Shattered Girls (Broken Dolls Book 2) (23 page)

“That’s only for lengthy transitions to keep the body alive, lady doll. You won’t be long.”

I sigh. “How did we get involved in all of this?”

“It’s rather poetic.” Sianne unwraps the last cord. “It all started with you, thirty years ago. Hopefully it can end with you, too. We can beat this. I
know
it.”

Lisa smiles. “I like you when you’re lucid, Sianne. Sometimes, you’re inspiring. Like, you’re a good friend about ten percent of the time.”

Sianne scowls. “All my imaginary friends think I’m a good friend one hundred percent of the time.”

“And there goes the lucidity,” Lisa says.

Sianne switches something attached to the wires and my head tingles. Her voice fades, my vision blurs, and reality distorts. It’s a common occurrence, lately. Within moments, I’m reborn. Only now, I have no heartbeat, no need for oxygen and, no blisters.

I’m back in Hell.

top looking so depressed!” Lisa snaps, her doll form eerily similar to her human self, only it has purple hair instead of black.

“Sorry,” I mumble. “I’ve just wasted so many years as a doll. I hoped never to be one again.”

“Well, look who has changed! Besides, we’ll be like what, two hours?” She glances around the park and grunts. “Make that two days. We’ll never get out of here.”

“New York is bigger when you’re a doll.”

Sianne, who is gigantic again, bursts into a fit of hysterics. Wiping away tears, she grabs the blue backpack and shakes it until a small, pink jeep lands with a thud. “See? Pack for every occasion!”

“Yeah well, if you’d just brought your computer, we wouldn’t need to be doing this at all.” Lisa runs her hands across the pink plastic door. “It’d be a lot cooler if it were black.”

“It kind of looks black in the dark.” I jump into the passenger seat. “Is it remote control?”

“Nope!” Sianne tents her fingers. “I’m so jealous you get to use this. I made it myself!”

“Yourself?” Lisa freezes. “Oookay, we’re doomed.”

Something in me possesses me to jump in. The whole crazy extended family is still family angle, maybe. “Sianne’s actually pretty decent at engineering. She’s just socially awkward.”

“Conversing, confabulating, and words in general don’t make sense how they make sense. What even is grammar?” Sianne removes her foil hat to scratch her head.

“See?” I glance at Lisa. “Anyway, Sianne, how do we control this thing?”

She bends down to point out the accelerator. “Like any other car. It’s got an engine and everything. It’s just shrunk down to your size. Don’t crash it, or it’ll
bloooow
.”

Lisa slides into the seat, buckling in and gripping the steering wheel. “Sweet. We’ll head towards the apartments.”

“How will we get in?”

“With your upgrades,” Sianne says. “Those handy spikes, like the old Ella doll. You should be able to pick any lock.”

“Too easy.” Lisa turns on the car and revs the engine, smiling at the sound. “Oh hey, Sianne, if you can find a way to transport us closer to the company, that’d be great. It’s not far from here. As soon as I transmit the signal, we’ll want to storm the place.”

“Orders orders, more orders.”

“Damn straight,” Lisa says. “This may be pink, but boy does it have a sexy motor. Let’s get out of here.”

Without warning, she speeds forward before I can put my seatbelt on. Thank goodness we’re dolls, because that would’ve given me serious whiplash.

“Slow down!” I scream, each pebble and twig hazardous.

“No time,” Lisa says, jaw clenched.

Our bottoms are in the air more than they’re in the seats. I desperately hold onto the dashboard as Lisa swerves through the park.

“Do you even know where you’re going?”

“Yep.”

“Then could you turn the headlights on?”

“Nope. We don’t want to be seen.”

We close on the edge of the park, and there’s a busy road up ahead. I can’t understand how it’s already so hectic at five in the morning.

“We’re going to drive through the cars.”

“
What
?!” I shriek.

“Through the
traffic
, dummy! Ready?”

“No!”

“Steady?”

“
Stop
!”

“Here we go!”

Momentarily airborne, we speed through the park and shoot off the sidewalk, landing in the middle of the road with a bounce and a grunt. Screaming in unison, we tear right through, narrowly avoiding the tires. Crashing into the lip of the sidewalk across, Lisa revs to get over the hump.

Flinging the jeep into the shadows, she rips off her seatbelt, her hair mussed and wild. “Let’s hurry!”

“And leave the jeep here?”

Lisa hesitates. “No. You’re right. It’ll be quicker to take it in.”

“Wait. I didn’t mean that!” My words are muffled as Lisa reverses the jeep, aiming straight for the glass door. “Lisa, stop! The alarm will go off! The doorman will chase us!”

“And they’ll arrest two dolls?” She smirks. “We could hula the handcuffs. Anyway, I know Frank the doorman. Look at him. He’s three-hundred years old. It’ll be next week before he registers what just happened.”

She revs and we roll forward, dodging Frank, who is staring up at the sky, humming to himself. He’s stooped over and missed a button on his shirt. I feel a little sorry for him. Hopefully, we won’t get him in trouble.

Bracing for impact, I instinctively cover my head as we smash through the glass. Shards scatter in the jeep as Lisa charges through the lobby.

I glance over my shoulder to where Frank painstakingly bends over to check the glass. Lisa’s right. It’ll take him a while to catch up. “Why is he still working here? Isn’t he a little—”

“Over the retirement age? He used to manage the place before his nephew took over. He likes being close to the residents, and his nephew doesn’t have the heart to put him out to pasture.”

Oh man. Now I feel
a lot
sorry for him!

“How are we supposed to get anywhere?” The lobby seems pretty much devoid of exit points.

“Take the wheel for a sec. Keep aiming for the elevator.”

“Wha…” I gasp as Lisa takes her hands off the wheel. Leaning over, I grab it, on the verge of a panic attack.

Lisa rips off her right arm, and like a gun, aims the hollow limb at the button. She flicks a switch by her elbow and a small ball shoots out, hitting the button. The doors slide open just as we skid to a stop—inside the elevator car.

“Holy crap,” I whisper as Lisa aims at the buttons. She selects ‘five’, and as the doors close, she blithely twists her arm back into place.

“Sure wish we had these upgrades back in the day, right?”

“How did you even know you could do that?!”

“Sianne’s crash course as you were dosing off into your doll form. Neat, eh? Eh? Ella, isn’t it neat?”

“Sorry, I just need time to process everything.”

Lisa frowns. “There
is
no time. We have to get back to our bodies which are currently freezing their butts off in the middle of Central Park, protected by a crazy lady. Man up!”

The doors open and Lisa revs, turning left and stopping at the unit numbered ‘504.’

“Hello, Josh,” Lisa says. “Arrogant, cheating piece of crap! Dimwit.” She growls, showing the door a rude gesture. “He wasn’t even that good-looking, you know. Or funny.”

Someone’s bitter. “Do we use our arm guns to get in? Or our spikes?”

“Hmm. Spikes? You know how to break into houses with a credit card?”

“No.”

“It’ll be just like that, but with the spikes. Give me a boost.” If she expects me to ask how
she
knows how to break into houses with a credit card, she’s in for a disappointment. I may be a doll again, but my self-preservation instincts have translated loud and clear.

I climb onto the jeep’s hood and Lisa leaps onto my shoulders with ease, jumping onto the doorframe, and shimmying up until she reaches the handle. I flinch when spikes shoot from her body. She looks like a tiny porcupine clinging to the doorframe. It’s hilarious.

Using her legs to jimmy the handle, she inserts her spikes into the gap and slides up and down. It’s an odd display, but after a few seconds, the door clicks.

With a proud grin, she slides down the doorframe, leaps back into the driver’s seat, and slowly nudges the door open with the jeep’s bumper bar.

It’s dark inside. Not to mention tiny. The kitchen is about the size of a toilet cubicle with outdated wooden cupboards. The white, ultra-modern furniture is the only thing that makes this place look dapper, but
even
then… Maybe this is the cheapest unit in the cheapest building. Then again, there’s that prized view—through the tiny, claustrophobic windows.

The jeep crawls into a poorly decorated bedroom where a man snores. A crinkled blue uniform hangs by his bedpost, shedding random gadgets.

“How did Josh afford such an expensive place?” I ask. “On a policeman’s salary and all.”

“Because he’s Daddy’s little prince, and Daddy owns like a billion insurance companies.” Lisa rolls her eyes. “I won’t lie, I was attracted to him because of the money. And the uniform. But he’s legitimately the
worst
. Plus, his apartment is crap.”

I manfully refrain from pointing out they sound like a match made in Heaven and point instead to the oak desk in the corner of the room. A laptop is open and left on, plugged into the wall. “Go on. I’ll keep watch down here.”

Lisa nods and kills the engine. She jumps out and bolts towards the chair, performing fancy acrobatic flips to pull herself up. The first thing she does is turn the volume down, then proceeds onto some arcane things I assume will get her into the locked computer.

I fidget in the jeep, shuddering every time the cop so much as breathes. Lisa’s right. He’ll probably be awake soon.

Slowly, I slink out of the jeep and inch towards his bedside, where the clock throws its sickly green light onto his pillow. Surely he has an alarm. If I can turn it off, it might buy us more time.

As he chokes on his snore, I stare up at him. He’s about thirty and not bad looking. In fact, he’s quite a catch, even if he is the enemy. Glancing at the bedside table, I wrap my hands around the leg, considering performing fancy tricks like Lisa. She made it look so easy.

“And what do you think you’re doing, Ella?”

I stop. That voice is too sweet to be Lisa’s.

Spinning around, I spot a blond doll with pigtails and a red catsuit glaring at me with her hands on her hips.

“Who are you?” I whisper.

“Delilah,” she says at a normal speaking level. I want nothing more than to shove a sock in it. Literally. “We got word that you’re in trouble. We’re supposed to report you.”

“You don’t want to do that.” I keep my voice down. “We’re helping you.”

She tilts her head to the side. “Helping us? We don’t need help. We’re happy, silly.”

“You’re not. My guess is, you were probably a criminal. I’m sure you committed a victimless crime, but that doesn’t matter to them.”

Delilah bats her eyes, clearly affronted. “I am no criminal! I’m a helper. I do chores for my master. I pick up crumbs, order groceries online, and ensure that my master is looked after at
all
times.”

I frown. The sad truth is Delilah probably
is
happy. I mean, she
could
rot away in a prison. Instead, she’s able to live a relatively carefree life in an apartment overlooking Central Park. See, this is where that good versus bad stuff gets really complicated.