The command earned him another snort, annoyance flaring across her brain. Yep, time for a break. If she were lucky, it would be an extended one. As far as she knew, though, all the rooms in this place looked the same, so she wasn't counting on it.
Without another word exchanged between the two of them, Ami stalked away, shoulders hunched.
Once inside her room, she shucked off her jacket and tossed it on the bed and went into the bathroom to turn on the hot water. As she was waiting for it to heat up she lit another cigarette, sucking it down with record speed as she undressed – throwing her clothes in a pile on the bathroom floor – and turned on the iPod-powered speakers resting on the cluttered bathroom counter. She took the switchblade from her boot and her phone from her jeans pocket and set them both on the edge of the sink, in easy reach.
The Pietasters' "Out All Night" began piping from the speakers at a decent volume as she tossed her cigarette butt in the sink and stepped into the shower, water too hot for most people to deal with. Something about the sting of the heat comforted her. The dull pain kept her grounded. In this town, it was easy to lose track of what the truth meant.
Cicero would find the front room cluttered with discarded clothing (90% of it black) and a few stray empty beer bottles, but not actually dirty. Though there were plenty of dishes piled next to the sink in the kitchenette area, they were all clean. There was an ashtray on every surface, however, and a collection of small toys lined her dresser. Her machete (bearing the legend '+3 AGAINST UNDEAD' in bright red) lay on the bedside table, next to a well-worn copy of Max Brooks' The Zombie Survival Guide. The only light in the room came from under the bathroom door.
Blissfully unaware of her visitor, Ami washed herself fastidiously with a bar of unscented soap and forewent washing her hair, preferring to simply stand under the hot spray for a few extra moments before shutting the water off. Before she left the steamy warmth trapped by the shower curtain, she reached out to grab the towel hanging from the rack and dried herself, wrapping the towel around her waist as a man would before throwing the curtain aside and stepping out of the shower.
Upon her exit, she knew immediately that something was wrong – but it took her brain a moment to process that that wrongness was the presence of another person in the room; he was just that still. Before it was even done processing that, however, her switchblade was open in her left hand, her right fisted and raised in a classic defensive position meant to protect her face, body turned slightly away from Cicero.
Cicero.
She knew she didn't have a hope of fighting him, but her reptile brain wasn't listening – it was too busy pumping adrenaline through her veins. Conditioned toward self-defense, her body was nearly vibrating with the effort of suppressing her fight or flight response. She managed to lower the knife, though she kept her hold on it, and crossed her other arm across her exposed breasts.
"What. The. Fuck?" she asked through gritted teeth.