"Huh?"
"Him, not you. He had my blender all summer. Margarita season."
"Oh." I shook my head - infection, cannibalism, blender appropriation. The Curse of 704 was alive and well.
I pulled out another little toy I'd picked up that morning - an ultraviolet wand - and flicked it on. The demon's eyes on my Kill Fee shirt began to give off an otherworldly glow. I swept the wand across the same wall that, back in Lace's apartment, had held the words written in gristle.
"Dude! Flashback!" Lace said, crossing the living room. She smiled, and her teeth flickered as white as a radioactive beach at noon.
"Flashback?"
"Yeah, your teeth are glowing, like at a dance club."
I shrugged. "Don't go to clubs much since I ... got this job."
"No, I guess you wouldn't," she said. "All that sexual transmission just waiting to happen."
"Huh? Hey, I don't have anything against - "
She smiled. "Just kidding, dude. Relax."
"Ah." I cleared my throat.
Nothing glowed on the wall in the ultraviolet. I held the wand closer, casting weird shadows across the stucco mountainscape. No pattern of a hurried paint roller appeared. I cut into a few spots at random with my fingernail, but nothing bright shone through.
The other walls were just as clean.
"So does that thing make blood show up?" she asked.
"Blood and other bodily fluids."
"Bodily fluids? You are so CSI." She said this like it was a cool thing, and I gave her a smile.
"Let's try the bedroom," she said.
"Good idea."
We went through the door, and my déjá vu ramped up to another level. This was where I had lost my virginity and become a monster, all in one night.
Like the living room, the bedroom was impeccably clean. Lace sat on the bed while I scanned the walls with UV.
"This goo you're looking for, it isn't still ... active, is it?"
"Active? Oh, you mean infectious." I shook my head. "One thing about parasites - they're great at living inside other organisms, but once they hit the outside world, they're not so tough."
"Parasites?"
"Oh, pretend you didn't hear that. Anyway, after seven months, you're totally safe from catching it." I cleared my throat. "As am I."
"So, what's with the glow stick?"
"I'm trying to see if the same thing happened here as in your apartment."
"The wall-writing dementia festival, you mean? Does that really happen a lot?"
"Not really."
"Didn't think so. Lived in New York all my life, and I never saw anything like that on the news."
I shot her a look, the word news making me wonder if her journalistic instincts were kicking in. Which would be a bad thing.
"What disease is this again?" she asked.
"Not telling."
"Please!"
I waved the wand at her, and several luminous streaks appeared on the blanket underneath her.
"What's that?"
I grinned. "Bodily fluids."
"Dude!" She leaped to her feet.
"That's nothing compared to the skin mites."
Lace was rubbing her hands together. "Which are what?"
"Microscopic insects that hang out in beds, feeding on dead skin cells."
"I'll be washing out my blender," she said, and left me alone.
I chuckled to myself and turned the wand on the other walls, the floors, inside the closet. Other than Max's blanket and a pair of underwear under the bed, the UV didn't get a rise out of anything. Picking at the stucco didn't help; nothing had been painted over in this apartment.
Max was a lot neater than most single men, I'd say that for the guy. Or maybe Morgan knew not to eat where she slept.
Suddenly, my ears caught a jingling sound. Keys in a lock.
"Crap," I said. Max was home early. "Uh, Cal?" Lace's voice called softly, her vocal cords tight.
"Shh!" I flicked off the wand, shoved it into my pocket, and ran into the living room. Lace was standing there, clutching her wet blender.
"Put that down!" I hissed, dragging her toward the glass doors that led to the balcony.
I heard the lock's bolt shoot closed. A lucky break - I had left the apartment unlocked behind us, so whoever was coming in had just relocked the door, thinking they were unlocking it.
Muffled Spanish swearing filtered through, a female voice, and I realized that Max's apartment was spotless because he had a cleaner.
I yanked the sliding glass door open and pushed Lace out into the cold. When it was shut behind us, I watched the thick curtains swing lazily to a halt, hiding us from the living room. Pressing one ear to the icy glass, palming the other to mute the roar of traffic, I listened. My heartbeat was ramped up with excitement, adrenaline making the parasite start to churn, my muscles tightening. Through the glass came the sound of a graphite-lubricated dead-bolt shooting free, and the door creaked open.
"Mio!" an annoyed voice muttered. Fingers fumbling for a light switch. The apartment was too dark to work in - she would probably be opening the curtains in a few moments.
I turned to Lace, whose eyes were wide, her pupils huge from the excitement. On the tiny balcony, we were only a foot apart, and I could smell her perfectly - the jasmine hair, a salt smell of nerves. We were too close for comfort. I pulled my eyes away from her and pointed at the next balcony over. "Who lives there?"
"Um, this girl called Freddie," Lace whispered.
"She at home?"
Lace shrugged.
"Well, let's hope not." I jumped up onto the rail and across.
"Jesus, dude!" Lace squeaked.
I turned back to look down through the two-and-a-half-foot gap, realizing I should at least pretend to show fear, if only for Lace's sake. The parasite doesn't want its peeps too cautious; it wants us picking fights, complete with the biting and the scratching and other disease-spreading activities. We carriers don't mind a little danger.
Lace, though, was fully human, and her eyes widened farther as she stared down.
"Come on," I whispered soothingly. "It's just a couple of feet."
She glared at me. "A couple of feet across. Seven stories down!"