On Monday afternoon, Thorne drove to the Rikan Corp headquarters. He hated going there. Since it was in the center of the city, it was always packed with traffic and a whole bunch of pompous people. He tried not to think about how annoyed he was as he pulled into the parking garage below the enormous skyscraper. He was here to figure out what was going on with Kai.

Kai had not called him back on Saturday night at the Masquerade. Thorne had been happy for him. Thrilled, actually. He thought it meant that Kai was perhaps spending some quality time with his new lady friend, Cinderella. Thorne had given him until Sunday afternoon until he had called, merely out of sheer curiosity, to hear how it went. Kai never had any interesting stories about women, so it was about time to get some details. But Kai hadn't responded. He hadn't responded to Thorne's texts either. Thorne had shrugged it off and gone about his day.

When he still hadn't heard anything by Monday afternoon, he'd called Nainsi. She had assured him that Kai had indeed gone to work but seemed "different" than usual. She hadn't elaborated. And yet when he'd asked to be connected, she'd said that he wasn't accepting any calls today. So here he was, driving to the epitome of pretentiousness, possibly to stage an intervention. Because Kai was probably heart broken. Why else wouldn't he have called? The guy wore his heart on his sleeve.

Thorne had long since gotten his security clearance from Huy Deshal. That man was a beast. It'd taken Kai several months to convince him that despite Thorne's somewhat troubled past, he should be able to have his own access badge to get in and out when he pleased. Thorne was certain that Kai had probably just been sick of constantly having to answer the secretary's calls of "can he come upstairs?" since back then he would visit Kai more often so they could get lunch together or go out after work. That was before Kai started working like a maniac.

He exited the elevator and immediately felt some dejection wash over him. He hadn't wanted to be right about Kai being heart broken. Thorne could see the dark blinds to his office drawn down all the way from across the room. He mentally told himself to be patient and sensitive—two traits that did not come so easy to him—and strode over to Kai's door. He didn't even bother knocking.

Kai barely looked up when Thorne entered. He was slumped at his desk, looking like a total mess. His hair clearly hadn't been washed, his clothes looked unusually rumply, and his tie wasn't even properly tied. Needless to say, Thorne was not used to seeing him so disheveled. He sat himself on the side of Kai's desk and stared down at him.

"You didn't return my calls."

"We're not dating."

"Ouch. And to think I thought you were my one true love."

Kai didn't reply. He only hunched over and put his head into his arms on the desk.

Thorne surveyed the room. "I guess if you're taking a nap, you must be all ready for your trip to Beijing."

Kai groaned. "Oh stars! Is that today?"

Thorne shrugged. "How should I know? Don't you have a ticket?"

Kai sat up and looked panicked. He picked up the phone and dialed a number. Movement. This was good, Thorne observed.

"Nainsi? When is the annual summit?" Pause. "Wednesday? So do I leave tomorrow? Okay…thanks."

He hung up and looked at Thorne. "I don't leave until tomorrow morning."

"Great. Plenty of time to mope some more."

Kai looked up in desperation, which was a look that Thorne hadn't been expecting. "It's Cinder, Thorne. It's Cinder."

"What's Cinder?"

"Cinderella! The girl at the Masquerade! It was her."

Thorne whistled. "Whoa, girl cleans up well." He hadn't expected that. "What's the problem, then? I know you like her."

"You know?"

"Do I look like an idiot?"

Kai raked his hand through his hair exasperatedly. "I knew it was her from the beginning. Because I saw her eyes, and I'd been thinking about her, and she talked like her, and I just knew."

"And?"

"And then we kissed." Kai looked down. "A lot."

Thorne whistled again. "There you go, buddy! I'm so proud of you."

"No, Thorne, just listen." Kai's voice had become raspy and desperate.

"She kept insisting she was someone named Selene, but after we kissed I told her I was so glad it was her."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I told her that I knew she was Cinder and that I liked her and wanted to get to know her better and…" he trailed off, a look of agony caming over his face. "She left, Thorne," he whispered. "She just left me there."

"Did you go after her? Girls like being chased, you know."

"Of course I did. I tried to get her to give me her number and she just kept saying I had the wrong person and she was Selene and she bolted."

Thorne whipped out his phone and texted Iko.

"What are you doing?" asked Kai, horrified.

"Finding out if Cinder has an evil but equally pretty twin named Selene."

After a few moments, a text message came back from Iko: "No, why?"

He shut his phone. "Well, that settles that."

"Thorne, what should I do? The more I danced with her, the more I knew it was her. I need to know what's going on. I'm going insane."

Thorne scratched his cheek. "Maybe she just wanted to be a mystery that night. I met a pretty weird girl myself. She was cute but probably a whole lot of crazy when I stop to think about it."

"Cinder's not crazy."

"Kai, you barely know her. I barely know her. If it really was her, then she bolted for a reason."

"Give me her number," he said, holding out his hand to Thorne.

Thorne clutched his cell protectively. "No."

"Help me out."

"I am helping you out. I'm helping to protect you from yourself. You are not going to call or text anyone in this condition." He gestured at Kai's unruly appearance. "You're going to come off either as a desperate stalker, or a depressed stalker."

"No I wouldn't."

"Let's pretend this is Cinder. What excuse would you give for having her number?"

"I can pretend my car is broken."

Thorne tried to hide his condescending laugh. "No. Not happening. Go to your conference in Beijing, and when you get back see what's going on."

"The VIP list says she signed in, though."

"See, you're still a stalker. You're going to Beijing and you're not going to call her."

Almost an hour later, Thorne was finally making his way out of Kai's office. He'd convinced him to go to Beijing, with the understanding that Thorne would stop by the garage sometime this week to try to get a feel for the situation. He felt like he was back in high school again. The conversation with Kai had gone in so many circles that Thorne wasn't convinced at all anymore whether it really was Cinder or not. Kai was one hundred percent sure. Poor guy.

He entered the elevator a few moments later and watched the light tick its way down the floors slowly. With all of Rikan Corp's investments in Asia, he'd been hoping for a long time that this would lead to them getting a super high-speed elevator like the Taipei 101 had in Taiwan. That would certainly make these trips more amusing. The light stopped at the twenty-first floor and the doors opened to a blonde chick in a professional-looking dress who stood there expectantly. She hesitated when she saw Thorne. He put his hand out to stop the door from shutting again.

"Coming?" He gave her a dazzling smile. She only gave him a tight-lipped lift of the corner of her mouth, and then glanced around the elevator suspiciously. He stared at her a little, hoping that she would hurry up so he could get out of here. She had a cute face, though, framed by cropped blonde hair that went just past her ears. It wasn't hurting his eyes at all to look at her. She finally entered, and he saw that despite the work clothes, she toted a rather shabby looking backpack. It looked like it would swallow her as she walked past him to the corner. There was no way she was more than five feet tall.

He released his hand from the door and moved towards the buttons. "Lobby?"

She nodded politely and then turned her face away from him, as if she could hide away in the corner. Okay then. He could take a hint.

Thorne turned back to watch the light tick down the floors. But after only one floor (twenty) went by, the blinking light disappeared and the elevator shook. The girl let out a cry of surprise as Thorne's hand reached out instinctively to balance himself against the wall. The elevator shuddered, made a strange noise, and stopped. Thorne pressed the arrows to open the door, but nothing happened. The girl in the corner began to breathe hard, sounding as if she were almost panting. He turned to look at her, and saw that she had shrunk down to the ground, panic etched all over her face.

"Hey, are you okay?"

"Clau—claustrophobic," she gasped, clutching her stomach and looking down.

"Oh. Well don't worry, it's nothing to be afraid of. Probably just a brief malfunction." He pressed the emergency button on the elevator. It didn't do anything.

"Hmm…" he said, pressing the button a few more times. Then he held it for a count of ten seconds before he let it go, but nothing happened. He tried pulsating the button intermittently. Again nothing.

Thorne cleared his throat. "Well, just because we don't see anything on our end doesn't mean there isn't a signal that went off on the other side of this button. Besides, you can't really expect someone to just be sitting and waiting for the button to flash." He stared at the panel. "Yeah, it probably just sends a signal straight to the fire department."

He turned to look at the girl again, who was no longer breathing so hard, but looked rather pale. He tried to lighten the mood. "Besides, the people who work in this building are definitely not going to want to take twenty flights of stairs to get up or down."

She finally looked up. "I work here. I'd gladly take the stairs right now."

"Well, you're unique. The others will probably get their lawyers to make sure the elevator is functioning properly immediately."

The girl just moved her eyes around, surveying the walls of the elevator.

"Clearly you need a distraction. Let me help you." He extended his hand. "I'm Thorne."

She didn't take his hand. "Cress."

"Cress. That's an interesting name. Is it a nickname?"

"Does it matter?"

"Only if you want it to."

She didn't respond. It was kind of annoying. He slid into the other corner of the elevator, which in reality was only a few feet away from her. He was worried that if he got any closer, she might break out into a full blown panic attack due to her supposed claustrophobia. He loosened a button on the collar of his shirt. This could be awhile. After a few more minutes, though, he refused to sit quietly. Thorne was a big talker, and he couldn't imagine spending time waiting in a broken elevator silently.

"So, Cress, what kind of work do you do here?"

"I'm the Internet Security Specialist."

"What's that entail?"

"Basically I prevent people from hacking into our system."

Aha. A cyber nerd. Definitely useful in this day and age. He liked her more already. Then a thought occurred to him. "Hey, if you work with codes and such, you've probably got this elevator all figured out then, right? What frequency it's on, or whatever."

She rolled her eyes. Thorne couldn't help feeling that something about her looked vaguely familiar as she did. "Elevators don't run on frequencies. And no, even if it did, this is only my first day. I haven't figured everything out yet."

"That's a tough end to a first day," he commented.

She nodded, and a flicker of stress came across her face. "Which department are you in?"

"Oh, I don't work here." He laughed at the thought. Cress looked at him blankly. "I'm just visiting a friend...Kai. Maybe you've heard of him?"

Her eyes widened. "You mean...the Kai?"

He laughed again. "The Kai? What, is he the topic of all the office gossip?" Thorne pretended to swoon.

She blushed. "No, not really...I mean, I don't know. I haven't met anyone to gossip with yet, really. I just meant, he interviewed me for the job."

"He did? That's interesting. Kai doesn't usually handle personnel interviews."

"I—I think I was a special case." Cress blushed again, turning a darker shade of crimson. It made her cuter, he decided.

"Well, lucky you. He's the son of the boss. And sooner or later, he'll be the boss."

"Oh!" she said suddenly, whipping her backpack around so it sat in front of her. She reached in and grabbed a cell phone and opened it excitedly. Then her face fell, dejectedly. "Nevermind...there's no reception."

He shrugged against the wall and lifted one knee so he could rest his elbow on it. "Happens a lot in elevators."

Cress looked positively defeated. He thought it better not to acknowledge her fear anymore.

"So, are we going to sit here and talk about Kai all day or are you going to tell me something about yourself?"

"What do you want to know?"

"I don't know, anything. Time will go faster if we talk a bit, don't you think?"

She considered it. "I guess."

"Do you spend your evenings on the internet like you do at work or do you have other interests?"

"I like watching movies."

"What kind of movies?" he prompted.

"Disney. Fairy tales, fairy tale retellings, that sort of thing."

At this rate, she was probably obsessed with Rom-Coms too. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-three."

"Why are you still watching those movies?"

She bristled. "Because nothing bad happens in them."

He looked at her incredulously. "What? Every Disney character has, like, the worst life ever until the very end. And don't get me started on fairy tales. Look at the Grimm brothers. Everyone dies, basically. Yeah, that's a good summary."

"I don't read those," she said snippily. "The point is, in the end everyone is okay. They give me hope. That everything will be okay."

He snorted. "Maybe you need to put your hope in something else."

"They're romantic. You probably know nothing about that."

"Yeah, romantic with a side of delusions."

She was glaring at him now.

"Not that it's any of your business," he added, "but I am plenty romantic thank you very much."

She opened her mouth to respond, but at that exact moment the lights began to flicker. Instead of yelling at him like he thought she would, she stood up abruptly. "Oh no, no, no, no, no, no," she said frantically.

"Hey," he said, feeling the need to stand up too for some reason. He walked over to her and put his hands on her shoulders to try to calm her. A part of him thought she would slap him away, but she was frozen in place and shaking all over. "It's going to be—"

The elevator went pitch black.

"—fine."

His words were lost though, because the girl let out a terrifying scream.

He groaned. This had to be a joke. Of all the cute girls that he could be lucky enough to be trapped in a dark elevator with, he had to get the one damsel in distress. How was it possible that he was—for the second time in just two days—stuck taking care of someone who was likely to go comatose on him? This week was definitely not turning out to be lucky.