1-800-Psychic Hotline

Chapter Four

The ride over to the Upper East Side was a quiet one. She could have turned the radio on to fill the silence, but she wasn't sure how Daniel would feel about it. It seemed he left it off on purpose. Like he had something he wanted to say but hadn't found the right words yet. They were stuck in a repeat episode; they were still in high school. Daniel had done this a few times before. When he had something serious to talk about, he'd leave the radio alone. The night he asked her out to prom, she was worried he was going to dump her because he'd been so quiet the whole way. And when they went out on their last date, the same one where he announced his acceptance letter from the police academy, you could hear her heart breaking.

They were once a pair of dumb kids making out in the back seat of his old man's Honda Civic. Now, they were two estranged adults trying to find the words stuck in their throats. This wasn't the first time Daniel asked for a favor. He, her mother, and grandmother were the only folks who knew about Lydia's special talent. With both her mother and grandmother gone, Daniel had done an excellent job keeping his mouth shut.

"How you've been?"

Lydia rolled her eyes, "Couldn't ask me before you said you had a favor?"

"I was in a rush!"

"It would've been the polite thing to do."

"I know," Daniel sighed.

The police cruiser pulled to a red light. Daniel drummed his fingers on the wheel. He glanced over at his passenger seat. He gave Lydia a quick glance.

"Have boyfriend?"

"Why? Do you?" She snipped.

"Don't be like that."

"Be like what? My usual self? I can't be anything other than me."

"That's what I liked about you. You're honest. Perhaps, too honest. You tell it like it is." The light turned green. Daniel drove on and then turned around the corner. "At least you used to be." He grumbled.

Lydia's brows furrowed. She turned slightly in her seat. The seat belt dug in her neck and twisting hurt her lower back, but she needed to look at him. Daniel's eyes were fixed on the road yet he managed to get her attention.

"Excuse you? What's that supposed to mean?" She growled.

"You seem tense today. I can when you're lying. You didn't just get a weird phone call today."

Lydia watched Daniel's fingers tightened around the steering wheel. His knuckles turned white. She took a glance at his face. Daniel liked to grind his teeth when he was mulling something over in his head. He had that same look on his face when he worried about finals or when his sister showed up late that one. Though his eyes were on the road in front of him, Daniel couldn't be further away.

"Is this a friend talking or the cop?" Lydia sat straight in her seat again, huffing. She didn't know what to expect from him anymore. Sometimes Daniel forgot to leave his badge at home and be normal with her like back in high school.

"Both," Daniel answered, cool as a cucumber though she saw the vein in his neck throb.

"Well, if you must know," Lydia sighed. She started to regret the words coming out of her mouth as soon as she said them. "I've been…getting weird calls at work lately."

"What kinda calls?"

She gnawed on her lower lip. Yep. She definitely regretted opening her big fat mouth. Daniel was no long her boyfriend, her loyal confidant. He could no longer keep a secret if he thought she was in danger. He wore a badge now, and that seemed to give him more confidence. He never hid behind his badge, but sure as hell he was bound to use it.

"Lydia, come on." He sounded more like her father. "Talk to me. I'm only asking because I care. If someone's bothering you, you can tell me."

"Yeah. I have a question. Why do you care?"

Coming to another stop light, Daniel shot her a look. He turned to face her; his blue eyes looked so intense under the streetlight. Lydia could only look at him from the corner of her eye. If she dared to look his way for even just a second, she would lose all control. She'd spill. She'd tell all. Daniel had a way with her most guys didn't. He could get her to tell the truth without doing a damn thing. And that's what scared her. Ex-lovers couldn't be this impossibly close without one thing leading to another, and soon you have a dysfunctional relationship that doesn't know when to quit. She'd seen it before too many times on T.V., whether it be teenage drama or a sitcom. Most high school sweethearts don't keep in touch for years after they break up. It wasn't how things were done.

"The hell is that about?" Daniel growled.

"You know what this is about, Danny! You shouldn't….You shouldn't care so much," Lydia grumbled. She leaned away from and rested her head against the window.

"Yeah, well, I do. You're just goin' to have to suck it up."

A lump formed in her throat. A rock-hard lump like she swallowed a handful of gravel. This wasn't supposed to happen. They were supposed to move on from each other; they weren't supposed to be this nice or this close. At best, they should've been the kind of old friends you'd accidentally meet while getting coffee. Danny Boy was a good-looking guy. He should have been married by now, or at least with a girlfriend. He shouldn't be here worried about her. This felt unnatural, unsettling. But God did she still want him!

"I'm a big girl. I can handle myself," Lydia grumbled.

"Sue me for actually caring," Daniel chided.

Lydia continued to watch him out of the corner of her eye. His jaws still clenched tight as if he tried to bite back all the words he wanted to say. Did the way he still care make butterflies swarm in her stomach? Yes. Did his protective nature exceed her expectation of a former lover? Yes. Was she supposed to still have butterflies and palpitating heartrates and sweaty palms? No. Not after all these years.

Perhaps the reason why she did these favors for Danny Boy wasn't because of the greater good, but perhaps she wanted to get closer to him. With nothing but hope and a wish upon a star, just maybe they could work things out again. They could, you know, skip the awkward teen phase of all the emotional high school turmoil and hop right into the horizontal tango til the cows come home.

Yet it felt so inappropriate. So utterly, terribly, explicitly inappropriate. It was the stuff of trashy romance novels, not real life. Daniel had a career. Lydia had her writing, and yet she still had to take a second job to keep a roof over her head. Her mediocre job couldn't compare to being a New York City police detective. He wasn't making that much more than she does, but it still held more promising than a wanna-be author and a glorified fortune teller.

In summary, despite how much she wanted him back, it was generally a bad idea.

And boy, she wanted it to be otherwise.

Before she knew it, Daniel parked the car a block away from the scene. They looked up and down the street. For the city that never sleeps, Lydia didn't expect the streets to be devoid of foot traffic even at this time of night. She looked. By the looks of it, the only surrounding buildings were apartment complexes whose shutters were so conveniently closed. Apparently, people in this neighborhood weren't very curious. As far as she could tell, the proverbial coast was clear. They headed for the alley, rushing past the dimly street lamps just to be safe. Police tape remained up but the alley was left unguarded.

Daniel lifted the tape a bit for Lydia to duck underneath. He stood outside to keep watch. Lydia gagged at the smell of raw copper as it filled up her lungs. The lights from the surrounding buildings cast an eerie glow on the blood spatter. She grimaced at the ooze continuously dripping down to the ground; the blood was still fresh. How could it be like this? Lydia didn't know much about the science behind blood and coagulation, but she was almost certain that the blood should have dried by now.

"It's still…gooey," Lydia complained.

"How's that possible?" Daniel looked over his shoulder for just a second.

"I don't know. You're the detective."

"Hurry up and do your thing before we start attracting attention."

Lydia gave him a sarcastic salute. "Aye, aye, Captain."

She edged closer to the spatter on the wall. It made the wall look like it was the one bleeding. Nicholas' taunting voice somehow slithered inside her brain like an evil, evil snake. What remains of an executed vampire? Lydia swallowed hard. She was psychic and yet she didn't believe in vampires. Maybe. She hadn't decided whether to believe her mysterious caller.

"Lydia, how are you doing back there?"

Daniel's concern eased her. A little bit. She still faced a giant blood spatter that may or may not be the remains of a vampire. If vampires existed, she would rather have them turn into piles of ash and dust like in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Not True Blood. Because at least a pile of dust would be far less noticeable. Not at all news worthy.

"I'm doin' good, Danny Boy. Just that the smells starting to get to me."

"Do your thing and we can get out of her. I'll buy you a midnight snack afterwards!" He chuckled as if they weren't about to disturb a crime scene.

The heady smell of blood stung her nose. Lydia had to breathe through her mouth as she prepared herself. The tips of her fingers tingled; her palms surged with energy. The palms of her hands felt heavy. She could almost imagine a crystal sphere sitting in her hands. The energy coursing through her hands seemed to react to the blood splatter.

Like calls to like. Or something of that nature.

She stood in front of the wall. The spatter stood a couple of feet away from the ground and it measured twice across as it was tall. Like somebody was thrown against the wall and suddenly exploded. As there were no guts and gore, Lydia assumed that if vampires existed, if you staked them, this was the end result. She was at least grateful that she didn't have to stand in the middle of somebody's guts or step on their kidney. It was just blood.

Gross. Sticky. Warm. Blood.

Lydia reached out her hand. The energy from the splatter felt fresh and hot. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her dry mouth and her hands twitched as she continued to reach her hand out towards it. Licking her lips, Lydia took one step closer. Trash bags rustled under her feet, sending a rat scampering out from underneath. Surprised by the squeaking, frightened rodent, Lydia tripped on the slick plastic garbage bags. Without thinking, she reached out in front of her with both hands out, not even considering the spatter at the moment. Her palms hit hard brick. Grit scraped her hands even as something wet ran under her fingers.

Catching herself, Lydia saw that her hands were firmly pressed against the blood splatter. It felt like nothing. Suddenly all that energy she felt before disappeared. Poof. Vanished. It was gone. She couldn't see or feel anything, except for maybe hot, sticky vampire blood between her fingers. Gross.

"Danny, I'd hate to tell you this, but I'm not feeling anything."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm posi—"

Clearly, she had spoken too soon. It took the vampire blood a few minutes to kick in, but when it did…Oh boy. Did it knock her back on her ass. But before she could humiliate herself like that, the blood decided to pull one more trick.

Her vision showed her the same alley. Dark at night, street lamps flickering. Two figures alone in the alley. Nothing stirred. Nothing creeped. Not even a rat scuttled about. A large, hulking mass in a trench coat. A much smaller figure standing in the shadow of this enormous thing.

Lydia saw the bigger mass pull its arm back, and the smaller creature tried to make a retreat. It didn't get very far. The poor pale thing, a woman by the shape of her face, small waist, and curvy hips, didn't stand a chance. She was launched against the wall. Where she landed now stood the blood splatter. The large creature stomped towards her, claws extended. Lydia watched in horror as the slimy thing tore through flesh and bones with a single swipe of its claws. She had watched the vampire lady's eyes widened, bright blue eyes went almost black as her pupils dilated like saucers. The vampire's last view of the world was that of iron-hard, razor-sharp claws coming straight for her throat.

RIIIIIP!

SPLAT!

Lydia came out of it on the floor of the disgusting alley. Daniel knelt by her side, coaxing her up. She grabbed a hold of him as he picked her off the ground and looped one of her arms around his shoulders. Daniel walked out of the alley, pulling the police tape over them, and led her back to the cruiser. Everybody seemed more interested in minding their own business, which seemed odd considering the circumstances.

Back inside the car, Lydia tried to get her head to stop spinning. Her glasses lay askew on her face, and she didn't want to bother fixing them. She wanted the little black spots to stop dancing in front of her eyes before she affixed her glasses. Faintly, she heard Daniel call her name but it all sounded distant and muffled. As if somebody forced her head under water or stuffed her ears full of cotton candy. She breathed deep. The cruiser's interior smell of bad coffee and steel was a comfort. It helped her forget the powerful, cloying scent of hot copper that burned inside her nose. Sour bile rising in her throat replaced the hard rock she felt form earlier. Her tongue tasted milk past its expiration date as the bile rose into her mouth.

Quickly rolling down the window, Lydia threw her head out and let it all out. She was sure any passers-by seeing her would think she's a drunk getting a ride from a kind police officer, but her reputation hardly mattered. It probably didn't matter when a monster in a blood-stained trench coat made work out of vampires. If that thing could kill vampires, what was the hope of a normal human getting out alive?

"Lyd, you okay?"

Lydia was almost grateful that his question wasn't 'What did you see?' Daniel wasn't that much of an asshole though he often liked to get to the point.

"God, I'm so sorry. Was it that bad?"

She hated it when he sounded so tender. She couldn't stand it when he sounded like he cared when he shouldn't. He should have moved on.

"Take me home, will ya? I've got a killer migraine now." Lydia cringed at her poor choice of words.

"Are you going to be alright by yourself? I can stay with you if you'd like," Daniel asked as he reached over to touch her.

Lydia moved out of his reach. She stared at him with a cold look in her eyes. She didn't want him touching her. She didn't want him to be so close. Her heart beat so fast the rest of her couldn't keep up. She couldn't tell if it was from the vision or the proximity with Daniel that made her blood race. The vein in her temples throbbed, painfully. Even the street lights all pale and yellow and dim gave her a headache. Nothing seemed more comforting than her own pillow, the curtains shut tight, and all the doors locked and barred. Nights suddenly became too frightening to imagine. To think that she once stepped out into the streets and even give a single thought to what else could be out there.

Psychics were real. She was living proof of that. Lydia supposed that it was only a matter of time before she started to question her whole reality. If psychics were real, and she was fairly she was real, what else could be waiting in the dark? Lydia shuddered at the thought of vampires and werewolves and mermaids. Oh my!

"Can we postpone that midnight snack? I'm not feelin' so good, Danny Boy." Lydia pulled her arms across her chest and wrapped her fingers tight around her shirt.

She could feel Daniel's eyes on her. She knew the look he had on her face. Lydia flinched as he reached over and pulled at her seat belt until he clicked it place. Watching him again from the corner of her eye, Daniel pulled on his own seat belt. He turned on the engine and started driving. He had the decency to put on the radio to fill the void, and yet, Lydia could have sworn that she missed the silence. She glanced his way. His jaws were clenched again. He had something to say but didn't want to. Didn't want to or couldn't? That was the question. After these years, Lydia still had trouble figuring out his puzzle. Daniel could wear his heart on his sleeve one minute, and in the next he would be stuffing it back inside his shirt the next. Whatever he had on his brain, he wasn't sharing it any time soon.

A quarter past two, Daniel pulled up to her brownstone. He didn't bother helping her getting out of the car. He just sat there looking like a kicked puppy. Lydia chewed on her lip until it bled. Her heart pounded against her chest. She felt the inexplicable urge to be tried by a jury of her peers. It wasn't enough to break the guy's heart, now she felt like she was crushing it under foot all over again. Danny did nothing but care for her, and yet she pushed him away because she felt entirely unworthy and inadequate. She was the poster child of psychological complexes.

"Will you at least let me walk you to your door?"

Lydia saw that his hand was already reaching for the seat belt buckle. She got out of the car and leaned against the doorway. The lump in her throat returned with vengeance. She wanted to speak so, so badly. She wanted more than anything to say 'yes,' to say that she wanted to keep talking to him until the sun came up. But that wouldn't happen. She wasn't going to be the one to break him apart all over again because she couldn't decide what she wanted.

"It was nice seeing you again, Danny." Lydia felt her throat tighten.

He was giving her that look again. His big blue eyes made her think of sad puppies, and who wants to see sad puppies? Lydia slammed shut the car door and chose to march up the little steps leading up to her lonely, dark lit brownstone. She didn't turn back as she heard Daniel's police cruiser zoom out of street. He didn't pause to think about it; he just did it. Like she did when she couldn't stand herself being near him again.

Prying open her door, Casanova, as usual, was the only one to greet her. Lydia flicked on the lights. She threw herself face down into her sofa cushions, wailing and crying until her voice was hoarse. After a few minutes of self-pitying, self-loathing sobbing, Lydia managed to pull herself together long enough to wipe her tears with her sleeve. Sitting up, she kicked off her shoes, put her feet up on the coffee table, and grabbed for the remote. She skipped all the news channels. The last thing she wanted right now was to be reminded of the crime scene and what she put herself through tonight. First the vision, now Danny. She really hated herself sometimes. Tonight, she really hated herself.

Sleep didn't come easy. Not that it ever did. Even in her sleep, creatures followed her. All she dreamt about were large, cat-like yellow eyes and monsters with harrowing claws. Lydia woke up the next afternoon with a thin sheen of sweat coating her skin. With a well-deserved blech!, Lydia made her way to the shower and scrubbed yesterday's events off her and watched it flow down the drown with her pomegranate-scented body wash.

Until late in the afternoon, she tried to take her mind off things by working on her book. The blank pages haunted her, taunted her, mocked her. Her fingers rested uneasily on the keyboards but she couldn't make the words form as she wanted them to at her will. She glared at the computer screen until her eyes watered. Five chapters in and she already lost the plot. Two cups of coffee and a cigarette later, Lydia still glared at a blank screen. Her main character was done for.

With a growl, Lydia saved her work, what little of it there to be seen, and slammed shut her laptop. She stuffed it under her mattress for safe keeping, grabbed her keys, and headed out the door. Feeding the cats beforehand, of course.

She got into the car, and prayed that a certain song wouldn't be on the radio today. Lydia sighed with relief when she pulled into the parking garage after a thirty-minute commute, and not a single note from Rockwell disturbed her. Climbing out of her car, Lydia spied the garage floor. She saw no shady characters with unnatural eyes staring back at her. She rode the elevator down and crossed the street. Making quick work of the pleasantries to co-workers, Lydia found herself at her cubicle. Just in time to see her line blowing up like never before. She sighed at the return of normalcy.

At last, she could breathe a little.

For now.

The last call came in at three-thirty in the morning. Hanging up, Lydia yawned and stretched. Aaron dropped by her desk with a dreamy-eyed look on his face. He paused at her cubicle. Curiosity bit Lydia in the ass because she had no other reason to stare up at Aaron's face like she did. His usually bright hazel eyes looked cloudy, not that she paid much attention to her manager's eyes before then. She probably wasn't supposed to anyway.

His hazel eyes, nevertheless, looked…odd. Strangely dull. Glossed over. Had he been drinking? No, Lydia didn't think so. Last she checked, Aaron was a Mormon. He didn't drink even at the Christmas office party. And as far as she knew, Aaron didn't take drugs either. His smile looked crooked, as if he was forced to appear happy. His glance at Lydia sent shivers down her spine. Aaron looked at her with those glassy eyes peering straight into her soul.

"Have a good night, Lydia," he said with the emotional intonement of a robot.

"You…you too, Aaron." She immediately started packing her stuff.

Aaron mechanically moved away from her cubicle. He didn't say anything to anybody else but simply wandered off somewhere. Nicholas' words came to mind again, slithering inside her skull like the clever snake he was. He said that he had Aaron under his power. Something to that effect. Vampires, if they existed, Lydia still hadn't made up her mind about that yet, had mind-control, didn't they? Depending on who was telling the story, she guessed. If the dead could become creatures of the night who survived by drinking the blood of the living, why wouldn't they have mad crazy powers to capture their prey? She was psychic; she couldn't be the only creature on this planet with special powers.

Lydia grabbed her bag and headed to the nearest exit. She left the lobby. Not even giving the security guard sitting behind the desk a glance before heading out the door, Lydia forced her way through the doors. She made it three feet to the cross-walk when she froze in the middle of the sidewalk. A cold shiver ran down her back like icy knife blades grazing across her spinal cord. She could feel her heart thundering inside her chest. Standing perfectly still, Lydia glanced around but nobody was there.

She took one step. Her foot barely hit the ground. Something came up behind her. Something tall and so much stronger than she was. A strong arm wrapped around her waist like a steel band. Lydia opened her mouth to scream only to have a cold, clammy hand cover her muffled cries. A black car pulled up to the sidewalk. Its doors burst open without anyone sitting inside. The stranger shoved her towards the car, threw her inside with little regard, and slammed shut the door before she could even think about escaping. She heard her captor got into the passenger side door. She couldn't get a good look at him or the driver with a thick wall of glass separating her from them. The locks to the car doors clicked. Lydia snapped her head towards the closest one and tried prying it off to no avail. Her fingers were shaking too much to get the right grip to pull at the locks. With all the locks were forced into place, sealing Lydia inside the vehicle with them.

Heart pounding, Lydia looked at her new surroundings. The smell of crisp leather intoxicated her and floors left rug burns in her palms. Lifting her head, she found herself sitting in the back of what looked like a super-clean van or an SUV. The area appeared spacious, big enough for her to fully stretch out her legs. All the windows tinted. No way anybody could see her through the thick, dark glass. Lydia crawled into the leather seats. It creaked under her knees as she crawled to the window. Desperate, she banged her fists against the glass. The windows were tinted to illegal standards it seemed, but somebody should have been able to hear her. Right?

"Please, somebody! Help!"

The window behind the driver's seat rolled down. A boy's face, no older than fifteen or so, popped out. However, it wasn't the kid's young face that shocked her the most. He looked awfully young to be involved in the kidnapping game, but it was his large yellow eyes that distracted her from his youthful, Puckish features.

"You can either cooperate and stay quiet or we can pull over and give you a dose of chloroform. Which do you prefer?"

"YOU!" Lydia snarled, forgetting for a moment she had been kidnapped.

"You do remember me, don't yah?" The boy chuckled, laughing at her expense. "Sorry about the scare earlier, but I was just doing my job."

"What job is that? Stalking or do you prefer kidnapping?"

The kid's grin only grew bigger. He reached in front of his seat and showed her a bottle of suspicious liquid and a white rag. "Wanna keep talkin' or are you be quiet?"

Lydia gulped. She looked at the contents of the clear bottle sloshing around. She glanced at the kid's face. His golden eyes were glue to her, watching every reaction. His kept wearing that ridiculous smile on his face but he looked serious about his threat. Very serious. Lydia looked at the bottle and the rag the kid held in his slender hands. The blood in her cheeks drained way. Kidnapping was one thing, she didn't want anything ungodly happening to her if she was knocked out. If she was conscious, she at least stood the chance of fighting back and getting away. No chance of that happening if she was fast asleep. The idea of having her unconscious body lugged around the city terrified her. Nothing could be more terrifying than this kid and a bottle full of chloroform. She settled herself down into the leather seat.

"That's what I thought!" He gleefully returned to his seat. He rolled up the window behind him.

Lydia couldn't make out the streets any more than she could see two feet without her glasses. The windows were so tinted, she could see only blurs of shapes. In the silence, she tried to think of all that she had done wrong that led her to this moment. It had all been normal up to Nicholas' phone calls at work, and then examining the blood splatter. The kid didn't look like anything she'd seen in either of her visions, although, she thought with revulsion, nothing could ever be as it appears.

The dreadful fear of chloroform loomed over her. Lydia was wise enough to keep her mouth shut unless she wanted to know what that stuff smelled like. And she wasn't interested in finding out anytime soon. With her car in the garage, someone would be bound to notice that she never left work. If she was really lucky, Andros would come knocking on her brownstone door, seeking shelter from his pregnant hormone-crazed wife. She knew a cop, a detective. Daniel may be miffed at her, possibly, but he wouldn't let a bunch of psychos kidnap her. Somebody had to have seen something! Right?

Considering how neighborly Lydia experience with those renting brownstones besides her own, she started to begin to doubt it. They must have been driving for at least an hour. The car came to a final stop. Lydia's stomach lurched as the car's engine shut off. Her heart pounded inside her chest as the doors were thrown open. Lydia flinched when the kid reached for her. Giving up and cooperating were her best options at this point. She didn't put up a fight when his hand grabbed her wrist and tugged her painfully out of the car. He tied a black cloth around her eyes before she could look around at her surroundings.

The smell of salt and fish stung her nose. There were waves hitting against a shore and seagulls cried in the night. Wherever she was, it had a gravel round. She was pushed towards a house. They pushed inside and the blast of hot air struck her cold cheeks. A small hand grabbed her shoulder and continued to push her forward. Blindfolded, she couldn't fight him.

Suddenly, they stopped. The kid pulled the blindfold away from her eyes. Slow-burning flames stood in an ornate fireplace. Wood crackled in the bright orange glow that cast a familiar glow across the room. Lydia whipped around to find her kidnappers vanish behind the doors and lock it shut. Crossing the room, she went for the door. She tried the handles, the lock, even the door hinges themselves. No luck. They were built solid. She would need either a screw driver or a bulldozer to plow these things over. As she had neither one of those things on hand, Lydia circled the room for another route.

Something about this room seemed so familiar. As in, eerily familiar. She looked but the only door was the one her kidnappers locked. The room had no windows either. Green and gold damask wallpaper lined the walls like a tacky Victorian dollhouse. The furniture, as well, was old-fashioned. Like the interior decorator celebrated 1899 yesterday. Nick-knacks started looking as if she had seen the before, but Lydia dared not to touch a single thing. Whoever did this to her, had expensive taste. Most of the furniture and all the opulent trimmings were worth a fortune on the antique market. Being the daughter of an antique dealer had its benefits.

What would Mom do in a situation like this? Now that she was surrounded by it, she wondered what her mother would think of all this treasure. The smell filled Lydia's lungs with the nostalgic smell of gathered dust and old lace. Antiques had a particular smell she grew used to over the years. Her mother's first step might have been to pick something up and examine it for its worth.

Thankfully, Lydia was not just her mother's daughter. She resisted the urge to pick anything up out of fear that it might trigger the owner. An empty velvet chair sat by the fireplace with a silver standing tray sitting nearby. A goblet sat on the tray; its cup was turned upside down. Lydia grew closer to the fire to get a better look. The red glass of the cup shined in the firelight.

"What do you think of my parlor?"

Lydia whipped around towards the sound of the voice. Her skin pricked with goosebumps. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. She knew that voice. She knew that voice. And she started to understand why this room felt so familiar though this was the first time she stepped foot in here.

"Who are you?" She hissed.

"You remember me, don't you, my dear." He drawled with his thick accent sending cold shivers down her body. "Say my name, then."

"Mr. Papadopoulos, I think you should let me go."

"Call me Nicholas," he smirked.