The Nine Lives of Chloe King by Liz Braswell Read Free Book Online Page A

her forward. I won’t go in. I’ll stand in the hallway and ask him if he wants to go out. Maybe grab a coffee.
    His door was dark wood with molding and a little brass-and-glass peephole at eye height. She raised her hand to knock …
    And realized the door was pushed open just the slightest bit.
    “Uh, hello?” she called out, stepping back.
    “Help …,” a choked, wheezy voice called from inside. “Help me!”
    Chloe hesitated on the doorstep. It could be a trap. He could kidnap girls and rape them and sell them into slavery and …
    “Please … someone …”
    Chloe pushed open the door and stepped inside.
    The apartment smelled of sickness and decay, which was strange against the clean, antique furniture and expensive, modern lighting. In each gable was a carefully designed nook for reading and sitting— just like I would have done. Chloe made herself follow the sound of wheezing.
    Lying under the lintel to the bathroom was a very different Xavier.
    He was wearing the same clothes from the club two nights ago, but they were torn and pulled like he had tried to rip them off his body. His face had bubbled up like the rind of a diseased grapefruit. His cheeks and forehead were swollen and red, with white liquid, lymph or pus, oozing out of giant sores.
    “Help —“He was trying to scream, but his throat was swollen so badly, he could barely breathe. He groaned and twisted, trying to crawl out of his skin. He flopped onto his stomach and Chloe got a look at his back. Long, oozing cankers and welts, like claw marks. Exactly where she had scratched and kneaded him outside the club.
    Chloe backed up slowly.
    Must call.
    Without thought, like she was walking through syrup, Chloe found the handset of a cordless phone in the living room, resting on top of one of those expensive giant HEPA filters from Sharper Image, like the one her mom had. She dialed 911.
    She recited the address when a brusque, disinterested voice came on. “There’s someone here. Covered in sores. Can barely breathe. It looks like he’s dying.”
    It looks like he’s dying.
    “We’ll be right there, ma’am. What’s your telephone number?”
    “I don’t—“She looked at the card and gave them his cell. After hanging up she went back to Xavier. He was hissing and coughing and his eyes were crusty and half shut. She wondered if he could see her, if he would recognize her.
    Exactly where she had scratched him.
    Chloe waited until she heard sirens approaching, and then she ran.

Six

    Friday passed normally, and Xavier wasn’t mentioned in any obits or police beats, so Chloe was determined to have a normal weekend, too. Hormone free. Guy free. Falls-from-towers and formerly-hot-now-sick-strangers free.

    She got up on Saturday, poured herself a big box of Lucky Charms, and watched new (really crappy) cartoons for a couple of hours. It was sunny out, so she drew the shades, just like she used to when she was young so she wouldn’t be tempted to leave the glowing light of the television for the great outdoors.
    At two she met Amy at Relax Now. Chloe had casually suggested to Amy the night before that they treat themselves to manicures with some of her birthday money. Amy objected at first, calling it a middle-class, bourgeois ritual of the Burberry-knockoff set. Chloe told her to cut the crap and enjoy it; they had never done it before and might never do it again. Besides, she was paying.
    And Amy actually seemed pretty cheerful, looking over her nails as they dried. She had talked the most artistic seeming of the women there into painting the lower half of all her nails black, then putting a single clawlike black stripe in the middle of each one. She flexed and re-flexed her fingers under the little lamps.
    “Grrr,” she said.
    Chloe was still having hers worked on. She’d opted for the hot paraffin, vitamin-wrap, extra-super-cleany options and was drilling the woman doing it with a battery of questions: Could fingernails be dirty even