Page 37

“‘I want a clean cup,’ interrupted the Hatter: ‘let’s all move one place on.’”

- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Oz didn’t feel well today.

His balance felt off.

There was mold somewhere in this building, which was causing his lungs to become inflamed and his eyes to water.

This neighborhood was in an industrial zone, and he could practically feel the chemicals and fumes which had soaked into the concrete and the buildings.

Most of the chemicals were probably illegal.

They were probably carcinogens and poisons, filling his lungs with every breath.

It was like walking into a gas chamber. Every second he was here was one second closer to death.

That was why he didn’t feel well.

He knocked on the door and it was opened an instant later.

Natalie smiled at him broadly and ushered him inside.

That woman’s smile always just about stopped his heart. He found it so appealing that it took everything in him not to grab her and pull her against him, confessing everything he felt about her.

But that would be inappropriate.

It hadn’t been his idea to leave her alone, even for an instant, but she had insisted.

Something about him making her nervous with his pacing around.

She was still coming down from 30+ sleepless hours, so Oz had decided to give her a few minutes to rest, remaining in the Crater Lair until she’d had a chance to sleep.

In patented Natalie fashion though, the woman had taken that break from being watched at every moment to return to her apartment and continue with her life.

Oz was not a fan of that plan.

People were trying to kill her, so it made no sense to stay at the most obvious location anyone searching for her would look. He was not at all pleased that she was ignoring her own safety like this .

While on the car ride over to her place though, he had managed to convince her to stay with him until the matter was settled. All in all, he had expected more of an argument about it. But she had agreed almost immediately.

Which was… odd.

Oz was used to being confused by Natalie’s actions though, so it wasn’t exactly surprising either.

As he stepped into her apartment, he wondered why the sight didn’t horrify him as much as it obviously should have.

The space was… crazy. Like a dozen different houses were shuffled together and then arranged around a single apartment in a jumble.

But it was a chaos that had a deliberate order to it.

It was the product of an eccentric mind, not a lazy housekeeper.

The space wasn’t dirty or disgusting like his aunt and uncle’s house had been, it was just… crazy.

Piles of things around that obviously were placed there for a reason, but Oz couldn’t begin to guess what it was.

Multicolored walls.

Posters of boybands from the 1990s and concerts from the 18 90s and velvet paintings of sci-fi robots.

It was like walking around in Natalie’s mind, and he found himself grotesquely fascinated by it. Yes, being here was causing his compulsion for order to go nuclear, but he couldn’t look away from it.

Natalie made her way further into the apartment, while Oz bolted the door behind them. They were only going to be here for a few minutes while she collected some things, but it never hurt to be cautious.

The door was secured with nothing but a simple deadbolt and a chain lock.

Oz automatically put “installing a good quality lock on the door” on his internal list of things he needed to do.

For a professional assassin, he really would have thought the woman would have more than two locks on the door.

Heck, Oz himself had seven. One of which had a reversed mechanism and was always kept unlocked, so that anyone picking the other six would inadvertently lock the seventh.

He followed behind Natalie, through the foyer and into the main living area. There was an opening in the wall which formed a breakfast nook, although the counter was currently filled with an overflowing mass of paperwork.

“What’s that?” He gestured to the large pile of envelopes on the counter.

Natalie shrugged, apparently unconcerned. “That’s the mail I don’t open because it’s going to be bad news.”

He blinked at her in confusion. “Okaaaaaay. Um… why not just throw it out then?”

“Because it might be important.”

“Then shouldn’t you open it?”

“I just said I didn’t want to open it because it’s going to be bills and letters yelling at me for doing or not doing something.” She looked at him like he was insane. “If I opened the mail I don’t want to open, then it would completely eliminate the need for the pile of mail I don’t open.”

“Ah.” For the first time in his life, Oz was confronted with something that both made complete sense yet was also entirely insane.

So he simply stared at the mail, vainly trying to come to terms with that contradiction.

Natalie noticed his confusion. “You okay?”

“I don’t feel good.”

“You don’t look good.” She tilted her head to the side. “You dying or something?”

“Possibly. I haven’t had a physical in two weeks, so something could have come up in that time.”

“I’m not used to you not looking perfect, Oz.” She sounded concerned.

“I’m tired.”

“Did you sleep at all last night?”

“No.”

“Or the night before?”

“No.”

“I was the one dying, how is it that you’re the one who looks like shit?”

Oz knew perfectly well why he hadn’t slept.

Because she had been dying and he spent most of the night vacillating between crushing grief, boiling anger, and near catatonia.

And he’d spent last night once again looking over all of the information they’d thus far managed to collect about their enemies.

But she didn’t need to hear that.

“I don’t know.” He finally said simply, carefully turning one of the pink ceramic cats on a shelf so that it was more in line with its companions.

Of course, the action was entirely pointless, since the shelf itself seemed to have been nailed to the wall at a slight angle, but it was the only thing Oz could do at the moment .

This apartment was… He’d never been to a haunted house of any kind, but he very much guessed that the experience was a lot like this.

Not in the sense that there were ghosts, just in the sense that this apartment represented his own personal nightmare.

But one which was somehow presented in a safe way, so that his terror was rendered fun.

Or at least like an adventure you knew you could survive.

It was very strange.

He must have been staring at the off-kilter shelving for too long, as Miss Quentin finally snapped at him. “What’s wrong with you?”

“A lot.” He admitted, taking the question large-scale.

“Such as?”

“I don’t feel well.”

“You’re always like this.” She reminded him.

He shrugged, making his way towards the living room to continue the security sweep. “I always don’t feel well.”

“I’ve never met anyone in my life who never feels good.”

“I just…” He shrugged helplessly again. “I don’t feel well.”

She cautiously approached the refrigerator and threw open the door, again obviously expecting a body to tumble out, but only finding sugary and unhealthy foods. Personally, Oz found them scarier and more horrifying than a dead body would have been. “You know what I think your real problem is?”

“Some kind of unknown form of leukemia?” He guessed, making a serious self-diagnosis.

“You don’t have any fun.”

“Not feeling well is not fun.”

“If you started having fun, you’d start feeling better.”

“I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Lots of people have fun which ends up killing them. They…” He trailed off, distracted by the living room. “What’s that?” He pointed towards a mannequin in the corner.

Natalie started to pull a “Hello Kitty” suitcase from a hall closet, and Oz unconsciously tilted his head to the side to get a better look at her rear.

It was the kind of thing he would be completely horrified by seeing someone else do, but which he still felt compelled to do when it was Miss Quentin.

There was something about the woman which seemed to inspire him to admire her.

It was wrong and juvenile and a complete betrayal of her trust. He knew he should feel guilty and ashamed for it.

Knew it was a sign that his “bad blood” was winning out… But Oz didn’t care .

That woman had an amazing body. It made him happy to look at her. And there were precious few things in this world which could make Oz happy.

She turned to look at the object he indicated. “That’s a robot from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.”

“Really?” He turned to look at it again. “Huh. Where did you pick something like that up?”

“The Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Duh.” She started past him, but then stopped when she saw he was staring at her in amazement. “What? They had a ton of them in there. They’ll never miss one redhead.”

“Why is it that everyone in the Consortium thinks that’s somehow a complete legal defense?” He threw his arms out in exasperation. “According to them, the world is completely blind and uncaring about its own property going missing.”

Natalie made a humoring, dismissive sound and tossed her suitcase onto her bed.

Oz paused in the doorway, recognizing that he shouldn’t go into the room. This was her private space and he hadn’t been invited. It was crossing a line.

On the other hand, he was in charge of her security at the moment and her bedroom hadn’t yet been swept for dangers.

Plus… he’d sworn to himself that he was going to be forward in showing Miss Quentin how important she was to him. He wasn’t about to ever get into a position of her dying without knowing how he felt again.

Oz’s only goal in life was that woman.

As he stood in the doorway, silently debating, he noticed a creepy looking doll on the shelf across from him. There was something hypnotic about it and he couldn’t look away.