Page 67 of Static/Cling

But Leif pushed himself free of Bjorn’s hold and turned to stand at the top of the stairs.

“Babe!” Bjorn clamped a hand on his shoulder, terrified he intended to toss himself down.

“Hang on,” Leif said.

“I got you.” Bjorn wrapped both arms around him from behind and buried his face in the crook of Leif’s sweaty neck. “I’ve got you. Always.”

Leif sighed and his body calmed, stopped shaking, and some of the chill began to warm against the exposed skin of Bjorn’s arms.

After a second, Bjorn realized Leif was whispering something. “What? I can’t hear you.”

“He’s not talking to us,” Sal whispered.

“Who?”

“You don’t have to do this,” Leif said a little louder. “You don’t have to stay here.”

“Who?” Bjorn asked again.

The stairwell got deathly cold. Frost formed on the metal railings, a coating of malice and anger that even Bjorn could feel crawling over his skin.

“You tried, babe,” he said, and dragged Leif back from the edge of the step and through the door he opened behind them without even looking. Any humans on the other side he could deal with. Whatever that was in the stairwell was beyond them.

The glass in the door’s window frosted over as the hinges sprang it closed with an echoing, metallic crash.

“Directly to the left of the stairs,” Sal snapped. “There’s an office. Get in.”

Bjorn spun, dragging Leif’s limp form with him, and all but crashed through the indicated door into a small room that might have been an office at some point, but was, at the moment, apparently where old office furniture went to die.

He cracked a shin on the edge of an overturned filing cabinet—the wooden kind that he’d been dreaming about lately—tripped over the wheels of an office chair, and landed heavily on the edge of a desk, barely managing to keep Leif’s dead weight from hitting the floor.

Outside, he heard voices and footsteps approaching, doors opening along the hallway, the sounds getting closer.

“There’s no one here” came a female-sounding voice.

“Protocol,” someone else said. “We check every room.”

The treads and other sounds slowed noticeably as they approached the end of the hallway.

“Come on.” Bjorn hefted Leif into his arms and carefully, now, picked his way through the furniture graveyard. Near the back of the room, a tall pressboard cabinet stood, one door hanging off a hinge, the other having been pulled from the flimsy wood.

Bjorn squeezed them both inside and held his breath.

The door to the room opened.

Light spilled from the hallway across the room, slashing past the crooked slit of the cabinet door. Bjorn closed his eyes.

“I told you,” the softer voice griped. “Can we get the fuck out of here?”

“Why’s the window frosted if there’s no one here?”

“Who the fuck knows? I’m not going to find out.”

There was a pause.

“Look, if someone did try to come up here, we’ll probably find another body at the bottom of the stairs tomorrow.”

“We’re on leave tomorrow.”

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