also brightly lighted. They would be spotted easily from the street.
The inner door was also glass paneled. Beyond it lay the first-floor
hall, the elevator and stairs. But the door was locked and could be
opened only with a key or with a lock-release button in one of the
apartments.
There were sixteen apartments in all, four on each floor. Jack stepped
to the brass mailboxes and pushed the call button for a Mr. and Mrs.
Evans on the fourth floor.
A woman’s voice issued tinnily from the speaker at the top of the
mailbox. “Who is it?”
“Is this the Grofeld apartment?” Jack asked, knowing full well that it
wasn’t.
“No,” the unseen woman said. “You’ve pressed the wrong button. The
Grofelds’ mailbox is next to ours.”
“Sorry,” he said as Mrs. Evans broke the connection.
He glanced toward the front door, at the street beyond.
Snow. Naked, blackened trees shaking in the wind.
The ghostly glow of storm-shrouded streetlamps.
But nothing worse than that. Nothing with silvery eyes. Nothing with
lots of pointed little teeth.
Not yet.
He pressed the Grofelds’ button, asked if this were the Santini
apartment, and was curtly told that the Santinis’ mailbox was the next
one.
He rang the Santinis and was prepared to ask if theirs was the
Porterfield apartment. But the Santinis apparently expected someone and
were considerably less cautious than their neighbors, for they buzzed
him through the inner door without asking who he was.
Rebecca ushered the kids inside, and Jack quickly followed, closing the
foyer door behind them.
He could have used his police ID to get past the foyer, but it would
have taken too long. With the crime rate spiraling upward, most people
were more suspicious these days than they’d once been. If he had been
straightforward with Mrs. Evans, right there at the start, she wouldn’t
have accepted his word that he was a cop. She would have wanted to come
down-and rightly so-to examine his badge through the glass panel in the
inner door. By that time, one of Lavelle’s demonic assassins might have
passed by the building and spotted them.
Besides, Jack was reluctant to involve other people, for to do so would
be to put their lives at risk if the goblins should suddenly arrive and
attack.
Apparently, Rebecca shared his concern about dragging strangers into it,
for she warned the kids to be especially quiet as she escorted them into
a shadowy recess under the stairs, to the right of the main entrance.
Jack crowded into the nook with them, away from the door. They couldn’t
be seen from the street or from the stairs above, not even if someone
leaned out over the railing and looked down.
After less than a minute had passed, a door opened a few floors
overhead. Footsteps. Then someone, apparently Mr. Santini, said,
“Alex? Is that you?”
Under the stairs, they remained silent, unmoving.
Mr. Santini waited.
Outside, the wind roared.
Mr. Santini descended a few steps. “Is anyone there?”
Go away, Jack thought. You haven’t any idea what you might be walking
into. go away.
As if he were telepathic and had received Jack’s warning, the man
returned to his apartment and closed the door.
Jack sighed.
Eventually, speaking in a tremulous whisper, Penny said, “How will we
know when it’s safe to go outside again?”
“We’ll just give it a little time, and then when it seems right . . .
I’ll slip out there and take a peek,” Jack said softly.
Davey was shaking as if it were colder in here than it was outside. He
wiped his runny nose with the sleeve of his coat and said, “How much
time will we wait?”
“Five minutes,” Rebecca told him, also whispering.
“Ten at most. They’ll be gone by then.”
“They will?”
“Sure. They might already be gone.”
“You really think so?” Davey asked. “Already?”
“Sure,” Rebecca said. “There’s a good chance they didn’t follow us. But
even if they did come after us, they won’t hang around this area all
night.”
“Won’t they?” Penny asked doubtfully.
“No, no, no,” Rebecca said. “Of course they won’t.
Even goblins get bored, you know.”
“Is that what they are?” Davey asked. “Goblins?