Along Came a Spider Ch. 03

"I did."

"We could do it again," he continued, and her breath fluttered.

"We could." He lurked near her doorframe as she shakily fitted her key into her lock, and when she looked up at him, his eyes seemed hooded and slightly glazed from beneath a fringe of shaggy, pitch-black hair. She paused, and for a while they just looked at one another. Their stare seemed charged, somehow, and she languished in the uncertainty of the silence, broken only by the faintness of their breathing and the thrum of the building's heating vents. It had been nearly three years since she had gone out to dinner with somebody. The last somebody had been with 'Zack', a friendly hippie that Lily had set her up with. Zack worked at a sandwich shop. She remembered the inside of his car smelling like bread and weed when he drove her home, and then she never heard from him again.

But he hadn't walked her to her door. In fact, she didn't think anyone ever had before. And, at that moment, she realized that she didn't know what she was supposed to do. In every romantic movie she had seen, this was the part where the couples kissed, but Hollywood wasn't a reliable source of information and she wasn't quite sure if she wanted to kiss him. Did he even want to kiss her? Maybe this had been more of a casual outing and she was just overthinking it.

She jumped a little as he lifted his hand to brush back a strand of hair that had come loose from her bun. His fingertips grazed the skin of her temple, cool and soft. His lips were parted slightly, and a hectic heat stung her cheeks when she realized that she had been staring at him. The look on his face made her breath catch. Oh. He did want to kiss her.

Her hand was still gripping the doorknob. She wondered if she should just go inside. But then---suddenly, in a motion that surprised even herself---she drew herself up onto her tiptoes and pressed her mouth briefly against his cheek. The skin was cool and firm under her lips, and when she pulled back, his eyes were ablaze with a slow heat.

He seemed a little unsteady as he knelt towards her, and she felt her eyes quiver shut as his lips captured hers.

His mouth moved softly over hers, gentle but ravenous, and she lifted her arms to entwine them around his neck. He took a couple jerky steps forward, and her heartbeat stammered as she matched his movements and felt her back press up against the surface of her door. The lean length of his body slid insistently against hers, pinning her in place, and every coherent thought she possessed melted into a hot, sticky puddle. She kissed him back desperately, dying inside from the wet silkiness of his mouth. A soft little noise left her lips. He braced one of his arms against the door, caging her beneath him, and the other slid down to grasp her hip. Her knees trembled as he opened his lips over hers, his breath a roar in her ears, and his tongue delved slowly into her mouth.

She couldn't stop. She didn't want to.

Suddenly, the door jerked behind her, and she stumbled as the wooden surface creaked backwards. James's grip tightened on her waist to steady her, but he too seemed uncharacteristically unbalanced. From the corner of her eye, she saw a fluffy mop of pink hair peek through the crack in the door. A pair of hazel eyes abruptly widened.

"Oh...there you are," Lily stuttered. "My bad. I just thought I heard...uh...sorry." The door shut hastily behind her, and she stared up at James. His eyes were enormous, drowning pools of darkness in his pale face and his lips seemed flushed, freshly bitten.

"James," she whispered, groping behind her for the doorknob.

"Tabitha," he said hoarsely. Every syllable of her name seemed indecent on his tongue. He kept his eyes fixed on her as she stumbled into her apartment and quickly shut the door.

Lily was waiting for her in the hallway, and her magenta eyebrows rose sky high when she observed Tabitha's unsteadiness. The TV was on in the background, murmuring little news segments here and there, and on the counter near Lily's elbow sat the half-empty bottle of whiskey and two shot glasses. One of them was already sticky from use. "Wow," she said flatly, but the corners of her mouth were twitching into a little smile. "I tried calling you again, but you never answered. I was worried about you for a while, but uh..." She hesitated. "Well, how did it go?"

Tabitha gripped the counter for support and brought a shaking hand to her mouth. Then, to her horror, she burst into gales of high-pitched, panicky laughter.

"Easy, easy," Lily insisted over Tabitha's manic cackling, and she quickly ducked down to lift the bottle of whiskey and pour a thin little stream of it into a shot glass. "Here, chika. Take this," she said soothingly, pressing the shot glass into Tabitha's hands. Still giggling faintly, Tabitha cupped the glass in her fingers and tossed it quickly into her mouth. She gulped it down with a shudder, and tendrils of sickly warmth blossomed up from her stomach as the liquor trickled down her throat. She slammed the glass back down on the counter and rotated her hand in a "keep going" gesture. "Damn, okay," Lily said uncertainly, tipping another shot into the glass. Tabitha quickly snatched it up and gulped it down. "Do you want some Coke to go with that Jack?" she offered, holding up a little can and looking thoroughly worried.

"Yes," Tabitha gasped through another flurry of giggles. Thankfully, the hitches in her chest were growing shorter and less intense, and the painful smile that was fixed on her face was beginning to wane. As she sipped gratefully at the soda, taming the fumes from the whiskey that were choking her lungs, Lily's hand came up to pat her shoulder.

"He didn't try to eat you, though?" she asked hopefully. "Unless that's what that was, in which case, you are very welcome..." Tabitha let out one last bark of laughter, then shook her head.

"I don't think so," she murmured. "It was just...kissing. Really good kissing." She went beet red. "Great kissing." She paused. "I think I'm drunk."

"You're a wimp," Lily sighed, and she leaned down to pour another pair of shots. Tabitha raised her hands in protest, but Lily ignored her. "Don't be such a greedy-face, taking shots by yourself," she chided, and Tabitha took the shot glass in her hands with more than a little reluctance. "To dangerous dinner dates," she intoned, and Tabitha raised her glass.

"The dangerousest," she agreed solemnly, her s's slurring spectacularly. They concluded the toast with the chime of glass on glass, and Tabitha tossed the liquor back into her throat. Now that she wasn't laughing like a maniac, the whiskey burned unpleasantly on the way down, and she quickly gulped down another mouthful of soda. Lily watched her choke with amusement.

"So," she continued slyly, sipping at her soda can, "to be continued?"

"Oh, I don't know. I don't know at all," Tabitha said dreamily. The whiskey, adrenaline and untethered emotions coursing through her body had left her feeling very floaty. Her eyes widened in inebriated horror, and she knelt a little closer to Lily. "Do you think he can hear us?" she whispered loudly. Lily rolled her eyes.

"I'm sure we're fine."

"Okay." Her fingers twitched weakly as she placed the shot glass back onto the counter, and Lily laughed before slinging her arm around her shoulder.

"Let's get you into a couch. You look pretty broken." Tabitha let Lily guide her towards the living room, but then frowned blearily up at her.

"How did you even get in here?" she asked.

"I have a copy of your key, remember?"

"...No."

"Oh, my bad. I thought I told you."

---

Sunday, 8:17 p.m

In a decrepit little house somewhere downtown, a white phone began to ring.

It was an old phone, as far as phones went. It had a spiral cord and wires that plugged into wall outlets, and the buttons were big and round and made of chunky plastic. It was perched upon a tiny wooden table---the sort that one would find for three dollars at a garage sale---and in front of that table was a threadbare couch. And upon that couch, there was a large lump of black fabric.

On the second ring, the lump stirred. A hand dotted with scars wormed its way out from the pile of cloth and groped towards the phone, and by the third ring, the hand managed to ensnare the receiver. It lifted it from the cradle and brought it towards the head that had also emerged from the confines of the fabric; ruddy and weathered and covered with pale stubble that was partly blond, partly grey.

The man shifted, then coughed, then pressed the phone to his ear. "Hammond and Hammond," he grunted. The voice on the other end of the line began to speak, and the man scratched at the stubble on his chin as he listened. "No charge. Just tell me where you saw it and we'll take a look." He rubbed his eyes as the voice spoke again, then reached for the pen and pad of paper that were lying next to the phone. "Mhm," he said. "Mhm," he said again. After a pause, he lifted the pen and scrawled several numbers onto the paper, followed by a street name, and then another name, which he underlined twice. "Mmm." The person on the other line still hadn't stopped talking, and the man rolled his green eyes. "It's not an issue. It's only an issue if you're fucking with us, and then it isn't our issue; it's yours. We'll drop by and check the area tomorrow night."

The person on the other line began to say something else, but, spent of his patience, the man dropped the receiver back onto the cradle with a faint plinking noise. Then he gathered up the lump of black fabric he had been using as a makeshift blanket---a long, woolen coat---and began to slide his arms into the sleeves.

Another man emerged from the decidedly unsanitary kitchen, his pale brows knitted sternly. "Who was that?" he asked gruffly.

The man on the couch lolled his head back against the cushions. "Someone has a lead for us a few miles south of here."

The man by the kitchen snorted, his green eyes flashing. "Another haunted farmhouse?"

"Not that far south. In the city." His back crackled audibly as he sat up straight, and he reached towards his feet for a bottle that had once held an eighth of whiskey but now contained little more than a mouthful, which he promptly swigged down. "And it isn't ghosts," he wheezed after swallowing.

"What, then?" the man by the kitchen muttered.

The man on the couch flashed him a grim smile. "Bloodsuckers."

Still looking unimpressed, the man by the kitchen leaned up against a wall. "Halloween's in three weeks. Probably just a kid in fangs having a laugh."

"Could be." He jerked his head towards a sickly-looking figure with long, stringy black hair that was lying on the floor in front of the old television set. It lay perfectly still until the man spoke again, and then it curled up tighter in protest, displaying a prominent spine that bulged through its skin like columns of marbles. "We'll send her first," he said.