Vigilantes of Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

her to the back of the store.
    The Master was off in a corner, animately discussing the merits of Throwing Muses’ debut album with a pimply looking kid in a Smiths T-shirt. Meat is Murder , it proclaimed. “Yeah,” I thought, “so is dating.”
    “Haven’t you ever wondered what they hide up there?” I asked, back on the same obsession. I don’t know what I thought was there, but I had to know. And Lissa seemed like the best way to find out. They could call the police on me, or worse, bar me from the store. But she was an employee! What would they do if they caught her, other than say, “Stay out?”
    She hesitated. “I don’t know.”
    “The Master’s busy, he won’t even notice,” I urged. “Just take a peek.”
    She stepped on the first stair, and the black cat streaked ahead of her, as if to guard the way. She laughed. “See, Blackie knows I’m not supposed to go up there.”
    She reached down and stroked the cat’s head, but it hissed at her and she drew back.
    “Just go quick,” I said. “He’ll never know the difference. Come on, I dare ya.”
    She looked afraid, but then took a deep breath and hurriedly pushed herself up the stairs.
    I looked back and forth from her to The Master as she climbed the steps, making sure that he didn’t notice her ascent. But he didn’t even glance in our direction.
    I watched her from the bottom of the stairs. She was in faded jeans, a dark T-shirt and a flannel today. She was gorgeous. Delicate, but not a priss. Smart, but not a know-it-all. I had to get her to go out with me somehow.
    She put her hand on the doorknob and it creaked open, throwing a slice of midday sunlight onto the dark stairwell walls.
    She disappeared inside the room at the top of the stairs.
    She screamed.
    The black cat tore past me like a bullet down the stairs and leapt onto one of the record bins. I forgot about keeping our exploration a secret. I yelled her name as I vaulted up the stairs. “Lissa?!”
    It was freezing in the upper room; a window was open facing the alleyway and the faded brown drapes shifted in the March wind. There was an old wooden schoolteacher’s desk in the right corner of the room and a black steel file cabinet nearby. Stacks of old LPs spilled from the room’s corners.
    At first I thought she’d jumped out the window, but it was only open a few inches. She couldn’t have opened it, jumped and pulled it down behind her as she fell. Still, I ran to the window and looked out to see a telephone pole and empty asphalt below, a red and white Chevy Citation parked at the doorway of the red brick apartment one building over.
    It was only when I turned around that I saw the blood.
    Crimson and thick. Spreading.
    It seemed to flow from the cracks in the floor, quickly growing from a buckets-worth to a pool.
    The floor was bleeding and Lissa was gone.
    “Lissa?” I called, a note of hysteria in my voice.
    “Lissa?” I whispered.
    The pool of blood spread out across the room, dampening the stacks of albums and staining the legs of the desk. I shivered as the late winter breeze blew in like a gale from the cracked window.
    I didn’t know where to turn.
    “What the hell are you doing up here?”
    The Master stood in the doorway, six feet of black-T-shirted, black-haired, glaring-eyed anger.
    I shrunk back to the window, pointed at the floor, and babbled.
    “Lissa came up here, it was my fault, I asked her to. But then she screamed and I came up and she wasn’t here and there’s so much blood…” which, even as I said it, I saw was untrue. The floor was only dirty brown wood. The same scuffed, turn-of-the-century narrow, dark hardwood that seemed to floor most of the buildings around the university.
    The Master didn’t move, only regarded me with those piercing eyes.
    “Lissa hasn’t been up here in a year,” he said softly. “Lissa hasn’t been anywhere in a year. I don’t know what your deal is, kid, but I’m sick of you coming around here acting