Page 77 of Skin Trade

“What the fuck …” her hand slipped when she tried to turn the handle. It wouldn’t catch on a thing.

She banged on the door with the side of her fist. “Hello? Hello, is anyone out there?” She paused to listen for someone, anyone. “Nancy? Hello?”

Nothing. Even pressing her ear to the door to try and get a better grasp on sounds out there made no improvement. It was just as silent out there as it was in here.

Deep breath. “Think, Payton. Think.”

There wasn’t much in the room. The sofa, the desk, there were books, but they were no use. Maybe a secret entry way? Now she was clutching at straws, but right then she didn’t give a damn if she clutched at fresh air, a little hope was better than none at all.

But the books weren’t books. She took the first one down, holding it with the thickness she expected to find in a book that looked like a legal encyclopaedia and her hand crushed it. The cover wouldn’t open and when she turned it over, it was nothing but a box. Like someone had taken empty cereal packets and covered them with book covers and then lined them up on the shelves for decoration.

She tried the next book and the one after that. She tried other books in random places along the shelves, each time hoping one of them would be something.

“Fuck,” she said as she swept her arm through the books, knocking many of them to the ground.

Back to the door. More hammering, more shouting. She shouted until she coughed from the exertion of it. She shouted until her voice went hoarse. She thumped against the solid wood until the knuckles on her right hand ached with it and one of them split.

“Someone, help me.” She rested her forehead against the door, shoulders hanging. No one was there. There was nothing she could do but slide down against the door, her head leaning against it. “Please,” she murmured. She tucked her arms around herself, doubled over on her knees and pulled herself into a ball.

They hadn’t believed her, had they? She was a stranger, a no one to them and nothing close to the gangly teenager who’d been taken away that night.

But …

It didn’t matter what Nancy said. There were no paramedics that night.

Chapter Forty-Three

No one came and no one heard her. She’d been there for hours, locked in this room. Every book was now a crushed heap on the floor. The laptop was almost snapped back with her trying to get it to come on and pushing it away again in frustration. Even the phone had been a victim of her attempts. It lay on its side, the receiver snapped in two.

Each attempt Payton made to get someone’s attention left her a little more depleted. Her father wasn’t coming, if he was ever here at all. Maybe he never had been. What it said on Seth’s computer about him didn’t have to be true, and his picture hanging in the gatehouse, who said that meant he was here at all? It all meant shit really when she thought about it.

And what Nancy had said, those paramedics. No. It didn’t matter how much Payton tried to convince herself Nancy’s version of events was the right one, it just didn’t fit. She didn’t even remember Nancy. Not really. Not like she should have done if she’d have been around when Payton was taken, like she said. She’d been thirteen. She had clear memories at that age, but Nancy appeared in her mind earlier. When she was small. There was a memory with her and the stuffed monkey, some memory locked deep in her head, in her heart, and whatever she tried to do, she couldn’t pull it out. Her mind tried to protect her from something.

Stuffed monkey, she remembered him. Remembered the comfort of him, of what he meant to her.

“Oh, God.” That was it. That was where she knew Nancy from. Nancy had been the one to rip stuffed monkey in two. But not that night. No. Earlier than that, years earlier.

She closed her eyes in a vain attempt to get that memory, but she couldn’t. There was fighting. There was someone there. Someone arguing. A hand … her father? No. Mother?

Stuffed monkey had been torn from her, thrown on the ground and she’d been taken away.

“Payton …” She could hear her name in her head being called. In her memory.

“Please,” she said it for herself, for anything at this point. She was nothing but a heap on the floor between the door and the sofa. Pushing her fists into her head, she tried so desperately to grasp onto what was in her head.

She couldn’t sit still. Her limbs ached with the need to get out, her chest ached with the will she’d tried to put into herself to get out of the place and everything she’d tried had been useless.

There was nothing.

At one point, she’d even tried to pull the mini fridge out, which was working and was loaded with bottles of water and snack foods. She figured if that was working, then it was plugged in somewhere, but as far as she got it, she could only see the wire went through the wall and out of this room. Probably plugged in, in the room next door. A perfect safe room where no one could get out. Who needed bars when they had this?

Pulling her knees up to her chest, she wrapped her arms around herself and brought her hands to her face. “Seth,” she whispered. “Seth ….” His name came out as a part sob, something caught in her throat. Of all the things humans said about vampires, he had probably been the most honest of them all. Every word humans had told her had been lies. But more than that, there was something with Seth, something fundamental in her body like it knew him, trusted him. Knew that he would keep her safe. It was why she pushed his boundaries so much. But maybe this would break them when he realised, she was gone.

“Seth,” she said again. Then her heart gave a jolt. He’d got into her mind, hadn’t he? He’d been in there to tease her, to play with her. What if he’d left the door open the same way he had in the physical world? What if she could walk through it too?

As soon as the thought hit her, she straightened herself and sat with her legs crossed as if this was the answer she’d been waiting for. It was so hard not to go into panic and scream his name in her head, but she was pretty sure she needed calm for this. Like meditating. She sat like that too. Legs crossed, hands on her knees, shoulders and back straight, allowing herself to be a conduit for whatever it was that enabled him to come into her mind.

“Seth,” she said again. Her voice hushed. “Seth. Please hear me.”

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