Riley Thorn and the Corpse in the Closet by Lucy Score

10

9:50 p.m., Thursday, August 13

Crickets chirped maniacally in the sweltering dark as Nick took the dog outside for a quick game of fetch and one last pee. From his vantage point on the edge of the parking lot, it looked as though every light in the mansion was on. No one over the age of eighty seemed capable of turning off a light or locking a door.

Or building a ramp. The project was on its third week and was still nothing more than a pile of lumber and meatball sub wrappers.

Burt bounded out of the thigh-high weeds of the property next door, a stick clutched in his mouth instead of the Frisbee Nick had thrown. It was their tradition. He threw a fetch-approved dog toy, and Burt returned with something else.

Burt spit out the stick at his feet and trembled with joy.

Nick picked up the limb, gave it a toss into the overgrowth, and thought about how weird life was.

Earlier this year, he was assuring his Aunt Fotoula that he preferred being single while she pinched his cheek and told him about a “nice girl” who worked in her accounting office. Now, he was living with a nice girl that he picked out without any arm-twisting in one of the big houses he’d passed thousands of times as a kid, wondering what kind of people lived behind iron gates and manicured lawns.

Front Street in Harrisburg was home to several fancy-ass mansions with river views and large lots. For decades they’d housed wealthy families before the rich had moved out of the city, leaving their homes behind to be turned into commercial offices for lawyers and associations. Several of the buildings had seen better days. A few of them—like the Tudor nightmare next door—needed a bulldozer.

He looked up to the third floor, where a responsible number of lights were on. Riley Thorn was the responsible sort. And for some reason, he liked that about her.

Burt bounded back, this time clutching a six-foot stretch of orange safety netting in his mouth.

“I don’t even want to know where that came from,” Nick decided. A slow breeze chose that moment to lazily stir the air, bringing with it the scent of something rotting. “Ah, Harrisburg, you old charmer. Come on, Burt.”

They headed back inside via the front door, and each separated to follow through with another nightly ritual. Nick checked the doors and windows to make sure they were locked while Burt wandered off to sniff around the kitchen for crumbs and the occasional floor pizza.

He was just about to hit the stairs when he heard a wheeze and a pained, “One hundred forty-six.”

Curious, he found Gabe’s door ajar.

When the man had shown up earlier that summer—a big, buff stranger claiming to be there to help Riley—the boy-crazy Lily had rented him a room on the spot. It was a parlor of some sort. Like the rest of the house, crammed full of a few generations of paraphernalia.

Gabe’s bed was a sofa with a single pillow and bed sheet. It looked like it would only hold the man’s upper torso. His wardrobe of black gym clothes was folded and stacked neatly on top of some sort of old dressing room vanity next to a black marble fireplace. The man himself was suspended upside down from a metal rig set up in front of the bow window.

“One hundred forty-seven. One hundred forty-eight.” Gabe fought gravity and curled his body into a sit-up with each count. There was a puddle of sweat beneath him on an exercise mat.

“Uh, you doing okay there, Mount Olympus?” Nick asked.

Gabe’s mouth pinched in a firm line. “No. I am not well. Thank you for asking.”

Ah, hell.

They hadn’t exactly been best pals. Not with Nick discovering how much he liked a certain resident psychic and Gabe’s fawning adoration over Riley. But the guy was basically an oversized teddy bear who had Riley’s best interests at heart. It was hard to keep hating him.

“You want to come down here and talk about it?” Nick offered.

To his surprise, Gabe neatly executed a skin the cat flip and landed with a sploosh in his own sweat puddle.

“I would very much like that,” the sweaty giant said.

Crap.

Gabe swiped a bath towel over his brow. It looked like a regular-sized sweat towel in the man’s dinner plate-sized hands. “Elanora is disappointed in me,” he announced.

“Elanora seems like she’s disappointed in a lot of people,” Nick observed. Like the entire human race.

Gabe shook his head, sending sweat in a 360-degree radius. “It is my fault that Riley was in danger. I was distracted by my infatuation with…ice cream. Riley could have ceased existing, and it would have been my fault.”

Nick was fairly certain Gabe wasn’t really talking about ice cream.

“Listen, big guy,” he said, clasping Gabe’s sweaty shoulder. He removed his hand and wiped his palm on his t-shirt. “Riley’s safety is not on you. It’s on me. If anyone failed her, it was me, not you.”

“But I am here to guide her. Instead, I allowed myself to be distracted by earthly enjoyments.”

Definitely not talking about ice cream.

A life without “earthly enjoyment” sounded like a shitty, boring existence.

“Look, Gabe. I don’t know what your relationship with Elanora is or what your relationship with Riley is supposed to be. But you’ve got to cut yourself some slack. You’re only human. You are human, aren’t you?”

Gabe dropped to the floor and assumed the push-up position.

“One. Elanora is my spiritual patron. Two. I repay her generosity by taking on roles she specifies for me. Three.”

“And training Riley to open up to her powers was one of those roles.”

“Four. Yes. But my role was to guide her safely.”

“Riley pulled a fast one on all of us by sneaking out to try to rescue Jasmine on her own. It won’t happen again. I won’t let it. Moving forward, you can guard her spiritually. But I’m guarding her body.”

Gabe looked thoughtful while he executed several more push-ups. “I do not know if Elanora would find that arrangement acceptable,” he said finally.

“Does Scary Grandma Lady pay you?” Nick asked.

Gabe paused. “Of course not.” He said it as if getting paid to do work was the most ridiculous thing in the world.

“Seriously? Then where does your money come from?”

“Nine. The universe provides.”

“I notice you didn’t answer the ‘are you human’ question.”

“Ten. We are all human in our own way.”

Nick rolled his eyes. “You sound like a fortune cookie.” It made him think about the fluffy, lazy, divorced Larry Rupley who hadn’t bothered putting forth any effort until it was too late. On a sigh, he dropped to the floor next to Gabe. “One,” he said, executing a push-up.

“Ten,” Gabe said, now dripping sweat onto a new spot on the floor.

“Two. You do know there’s a difference between having a job and having a life, right? Three.”

“Eleven. I do not understand,” Gabe said, swiping a hand over his sweaty brow while completing a one-handed push-up.

“Fourteen. I mean, no boss gets to dictate how you live your life. That’s your choice. You get to decide. Twenty-three. It’s kinda your fault if you give someone else the right to make your decisions for you,” Nick said.

Gabe paused in a textbook plank, beads of sweat forming glistening rivers of sweat on his bulging biceps and forearms. “Is this true, or are you setting me up for some elaborate and embarrassing prank?”

Nick grinned. “I can see how you’d think that, but I’m being serious. You get to decide who you spend time with and what dairy products you consume by the gallon. Twenty-seven.”

“I do?” Bewildered, Gabe lowered himself to the floor.

“Of course you do. You’re probably human. You’re an adult. You wanna make out with ice cream every night? You pick the flavor. It’s up to you to figure out what you want and whether or not to go after it. Whether the thing you want is worth the consequences of having it.” Nick banged out three push-ups in rapid succession. “Thirty-eight. Thirty-nine. Forty.”

Gabe reached for a water bottle and guzzled deeply. “You are making an intriguing point. I must consider it.”

“Thanks, buddy. Fifty-two. Listen, another thing I learned the hard way. You’re not responsible for other people’s choices. Sixty-three. Riley was the one who stupidly decided to try to solve the problem on her own. You aren’t responsible for that. One hundred.”

“Many of the things you say are nonsensical. Yet now you are providing real wisdom,” Gabe observed with a frown.

“Yeah, I’m a complex guy,” Nick said, rolling over and executing a sit-up. “One.”

“I would never have guessed. Perhaps Elanora’s silent fast opened your mind?” he guessed.

Nick snorted. “Not eating and not talking didn’t teach me a damn thing. I’ve got the whole life experience thing going for me,” he explained. “Two. You know, learning through living. Seven.”

Gabe frowned thoughtfully. “Learning through living. Have you ever considered becoming a spiritual coach? I feel I have much to learn from you.”

“Fifteen. Stick with me, big guy. I’ll show you how to enjoy the world. Twenty.”

“A world with ice cream?” Gabe asked, his arms shaking from the plank.

“Twenty-four. A world with ice cream and pretty girls who like you a lot.”

Gabe smiled shyly. “I like this world you speak of.”

“Me too, Mount Rushmore. Me too.”

Bro time over, Nick took the stairs two at a time. It was time to do some living of his own. On the third floor, he kicked the door open, startling Riley into dropping a piece of fried chicken on the floor.

“What the hell, Santiago?” she grumbled, picking up the chicken.

“You. Shirt off,” he said, pointing at her as he yanked his phone out of the back pocket of his jeans.

“You caveman,” she said. “Why are you all sweaty?”

She was chewing on her bottom lip. A definite sign that she was turned on and trying not to be.

“If you’re not naked by the time I finish this text, I will rip the clothing from your body, Thorn.”

Her eyes widened. “Seriously?”

“Deadly,” he promised.

“Who are you texting?” she asked, dragging her shirt over her head.

“Everyone.”

Nick: For the next hour unless there is a fire or a life-threatening medical emergency, everyone is forbidden from entering the third floor, allowing access to anyone who wants access to the third floor, calling, texting, shouting for, or emailing any resident of the third floor. Starting now.

He shucked his jeans and left them where they fell.

Mrs. Penny: Sounds like the whippersnappers are getting it on.

Fred: Riley, I think you have my favorite chopsticks. I’ll be up in a minute to get them.

Nick: Fred, if you step one foot up here I will duct tape you to the lift chair. You can wait for your chopsticks.

Lily: Oh my! Do you need any of my flavored massage oils? The Tahitian Vanilla tastes just like ice cream.

Nick: Thanks and definitely not.

Mr. Willicott: There’s a third floor? What’s up there?

Mrs. Penny: An orgy.

Fred: We should have a new code word.

Lily: What a great idea! A sexy code word, and whenever any of us use it, someone has to have sex with us!

Mrs. Penny: For God’s sake woman. I need to see your prescriptions. I think your doc put you on the wrong hormones.

Nick threw the deadbolt, hooked the door chain, and dragged his t-shirt over his head. He hurled it in the direction of the couch and advanced toward Riley.

She was naked from head to toe. It was his favorite look on her. She put the chicken down and braced for impact.

“If your batty grandmother thinks she can convince you to get rid of me, she’s gonna be very disappointed,” he said, boosting her up and wrapping her legs around his waist.

“Uh-huh. Okay,” she said, sealing her mouth to his.

And there it was. That weird swoopy tickle in his torso. It was a new, disconcerting kind of emotional vertigo. And he was going to embrace the shit out of it.

“Ready to test out the table?” He kissed a trail down her throat and hissed out a breath when her nails bit into his back.

“Oh, yeah.”

He slid her onto the table and pushed her knees apart, wishing he had the restraint to show a little finesse. But he’d been denied too many times today.

“Condom?” she asked breathlessly.

He grinned and jutted his chin toward the decorative cookie jar thing in the center of the table. “Look inside.”

She raised an eyebrow and bowed back, reaching for the jar.

“Seriously? A condom stash centerpiece?”

He snatched the foil packet out of her hand. “You got a problem with that?”

Her lips were parted, eyelids heavy. “I have no problem,” she panted.

“Good because both nightstands are stocked, and that book on the coffee table is hollow inside.”

Riley sighed. “You’re so hot when you’re prepared.”

He was this close to making her say his name in that breathy, anxious way when the piercing sound of the smoke detector rang out.

“Are you kidding me right now?” he snarled.

“Hey, Nick.” Mrs. Penny’s voice echoed from her bullhorn over the incessant beeping. “There’s a fire in the kitchen. Willicott microwaved a burrito in the tin foil again.”

“We need a new place to live,” he muttered, reaching for his pants.