Vigil Page 27

  I grabbed his face, one hand on each of his cheeks. “Stop talking serious and fuck me, Callum.”

  He laughed.

  I kissed him while he was laughing, and his laughter filled both of our mouths, bubbling up, searing into me. I needed the joy to wipe away the darkness.

  Our bodies slid against each other, sweet, sleek, and a little soapy.

  He filled me, spearing me deeply, barraging me with bliss as I opened to him, as I surrounded him, accepted him, took him into me.

  His cock found the center of my pleasure, teased it, coaxed it, nudged it. And I rode the sensation until I was teetering on the edge of ecstasy.

  Everything seemed to blur together. The hot water pounding into our bare flesh. The slippery walls of the shower. His warm, wet body moving against me and inside me. I struggled for breath. I was lost to the rapture that was just out of my reach.

  “I’m going to come,” I managed.

  “Me too,” he said in a strained voice. “Should I… should I pull out?”

  What? The first shocks of it were traveling up my thighs. I could hardly understand what he was saying.

  But then I felt him start to disengage. I stopped him, held him in place.

  “No,” I gasped. “No, it’s okay. I’m on birth control.”

  He let out a ragged moan, grabbed onto my hips and stabbed me deep and hard.

  Our releases came in seconds of each other. I felt his tremors inside me at the same time as my own climax was pulsing through me.

  I’d never felt such togetherness. My pleasure twined with his, both growing and grasping for the sunlight before bursting into fireworks of blossoms, flowering and exploding and showering us both with euphoria.

  His mouth found mine, sweet and soft. I dragged my tongue against his.

  And we were joined. Completely.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “So, was this benefit your idea or Callum’s?” said Airenne. She was holding a recorder in my face, and we were standing in the corner at the Darlene Perry Memorial Gala. She was interviewing me for Bold!

  “It was a tag team effort,” I said. “Obviously, it’s named after my friend.”

  “Who was brutally murdered by The Phantom, correct?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “So, in your own words, tell me who exactly this gala benefits and why.”

  “We’re raising money for a newly formed foundation,” I said. “Callum and I have created it, and its job is to give girls who are faced with the choice of working as exotic dancers other options. It’s basically a scholarship program, but it’s more than that. It pays not only for college tuition, but for room and board and living expenses. It really is designed to give girls who don’t usually get one a fighting chance.”

  “Wow,” said Airenne. “That’s really amazing. And close to your heart, I suppose, given your own history?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. It was kind of fun to interact with Airenne like this, both of us putting on our best professional faces.

  “Well, speaking of college, your senior year begins in just a few weeks, doesn’t it? Are you leaving the fair city of Aurora?”

  I laughed. Airenne already knew the answers to these questions. She just had to get my answers down on tape so that she could write her article. “No, I’m not leaving.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” said Airenne. “Everyone would miss you.”

  “I’ve transferred to a local university,” I said. “And I’m going to continue as an intern for The Sun-Times.”

  “Right,” she said. “I imagine they wouldn’t let you go after you broke that amazing story about The Phantom.”

  I shrugged. “They seem to like me there. I like them too.”

  “Most of the stories you wrote were about Vigil. But we haven’t heard anything about Vigil in quite some time. Do you know what’s happened to him?”

  Ooh. That wasn’t something she and I had talked about. Surprise question. “Vigil decided to retire,” I said.

  “Really?”

  I nodded. “He was after The Phantom, and he got his man.”

  “So no more Vigil?”

  “No more Vigil.”

  “Do you think the city still needs him?” she asked.

  A tough question. “Well… I don’t know if Vigil is really up for any more work. I think he’s content to leave it to the police.”

  “But he said that the police were corrupt.”

  “I think things are changing.” I raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you think this is getting a little heavy for a fashion magazine?”

  “Not a fashion magazine,” she said. “It’s a women’s magazine.”

  “Whatever,” I said.

  “My editor made me promise to ask about Vigil.”

  “Okay, well you have. So, let’s move on.”

  She sighed. “You always get weird whenever anyone brings up Vigil.”

  “I do not,” I said.

  “Tell me the truth,” she said. “Deep down, he was actually like a big creep, right? I mean, what kind of guy would dress up like that?”

  “He wasn’t a creep,” I said. “Next question.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine. Um, next year, you’ll be going to school full time and working part time at the newspaper. Do you anticipate having any trouble making time for your relationship?”

  My gaze flitted across the room, seeking out Callum, who was holding a glass of champagne and talking easily to the other guests. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “You two are very happy together, aren’t you?”

  He looked up to see me gazing at him. His face broke out into a big grin.

  I smiled too. “We are.”

  * * *

  Callum and I stood outside the padded cell where Hayden was being kept. I’d been summoned by one of the orderlies.

  Callum and I were both concerned with the amount of information that Hayden knew, and to try to keep a lid on it, I’d asked the orderly to contact me if Hayden ever said anything about knowing the identity of Vigil. I’d said it was for a story, of course, and I’d given the orderly some money.

  The orderly had called me not ten minutes ago, saying that Hayden was raving about knowing who Vigil was under the mask.

  Once Callum had heard that, he’d insisted on coming along.

  We peered through the glass square window in Hayden’s door. It was fairly large, and we could see his entire room clearly. I guess that they weren’t particularly concerned about privacy here.

  Hayden was twirling around in the middle of the room, hugging himself. He’d suffered a fracture to his skull when Vigil had slammed his head into the floor, and there had been a lot of swelling on his brain. Doctors weren’t sure if there was damage to his brain, or how extensive it was. With injuries like that, it was a waiting game.

  But Hayden had recovered enough to be placed in Chilton, at least until his trial.

  The evidence against him was overwhelming. There was no doubt he’d be found guilty of his crimes as The Phantom.

  Abruptly, Hayden stopped spinning.

  He stared at us through the window. His head had been shaved, and his hair hadn’t quite grown out yet. He was sneering, giving him the look of a psychotic baby bird.

  “Hello,” he said, his voice muffled through the glass. “I have a secret.”

  He didn’t seem to recognize us. Or if he did, he wasn’t letting on.

  “You do?” I said.

  He nodded. “Do you want to know what it is?”

  “I would like to know that,” I said.

  Hayden grinned, his lips pulling back from his teeth—making his smile more of a grimace. “It’s about Vigil.”

  “Is it? What do you know about Vigil.”

  “I know who he is under the mask.”

  My heart sped up. I turned to Callum, who’d gone white. We’d had a discussion about this. He decided it wasn’t the end of the world if Hayden unmasked him now, considering that
he had retired, put up his mask and costume. He didn’t have any reason to be Vigil anymore.

  His brother Hayden was contained. He no longer hurt any girls.

  And he didn’t have problems with me in bed anymore. At first, we’d had a few missteps, but I’d been right. All he needed was practice.

  So Callum said it was okay if Hayden told. But I could see now that he really didn’t want that to happen.

  “Who is he?” I asked, looking straight at Hayden.

  “Underneath his mask, Vigil is…” Hayden spread his arms wide. “Erik. The Angel of Music. The Red Death.” He laughed like a hyena, throwing back his head.

  Callum and I exchanged a look.

  “Vigil is the Opera Ghost!” crowed Hayden.

  He’d confused Vigil with the title character from The Phantom of the Opera. He’d lost it. He was completely out there. Crazy.

  “Well,” I said. “He’s clearly confused.”

  “Clearly,” said Callum, looking relieved.

  * * *

  I awoke to the noise of my window opening.

  I sat straight up in bed.

  Vigil climbed inside, dark as a shadow, lithe as a cat.

  “What are you doing here?” I whispered.

  “I just busted some criminals,” he said. “Thought you might want to write an article about it.”

  I clutched my covers tight. “I thought you retired. I thought that you didn’t need to catch anyone except The Phantom.”

  He crawled up the bed, snatching the covers away from me. “Well, I’ve been thinking about that. And… I don’t know. It just seems like maybe this city could still use someone like me. And I kind of miss it. So, tonight, I just thought I’d put the costume back on for old time’s sake.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Can’t you see the headline? ‘Vigil Returns’?”

  It did have a certain ring. “Well, okay. I guess that makes sense. And I think Henry might like that story.”

  He grinned. “Good.” He ran his hand over my bare thigh, all the way up to the edge of my white t-shirt. I still liked to sleep in that. It was comfortable. “Don’t you ever wear actual clothes that cover any meaningful parts of your body, Cecily?”

  I slapped his hand away. “I thought you wanted me to interview you.”

  “We could call it that if you want,” he said, putting his hand back, sliding it up over my belly.

  I gasped.

  “Shh,” he said. “You’ll wake up your roommate.”

  I ran my hands over his shoulders, encased in their black spandex. “Well, I have to admit, I kind of missed the costume.”

  “Admit it,” he growled in my ear. “The mask turns you on.”

  “The mask turns me on,” I breathed.

  “You know what turns me on?”

  “What?”

  “You,” he whispered, and his gloved hand traveled higher to close around my breast.

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  unquiet slumbers

  1984

  The wind whistled through the cornfields, fluttering the stalks like a restless ghost. Outside the tenant house, Floyd Earnshaw—Daddy to Cathy—raged as he banged on the front door.

  “Get in the closet, babies,” said Mama Galloway to Heath and Cathy. She was already urging the children inside the linen closet and shutting the door after them.

  Mama Galloway wasn’t really Cathy’s mother. She was a hired hand who lived on the tenant house of the farm. She did some cooking, some housekeeping, some cleaning, and she helped with the planting and harvesting. Heath was her son.

  Daddy had been drinking whiskey that night. He drank a little bit of it every night, but some nights more than others, and some nights, it made him mean.

  Some nights he only came down to kiss on Mama Galloway, in her little tenant house, right in the shadow of the big farm house. But some nights he yelled and growled, and then Cathy was afraid of him.

  Those nights, when Mama Galloway heard his heavy fist on the door, his slurred voice outside, she would hide Cathy and Heath in the closet.

  It was like that on this night. Mama Galloway shut the door after them. “Hush now, little ones,” she said. “Daddy won’t be happy to find you here.”

  Cathy bit down on her fingernails, peering through the slits in the door to the closet. She was seven years old, and she wasn’t supposed to bite her fingernails anymore. But when she was nervous, she couldn’t help herself.

  Heath was bigger than her. He was eight years old, and he was her favorite person on earth. They played together every day. Heath was never like her big brother Matt, who always pulled her hair and called her a sissy baby.

  Heath touched her arm in the darkness of the closet. “It’s okay, Cathy. He won’t find us. He never does.”

  She nodded. The closet was full of folded sheets and towels, and it smelled like laundry detergent.

  She and Heath were quiet. They could hear Mama Galloway outside, opening the door.

  “Floyd, what are you doing down here?” she said.

  “I’m looking for my girl.” Daddy’s voice. It was heavy and slurred, the way it always was when he’d had a lot of whiskey. “My Catherine. Is she down here, Wanda? You know I don’t like it when you let her sleep over with that boy of yours. It ain’t right, boys and girls in the same bed.”

  “Oh, they’re only children, you know that. They’re innocent little babes,” said Mama. “Why don’t you sit down here? I’ll get you some coffee. You could use it, hon.”

  “Don’t want coffee. I want my daughter. Where is she?”

  Daddy’s voice was getting louder as he got close to the closet.

  “Floyd, calm down,” said Mama.

  “You down here, Catherine? You naughty girl, running off like that on your old daddy. When I find you, I’m going to beat your backside black and blue.”

  “Floyd—”

  “No,” roared Daddy. “She’s not yours, you know, Wanda. That little girl is mine and her dead, sweet mother’s. And you ain’t nothing but hired help, when it comes down to it.”

  “Sit down and stop it,” said Mama. “You been drinking, and you’re going to regret saying all this in the morning. Whenever you do this, you always apologize to me.”

  “You force me to apologize, woman!”

  “Ow, Floyd, don’t grip me so tight.”

  A crashing noise.

  Cathy squeezed her eyes shut. Heath wrapped his arm around her protectively. It was going to be a night where Daddy broke things, then. He got like that sometimes when he drank too much. Last time, he broke a vase that Mama Galloway had gotten from her grandmother. It had been beautiful, all purple and glazed and wonderful. Cathy missed it. But Daddy had called Mama Galloway’s grandmother a “gypsy whore” and smashed the vase against the wall.

  Mama had cried. Cathy and Heath had huddled in the closet and listened, and they were both afraid. But the next morning, Daddy and Mama were all made up, kissing while Mama scrambled eggs in the kitchen.

  “You do,” said Floyd. “You get inside my head, and I can’t stop trying to make you happy. You’re a witch. A gypsy witch, and you cursed me.”

  “That’s right,” said Mama, but her voice was strained. “Cursed you with love, you big lug. Now let me go.”

  Mama told them sometimes. She told them how she used to travel with her gypsy family, doing fortunes and making jewelry and working odd jobs. But she gave it all up after the night she met Daddy. She came to work on the farm, moved into the tenant house, and she never went back to her family.

  “Shut up, you stupid bitch,” growled Daddy.

  Another crashing noise.

  Mama screamed. “Floyd, stop!”

 
; “You stupid, stupid bitch,” said Daddy, and it sounded like he was concentrating real hard on something.

  Mama was making gurgling noises.

  Cathy pressed her eyes up against the flats of the closet and looked outside. Daddy had his hands wrapped around Mama’s neck really tight. Mama’s face was turning red.

  “Heath,” whispered Cathy.

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” Daddy was muttering, a slurred litany.

  Heath saw what was happening. He opened up the door to the closet. “Stop it, Daddy.”

  Daddy looked up to see Heath. He flung Mama away.

  Mama fell into the end table, and the impact of her head against the wood made a loud cracking noise. It looked like it hurt. But Mama didn’t even cry out. She didn’t do anything at all.

  “What are you doing in there?” said Daddy.

  Heath ran over to Mama. “Mama? Mama?”

  Cathy started to cry.

  And then Daddy saw her. “Catherine? You are down here. Hiding in the closet with that boy.” He stepped towards her, but he was shaky on his feet.

  Heath was shaking Mama. “Mama? Mama, wake up!”

  “What did you do to Mama Galloway, Daddy?” said Cathy. “What did you do to her?”

  Daddy advanced on Cathy. He pulled back his hand and slapped her hard across her cheek.

  Cathy screamed.

  Heath got up. “Don’t!”

  Daddy looked at him.

  “You killed her,” said Heath, his dark eyes flashing. “You killed my mama. You killed my mama!”

  Daddy backed away from Heath. “I…” He looked afraid.

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