Secret Santa Page 4

  “Hey, there’s somebody down here,” she shouted. The darkness was absolute. “Hello? Could you turn the lights back on?”

  No answer. She listened for footsteps on the stairs, but all she could hear was a flood of water rushing through the pipes overhead. When that finished, the quiet returned. She called out for help again and again, her voice a little louder each time. If only she’d brought a flashlight like the copy editor had insisted…

  Of course. They were hazing the new girl. How could she have been so blind? Sloppy Joe’s hushed “warning” had been a bit too melodramatic. Nice try, guys, but she was no stranger to hazing. Her first day at Broken Angel, her coworkers had locked her inside a storage closet with a clown. “Seven Minutes in Hell,” they’d called it. There had been whiskey on the clown’s breath—cheap whiskey. Fortunately, the clown passed out within thirty seconds. There was no way they could have known she’d always had an irrational fear of clowns. But that day, clutching a mop for protection in case the drunk woke up, she learned that she’d never really been afraid of clowns. What scared her were the men underneath the pancake makeup.

  God, she missed the Broken Angel crew. They’d had a lot of fun together.

  “Hazing the new girl, ha-ha,” she said, projecting her voice more forcefully this time. “You can turn the lights back on. Anytime now would be great.”

  Lussi waited, but heard nothing. No giggles. No footsteps.

  Were they really going to leave her in the dark? Okay, then. Her eyes had adjusted as much as they were going to. It would have to be enough. Only a sliver of natural light filtered through the windows, which were boarded up with plywood. She’d heard once that pigeons could find their way home blindfolded. She was smarter than a pigeon. Probably.

  Manuscripts in hand, she nudged the cage door with her foot. It didn’t open. She jammed her shoulder into the crisscrossed wire. It refused to give under her weight. Groaning, she set her load down and tried the door again, this time grounding her legs and pressing into it with her arms. It was stuck. She slipped her fingers through the wire, felt for the door handle. There was no latch, inside or out. No lock.

  It didn’t make sense.

  “Open up, open up, open up,” she hissed, rattling the door harder. The air seemed to have cooled off, as if somebody had shut off the building’s heat. She stopped shaking the door and started counting backward from one hundred in her head. It was a technique her analyst said would help her quell anxiety. Slowly, as she hit ninety, then eighty, then seventy, her breathing began to return to normal.

  She was not alone. She sensed someone watching her from the darkness. She couldn’t see them—couldn’t hear them—but they were there beyond her field of vision, swallowing up the silence itself.

  She rattled the door again, but felt even more resistance this time. It was like someone was holding it closed from the other side, which made no sense—she could see through the chain-link, and there was no one there. And yet…

  Her thoughts were drowned out by a whispering voice that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. Hunger.

  “You’re hungry?” Lussi said, backing away from the door. “I don’t understand. Who’s hungry? Let me out, please, please just let me—”

  That’s when she heard the unmistakable sound of the door being ripped off the front of one of the cages. She heard boxes tumble over, and then, to her absolute horror, she saw a glowing white figure hovering in midair in the next cage over.

  Whatever came out of her mouth next was involuntary and almost certainly unintelligible. In fact, she hadn’t even been aware she was capable of issuing such high-pitched sounds. The rational part of her brain was trying to calm her panic—there had to be an absolutely, perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this.

  The emotional part was running in circles, naked and howling.

  The overhead lights came back on. This snapped her back to reality long enough for her to shake the door again. “I’m back here! I’m stuck in a cage!” She gave the door one last good kick and the wooden frame splintered, releasing the door and sending her hurtling out of the cage. She landed hard on her hip.

  Heart still pounding, she whipped around to face the ghost. And indeed, it was a ghost—the kind you put in your front yard in October, as the days grow short and the leaves change colors. A glow-in-the-dark blow-up mold, propped up on a card table.

  She took a moment to catch her breath.

  What the hell just happened?

  Digby rounded the corner and stopped when he saw her on the floor. “Listen, I’ll have to call you back…Hello? Hello?” He looked at his cellular phone. “Lost him.” He glanced from Lussi to the broken cage doors, then back at Lussi. She imagined her face was frozen in the twisted shape of that Edvard Munch painting, The Scream.

  “So, ah, how’s your first day going?” Digby asked.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Lussi was worried that Digby would think she was crazy, but he was too preoccupied to ask why she’d been screaming. He just seemed glad she wasn’t hurt. He promised to find someone to cart the manuscripts up to her office. He was about to tackle several file boxes of financial records, he explained. “I’ll also have Alan look at the service elevator. The last thing we need is for someone to break their neck on those stairs,” he said, pulling a box from atop a shelf. “One lawsuit, and this whole operation comes crashing down.”

  “Have him look at the lights as well, if you could,” she said, still a bit shaken.

  “I already know what he’ll say: It’s an old building. That’s all he ever says. Laziest maintenance man I’ve ever dealt with. I’d let him go if I could, but supposedly he has, like, ten kids to support.” Digby continued to move boxes around. “I’ll wait until after the holidays.”

  Lussi nodded. “Do you want me to leave word with Agnes to remind you to speak to Alan?”

  He shook his head. “No use. I fired her last week.”

  Lussi stared at him, perplexed. In their brief interactions before and after the disastrous interview, Mr. Blackwood’s personal secretary had seemed both kind and competent. She also seemed like the type of woman who knew where the bodies were buried. In short: invaluable.

  Digby caught her look. “Don’t worry. My father set her up for life. She’ll live out the rest of her days in her palatial Massapequa estate, living far better than the rest of us.”

  Lussi didn’t know what to say, so she just gave him a little wave goodbye and went upstairs empty-handed. As she mounted the spiral staircase, she saw a trio of young women entering the second-floor conference room. Lussi checked her watch. Eleven on the nose. The editorial meeting was about to start. How had she spent over an hour in the basement? It didn’t seem possible. No time to head to the fridge for her fruitcake, or even to process everything that just happened in the basement.

  She dashed down the hallway as fast as her short legs would allow. A tall man holding the door let out a shriek as she barreled toward him. She slowed to a fast walk as she reached the door. “Sorry,” she said, her quads on fire.

  She took a seat at the far end of the conference table. The woman with the buzz cut from the morning of her interview was seated at the head of the table. The Raven. No wonder Lussi hadn’t recognized her from afar—the editor in chief’s trademark black hair had been almost completely shorn off. The other three women at the table—editors, all in their mid to late thirties, Lussi guessed—were dressed alike in striped polyester power suits with pointed shoulders. Their dark hair was swept up into matching high side-ponies. Before Lussi had applied for the job, she’d been warned by an ex-coworker that the Blackwood-Patterson employees were a different sort of strange. What else did you expect from the East Village, though? He said it went deeper than that. “They’re like V. C. Andrews characters,” he’d said.

  She was beginning to see what he meant. This trio looked like
they’d spent their whole childhoods together in an attic.

  The man holding the door open poked his head back out to see if anyone else was about to make a surprise appearance. Satisfied that the coast was clear, he shut the door and took the seat next to Lussi. His face was as long as the rest of him, as if someone had stamped out his features on Silly Putty and stretched it.

  The room was silent. All eyes were on Lussi, waiting for her to either explain her presence or leave. Shit or get off the pot, girl.

  Oh, how she wished she had her fruitcake.

  “I’m Lussi,” she said, forcing a smile. “The new—”

  “You have a spider in your hair,” the woman seated directly across from her said.

  Lussi rolled her eyes up but couldn’t see through her bangs. She had no fear of creepy-crawlies—she’d collected insects one summer, until her parents found the plastic milk jug with breathing holes under her bed. That didn’t mean she wanted a creepy-crawly in her hair. She bent over the side of her chair and brushed her hair out with her fingers. A daddy longlegs tumbled to the carpet. Each of its legs was a long, impossibly thin fishhook. It scrambled up and over a chrome mechanical pencil and then went straight for The Raven’s feet.

  Lussi picked up the pencil and sat back up. “Did someone drop this?”

  The man sitting next to her snatched it away without a word. He shot Lussi an evil side-eye and flared his nostrils.

  “Okay, then,” she said. “As I was saying, I’m Lussi. The new senior editor.”

  Nervous glances were tossed in The Raven’s direction.

  The editor in chief made direct eye contact with Lussi. Her gaze was so piercing, Lussi had to look away, lest she be turned to stone. “Thank you for joining us, Ms. Meyer. We’ll go quickly around the room and introduce ourselves. We’ve got a lot to cover today. Let’s start on my left, with…”

  Each of the women spoke in turn so quickly that their names went in one of Lussi’s ears and out the other. She picked up on the fact that they were all a level or two below her. She still couldn’t believe she’d talked Digby into handing her a senior editorship. Not that she felt bad about it. Home-grown editors were rarely rewarded for their loyalty. The best way to get ahead was to get out.

  The tall man seated next to Lussi introduced himself last. “Stanley Kenward O’Connell,” he said with a laconic drawl. “Art director.” She waited for more, but that was his entire spiel.

  Lussi was up next. She took a big inhale—when she was any sort of nervous, she tended to speak rapidly and run out of air—but The Raven stepped in. “Thank you everyone for sharing,” she said. “Let’s get down to business. We’re running behind already.”

  The editorial trio shared updates on their current projects. They showered each other with praise, and occasionally completed each other’s sentences. Lussi didn’t think the trio’s cohesion was solely for her benefit. Their hive mind was too well lubricated. Thirteen minutes into the meeting, Lussi settled on a pet name for them: Dracula’s Brides.

  No question who Dracula was. How was Lussi going to get a book—any book—past The Raven? Every time Lussi attempted to speak, the editor in chief quieted her with a look of utter disdain. The reason wasn’t hard to guess: Digby had hired Lussi without consulting her. Every office had its own protocols, but you’d be hard-pressed to find one where the top-ranking editor didn’t have at least some input into new hires. The only reason she hadn’t sat in on Lussi’s interview with Mr. Blackwood was because the old man hadn’t wanted to waste his highest-paid staffer’s precious time.

  If only Lussi had her stollen to soften the woman up.

  Stanley passed around some cover mock-ups for a new Richard Yates short story collection. There wasn’t much enthusiasm in the room for any of them. “Just pick one,” The Raven said. “Somebody, please. This needs to be at the printer last week.”

  When nobody wanted to go out on a limb, Lussi raised her hand.

  Five pairs of eyes turned to her. “I like the third one. With the wheelbarrow. Maybe it could have, I don’t know, a little more personality, though?”

  Dracula’s Brides exchanged looks of disbelief. The Raven smiled at Lussi. “And how, pray tell, would you go about giving a wheelbarrow ‘more personality’?”

  Stanley rubbed his chin. “I could see—”

  The Raven cut him off with a raised palm.

  “Well,” Lussi said, “maybe it could have some dirt in it? Go more rustic. It looks like it’s never been used. Or, you could go in a different direction with, I don’t know…a skull?”

  She didn’t know why she’d said it. She’d wanted to contribute something, anything to the meeting, to prove her worth, to show them she deserved to be here. Unfortunately, her mouth had been running faster than her brain. She’d forgotten where she was. A skull? Jesus Christ, what was she now, thirteen?

  As the seconds audibly ticked away on her watch, nobody breathed. Nobody sniffled, nobody bounced a foot under the table, nobody scratched an itch, nobody so much as blinked.

  Finally, one of Dracula’s Brides cleared her throat. “I like it.”

  “A skull would certainly be different,” Bride #3 said, nodding.

  “What if it scares people?” Bride #2 said.

  “It’s a dark book,” Bride #1 said. “Remember Revolutionary Road? That ended with the wife killing herself and her unborn baby. This one ends with a quintuple murder-suicide.”

  Bride #3 shook her head. “That’s sad.”

  “So sad,” Bride #2 said. “So, so sad.”

  The Raven never took her eyes off Lussi. When the editors had finished their little debate, The Raven told Stanley to do a mock-up of the new concept. “But we need it by the end of day. Go. Now.” He scooped up his drawings—and his beloved pencil—and left in a flurry.

  The Raven snapped her day planner shut. “Our time is up. I’ll schedule a follow-up on the Yates book tomorrow. And don’t forget—if you haven’t left your Secret Santa gift under the tree downstairs, do it soon. The party’s this Friday.”

  “Did you already draw names?” Lussi asked, pushing her chair out.

  “Two weeks ago, I’m afraid,” The Raven said. “Everybody’s name was in there…except for yours.” She smiled faintly.

  “Are you sure?” Bride #2 cut in. “She has a gift under the tree.”

  The Raven, holding the door open for everyone, dropped her smile. “I made the list—I know whose names were on it,” she said. “It sounds like somebody decided to appoint themselves as your Secret Santa, Lussi.”

  The thought of somebody taking it upon themselves to “welcome” her with an anonymous gift made her uneasy. She was starting to get the feeling that someone had it in for her at the company. Whatever had happened to her in the basement had been a prank. Even if she couldn’t explain how they’d pulled it off. Digby had too much going on to waste time pranking her, but there were nearly two dozen other people in the building…every one of them a suspect. What in the name of all that was holy was waiting for her under the tree?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The shopping mall below the World Trade Center was bright and airy, with piped-in Christmas tunes and a decorated spruce in the atrium. Despite being a rather frigid Thursday evening, the mall was alive with foot traffic. Most shoppers were well-dressed men with slicked-back hair—brokers who worked in the Financial District, getting a little Christmas shopping done before taking the train back to the ’burbs. The Sears bags were for their wives; the Victoria’s Secret bags, for their secretaries.

  Lussi hadn’t come to the mall to shop, however. One of her Broken Angel authors, Fabien Nightingale, was signing at Waldenbooks. After a long, at times frustrating, first week at the office—which wasn’t even over yet—it would be nice to see a familiar face.

  After the editorial meeting, the rest of the week had passed without inci
dent. Hardly anyone spoke to her, though she was on the receiving end of several dirty looks from Dracula’s Brides and seemed to run into Sloppy Joe every time she went on break. She wanted more one-on-one time with Digby, but he was always either on the phone, walking around with men in dark suits, or holed up in the basement rifling through file boxes. She didn’t even pretend to hope for a meeting with The Raven; she’d need to give that relationship some time to grow.

  Thankfully, Digby had arranged for someone to bring up the manuscripts from the basement on Monday afternoon. Lussi had returned to her office after lunch—the world’s saddest hot dog from the world’s saddest park vendor, hastily eaten on the world’s saddest street corner—and found stacks and stacks of manuscripts on the floor of her office. But after only three days of reading submissions, she was about ready to throw in the towel on the slush pile. One yellowing cover letter was dated 1972. It occurred to Lussi that she might not find the next Stephen King…she might find the Stephen King. A pre-Carrie submission. A Bachman book!

  As they say, though, there’s more than one way to skin a corpse. She’d begun ringing up every agent in her Rolodex, putting out word that she was on the hunt for fresh talent. The quality of agented submissions compared to slush was night and day. She could hear the skepticism in the agents’ voices, though, when she mentioned her new employer. That was one barrier she should have foreseen. A few promised to overnight her a hot manuscript or two, but so far she hadn’t received any mail. How long did it take the post office to deliver a package from Midtown?

  Lussi passed a Kay-Bee Toy & Hobby, where a mechanical bear whirred to life. “Hi there, I’m Teddy Ruxpin,” it chirped, its eyelids clacking open and shut, open and shut. “Can you and I be friends?”

  I don’t even see the friends I’ve got, she thought. Her niece might like the bear, however. She’d have to check with her sister to see if she had one already, or was getting one from Santa. It was looking less and less likely Lussi would be going home for the holidays, however.