Xavi spun and glared at him. “Should you be heading upstairs, already?”
“Us, too,” I said, as Ace and Keaton wandered away.
Xavi turned back to me, shaking his head. “Let’s give them a minute. The elevator’s occupied until they come back. Look, Jesse, can you carry on searching the ground floor on your own?”
Jesse nodded rapidly, his hair quivering along with him. “I’ll head off now,” he said, promptly turning and disappearing.
“We can’t let that slow us down,” I said, striking out determinedly across the lobby. “We’re only going up one floor. Come on. We can take the stairs.”
“But…” Xavi said, rushing after me and gesturing at my cane.
I fixed him with a hard look. “Xavi, for the last time, I know my own limits,” I said. “Don’t treat me like a child. I can hold onto the handrail and get up the stairs just fine.”
He looked like he was still going to protest – but whatever it was on the tip of his tongue, he swallowed it down and pushed open the doors to the stairwell instead.
We started to jog up the stairs. My cane was difficult to use – I was used to taking longer strides than I could manage on the short span of the steps – but I could hold onto the handrail like I’d told Xavi, getting the support I needed that way. Even so, I was out of breath at the top of the flight. As he pushed open another set of doors to let us out onto the first floor, I knew he’d been right about taking the elevator.
But I wasn’t going to admit that. And besides, sometimes the situation called for pushing yourself just a little harder than was comfortable. When you needed to go above and beyond, you could sacrifice a bit of comfort.
“Which way should we go?” I asked, trying not to allow the panting to show in my voice.
“I don’t know,” Xavi said, casting around. The corridor branched in two opposite directions from where we stood.
There was a sound behind me, something like the flapping of huge wings along with tiny pattering footsteps, and Xavi spun to look.
“What was that?” he asked, his voice falling to a stage whisper.
I looked behind me. There was nothing there. “I don’t know,” I said.
I looked back at Xavi. He reached out for my hand. “Can you handle it?” he asked.
At least this time, he asked.
“Go,” I nodded, and he took off at a run, pulling me along with him.
We only passed ten rooms before the corridor branched off into two different directions again. One to the left, one to the right. I felt in my gut that the sound I heard had been passing from left to right, and Xavi didn’t hesitate in pulling me in that direction. I held tightly to his hand, my cane tucked under my arm, feeling like my chest would burst and my leg would seize up and I would have to fall down and sleep for a week as soon as we stopped running.
But for a moment…
I didn’t care.
We were running and I felt free, and I had a purpose, and Xavi was grinning and I was grinning and we were not office workers or wedding guests or fake lovers or wage earners or taxpayers or big brothers or orphans or stupid slutty bitches - we just were, and it was the best I had felt in such a long time that I never wanted to stop running at all.
Until we turned another corner and almost ran right into a figure dressed all in white, a huge gown that took up so much of the hallway it was almost possible to see past it.
“Hey!” Xavi shouted. He must have realized, as I had, that this was who we were looking for. I just didn’t have enough breath in my lungs to say it.
She spun around to look, and I almost jumped back at the sight of her.
She was not in a good way. Tara, if that really was her name, was a picture of misery from head to toe. She had been wearing a veil at some point, but it had been torn askew, presumably when she was running from the security guards and climbing up and down and through things, and her hair was tangled around the remains of a cheap plastic tiara.
Her face had been made up in what looked like classy bridal makeup, but tears had streaked heavy black lines of mascara down her face. She must have rubbed a hand across her eyes at some point, smearing her rose-colored eyeshadow to the side, and even her lipstick had been smeared across the side of her mouth.
The dress had also seen better days – it was marked and pocked with holes and flecks of what looked like paint, as well as smears of makeup that must have transferred from her hands and arms as she lifted the dress to run. It was splattered with mud and even green grass stains along the lower edge. She lifted the hem now to free her feet, and I saw white satin pumps with broken heels and the same mud and grass marks all over them.
“Tara,” I called out. It was the only thing I could think of: to appeal to her on a personal level. If we said nothing, she was ready to run. “Tara, wait – think about this!”
I thought she was stopping, turning back. I thought she was ready to talk.
