Concrete Underground, Moxie Mezcal [best books to read for teens .TXT] 📗

forward and buried her face into my lap.

I rolled my eyes back and savored the feeling. Then I opened them again when I felt Max's hand on my chin. He slipped his fingers around to the left side of my jaw and turned my head right, towards him. I let him control my movements and parted my lips as he leaned in to press his against mine.

I woke up in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room. The sun shone brightly through an open window. I was wrapped in black silk sheets and spooning Max, who was still asleep. We were both naked.

I reached out and touched him, as if I needed to prove to myself it was real. He snorted and rolled over, hovering halfway between waking and sleep, then mumbled something that sounded like, "Didn't this already happen?"

25. Whatever You Want Most

"Are you still having the dreams?" Max asked me as he took a sip of his tea.

We were sitting in his bed, naked and loosely wrapped in sheets.

"No, they stopped about the time I met you," I replied, enjoying the warmth of my own cup in my hands. It was a Japanese-style stone mug, rough to the touch, with small lotus flowers painted on the sides.

Max cast a sideways glance at me. "I am," he said and drained the rest of his tea.

He stood up and moved over to his closet, keeping his back to me as he put on a red and black Japanese silk kimono. "Have you figured out why you were having them, yet?"

"No," I replied, getting out of bed myself and hunting around for my clothes - unsuccessfully.

He nodded. His demeanor was more restrained, more serious than I had ever seen him before. He wasn't wrapping everything in his usual forced irony. Honestly, it was a little unsettling.

"You know, when you first told me that you were having that dream, I thought that there was one painfully obvious explanation," he said.

"What's that?"

"Well, you knew where her body was hidden. Logically, there are only two ways that was possible - either you found her there, or you were the one who put her there." He let out a dry, bitter chuckle. "That first time you brought her up, I thought you were confessing."

"Wait, you thought I killed her?"

He chuckled again. "Yes. It actually made perfect sense to me at the time. I thought that since you were a reporter investigating my activities, you had uncovered certain damaging information about me in the process. It wouldn't have been the first time - your friend Cobb stumbled upon the same information back in his own time. Anyways, it seemed to follow that you were a likely suspect for my blackmailer. So when you first mentioned Jacinda's body being in my plane, my natural assumption was that you were trying to let me know that you were my adversary, and that you weren't afraid of me knowing your identity."

I laughed. I didn't know how else to react, so I just laughed.

Max joined in.

We descended together down the spiral staircase into his living room. It was a vast open decorated in the same minimalist style as his office. The walls were completely bare, devoid of photos, pieces of art, or personal touches. There were a few white couches, all pristinely clean, interspersed with black side tables and coffee tables. Everything was laid out in a precise, geometric pattern, and though it was obviously intended to entertain guests, the entire room had a cold, antiseptic feel to it.

I couldn't decide if he preferred such stark surroundings to avoid betraying anything of himself psychologically, or if he was legitimately this soulless.

As I stepped off the staircase, we found Columbine laying on one of the couches, looking rumpled and bleary-eyed, as if she had just woken up herself. I immediately regretted the fact that I hadn't been able to find my clothes to dress before leaving Max's bedroom.

She was wearing a men's shirt that fit her like a loose nightgown, and it took me a second to recognize it as mine. "Sorry," she said, noticing that I was looking at the shirt. "I found it on the ground when I came in last night, and I put it on so I wouldn't have to sleep in my costume."

Her eyes, however, betrayed that she knew the shirt was mine when she picked it up and that she had worn it as more than just something to cover herself.

Max had doubtlessly picked up on this as well. "Well I don't know about the two of you," he said jovially as he slapped me on the back, "but I could sure go for some more tea."

He headed into the kitchen to fix some. Meanwhile, I hunted around and found my pants.

"My cell phone's missing," I said as I slipped them on and felt around the pockets - mostly to fill the awkward silence.

"I haven't seen it," Columbine replied. "Your stuff was kinda scattered all around when I came in last night, though."

I nodded and continued to cast about for some way of making small talk. "So how did you end up here, anyways? Why didn't you go back to Violet's?"

She shrugged. "I did, but as soon as I pulled up I could tell they were in the living room, and I didn't want to interrupt, you know."

"Wait, what do you mean?"

"She means, they were in the living room, fucking," Max chimed in as he re-entered carrying a tray with a tea pot and three cups.

I felt a knot in my stomach as I imagined Violet and Anthony together. Columbine seemed to relish watching my reaction.

Max set the tray on a coffee table and continued talking in a light, conversational tone while serving us. "You missed a good game last night, Col. I took everyone underground. D even played. Of course, he got beat by a girl, but at least he played."

Still trying to shake the mental image of Anthony fucking Violet from my head, I said, "That reminds me, I was meaning to ask you for a favor. Whoever the big loser was last night, when you go to ruin his life like you did to Peterman, can you at least give me the scoop?"

Max laughed. "Do you honestly expect me to sit around for a week waiting for your paper to go to print? I hate to be the one to break this to you, but that's not how news works anymore. Get yourself a blog, and we'll talk."

Columbine grinned, trying to keep her face down so I wouldn't see.

Max added, "You don't really remember much from last night, do you?"

I shook my head. "No, and honestly I'm probably the better for it. I just wish I could remember what I did with my phone."

"Oh, you lost it last night," Max replied.

"Fuck," I muttered. "Jenny's flying back in today and she's supposed to call me later. I'll have to go back and find it."

"I'll drive you," Max offered. "I have some quick business to take care of there, anyways."

We went back to the Highwater Building after breakfast. As we walked inside, Max explained that it was most likely I lost my phone upstairs toward the end of the night. "Go ahead while I take care of what I need to do downstairs. Your keycard should be able to get me anywhere you need to go."

So I proceeded alone up to the mezzanine and its three colored doors. I decided to try the middle one first, which was painted white. It was locked, but I noticed an electronic card reader beside it. I held my card up to the reader and heard a loud click. I tried the knob again, and it opened.

The door led into the large room with the sun roof and mirrored walls where the "cuddle party" had been. It was now empty but for a small cleaning crew, who said they hadn't found any stray phones.

I doubled back out to the mezzanine and tried the black door next, but my keycard didn't unlock it. I thought it was a little strange, considering what Max had said, but just shrugged it off and tried the red door instead. It clicked like the first one had, and I turned the knob.

This one opened into a narrow hallway with three more doors - two along the left wall, the third at the far end. The right wall was made of one-way glass that looked into the room with the sun roof.

The other walls were covered in golden wallpaper embossed with faint floral patterns, while the dark red carpet had a pattern of intricate gold lines intertwining like a celtic cross.

I heard sobbing coming from the far door and treaded quietly down the hallway to see what it was. Slowly opening the door, taking care to be as silent as possible, I peeked inside.

I recognized the room with the velvet couch where Max had taken me last night. There were three people inside. One man stood in the corner facing away from me. He was bent forward over a second person, a woman, whom I also couldn't see clearly except to tell that she was sitting in a chair and wearing only underwear. The third man reclined on the velvet couch across the room. I could see him clearly and had no trouble recognizing him.

"Saint Anthony," I said as I opened the door fully.

He sat up and smiled broadly. "Come back to admire your handiwork?"

"What do you mean?"

I walked further into the room and got a clearer view of the other two people. The standing man was the old doctor who fixed me up at Asterion, and his patient was the masked woman from last night. She had been badly beaten; large bruises covered her face and neck, her nose had been broken, and a large crescent shaped laceration had split around her left eye. The doctor was busy stitching her up.

The woman glanced up to see me and immediately began trembling in terror, her eyes welling up with tears. I took a step closer, and she leaped up from her seat and screamed incoherently in Spanish.

Behind me, Saint Anthony laughed.

"What the fuck happened to her?" I demanded.

"You did," Anthony replied.

"Bullshit," I spat angrily, feeling nauseous.

The woman kept screaming, despite the doctor's best efforts to calm her down. "I think you better leave," he finally said to me over his shoulder.

I turned to go, but the door was closed behind me. Painted on the back side, where I now could see it, was another crowned globe sigil like the one I saw last night, shimmering hypnotically in strange metallic paint. Suddenly, fragmented memories started rushing back to me.

I was on top of this woman, thrusting violently and grunting like an animal. Max laid beside us, watching, barking at me to do it harder and faster. I looked down at her face, saw her biting her lower lip in pain, and noticed the mask had slipped and was covering