She wore a leather jacket over a short plaid dress that left her knees bare to the cold. Her hair lay across her forehead in a jet-black fringe that had grown out too long, ending just above her dark brown eyes. It took me a moment to realize that in the days before I lusted after all women all the time, this girl would have been my type.
She kept watching me as her friends prattled on, her expression more thoughtful than suspicious. When she ran her tongue between her lips in a distracted way, a little shudder went through me, and I tore my eyes away.
Bad carrier, I scolded myself, snapping a mental rubber band against my wrist.
The elevator dinged and opened, and the six of us crowded inside. I tucked myself into the corner. The pizza consensus had become unglued, and everyone besides the girl in the leather jacket was arguing again, the reflected sound from the shiny steel walls sharpening their voices.
Then a smell reached me - jasmine shampoo. I glanced up and saw the girl pushing her fingers through her hair. Somehow, the fragrance cut through the cigarette smoke clinging to their clothes, the alcohol on their breath; it carried her human scent to my nose - the smell of her skin, the natural oils on her fingers.
I shuddered again.
She pressed seven, glanced at me. "What floor?"
I stared at the controls. The array of buttons covered one through fifteen (without the thirteen), in three columns. I tried to imagine Morgan's hand reaching out and pressing one of them, but my mind was in turmoil over the smell of jasmine.
The Bahamalama-Dingdong memory injection had finally let me down.
"Any particular floor?" she said slowly.
"Um, I uh..." I managed, my voice dry. "Do you know Morgan?"
She froze, one finger still hovering near the buttons, and the rest of them fell into a sudden silence. They all stared at me.
The elevator meeped away a couple of floors.
"Morgan on the seventh floor?" she said.
"Yeah ... I think so," I answered. How many Morgans could there be in one building?
"Hey, isn't that the - ?" one of the boys asked, but the other three shushed him.
"She moved out last winter," leather-jacket girl said, her voice controlled and flat.
"Oh, wow. It's been a while, I guess." I lit up a big fake smile. "You don't know where she lives now, do you?"
She shook her head slowly. "Not a clue."
The elevator slid open on the seventh floor. The doors stirred the air, and I caught something under the cigarettes and alcohol on their breath, an animal smell that cut through even the jasmine. For a moment, I smelled fear.
Morgan's name had scared them.
The other four piled out efficiently, still in silence, but leather-jacket girl held her ground, one fingertip squashed white against the Open Door button. She was staring at me like I was someone she half recognized, thinking hard. Maybe she was trying to figure out why I set her prey hackles on fire.
I wanted to drop my eyes to the floor, sending a classic signal from Mammal Behavior 101 I don't want to fight you. Humans can be touchy when they feel threatened by us, and I didn't want her telling the doorman I had snuck in behind them.
But I held her gaze, my eyes captured.
"Guess I'll just go, then." I settled back against the elevator wall.
"Yeah, sure." She took one step back out of the elevator, still staring.
The doors began to slide closed, but at the last second her hand shot through. There was a binging sound as her leather-clad forearm was squeezed; then the doors jumped back.
"Got a minute, dude?" she asked. "Maybe there's something you can explain for me."
Apartment 701 was full of déjá vu.
The long, narrow living room had a half kitchen at one end. At the other, glass doors looked out onto a tiny balcony, the river, and the ghostly lights of New Jersey. Two more doors led to a bathroom and a small bedroom.
A classic upscale Manhattan one-bedroom apartment, but the devil was in the details: the stainless steel fridge, sliding dimmers instead of regular light switches, fancy brass handles on the doors - everything was sending waves of recognition through me.
"Did she live here?" I asked.
"Morgan? Hell, no," the girl said, slipping off her leather jacket and tossing it onto a chair. The other four kept their coats on, I noticed. Their expressions reminded me of people at a party right after the cops turn the lights on, their buzz thoroughly killed. "She lived down the hall."
I nodded. All the apartments in the building must have looked pretty much the same. "So you know her?"
She shook her head.
"Lace moved in after," one of the boys volunteered. The rest of them gave him a Shut up! look.
"After what?" I said.
She didn't answer.
"Come on, Lace," the boy said. "You're going to show him the thing, aren't you? That's why you asked him in, right?"
"Roger, why don't you call for the pizza?" Lace said sharply.
He retreated to the kitchen muttering. I heard the manic beeps of speed-dialing, then Roger specifying extra cheese in a wounded tone.
The rest of us had filtered into the living room. Lace's three other friends took seats, still keeping their coats on.
"How well do you know Morgan?" Lace asked. She and I remained standing, as if faced off against each other, but out of the confines of the elevator, her smell was more diffuse, and I found it easier not to stare so maniacally.
To distract myself,T cataloged the furniture: urban rescue, musty couches and other cast-offs, a coffee table held up by a pair of wooden produce boxes. The tattered décor didn't go with the sanded floorboards or the million-dollar views.
"Don't know her that well, really," I said. She frowned, so I added, "But we're related. Cousins."
Kind of a fib, I know. But our parasites are related, after all. That has to count for something.
Lace nodded slowly. "You're related, but you don't know where she lives?"
"She's hard to find sometimes." I shrugged, like it was no big deal. "My name's Cal, by the way."
"Lace, short for Lacey. Look, Cal, I never met this girl. She disappeared before I got here."
"Disappeared?"
"Moved out."
"Oh. How long ago was that?"
"I got in here at the beginning of March. She'd already been gone a month, as far as anyone knows. She was the weird one, according to the other people in the building."