She shook her head. “I’ve got it, Lucas. But thanks anyway. You too, Tessa.”
“See? She’s got it well enough in hand.”
Tessa looked from Lucas to Grace and back. “I guess.”
“It darted out in front of me. The rat, I mean. It had beady little eyes and a long bald tail,” she invented, hoping the extra details would convince her neighbors. Doubtful, but she tried. “Since it’s still in there, I should probably call an exterminator or something to help me. I wouldn’t want it to find its way into your apartment.”
“No,” Lucas said in a flat voice. “We wouldn’t like that, either.”
The chuckle that Grace let slip was one of nerves, one of discomfort. “Anyway, I guess I’ll see you guys later. Sorry again for bothering you.”
“Don’t worry about it, Grace. Good luck with the rat.”
As Tessa turned to go back inside and he made to follow, Lucas spared one final glance over his shoulder. The look in his icy blue eyes almost caused her to shiver, it was that cold.
He nodded, then disappeared into the shadows of his apartment. The door shut a second later.
Grace let out a long exhale of relief, tilting her head back so that she was leaning it against the wall. She stayed there for a few more minutes, working up the nerve to go back inside.
She had to. She had a heart and a bouquet of viscaria to dispose of.
After a night spent tossing and turning on her futon, Grace laid wrapped up in her blanket, staring at the smoke-stained ceiling. If she was going to stay in Strawberry Village any longer, she might have called the landlord to do something about that.
If she was going to stay… she hadn’t made up her mind about that just yet.
She thought back to the time when Tommy found her at her last place. Grace hadn’t wanted to leave her home in the suburbs, but it was the first sacrifice she had to make when it became clear that Tommy’s unhealthy obsession with her wasn’t going to go away just because she wanted it to. So she traded her comfortable house for a small apartment, hoping the anonymity of the city would protect her.
If only.
Because she naively believed that he would never be able to track her down when she first moved, Grace never knew how long he was watching her before he started leaving his “gifts” for her. She did remember, though, how many times she returned to that cramped city apartment and discovered things were… different. They were missing, or they were somewhere else. For the longest time, she thought she was going crazy.
Then she discovered it was Tommy who was off his rocker.
Shoving the blanket away from her legs, she sat up, leaning back into the padded mattress of the folded-up futon.
It didn’t take too long before Tommy Mathers crept his way back into her thoughts. Sometimes she wondered if she was as obsessed with him as he was with her.
Then she realized that that was impossible. Nobody could be that obsessed.
Cheery music filtered into her consciousness. It took her a minute to figure out why. The DVD player was still running, and the menu was a never-ending loop of about fifteen seconds of the same upbeat melody.
That’s right. She’d put a movie on last night.
Though she did little more than doze, Grace had fallen asleep to the sounds of the television. She’d needed some mindless entertainment to try and get her mind off of Tommy. Watching something as familiar as her childhood favorite, Newsies, had soothed her enough that she got some sleep at least.
In the morning, though, the chords to “King of New York” were too much for her and the headache she could feel brewing. She searched the futon for the remote and came up empty-handed. Throwing the blanket to the floor, she got up and crossed the room, slamming the power button on the TV in irritation.
The sudden quiet was almost immediately broken up by a rumbly sound. Her stomach. That was her stomach growling.
More of the night before came back to her in a rush.
After she convinced the De Angelises that she was in good enough shape to return to her apartment alone, Grace packed up the heart and buried it in the bottom of her garbage. The flowers? She hefted the heavy crystal vase up in both arms and hid it in her practice room. So long as she didn’t have to look at it, that was fine for now.
She was too rattled to dare throwing his gifts out in the dumpster in case she saw the Jaguar prowling the lot. Instead, she triple-checked her locks, ignoring the hollow feeling that asked her why she bothered, then made a bed on the futon couch out front. She didn’t feel right, sleeping in her room. Now when she knew that, only hours ago, Tommy had been in there.
She never ate dinner. Any appetite she had vanished when she saw the bloody cow’s heart.
It wasn’t like she was all that hungry now, but Grace knew her body. The niggle in the back of her head would blossom into a full-blown migraine if she didn’t eat something first. She could try taking an herbal supplement—never an aspirin—to cut it off, but those always made her feel queasy if she took them on an empty stomach.