat into a lion’s enclosure. Something he could sink his teeth into that wouldn’t bite back.”
The look Martin gave her told her he wasn’t buying it, which was fair. He’d always been able to see right through her, even before they’d found out what was going on with his eyes. “So what did you give him? The Brickyard job or that time you tried to prove ghosts existed to that snot-nosed American kid by grabbing one of Aunt Mary’s books to read at him?”
“I wasn’t going to read it myself. I was going to make him read it,” Melanie mumbled. She shot a glance over her shoulder. Thankfully, the door was still closed. “No, I…the Cambridge Military Hospital.”
“Melanie Beatrice.”
“I know! I know I shouldn’t have—I couldn’t help it. He asked what my statement was regarding and that just came…pouring out.”
Melanie hated herself as soon as she said it, but she made herself not look away from Martin as fear and sorrow mingled across his face, and she knew it wasn’t just for her. The quick look he shot at the office door behind her confirmed that. She sighed and rubbed at her forehead before changing the subject. “When do you take your lunch break? And how long do you get?”
“An hour, but I just got back. Can I take a rain check?”
“Don’t be stupid, I’ll meet you after you get out of work. When do you leave? And where are you staying?”
Martin huffed at her. “Here, Melanie. Aren’t you listening? I don’t leave at the end of the day. I’m staying here. The Corruption had me pinned in my flat for two weeks, and when she finally left I came here to tell Jon. I didn’t even explain…everything, and he still was worried enough to suggest I stay here in the Archives.”
“You can’t stay here!” Melanie said, horrified. “Jesus, Martin, why didn’t you come to me?”
“She took my phone,” Martin told her. “I—look, fine, tell you what. We close down at five. Come back a bit early and…I don’t know. Maybe Jon will let you hang around and we can talk some.”
“Or maybe you can come home with me.”
“You know Andy doesn’t like me.”
“Andy’s gone,” Melanie admitted. It was one of the things she’d wanted to talk to Martin about. “Which, you know, means there’s another room in the house for let, so if you’re in need of a place I—”
“Ah, Martin. A word, please?”
Melanie jumped and whirled around. Standing behind her was a tall, slender, middle-aged man with the expression of a self-satisfied and mildly inconvenienced bureaucrat and the aura of something in servitude to a dark power wrapped in a tailored charcoal suit. She was struck with the urge to deck him, but suspected that would be a bad idea.
“Um, yes, sir?” Martin’s voice drifted into a higher register. Melanie looked over at him and saw that he had shifted his posture into the one she automatically associated with him putting himself in Mary and Liliana’s cross-hairs to keep them from taking out their wrath on Gerry or, more infrequently, Melanie.
“In my office.” The man turned a bland expression onto Melanie, who found herself wondering which end of his tie she would have to yank on in order to strangle him. “Is there something you need assistance with?”
“Ms. King was here to give a statement,” Martin said, and Melanie barely managed to suppress her frown at his tone. There was a quaver, a tiny note of fear, and even Melanie, who’d known him for going on twenty years, genuinely couldn’t tell if it was real or put on. He turned to her and added, “Like I said, we close down at five, so we probably won’t have anything for you today, but we’ll be in touch if we have any questions.”
“Sure,” Melanie said, letting the bitterness from dealing with Sims back into her tone. “I’ll try to get you those video files today.”
“We’ll walk you out.” The man’s words may have seemed like mere courtesy, but Melanie swore she could hear a subtle threat in the tone. “This way.”
Melanie couldn’t do anything but follow the man up the stairs, Martin behind her. When they reached the main floor, she gave him an obvious and sardonic two-fingered salute, then brushed her fingers quickly against his before heading out the door, whistling as nonchalantly as possible. She hoped he’d recognize the tune and understand what she was trying to convey.
She also wished she didn’t feel like she was abandoning him to wolves.