Vigil Read Online Free PDF Page A

He was suspended from a rope, like some kind of rock climber.
    I watched as he landed on the roof next door. He looked down at me.
    “Cecily?” said Airenne from outside the door.
    He turned away. He strode across the roof and the darkness swallowed him.
    “Hello?” said Airenne.
    “No, Airenne,” I said, still staring out the window. “I’m alone.”
    * * *
    I had barely set my coffee down at a desk when Lauren was out of her office and coming for me. “Oh, good. You’re finally here.”
    I looked around for the clock. “Am I late?” No, I was right on time. Anyway, people tended to wander in and out of the office whenever they wanted. It was more important that a reporter get her copy done than that she show up at a specific time.
    “Henry wants to see us,” she said, taking me by the arm and ushering me towards the elevator.
    “Henry? Why?”
    Henry Kingston was the editor-in-chief of The Aurora Sun-Times. I’d only seen him twice, in the weekly meetings that the staff attended. He really seemed like a throw-back to the newspaper editors from the 1940s. He was balding. He had a paunch that protruded over his gut. And he barked a lot. Even though I romanticized that era of newspaper writing, I was a little afraid of Henry. I’d never seen him look… happy, exactly.
    The elevator doors closed on Lauren and me. She pressed the button for Henry’s floor.
    “What do you think he wants?” I said.
    “I don’t know,” said Lauren. “But it’s probably got something to do with Vigil, because we broke that story together. And there was stuff on television about him this morning.”
    “There was?” I didn’t watch news TV. I liked my news in black and white. Words. It was so much harder to screw with the written word. It was blunt, honest, and clear. TV distorted things. It plastered up images and smiling pretty ladies in suits telling you about murders, and before long, it was impossible to tell what had actually happened.
    Lauren nodded. “Vigil rescued a girl last night. And she went to every major network immediately afterward.”
    “He rescued…?” After he’d left me or before? “What do you mean rescued?”
    The elevator door opened.
    We emerged in a subdued hallway, muted mint green paint on the walls. The carpet matched.
    Lauren turned to her right and started walking. Her heels clicked on the floor.
    I struggled to keep up. I didn’t wear heels, but my flats were just as noisy. “Rescued from whom?”
    She smiled at me over her shoulder. “Ooh, nice use of the correct form of ‘who.’ Still, I imagine that’ll go out of the language soon. I see it incorrect in print all the time, don’t you?”
    “Yeah,” I said. “It drives me batty.”
    She shrugged. “Language changes. Keep up.”
    A door at the end of the hallway opened, and there was Henry. “Finally,” he barked. “Get in here. Both of you.”
    * * *
    Henry’s office was large, but not as large as I would imagine for an editor-in-chief. He had a massive desk, covered in photos of smiling children. I guessed they were all related to him. There sure were a lot of them. But then, he was probably old enough to have grandchildren. His wall dotted with various plaques and a few framed news stories.
    There was a big television screen mounted to the wall in front of his desk.
    It was blaring.
    “Sit down,” he said, gesturing to two seats. “Watch this.”
    We did as we were told.
    On screen, a thin woman with obviously-dyed red hair and numerous tattoos was blubbering at the camera. “I thought I was dead. There was a man with a knife. He was wearing one of those theater masks. He looked like the Phantom of the Opera. He was crazy. But Vigil saved me. He sailed in on this rope and scooped me up, and took me away from the crazy man.”
    Henry switched the TV off. “We named him, dammit. Us. For the first time this century, a newspaper scooped the networks.”
    Lauren and I swiveled in our chairs to face