“Hey,” the woman said, looking around, just as surprised as I was. “What the —?”
Before she could get another word out, the darkness covered her mouth. Her eyes rounded, and she looked at me as though asking for help.
I took a hesitant step forward, but the black smoke swallowed her before I could do anything. Then again, what would I have done? What could I have done? When the billowing smoke dissipated, she was gone.
“No!” I rushed forward, looking for her everywhere. In the mop bucket. Behind the storage shelves. Under the mustard.
What the hell just happened? And why did my skin burn as though it had been scorched by something powerful? Something angry? Whatever it was, it wanted to silence that poor woman who probably hadn’t hurt a soul her entire life. Just to keep her from telling me who I was. Where I was from.
I sank onto a box. Was something keeping me here? Was I trapped? A prisoner?
By the time I went back into the dining area, my section had exploded. Erin and Francie had shown up and Dixie had even called Shayla in early. Lewis was there, too, to help bus, and Thiago, the second-shift cook, was putting on his apron.
“What about her?” Cookie asked me as she blurred past.
I was still trying to process the evil fog. I turned to Reyes. He was the only person present who had black smoke cascading off his shoulders like a cape.
Cookie rushed past again and said, “The blonde at ten.”
I glanced at table ten while picking up an order from the pass-out window. Reyes was cooking, completely oblivious to the evil fog in the storeroom. At least he seemed to be.
“What about her?” I called out.
The next time Cookie and I passed like ships in the night, she paused long enough to say, “I can see a resemblance.”
I snorted, sounding much like a foghorn on a ship passing in the night. “Please. She looks nothing like me. And I rarely walk around with a stick up my butt.”
“She doesn’t have a stick up her butt.” She gave her a once-over, then said, “Not a big one.”
I walked over as the blonde put her Louis Vuitton on the seat beside her. She probably didn’t buy hers off Scooter.
“Welcome to the Firelight.”
The woman gazed up at me, her eyes glistening, and I felt a strong sense of expectation coming from her. Hope welled inside me. Could Cookie have been right?
“Hi,” she said, letting a shy smile soften her face. “I’m Gemma.”
“I’m Janey.”
We both seemed to be waiting for something, and I realized she couldn’t know me. Wouldn’t she say something if she did?
“I’ll be your server. Can I get you something to drink?”
“I’m here on vacation.”
“Oh, nice. Welcome to Sleepy Hollow.”
“I just got here. I had to clear my schedule.”
“Okay, then.” This conversation was quickly leaning toward strange and unexplainable. “Are you a fan of the story?”
“The story?” she asked, blinking mascaraed lashes over blue irises. “Washington Irving? ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’?” Mine weren’t even close to blue. They were more of a golden amber.
“Oh.” She laughed into a hand and cleared her throat. “Yes. The story. Big fan. Absolutely.” She looked up at me again, her oceanic gaze full of expectation and… something else. Something warm. “You?”
“Love it,” I said, having no idea if I’d ever actually read it or just saw movies about it. I might need to make a trip to the library. “Have we met?” I asked her.
“I’m not sure. You do look familiar.”
I sat across from her uninvited. “Really? Do you know me?”
She leaned forward, an expectant air about her. “I don’t know. Do you know me?”
I squinted and thought as hard as I could. Tried to get past the veil that had been pulled over the last few decades of my life, but I just couldn’t penetrate it. After a valiant effort, I shook my head, frustrated.
“I’m sorry. I have —” I almost told her about the amnesia, but I’d learned not to tell customers. It was like they suddenly didn’t trust me to know the difference between an egg and a hamburger. I stood, because it hit me where she probably knew me from. The news. I looked familiar because of the news coverage when I first woke up. “You look familiar, too. Must have one of those faces. Can I get you something to drink?”
She seemed to wilt a little. “Sure. Iced tea?”
“You got it.”
I had walked to the drinks station to fill a glass of ice when I heard a loud pssst. Only one person psssted at me. I chuckled and looked through the pass-out window at Lewis.
He peeked over his shoulder, then said, “I need to talk to you about today.”
Oh, holy crap. I almost forgot. Today was the big day. And it was such bad timing. We were way too busy to pull off a fake robbery.
“Number four needs a refill,” Erin said, her voice full of derision. That woman hated me so.
“Thanks!” I graced her with a killer smile and sassy hair flip, wondering how I was going to lift her phone. I might have been clueless about what I did in my past life, but I felt reasonably safe in assuming I wasn’t a pickpocket.
Cookie and I made it through the lunch rush relatively unscathed. I managed to get a death threat from one of the giggling preteens when she noticed Reyes watching me, so that was a first. Cookie had to buy another man his dinner when he accused her of trying to sell her wares.
Who knew a simple “Would you like to take some of my buttery cream pie home?” could be taken so metaphorically? She’d made a pie. It was buttery. She was proud.
By a quarter to two, I’d hit rock bottom. Or, well, my energy level had. A sleepless night in a freezing car did little for my self-esteem or my skin tone. Thankfully, Reyes didn’t seem to mind. At least he wasn’t repulsed by me.
Bobert had come in, but we were too busy for me to get a word in. I’d have to try to catch him later and explain the whole situation. I was in so far over my head, it was unreal. At the moment, we had only fifteen minutes left on our shifts. I planned on spending that time stealing and invading someone’s privacy. Unfortunately, that meant venturing into the storeroom again.
I walked past Reyes, who was finally taking a break. The café wasn’t dead, but the rush was over at last. I turned the knob to the storeroom, carrying a box of condiments from the delivery guy to give me an excuse to go in there. Not that I needed one. If anyone found out about the phone, I could plead innocent. Say the mustard made me do it. In the storeroom. With a candlestick. That was such a cool game, and yet I couldn’t remember ever playing it.
Holding my breath, I peered around for billowing smoke. I so didn’t want to be sucked into some alternate dimension where spiders were the size of elephants. Seeing no smoke of any kind, I hurried in and closed the door. Her purse hung from a hook in her locker. That she never locked. I rooted through it until I found her phone. A thud sounded outside the door. I paused. Waited. Peed a little. When no one came in, I woke it up and thanked the heavens she didn’t have it code locked.
Finding her pictures was easy. They were inside an icon titled PICTURES. I thumbed through picture after picture, each one more hideous than the next. The departed woman was in every one. Creepy as ever-lovin’ fuck. Her white eyes glowed, and her toothless scream showed off a gray tongue and blood-soaked gums.