Lost Girl

Chapter Thirteen: The Neighbor

Because Eve had stayed later than she intended at the nursing home – or hospital, or asylum, or whatever it was called – it was almost nine by the time she tramped into her apartment building. A few winos were already asleep against the front wall of the building, only spitting distance away. They didn't worry her, though. Indeed, they actually provided comfort: if they were sleeping peacefully it usually meant that things were quiet enough and safe enough that she would probably get home without getting mugged or raped. Which made it a good day, all things considered. Or at least what passed for a good day in her life.

She opened the front door, then turned sharp right and entered the coffin-like stairwell, the hollow echoes of her black boots on the treads immediately darkening her mood to a hue beyond black. She was only a few hundred feet away from her home, from her mother. She felt like a convict being transferred between prisons, leaving one place she knew as a particular circle of Hell for another one that might not be as bad... but then again could just as likely be worse. The only thing that kept her from wanting to just start screaming was a memory of eyes so blue they put the sky to shame; of a smile that crooked to one side as though being pulled by invisible sprites. Rocky was a stupid name, but stupid or not that guy had been gorgeous, and there had been something captivating about him. There was good-looking, and there was attractive. They were two different things, and very few people enjoyed both qualities. Rocky was one of them.

A moment later, thoughts of her mother, her home – even of the amazing-looking boy who had saved her from her asthma attack – all fled from her mind as she heard the sound again. The music, the velveteen sound of bow on strings, the notes that curled slowly around and over and under and through her.

Without thinking about it, Eve began running. Her boots, so heavy only a moment ago, now seemed light as they flitted up the stairs, around the single turn, then onto the second-story landing. She pushed the fire door open.

The music was louder in the hall. She followed it, thinking for a moment of old cartoons she had watched as a kid, stories of cats and mice that had been tempted out of hiding by food so delicious it cast a visible odor that caught them by the nose and led them to their doom. A part of her wondered if that was what was happening now; if she was following something best left alone. Then she was around the corner.

And she saw where the music was coming from.

It was apartment 214 again. The "2" was still missing, leaving only the "14" behind. Something about that pulled at her, seemed familiar. But she couldn't spare much thought for it, because most of her attention was focused on the person sitting in front of the apartment.

He was sitting on a folding metal chair, a cheap brown and black thing that looked like it might have been stolen from a local school or church. The chair was canted back on two legs, leaning against the wall of apartment 214, the guy who sat on it balancing as he played.

The violin itself was brown, but so dark it was almost black, and it gave Eve the impression of great age and value. She had heard of violins made by a man named Antonius Stradivarius that sold for millions of dollars, but standing here in the hall if she'd had a gun put to her head she would have guessed the one in the stranger's hands was older and worth more than any Strad might be.

As for the musician himself, he was a sight even stranger than that of a violin in the hall of an apartment building in South Central.

He was dressed all in black, with a long black coat that covered him from chin to shins, a billowing leather thing that could almost be called a cloak. He wore boots tough enough to put hers to shame: scuffed and soft-looking in a way that could not be faked, but only earned. They had clearly been used for more than walks to school and back.