Ghosts of Averoigne

She recalled one sweltering day out in the gardens where Jeremy had picked the lock to an old root cellar. They spent that afternoon in the cooler shadows, screw

ing like rabbits between pallets of dried fruit and nuts. Making love again and again on the soft earth floor…

Kara blinked and looked up. He was staring back at her, smiling. Probably running full-tilt through the same memory she was.

“Open the door already.”

He did, and they entered. The maintenance closet was cramped and cluttered and filled with shelf after shelf of cleaning supplies. A large push broom took up a good part of one corner. Jeremy dragged the mop bucket out into the hallway temporarily, so they could both fit inside.

“This room isn’t right,” he said. “It’s way too—”

“Small,” Kara finished.

He nodded his agreement. They knelt together in poor lighting at the back of the room, running their hands over what looked like a painted plywood wall. Jeremy wedged his fingers behind it and tried to pull. It didn’t budge.

“Get that me that hammer.”

Kara reached over a shelf and handed it to him. A minute later he’d used the claw to pry the wood just far enough away from the wall to get a good grip. He pulled again, and this time there was the creak of nails squeaking through wood. The muscles of his back and shoulders rippled though his shirt.

“Need help?”

“I think I got it.”

Jeremy pulled once more and the board came free. He slid it to the side, and the same familiar plaster of the other walls came into place.

There was another opening there. Another doorway.

“What now?”

Kara kicked out her leg, punching her boot straight through the wall in a cloud of dust. Chips of plaster flew everywhere.

“Holy shit,” Jeremy laughed.

She reared back and kicked again. And again after that. Jeremy joined her, and together they destroyed a good section of the lower wall.

“This feels just like being back at the Blackstone,” he quipped. “Getting in trouble with you all over again.”

Kara smashed out another section with her heel. “Xiomara was very specific on the phone this morning,” she said through clenched teeth. “Access to anywhere we wanted.”

Finally they had a hole large enough to crawl through. Kara dropped to her knees. She pulled out her phone and activated the flashlight.

“Ready?” Jeremy asked, doing the same thing.

By the time he looked down she was already gone.

Twenty

Kara paused, kneeling in the darkness of the strange little room. Dust swirled everywhere. It danced chaotically through the diffused beam of her phone’s flashlight as she stopped to take it all in.

A head bumped roughly into her ass.

“Ow!” cried Jeremy. A pair of hands slid upward, two big palms closing over both her asscheeks. “Keep moving!”

She crawled into the room and stood up. Jeremy followed, still rubbing his head.

“My ass hurt your head?” she asked snarkily.

Jeremy stopped the pretense of rubbing and grinned. “Mayyyybe.”