Her reaper wept as she died.
But she was calm.
Maggie woke up with a groan.She assumed she was awake, but honestly, consciousness was a bit of a gray area at the moment. Her head was reeling. The room swam around her as she tried to blink herself awake.
She was somewhere soft. She was in a bed. It smelled clean and fresh, like newly run laundry. It wasn’t lumpy. Her head sank back into the pillow, and she couldn’t help but enjoy it for a moment. It was extremely comfortable, and she let out a contented sigh as she snuggled into the surface. This was what a bed should feel like. Not a musty, old, bumpy futon she got from some college student moving out of their apartment in Allston.
There was only one problem—it wasn’t her bed.
That was enough to wake her up the rest of the way. She sat up, and her reeling head sent her back down to the pillow. She felt like she was hung over, drunk, or a mix of both. Maybe if she had spent the night partying she wouldn’t be so upset. Sadly, that wasn’t the case. She’d been drugged.
Attempt number two went better than the first, if marginally so. She sat up and leaned heavily against the wall next to her. Wiping her hand over her face, she took a few slow, deep breaths, trying to clear her head. It mostly, kind of, sort of worked.
At least she could get a look at the room around her. She expected a hotel room. She expected to wake up with her hands duct taped together and another strip over her mouth to silence her. But instead, she was sitting in a tastefully done, but clearly very expensive room. The building itself looked old—Victorian, maybe—with elaborate moldings and high ceilings. The bed she was in was a full size, antique-looking thing with a curling brass headboard and footboard up against one wall. The nightstand next to her had a lamp, a few heavy books, and…
A taxidermized dead rat.
With a hiss of air through her nose, she recoiled from it in surprise. The rat was posed to be sitting there on the dark wood surface of the end table. It looked old and worn, like it was less of a sculpture on a shelf and more like a child’s toy, well-loved and well-traveled. Most of the fur was missing, leaving only a few tufts and one ratted remainder of an ear. Only a few whiskers still stuck out from its bony nose.
She wasn’t afraid of rats. She’d seen enough in her apartment building. They were big, sure, but pretty harmless. She wished they didn’t chew through her boxes of dried food, but she understood. Everybody was just trying to survive. In fact, she always thought they were kind of adorable.
But a taxidermy rat was just not something she expected to be sitting there staring at her with its empty eye sockets and mostly showing skull.
Where was she?
Climbing out of bed, she was happy to find she was still in her clothes. Someone had taken her shoes off—how polite—and her hoodie but had stopped there. It left her in her pants and a tank top. She could see her missing articles on a chair by the end of the bed. She felt woozy and out of sorts, but otherwise fine. No bruises. No aches.
Checking her pockets, she sighed. No phone, either. Which made sense for someone who had just been abducted, she supposed. There would be so many movies that would be a hell of a lot shorter if the bad guys were stupid enough to give their victim a phone.
Slipping on her shoes and tying them and pulling on her hoodie, she took another look around the room. It didn’t look lived in; it looked manicured. A guest bedroom, maybe? But where? And why?
She picked up one of the books from the nightstand. It was a copy of The Martian. Huh. She’d been meaning to read it. Underneath it was I, Robot and The Mysteries of Udolpho. What an odd selection of books. Two science fiction and one gothic romance.
I mean, it’s my taste, but I’m a freak. So—
Her thoughts cut short.
The taxidermy rat had moved.
“What the fuck?” She leapt back.
The little thing was turned to look at her. It was sitting on its hind legs, its front paws clasped in front of its chest. It was definitely—definitely—not in that pose a second ago. She stared at it wide-eyed.
“Is it the drugs? It’s the drugs,” she muttered. “Rinaldo shot me full of who-knows-what. I’m still a little loopy, and I’m imagining things. It’s fine. I’m fine. It’s cool. It didn’t move. It’s not—”
The rat tilted its head to the side like a dog pondering its owner. Its bony tail curled around its leg.
“Shit!” Maggie smacked it with the book she was holding as hard as she could, sending the taxidermy rat flying across the room. It smashed against the wall and fell to the ground in a rain of tiny bones with a rattle.
Her heart was pounding. Adrenaline had taken over, and in that one instant of “fight or flight,” she had soundly picked “smash it the fuck up.” The result was that she was even dizzier than before. Sitting on the bed, she put the book down beside her and took a slow breath.
“It didn’t move. No way.” She shut her eyes and tried to steady herself. “I’m fucked up from the sedative. That’s all. I imagined it, and I accidentally trashed somebody’s weird-ass antique. That’s all.” When she wasn’t so shaky, she slowly let out an exhale and opened her eyes.
She half expected the dead rat to be sitting there on the bed or back on the nightstand. But it was still in tiny pieces all over the floor by the wall. Luckily. She might not have been able to handle it if it weren’t.
Small favors.
Now, on to the next question. Was the door locked? There were two closed doors in the room. Heading to the first one, she tentatively grabbed the handle. Giving it a slow, careful twist, it spun easily. It wasn’t locked.