Slumber (4 page)

“Dreamed it?” Ruby said sharply.

The girl continued in a faraway voice. “It was super-weird. I climbed to the roof of some Addams Family mansion with a posse of gorgeous boys. I think I kissed a few. Then someone yelled, ‘Let's go flying!' and they pushed me off the roof. I woke up on the floor at home. I'd fallen out of bed and landed on my arm so hard, it broke.”

“You fell out of bed?”

“Yeah. But how could you know about my dream?”

Ruby stared at her. Was she making up the dream-story as a cover? But the girl seemed genuinely confused, the corners of her mouth trembling like she was trying not to cry.

“Lucky guess,” Ruby said, creeped out. For sure she
did
see the girl at Cottingley, barely covered by a red kimono in the make-out room. Maybe the girl got so drunk or high she blacked out when she got home.

“Ruby Benson?”

Ruby's nerves jolted. A woman in a white coat stood in the doorway. The doctor. Ruby followed her into a private area behind the desk, nails digging into her palms. She tried to read the doctor's expression for a clue about her mom, but her face remained professionally neutral.

“Where's Mom?” Ruby asked.

“She's having some blood work done. Would you like to sit down?”

Ruby felt her heart squeeze. Nobody ever asked you to sit down so they could give you good news. “Just give it to me straight.”

The doctor studied her for a moment, then, evidently deciding she could handle it, said: “It's not good.”

Ruby's nails made deeper dents into her palm.

“We gave your mother a CAT scan and found an anomaly on her thyroid gland.”

Ruby felt the floor under her drop away. She had no idea her mother was so sick. “An anomaly?”

“A tumor. Has your mother been eating well? Sleeping well?”

“She's…been under a lot of stress lately.”

The doctor nodded sympathetically. “Stress and anxiety tend to deplete the body of resistance to tumorous cells.”

Ruby listened to the doctor rattle off glandular secretions and hormonal imbalances and other medical terminology before she interrupted with, “Is she going to die?”

“We'll embark on an aggressive form of treatment, of course,” came the response.

“You didn't answer my question.”

The doctor put a hand on Ruby's shoulder and sighed. “I'm not going to pretend that your mother's situation isn't grave, but we need to stay positive and focus on treatment plans. I'm going to refer her to a specialist who will prescribe medication to see if that reduces the size of the tumor. If that doesn't work, we'll have to consider surgery.”

“Oh.”

Oh Mom . . .

“Do you have health insurance?” the doctor asked gently.

Ruby blinked back tears. “No.”

“I'll send you to social services to point you toward resources available to low-income residents, but even with this assistance, the co-pays and drug therapies will get expensive.”

“Not to mention the surgery.”

“If it comes to that,” the doctor agreed. “Our hospital policy states that uninsured individuals will be required to place a co-pay deposit before we can schedule an operation. I'll try to get around that administrative hurdle, but you'll still have to come up with a financial contribution.”

Ruby listened to the doctor explain the reasons why—lack of funding, government requirements, and the fact that the hospital can't run on a deficit, but her brain was scrambling around the realization that they needed to come up with extra money in a hurry or Mom's health would just get worse.

The doctor gave Ruby's shoulder another sympathetic pat before directing her to a window where she was given a pile of forms to fill out. In a daze, Ruby went back to the waiting room with the paperwork while her Mom finished up with the blood work. She sank down on the bench, the forms untouched on her lap, and stared out the window at the bright mid-morning sun.

It'd been bright and sunny the day they got the call about Dad, too.

No way were she and Shelley losing both parents. Not if Ruby could help it. She'd do everything in her power to help her mother get the best medical treatment possible.

But that meant she'd have to earn the money they needed.
She set the forms aside, took out her cell phone, and hit the shortcut to the Happy Housekeepers number. So what if she'd have to skip school more often? So what if she didn't have a hope in hell of being accepted into NYU with her shitty grades? They needed the money or Mom's treatment would cost them everything. If they couldn't pay…she didn't even want to think about it.

“Hi, this is Ruby Benson calling for Margie Benson. Do you have any jobs coming available? We—I mean, she'll take anything. Her schedule is wide open.”

The woman on the other end of the line let out a sharp laugh. “Yeah, so's everyone else's. Most of our clients have canceled their cleaning contracts.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that. Maybe it's the recession, who knows, but people are cancelling our service left and right. In other words, we've got nada work for your mom.”

Ruby felt her heart hit the pit of her stomach. What were they going do now?

“…Except…hang on, something did just come across my desk…”

Sounds of paper shuffling. Ruby bit her lip to keep from screaming at the woman to hurry up.

“…Cottingley Heights. They just booked. They're offering a regular gig. Five days a week. Your mom did that job the other day, right? Does she want it?”

Ruby closed her eyes. Go back to that madhouse cleaning up after coked-up orgies and rich spoiled brats who never seemed to have suffered a day in their lives?
Every day?

But they needed the money. Mom needed the money.

And you'll see Tam again
, a voice whispered.

“Yeah. She'll take it.”

“No! I don't want you cutting class anymore,” Mom said. “How are you going to graduate? Go to college? Have a future? I don't want you to end up cleaning houses all your life like me.”

Ruby wanted to go to college and have a future, too. But she wanted her mother to live more. “It's just temporary, until you get better and we've paid off the bills.”

“That could be months!
Years
, Ruby! Be realistic,” Mom said angrily.

“I AM being realistic!” Ruby shouted.

Over the head of the stuffed teddy bear she clutched to her chest, Shelley's wide eyes traveled back and forth between the two. Ruby felt a pang of guilt. Despite all the stresses in their lives, she and Mom rarely fought, and never in front of Shelley. But this was different.

“I'm taking the job, and that's that!” Ruby stormed out of the trailer and hopped into the minivan, slamming the door behind her. She really didn't need her mother's lecturing right now. She knew that the longer she stayed out of school, the harder it would be to get back on track. But she had no choice. They needed the money. She gunned the accelerator and rattled out of the parking lot.

Storm clouds gathered thickly as Ruby took the turn into Cottingley's private woods. Under the canopy of the tree branches, the light was so dim it seemed almost like evening, despite the fact it was mid-morning. She turned on the headlights so she wouldn't hit one of the massive potholes. As she drove past the colossal oak where she'd seen the black stag, the minivan's engine sputtered ominously.

“No, no, no,” Ruby begged. “Don't do this now.”

In answer, the minivan gave a wheeze…and died.

“Damn it!” Ruby yelled as the vehicle rolled to a stop. Then she folded her arms on the steering wheel and dropped her head on them. Tears of frustration pricked her eyes. How much more could she take? She could barely afford to put gas in the tank, let alone pay a huge repair bill.

Thunder rolled overhead and the trees shuddered in response. After a moment, she lifted her head, and wiped the moisture off her cheeks.

Come on, Ruby. So you're going to have to walk it. Get moving or get caught in the rain.

A few drops spattered down from the clouds just as she struggled up the driveway, lugging her bag of cleaning supplies and vacuum cleaner. Above, the sky darkened over Cottingley's weirdo horror-story battlements, and a couple of crows cawed. An upsurge of wind whispered through the ivy clinging to the side of the house just as Ruby swiped the security card in the keypad by the front door. She shook off the feeling that nature was trying to get her attention, to warn her not to go inside, and hauled her equipment over the threshold anyway. She had a job to do.

Inside the darkened interior, the house was still and suffocating. Something dripped somewhere, and the air smelled stale and sour, as if Cottingley had remained shut up since she'd last been there. She took a step forward into the gloom and her foot kicked something. A beat-up bottle of Windex. Hers. A half-laugh left her. She must have dropped it when she bailed with Shawn two days ago. Obviously no one thought to pick it up. Or to open a window and let fresh air in. Or bother lifting a finger to clean, since it was just as dirty as she'd left it.

She felt stifled. She turned to open the window nearest her, and saw that the casing was covered in a crusty red-brown substance. Rust? Or…Lying on the window sill, just out of sight behind the wine-red brocade drapes, was the desiccated corpse of a cat. It looked like it hadn't died well either. Her stomach heaved.

“Holy crap. These people are messed up,” she muttered, backing away.

As she spoke, the delicate sound of guitar music penetrated the suffocating stillness. At least one of them was awake before noon. Ruby pulled plastic gloves and a twenty-five-gallon garbage bag out of her work kit. Maybe if she threw herself into the job, time would go faster.

She gingerly placed the cat in a smaller plastic bag, tied it off and left it by the front door. “Poor kitty,” she murmured. At some point she'd find the dumpster and get rid of it properly.

She followed the trail of random trash, picking up as she went, down the hall to the lounge with the indoor swimming pool. Sitting cross-legged on the bar, a beautiful dark-skinned girl, a guitar in her lap, played an old-fashioned folksong. She didn't look up when Ruby entered.

“Don't mind me,” Ruby said. “I'm just the cleaning lady.”

The girl ignored her and kept plucking deftly at the strings.

A laugh behind Ruby made her turn. For an instant, she found herself hoping it would be Tam. But no. Drifting into the room was another impossibly hot guy, all full-lipped mouth and sleepy looks, and a girl with enormous blue eyes and a cascade of brown curls rioting down her back. Yet more kids who could be on the runway. How many of them lived at Cottingley?

They ignored Ruby too.

“Check this out,” the guy said to the girl. He held out his phone so the girl could see the video on the screen. Ruby heard laughter, playful shrieks, and the sounds of general horseplay coming from the clip. She caught someone saying, “Real deep slumber,” then a male voice yelling “Yo, let's fly!” followed by a girl's terrified scream.
The two broke up laughing.

“That's awesome,” the girl giggled, and without missing a beat gave the guy a kiss as they strolled past.

Ruby felt cold all over. That couldn't have been the girl in the emergency room, could it? The one with the broken arm?
Had one of these maniacs really shoved her off the roof?

“Hold up a sec,” she called after the pair, but they didn't even break stride and disappeared into an adjoining room.

How freaking rude
.

“Hey, I want to talk to you!” she said, following them into the room.

As it turned out, it wasn't a room at all but a darkened corridor lit by one weak bulb dangling from the ceiling and filled with the smell of mold and dirt. The two supermodels had vanished into the gloom. “This place is like Hogwarts on crack,” Ruby murmured. She took a couple of steps forward into the shadows, thinking she could catch up to the pair and ask them about the video, but instead she heard…crying.

The hair on the back of her neck rose.

“No, no, no.” It was a male voice, and he sounded scared. Or in pain. “Help me…”

“Hello?” Ruby called. “Where are you?”

No answer. Ruby listened hard over her drumming pulse but didn't hear the cry again. It had been so faint, she started to wonder if it was just her imagination. She grabbed the knob of the nearest door and found herself back in the library where Shawn had stumbled in the other day.

The room still smelled strongly of brandy and sex. As her eyes adjusted to the murky light, she picked out the figure of a girl with dark skin and white-blonde hair standing by the window, wearing a filmy lace dress. The storm outside meant that hardly any natural light filtered past the thick mullions, but the girl still stared intently out into the darkness.

“Did you hear that sound?” Ruby asked her. “A guy crying or something?”

The girl turned at the sound of Ruby's voice. Her eyes were utterly blank, pupils blown. She blinked once, then went back to staring out of the window.

“Hello?”

No response. Obviously the chick was high. She seemed to be around fifteen years old, max.

Ruby tried again. “I said, did you hear someone crying?”

The girl turned away from the window and drifted out of the room, brushing by Ruby like she didn't exist.

“Nice to meet you too,” Ruby said to the girl's retreating back. Then she sighed in exasperation. Of course she was just the cleaning lady, a hired hand, performing the shitty job of cleanup so the Cottingley crew could party endlessly and not be buried in their own filth, but did they all have to be so frickin' rude? Last time they couldn't leave her alone, and now they wouldn't even acknowledge her presence. Something in between would be nice.

She kicked at the half-filled garbage bag she'd been dragging around. Who was she kidding? None of these people probably ever had to work a day in their lives, or ever would, because in addition to being beautiful and pampered, they were undoubtedly mega-rich with trust funds and bright futures lazing about the Hamptons in the summer, and Aspen or maybe Malibu in the winter.

Meanwhile, she had to skip school, put her dreams on hold, and perform manual labor just so her mother could get proper medical attention. The unfairness of the situation welled up in her throat until she wanted to scream. Or cry. Or both.

There was a little less ruined designer clothing and fewer empty champagne bottles since the last time she'd cleaned the place. But the lack of high-end garbage just ended up revealing more ordinary filth. Dirty oriental carpets. Grime-coated crystal. Dead insects around the windows. Shoe prints on the upholstery. Most annoying of all, patches of a sticky substance had been flung everywhere, as if someone had run around the house with an open bottle of honey.

Honey.

The memory of her dream with Tam popped into her head. His beautiful smile and his sculpted muscles…and his totally pampered lifestyle. She wanted to see him, yet also hoped he'd stay away from her. It bugged her. Usually she was pretty clear-headed about guys, but something about Tam confused her. He was the only Cottingley resident who acted normal, decent even, speaking to her like she was a person instead of an object. Yet he was still one of them. Against her will she wondered what he was doing, or where he was.

“Probably sleeping it off,” she murmured. She knelt in front of the door with the Egyptian hieroglyph painted on it, trying to scrub at one of the gluey patches on the floor. She gave the door knob a rattle, just in case…Nope, still locked.

“Who's sleeping it off?” a male voice chuckled.

This time she was certain. It was Tam.

Hastily she scrambled to her feet. Holy crap, he was even hotter than she remembered, with a jaw-line that could cut glass and knowing dark eyes. He seemed to make the corridor glow.

“Uh, no one…I mean, nothing, just talking to myself,” Ruby said.

“Uh-huh.” Tam leaned one shoulder easily against a doorjamb, stretching the fabric of his shirt tight across his bicep. He watched her watching him. “It's great to see you,” he said. “Really great. You look…good.”

Ruby flushed. How could she look good wearing a gray work t-shirt, jeans, and zero makeup? Was he mocking her again? Or trying to get in her pants? “Thanks. It's nice to know I can still look okay after two hours cleaning up after slobs.”

“You're super-talented,” he agreed solemnly.

“Or you're a grade-A bullshitter.”

He laughed. “Maybe. Or maybe I'm a truth-teller, and you don't want to hear it.”

She frowned at him suspiciously, but his face gave nothing away. He seemed to be playing a game, but only he knew the rules.

“Why don't you take a break and hang with me for a while?” he asked.

She was tempted. It'd be great to get off her feet and spend time with Tam. Then she shook her head. “I'd better not. You and your party-freak friends have left too big a mess. Speaking of, why is this house full of teens with no supervision? Where are the adults?”

“Adults?”

“You know, 'rents. Parents,” she clarified at his mystified expression. “People who pay my cleaning bill?”

“You look tired. Would you like a cappuccino? Espresso?”

Wow. Coffee sounds so good right now…

Ruby shook her head. “You're not answering my question.”

“I know.” God, his smile was so devastating. And he obviously knew it. “Come on, take a break. I won't tell the others that you're slacking.”

She bit her lip. She needed to at least get some of the cleaning done so she could go home to Mom and Shelley without worrying that she'd lose the job, but then again, it wasn't like these people were paying much attention to housekeeping details in the first place. After a moment's indecision, she shrugged and said, “Why not? Just a few minutes, though.”

“Just a few minutes.” Tam dipped his head in agreement. She followed him down the hall to one of the smaller lounges, the one with the bar and the broken fish tank that was now mercifully empty of dead sea-creatures. A huge professional-grade chrome coffee machine dominated one end of the bar, stocked with tiny espresso cups, Illy and LavAzza coffee, around forty varieties of Monin syrups, turobino sugar, and other mysterious flavorings in cut crystal containers.

Tam moved behind the bar and flipped on the machine. “What'll be? Espresso? Macchiato? Cappuccino?”

“Err…what would you recommend?”

“Cappuccino.”

“Sounds good.” She watched as Tam unclipped the frothing pitcher and began making coffee as expertly as any barista she'd ever seen. Which admittedly wasn't that many because a four-dollar latte was far too extravagant for her budget. Still, Tam seemed to know what he was doing, measuring this and steaming that.

“One Tam's Special, coming up.” He ladled a spoonful of syrup from one of the crystal bowls into her cup, then put the cup under the spigot. Fragrant coffee streamed into it, mixing the two liquids.

It smelled amazing, like baking cookies and mocha. Ruby's mouth watered. When Tam's attention focused on frothing the milk, she dipped her finger into the crystal bowl to taste the syrup. It was so good she almost moaned—like honey steeped with exotic spices.

Tam handed her the bowl-like cup. He'd even marked the top of the foam with one of those heart-shaped squiggles of milk. “Hope you like it,” he said.

She took a sip.

It was incredible. Sweet and spicy, the heat of the liquid seemed to spread throughout her body. Now she knew why people got hooked on the stuff.