Page 37 of Surface Scratch
Caleb looked over at her and saw she was grinning as she put the money in the register. Of course she would pick something gross and embarrassing as a cover story. He’d have to go along with it regardless.
“Yeah, it was a rough few days, but I’m better now,” Caleb said, attempting to laugh away his embarrassment.
“I’ll say! I swung by your apartment, but no one answered, so I figured you must have been dying.”
He’s not too far off.
Andrew grabbed his hand, not seeming to notice when Caleb winced at the pressure across his purple and yellow knuckles. “Come on, I’ll fill you in on all the weird stuff you missed while you were dying before they let those animals in here,” he said. He pulled Caleb over to Ophelia’s side of the bar, talking a mile a minute about how some woman the night before had had the cops called on her because she was dancing on one of the tables in just a thong.
He wanted to pay attention to Andrew, but he couldn’t. His eyes were locked on the DJ booth where Tariq and Marcus both leaned over the railing, looking in their direction as they talked among themselves. Caleb wanted nothing more than to run up there and hug him, if only to feel the oddly comforting touch of his unnaturally cool hands on his skin. Since the first time Marcus had touched him, he’d felt magnetically drawn to him, as if his body wanted to pull them together and the only thing that would be able to separate them would be for the earth to spontaneously change its polarity.
Calm down, you’re going to come off way too clingy. He took a deep breath. He could play it cool, right? He had to.
It wasn’t until Marcus went back up to his office a few minutes after the lights went down and the music went up that he got his mind to get back into work mode. It didn’t take long for his muscle memory to kick in when the first rush of clubgoers filtered in. He wasn’t fond of helping Ophelia behind the bar—mainly because it involved trying to understand people shouting their orders over the music, which always made his tinnitus worse—but she looked more irritable and tired than usual. She was probably still recovering as well.
He tried to imagine what her life had been like. She’d been raised by avampire—that word still didn’t sound right in his head—and was apparently so smart she was already slacking off in college courses remotely. What had her childhood been like? Had she been involved in the spats between hunters and people like her dad? Did that explain why she was always so cold? Or had she always been like that? He wanted to ask, but it felt too intrusive. Maybe she would tell him, eventually?
No. That didn’t seem likely. She wasn’t the type to just randomly open up and spill personal details.
He was pointing out where the bathroom was to a group of young women when Andrew approached him.Damn, already break time?He pulled out his phone to check the time. 12:45 a.m. “You going first or should I?” Caleb asked.
Andrew placed a hand on Caleb’s side, flashing him a nervous look. “Actually, I was wondering if I could talk to you real quick?” He leaned in to ask the question over the sound of the music like all the staff did, but he got much closer than Caleb was used to.
“Um, sure. Is everything okay?”
A high-pitched feedback whine blared over his earpiece, making him jerk away from Andrew and grab at his ear. Andrew did the same, pulling at the wire like he wanted to rip it out. “The fuck?” he cried.
“Sorry kids, my bad,” Tariq’s voice crackled through the earpiece. “I can’t see either of you on the floor and I need Caleb here ASAP.”
Caleb patted Andrew’s shoulder. “I guess you get to go on break first,” he said with an awkward smile before ducking past him and heading toward the DJ booth.
That was weird, right? Like, really weird? He’s been acting different since I started seeing Marcus. Does he know?Caleb mulled the thoughts over in his mind. His first night, Andrew had been really friendly, but over time he’d realized that that was just his personality. He seemed flirtatious with everyone in the club, patrons and staff alike, but recently he had seemed much more… sincere? Serious?
Tariq jogged down the short set of steps to meet Caleb at the bottom. “Hey, I have a lead,” he muttered, motioning for Caleb to move closer. “Well, half a lead. The scanner’s storage for that day got fucked.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, someone tried to delete the file for the whole night,” Tariq said. His face was taut.
Caleb brought his thumb to his mouth, gnawing on the edge of his nail. “Could it have been hacked? Like, by identity thieves?”
Tariq shook his head. “No, it’s not online. You would have to do it manually, from inside the club, but only a few of us have access to it and I don’t think any of them would mess with it,” he said, glancing around to check if anyone was close enough to hear him. “They did a shit job of deleting it, though. We were able to recover the ID used by the woman who attacked you guys in the alley. It said her address was in town, but when I looked online, it was just an old warehouse, so it’s probably a fake.”
“Shit,” Caleb muttered. He ran his hand through his hair, feeling his face flush. For once it wasn’t because he was embarrassed. He was frustrated. No… he was angry. That meant the group was probably local.
It meant they would be back.
“I do have a bit of a double-edged sword that can help us out,” Tariq said.
“If you’re offering to hit me with your Burning Man ability, not right now,” Caleb said. He crossed his arms over his chest. He probably could use Tariq’s calming effect, but he wanted a clear head. He’d pretty much fallen asleep after Tariq left Marcus’s apartment yesterday and had stayed dead asleep on the couch for hours, despite both Marcus and Ophelia claiming they’d tried to wake him.
“Oh yeah, no, Marcus said I’m not allowed to intentionally use it on you without your permission,” Tariq said quickly. “What I was going to propose is us going to meet with a friend who could tell us who made that kind of ID. Like, I’m ninety-nine percent sure this guy would know who made it. If we know who made it, we can ask them if they have a name or phone number and go from there.”
Caleb lit up. “Yes. That. Let’s do that. When can we go?” he asked. He rubbed his finger over his lips, trying to keep his most nagging question at bay: what we they going to do when they figured out who was behind this? Was there anything he could personally do? Maybe plead with them to see reason? That Marcus wasn’t a threat and they didn’t need to go after him? That seemed like a naive idea, but it was the only nonviolent one he could think of.
Tariq tucked his arms behind his back and leaned against the DJ booth, his eyes shifting as though he were trying to avoid looking at Caleb directly. “So, we could go now, but it’s not a good idea. Not for you, at least. I could go and tell you what I find out.”
Caleb shook his head before he processed the idea. “No, they attacked me too. I want to be involved.”
