“—then we’ll talk about it.” He blinks at me. “Wait, what about our parents?”
I swallow the last of my second drink and walk the empty glass over to the sideboard. “Our parents, and everyone else who’s ever lived in this valley, has stayed silent about the chapel and the door. If they hadn’t, if they’d simply told other people or told scientists or authorities or someone, then maybe Poe’s mother would still be alive.”
“So you agree with Poe’s father, then? The door should be studied by men in plastic suits with ticking instruments?”
“I agree more with David Markham than my own father, who thinks God put the door there,” I sigh, and then I walk over to the sofa, swipe my phone from the cushion, and look at Auden. “I’ll go out to it tonight. But for the record, I don’t think ignoring the door like my father did is any better a strategy than fucking with it like your father did.”
“You may change your mind,” Auden murmurs.
I give him another look. “We shall see.”
I started my day in London, and so I’m still in clothes meant for pitching designs in glassed-in conference rooms—not for tromping around Thornchapel in the dark. I take the stairs up to my room to change into something more practical, and once I get there, I pull out a pair of jeans and a thin jumper and start stripping out of my blouse and trousers.
Which is when my phone buzzes on the bed where I tossed it. One buzz. A text.
It’s probably Ma. Or Daddy.
But my hand is shaking when I reach for the phone, because I don’t want it to be Ma or Daddy, I don’t want it to be work, or some half-drunk message from Auden downstairs, too lazy to come up to say it and too impatient to wait for me to come back down.
No, I want it to be someone else.
I pick up the phone and swipe across the screen.
New Message From Delphine Dansey.
Heat sears up my arm from the hand that’s holding the phone, as if I’ve just plucked a living coal from a fire. It’s her. She’s texted. It’s her and I don’t know what to do, because I shouldn’t open it, I shouldn’t have sent her those gifts, I was the one who ended things—
My thumb moves anyway, out of habit or excitement, I’m not sure, and then I see a picture. A beautiful necklace, glittering with all its diamonds and pearls and gems, still resting inside the jeweler’s box with its lid propped to the side. The box is sitting on a white dressing table, with lipsticks and things scattered around it. In the mirror, I see a room that I know must be her bedroom at the Dansey cottage in the Cotswolds: attractively rustic beams in the ceiling, a partially open casement window, a bed made with an ivory duvet that is wrinkled and puffy in that particular way that very expensive duvets have.
She isn’t anywhere in the picture.
I’ve had two gin martinis, which is not enough to do what I do next.
I want to see you wearing it.
I send the text message and immediately regret it. What I am doing? What am I actually doing? I can never forgive her for what she’s done, and that’s something that won’t ever change, so why—
Delphine sends me a picture, again with no other message attached.
Oh, my brain thinks slowly. Stupidly.
That’s why.
She sent me a picture of her wearing the necklace . . . and nothing else. The diamonds wrap around her throat and drip down her chest, ending right at the fullness of her bust. One hand is holding the phone aloft for the selfie, and the other is wrapped coyly around her breasts, enough to press them up, but not enough to hide glimpses of pink areolae that match the colors of the trapped bird perfectly. Her hair tumbles over her shoulders in tuggable waves, I can see enough of her hips and thighs to know she’s not wearing knickers, and though I can’t see her eyes from this angle, I can see her perfect doll’s mouth, painted in a color that reminds me of candied violets, that reminds me of the berry-sweet, violet-y way she smells.
The curve of her upper lip means I can see the white of her teeth, teeth I used to chase my tongue along the edges of, teeth that have scraped gently across my skin when I’ve permitted them to. Goose bumps pebble up and down my arms.
I want to lick those teeth. I want to lick that violet mouth.
I knew what I was doing when I asked for a picture, and still, the angry, panicked lust which slams into me takes me completely by surprise. I want to mark her, taste her, hold her down and stain her with her own shame.
Desire is not forgiveness, I remind myself.
Very good, I text. And my other gift? Did that come in as well?
I know it has—it was delivered this morning. I also know she hasn’t turned it on yet, because the gift comes paired automatically with an app on the purchaser’s phone, so I can see when it’s turned on, when it’s used, and for how long. I can also control it from my phone, if I wish. Which I do, I do wish.
There’s a long pause, and then Delphine replies:
Do you want to see me wearing that too?
I’m sending mixed signals, I know I am. I’m acting like a lad at uni all over again. I’m acting like fucking around in the present moment has no future emotional consequences, but I don’t care. I could blame the gin, or I could blame the lack of sex, or I could say, look at Saint and Auden, they do this nonsense all the time, and they’re both still fine—but the truth is more than any of those things. The truth is that I want her. I want her so much that I don’t care if it’s not fair to either of us.
I want her so much that I don’t care if it hurts afterward.
You know that’s exactly what I want to see.
Three dots appear, then disappear, and then appear again. I’m not moving, I’m not breathing. I have Delphine-apnea.
The dots disappear again, and this time they don’t come back. I pull up the app for the toy on my phone, checking to see if it’s been turned on or used, and it hasn’t.
And she’s still not replying.
The silence is its own response, I suppose.
Maybe she’s being sensible enough for the both of us, or maybe her self-preservation instincts are finally kicking in. Maybe she knows that no orgasm is worth the torment that will inevitably come after—although even as I think that, I know it’s a lie, because after everything that happened, I still can’t regret fucking her. It felt too good, so good, the kind of good worth losing a heart over.
Maybe even worth losing a heart over a second time . . .
Stop. That’s your clitoris talking.
Hating myself, but too horny to care, I bring up her picture again, propping the phone against a pillow as I stretch out on the bed and push my fingers into my knickers. She’s so fucking sexy in this picture, all curves and skin and the diamonds I bought just for her, and that mouth—
Even as the climax comes, swift and sharp, I know it won’t be the last I have looking at this picture. I know it won’t even be the last I have tonight, which should dent my self-respect some, but apparently when it comes to Delphine, I don’t have any left to dent.
In fact, I know this is true because the first thing that occurs to me once my cunt is finished contracting is not that I want more sex, more filth, but that I want her in my arms to hold and to snuggle, to kiss and to pet. I want her to fall asleep with her head on my shoulder, and then blink herself awake looking at me, and I want us to be so tangled together that neither of us want to leave the bed ever, ever again. I want to hear her voice, her laugh, her sleepy murmurs.
I want her here.
I roll onto my back as I pull my fingers free and lick them clean. This is the problem with Delphine Dansey, I think. The problem with loving someone beautiful and charming and perfect. Her sex slides seamlessly into her beauty which slides seamlessly again into her playfulness and her wit and her cheer, and there’s no winnowing out one thing from the other. There’s no only wanting to fuck her, because then once I’m thinking of her, I’m thinking not only of plush thighs and a pouty, rich-girl mouth, but of giggles and gossip in the dar
k. I’m thinking of the purring noises she makes when she’s happy.
I’m thinking of how she sees me like no other person ever has.
Yes, this is the problem with Delphine Dansey.
Once I’ve cracked the door for lust and lust alone, all the other feelings come barging right in after anyway.
Chapter Eleven
Rebecca
I do end up changing, and then I make my way back downstairs, creeping quietly through the hall and to the mudroom in the south wing. I doubt Auden and Poe would be able to hear me anyway, but the hall and windowed corridors have a funny way of carrying sound, and I don’t feel like talking to anybody at the moment, in case my furtive wank is somehow written all over my face.
In case This Girl Still Stupidly Loves Delphine is somehow written on my face too.
I find a torch and wellies in the mudroom, slip into a raincoat I keep there, and concede defeat to the German shepherd currently prancing circles around me.
“Fine, all right, you can come,” I mutter, and Sir James gives me an answering whine, like he can’t be sure I’ve said yes until the door is actually open and his paws hit the grass.
I open the door and he tears off into the night, disappearing immediately, although I know he’ll find his way back. In the meantime, I click on my torch and set off across the lawn.
It’s one of those evenings that can’t decide if it’s warm or cool, rainy or not, and so the air is a clammy sort of in-between. Even the mud can’t make up its mind—firm in one place, sloppy in another—and it takes me a long time to pick my way through the expansive dig site on my way to the path out to the chapel.
I swing the torch light over the mess as I go: grids made with thick white string, abandoned sieves, a small canopy tent with trays and trowels piled haphazardly underneath. They’re still in the thick of the excavation, even though they’re working with incredible speed, and strictly speaking, I haven’t been needed at Thornchapel since this started.
I’ve come anyway.
Even though I could do more work in London, even though there’s truly nothing I can do with the site right now—because the alternative is . . . what? Drinking wine in my flat alone and regretting impulsive jewelry purchases? Missing Delphine and arguing with myself about going to my own damn club? No, it’s better to be here. In London, I’m restless, stifled, trapped; here I can stretch and breathe and see. Here even my squashed and mangled heart is easier to carry.
I used to think it was the simple recipe of air and trees and grass, I used to think it was the appealing prospect of design to be drawn, of a vision to manifest, but it’s more than that, I think, it’s more than work and opportunity. But what it actually is remains a mystery to me. It’s a formula with too many variables. A riddle meant to be recursive. There’s no solving for x, there’s no curve to chart.
The question is Thornchapel and the answer is also Thornchapel and that’s as clear as it will ever be.
Sir James rejoins me as I make my way into the trees, his ears up and his nose to the ground. He occasionally darts off into the dark, ready to pounce on some small furry thing he scented or heard, and by the time we reach the clearing, he’s panting and totally wet, like he detoured through the river on his way back up to me. “I’m not drying you off when we get back,” I tell him in a stern tone. He just looks up at me with his tongue hanging out of his mouth, totally unfazed by my scolding, and then gives my free hand a lick, as if to remind me that we’re friends and friends don’t river-shame each other.
Untidy, lovable beast. I scratch behind his ears as we approach the stone row, and he licks me again.
“Stay with me,” I say, and I meant it as a command and only in the interest of him not being a muddy mess when we get back, but it comes out as a plea. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t believe in ghosts or magic, and I’ve never been afraid of the dark, but as I step between the two menhirs and my torch beam cuts through the dark, something adrenal starts happening in my body. Goose bumps, a speeding heart, a trembling stomach. Waves of heat everywhere.
Fear.
Stray raindrops streak in front of the torch, not enough to truly be rain, but enough to make me blink away water. Enough to patter and hiss on the leaves. My beam catches the broken arches of the windows, the ruin of the doorway, the rose-covered walls, but only in brief flashes. Only in quick, shaking slices.
It’s stupid to be afraid. Utterly childish. I’m the only person here, and I have a giant, loyal dog, and nothing is going to hurt me. This is merely a chemical response to the sensory deprivation of darkness, this is just evolution reminding me that humans who go wandering where they can’t see fall into holes or get eaten by bears.
It would be better, though, if my torch were stronger. Brighter.
As it is, it won’t even reach the far end of the chapel. It illuminates the silvery-wet grass until almost the altar and then everything dims and blears to impenetrable darkness—
“Oh,” I breathe. “Oh no.”
It’s not my torch at all. It’s the chapel itself—or rather, it’s the roses covering the chapel walls and spilling onto the ground beneath. Black roses, I think, or very close to black. Big and full-blown, so many of them that they cover the stone completely. The altar is covered with them, and behind the altar . . .
I’ve seen the door before now, at Lammas. I’ve seen its pointed arch, its weathered wooden door banded with old metal, the quiet clearing on the other side of its threshold. But there’d been no black-red roses on Lammas, none at all. Only the usual pink and white ones lingering on from June, only red hips and blue sloe and green leaves everywhere else.
I don’t mean to take a step back, but it happens anyway. My neural programming is whispering that I should go, that unknown things in the night are bad, that I’m alone and in danger and the correct response is to run away.
Even Sir James is whining and pacing behind me right now, as if he also wants to leave but won’t let himself leave without his human alongside him, and it takes all of my willpower to talk myself down.
I’m not afraid of the dark. I’m not afraid of roses.
I’m not afraid of a door.
Forcing myself to take a step forward, I swing the torch around the chapel, trying to get a sense of what I’m really seeing. The most logical conclusion is that the roses seem to have started near the door and crawled outward, and when I examine the leading edge of the growth, I see that the roses farthest from the door—and closest to me—are barely budded. Brand new.
Sir James Frazer huffs behind me, as if to say why are we still here, why aren’t we going back to where it’s safe and Auden-y?
“We’re not afraid,” I tell the dog. “It’s just some roses.”
Fast-growing roses. In a color that’s not possible. Spreading from a door that should not exist.
I use the torch to trace the shape of the door, following its contours until I drop the light down into the middle, shining it at the opening. I say at, because the light of the torch doesn’t seem to pass through the opening, impossible as that is. As if there’s something invisible blocking the way, some transparent but still impermeable barrier.
I step forward, and forward again, until I have to step into the sprawling ground cover of the roses. I’m grateful for the wellies—which are impervious to the thorns—and grateful too that Sir James decides to hang back, although he makes a big production about it, chuffing and complaining.
“I’m not bringing you back to Auden with a thorn in your paw,” I say. “That would be unpleasant for all of us. Stay.”
I turn back and press on toward the door. There is a sort of path through the roses, roughly three feet wide and edged by thorns, which winds to the rose-covered altar and then forks around it, leading back to the door. It’s not a perfect path, however, still strung with sprouting canes and invaded by reaching sprays of the plant, and I snag my jeans on the thorns more than once before I get around to the door.
Finally I�
��m there, and even from right here, the light from my torch won’t pass the threshold.
No, that’s not quite right. It does pass the threshold, only it’s much fainter than it should be, as if I’m shining it through gauze or some other thinly woven fabric. The light filtering must only go in one direction, because I can see what’s through the door with perfect clarity.
Wrong. Bad. Run.
I ignore my whimpering amygdala and click off my light.
There’s no mist or drizzle on the other side. There’s only a crescent moon hung in a sky filled with stars, only a clearing stretching into the velvet-dark woods beyond. Aside from the lack of cloud and mist, it looks exactly the same as our clearing, as our woods.
It could be the same world.
“Why does your light pass through and mine doesn’t?” I murmur. It made no sense. If there were some sort of barrier preventing light from passing through, it should work both ways, right? And if light from my torch couldn’t pass through properly, then could any light pass through properly? Did that mean I wouldn’t be completely visible to someone standing on the other side of the door? But Proserpina had told me that Estamond had seen a shadow on the other side of the door and it had known what she was doing . . . so what should I make of that?
That was at Lammas—so did the time of year make a difference?
I touch the stone architrave rimming the door. I don’t know what I expect to feel, but it’s as cool as stone should be at night, and as damp. It’s the same Dartmoor granite that makes up the chapel—and the altar and the standing stones and the manor house too. And as far as I can tell through the patchwork of rose canes and blooms, it’s as worn and weathered as if it’s been facing the elements for centuries.
I don’t believe in magic. Whatever this door is, it’s not that. But it might as well be magic, for as little as can be understood about it.
Which is frankly irritating. Very few things are beyond the limits of what I can assimilate, if I’m given enough information and enough time, but the door is not differential geometry, it’s not organic chemistry. The door is not a landscape to be transformed or an engineering problem to be solved. If I had to guess, I would say answers about the door and its nature lie in some obscure field of physics. Very theoretical physics. A fold in time and space that can only be explained by particles no one has definitively proven to exist yet.
Door of Bruises (Thornchapel Book 4) Page 11