Bat Out of Hell Read online

  “You’ve been checking their sex?”

  “I have decided they’re all male rats, as I refuse to accept they are breeding in the walls.”

  “Move out or be moved out. Decide. I think I’m going to take you to the park after dressing you in that damned period gown, then we’re coming back here, and we’ll pack my SUV with your most important stuff, and I’ll hire a mover to get the rest into storage or my condo.”

  “That won’t work, Jonas. I work here, remember? You live in Manhattan.”

  “I bet I could find you a job at a good boutique near my place. You’ll get better pay and free rent. It’ll be my good deed that’ll last for however long you take over my spare room.”

  “No, Jonas. The rats in the wall are fine.”

  “They are not fine. One ran over my damned foot!”

  For fuck’s sake. “It’s just a rat.”

  “It’s not just a rat. It’s a disease-carrying death trap with fur and teeth. It will rip your throat out in your sleep, just you wait and see.”

  “If a rat rips my throat out, I won’t be able to see because I’ll be dead.”

  “You can’t stay there.”

  Where had the asshole Jonas gone? Had announcing his status as a gay man somehow flipped the asshole switch to the off position? I couldn’t handle a non-asshole Jonas. Asshole Jonas would’ve shrugged and let it go. “Can we talk about this after you make me pretty and dress me in a nice gown, so I look like a lady from a painting?”

  “I will make you live at Mom’s house. That’s close to your work, and someone would drive you to work, I’m sure.”

  There was only one thing worse than moving back in with my parents: moving into my best friend’s parents’ house. “I would rather knock on the rat’s nest and ask if I could move in with them first. That’s worse than moving back home, Jonas.”

  “Your mom would love it. Mine would love it even more. Actually, they’d both love it if you moved in with either one, really. It gives them excuses to visit each other often.”

  “No.”

  “Temporarily? Long enough for me to get an exterminator in there? I can’t deal with knowing you’re living in a rat-infested apartment building.”

  “I think you’re blowing this way out of proportion.”

  “I am not. There are rats in there.” Jonas drew in a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. “But, I will leave it alone until after you have been transformed into a beauty rivaling those painted ladies you like so much.”

  It would have to do for the moment. “Take pictures. For some reason, I don’t think this will ever happen again.”

  “I’d bet against you on this one, but you’d find some way to get even more out of me, and you’re the damned most stubborn woman I’ve met in my life.”

  “Juliette Carter, your mother, your sister, and my mother exist, and you’ve met them, Jonas.”

  “And you are their queen, they just haven’t realized it yet.”

  I rolled my eyes and headed to my apartment. Dealing with rats seemed a lot easier than trying to convince Jonas just how wrong he was.

  The package, from an anonymous sender with a taste in art similar to the Penthouse Guy, contained two framed paintings, one depicting a wintry landscape while the other went the more traditional flowers route, with the blooms held within an elaborate vase staged on a wooden surface.

  I would lose hours studying the details of both. Before I allowed Jonas to work with my hair or dress me up, I hung them on the wall so they wouldn’t be ruined by any interloping rodents.

  “I see where I stand compared to those, a rather distant third,” Jonas announced.

  “I’m attributing these to the Penthouse Guy, and he’s on notice for being too generous.”

  “I understand why you might suspect my friend.”

  “Well, I had plugged my address into his phone, so he’s the most likely suspect. I haven’t figured out why he’d do such a thing, but I’ve decided I don’t care. My walls finally have paintings. Paintings that I like a lot.” I pointed at the wintry image, depicting a snow-covered landscape waiting for spring. “That one is my favorite.”

  “After watching you at my friend’s place, I would’ve thought the flowers would’ve been your favorite.”

  I smiled, tracing my fingers along the patterned frame of the winter scene’s painting. “The flowers are lovely, and they’re very stereotypical of Renaissance art, this one is different. I don’t think it’s Renaissance; the colors and tones aren’t right for it, but it’s still beautiful. If anything, it’s more beautiful because it’s focused on hidden potentials. I love paintings like this, where it’s all about the potential of the future. The landscapes wait for spring, and who knows what lurks beneath the snow?”

  “Will we have to check in on you every now and then to make sure you haven’t starved to death admiring your new paintings?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.”

  “I’m going to turn you into a lady fit for a painting now, so I don’t have to think about the possibility of you staring at some paintings until you starve to death.”

  With a startling amount of cursing and two bottles of hair spray, Jonas transformed my hair into black roses and decorated his work of art with sparkling bobbles and trinkets, the kind I often saw in boutiques but could never justify getting for myself. He raided my jewelry box, grunted at the meager selection, and went for my single string of pearls. “I know what to tell Mom to get you for Christmas now.”

  “No.”

  “You’re losing this one. I have been recruited to be this year’s present informant, so you’re just going to have to deal with it. At least you have matching earrings. Do you regret the dress yet?”

  Before I’d gotten into the dress, I’d believed they were like modern dresses. I’d believed dressing would be a simple affair.

  No.

  I’d been wrong. It had taken Jonas almost an hour to lace me into the damned thing, and he’d about suffocated me in the process. I understood why the ladies in the paintings I liked never played wind instruments. How had they breathed?

  I missed breathing.

  “I do not regret the dress,” I lied. “I question why you tied it so tight my voice has gone up an entire octave.”

  “You only squeaked once, and that was during the initial lacing. This is how the dresses were worn, and to make you authentic, I had to put you in an authentic dress. This is as authentic as it gets.”

  “What era is this from, anyway?”

  “I asked for a Renaissance dress to transform you into a painted beauty. This is the dress I was given after telling the seamstress your size and showing her your picture. The hairstyle is modern, but I wouldn’t know how to do the hairstyles from the paintings even with the help of a manual. I could figure it out, but it would take more time than we have. Under no circumstances are you to ask where I acquired the slippers.”

  The slippers made me unreasonably sad. If I could, I’d wear them every day for the rest of my life. “They treat my feet so well, Jonas.”

  “I’m sorry, but you can’t keep the slippers. If I could give them to you, I would.”

  “It’s okay. They probably cost more than I can afford anyway.”

  “So, you said you were going to play the harp. Where is this harp?”

  The dress made moving interesting, as the laces essentially paralyzed my upper body. I’d be able to play the harp, although I questioned how women from the Renaissance period had survived daily life. I went to my closet and grabbed the harp’s case from the upper shelf, amazed I managed to get the damned thing up there in the first place, considering how much it weighed. “If they get into my instruments, Jonas, I will torch this building to the ground.”

  “But will you move in with my mother until I can figure out how to deal with the rat problem?”

  I considered it. “Maybe. The rat problem would be solved, though. The building would be a pile of rubble and ash.”

>   “Okay. Here’s our new deal. Should any of the rats damage any of your instruments, I will help you replace or repair the damaged instrument, and you will move in with my mother until the rat problem can be dealt with—without an act of arson being committed.”

  “Fire is the only way to be sure.”

  “Lee, arson is a criminal offense.”

  “It would be worth it. Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to get some of those instruments?”

  “I’m concerned I’m underestimating the situation here.”

  “That’s because people with money don’t get what it’s like to be a person without money.” I opened the harp case and pulled my prized instrument out, carefully setting it on its base. The harp came up to my hip, and had it been made of a heavier wood, I doubted I would’ve been able to lug it around in a case at all. “When I bought this, it was damaged, and my parents, particularly my mother, saved up so she could have it restored and repaired. I’m pretty sure she did work on the side with the restorer to be able to afford it. I called around and asked, and it was hundreds of dollars neither one of us had. You may touch it, but you may not damage it in any way, and I will remove your fucking fingers from your hand if you touch the strings. You do not get to fuck with my harp.”

  Jonas held up his hands in surrender. “Even I can recognize when a woman means business. I won’t touch the harp. It’s a pretty instrument. Do I want to ask how much you paid for it and where you got it?”

  “I got it from a pawnshop for fifty dollars. It was in pretty bad shape when I bought it, but all the strings were intact, and it still worked somewhat. I think the guy at the pawnshop paid five dollars for it; it was in such bad condition.”

  “How much could you sell it for now?”

  “It turns out the pawnshop guy’s an idiot and didn’t know what he had. The restoration work wasn’t cheap because the cords had to be specially made to match the harp; it’s pretty old, but it was treated acceptably. It just had an awful amount of surface grime. At some point in its past, someone had done some treatments on it to protect the wood, which saved the instrument.”

  “I can’t help but notice it looks… rather plain.”

  I understood Jonas’s hesitation. To all appearances, there wasn’t anything special about my harp, which was a little too large to sit on my lap but too small to be treated as a proper full-sized harp. It had seen a lot of years, and it was a little like me: it didn’t fit in really anywhere. If anything, it looked ready to give out its last breath and die on me. “It’s Gaelic, and it’s about four hundred years old.”

  “And you got it for fifty dollars?” Jonas jumped back, and he shook his head. “You were about to hand me an ancient artifact! I could’ve dropped it. It looks heavy.”

  I definitely got exercise picking it up, and I risked giving myself a concussion every time I shoved it onto the extra-wide shelf, which barely had enough space for it.

  I loved my harp, but it wasn’t a great instrument to carry anywhere, and if I’d been smart or wise, I would’ve made a stand to give it some height and put it in a permanent spot in my apartment.

  “The original strings survived the abuse, which is how the restorer was able to get a reading done on the metal alloy used, the gauge, and construction of the wires. They’re as close as we can get to what the harp originally had. I have the original strings, but they’re no longer on the instrument. I worry they’ll snap the instant someone tries to play using them. That’s why the pawnshop guy sold it so cheap. He didn’t want to pay for it to be authenticated, I guess. Mom had it authenticated.”

  “Do I want to know how much that harp is worth?”

  “Probably not.”

  To the right buyer, I supposed it could fetch a pretty penny; the artist’s name and date were carved into the base, hidden beneath decades of grime, which the restorer had removed to return the instrument to its former glory. “This instrument is my true treasure of the lot, but every instrument I have has a story.”

  “I feel like I’ve underestimated you.”

  I returned the harp to its case and closed it before fetching the rest of my instruments and checking them. I introduced Jonas to each one, and he figured out where I’d gotten them all after the fourth.

  “Really, Lee? You spend your free time and money browsing pawnshops looking for instruments?”

  “Yes. And I try to play them, too. But I like the harp best. I suck at the reed instruments.”

  “Maybe you should try blowing instead of sucking. That might help.”

  “You, sir, are still an asshole,” I muttered.

  “I didn’t want you to forget about my asshole tendencies.”

  “Well, thank you for the reminder.”

  “Is this all of them?” Jonas counted instruments littering my bed. “You have twelve here.”

  “The ukulele is in the living room with the harmonica, and the clarinet hides behind the couch with the saxophone.” I triple checked all my instruments to confirm rats hadn’t gotten into them and returned them to the closet. I put the harmonica away in its proper place on the lowest shelf with my reed instruments. “It doesn’t appear I need to burn the building down yet, as the rats have wisely stayed out of my important possessions.”

  “I’ll beg, Lee. Please move in with my mother for at least long enough for me to get an exterminator in here to get rid of the rats.”

  “It wouldn’t help. They’d just gnaw their way back in after a few weeks. That’s what’s happened the few times the landlord has tried to get rid of them. There could be worse things in the walls, anyway.”

  “Like what? Snakes?”

  “Flying cockroaches.”

  Jonas shuddered. “I’m just going to grab your new laptop and its bag, and it’s coming with me, because with my damned luck, a rat will pee on it, and then your new laptop would be ruined, you will become upset, and you might light the building on fire.”

  As rats had peed on my clothes before, I worried he made a good point. “How about this? I’ll think about it—and start looking for a slightly better place if I can afford it.”

  “Mom has a lovely guest room she’d love to rent to you for a pittance, and she’d even open up one of her project rooms to give your instruments a proper place to live. It’s not a free handout if you’re paying rent, nor does it count as living with your parents. You’d have to deal with my parents as landlords, but you wouldn’t have rats.”

  “I’ll consider it.”

  “That’s better than a no. Shall we go to the park, Your Majesty?”

  “I’m not a queen, Jonas. I’m a pauper.”

  “You may not be a queen, but you sure as hell look like one right now. And, I have to admit, I’m damned curious to see how well you play the harp.”

  I sighed. “I’m going to need my stool.”

  “Your stool?”

  After triple checking my harp case was firmly closed, I walked into my living room and pointed at the stool I used when I played my harp, which served double duty as a general junk stand. “Just toss the stuff on the couch. That’s where I sit when I play my harp. It’s the right height.”

  Jonas did as asked, but rather than tossing everything, he transferred everything with care. “How long did it take you to find this?”

  “I didn’t find it. I made it.”

  “You what?” Jonas stared at my stool. “You made this?”

  “I asked around until I found someone with a woodworking shop. I needed a stool, and he taught me how to make it and supplied the wood. I helped clean up around his shop in exchange, and I play my harp for him sometimes.”

  “I almost regret I have zero interest in women, as that is absolutely incredible. I think I finally understand what my mother sees in you. And my sister. And my father. Life hasn’t given you jack shit, but you make it happen anyway, don’t you?”

  “I prefer to think of myself as too damned stupid to quit.”

  “You’re not stupid.”
/>   I looked him in the eyes, arched a brow, and replied, “I just argued with you for how long about refusing to move out of a rat-infested apartment, why?”

  “Right. Because of pride. Okay. I can accept that you’re too damned stupid to quit. That said, I’m exchanging stupid for another word in my head.”

  Frowning, I considered him. “What word?”

  “Tenacious.”

  I doubted I would ever understand my best friend’s brother.

  Chapter Six

  When I thought of going to a park, I thought of Liberty State Park, as I enjoyed the view of the Statue of Liberty across the water. Jonas had decided to drive through crazy traffic to Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park. For ambiance, the park scored a lot of points with me. I loved everything about the place. Waterfalls soothed me, reminding me there was more to life than just going to and from work.

  I’d never played my harp at a waterfall before, and I could think of a lot of songs that would do the place justice. As my level of exhaustion bordered on critical, I’d settle for some more classic melodies, as I’d played them so many times my fingers didn’t require any input from me beyond the initial notes.

  To my dismay, the park was busy for so close to closing time, and the lot itself lacked any spots at all, requiring us to park along a nearby street with a bunch of other people. “How many did you invite?”

  “Technically, I only invited ten, and all of them are people you’ve met before or I’m related to. That said, I told them to recruit bodies for you, but to recruit nice bodies for you.”

  “I regret this already. I better earn a dollar, Jonas. I need that laptop, and I’ve earned that laptop. I’m dressed like a lady from a painting with an old harp, it’s no longer Halloween, and now I’m going to be the comedy highlight of the hour.”