by Karin, Anya
Alyssa ran her fingers backward through her hair as the steady sound grew heavier. A glance through half-opened eyes showed her dark, puffy clouds.
"A thunderstorm?" She said as her hand slid down her chest, and hit the mattress. When it did, the place where the rope was around her wrist send a charge down her arm that warmed her chest, then her belly.
"Who's there?" She said in a half-conscious daze, when the deadbolt made that familiar sound, sliding through the door. She wasn't really sure whether it was real or a dream. In that place right between asleep and awake, through her exhaustion, the whole world seemed to be covered in soft, worn-ragged gauze. "Is somebody...?"
The sound, if it had been there at all, stopped. There were no footsteps, no breathing outside the door.
Must have been a little dozing dream.
Her breathing evened out. A soft, vulnerable snore, barely audible above the rain, told Preston Webb that she was asleep. He pulled the lock the rest of the way and opened the door carefully, to avoid those damnable hinges creaking.
Crossing the room quickly and silently, he pulled the blanket up around Lys's shoulders, covering the purple bruise.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "This never should have happened."
Lost in the rain, his voice reached dreaming ears.
He moved to sit, to cradle her head in his lap and stroke Lys's soft cheeks, but at the first hint of a sound from the mattress, he recoiled. When he was satisfied that she was unconscious, Preston settled down next to her so softly that he made barely a sound. Alyssa stirred when he touched her face with the back of a hand, and her eyes shifted under the lids.
He bent and kissed one, then the other.
Even though the room was growing dark, if she had opened her eyes, Alyssa would have seen the jagged mark that Preston Webb spent his entire life hiding.
When his lips touched her eyes, she let out a soft moan and smiled, just a little, from the corner of her mouth. In the room's darkness, he couldn't see her grin.
She turned, as if moved by sleeping restlessness, and shifted her weight backwards, against his leg.
As soon as her back was to Preston, Alyssa opened her eyes and stared out the window into the roiling clouds for a moment, then clamped them shut.
His hand brushed her cheek, narrowly avoiding the tear that ran down her nose and dripped to the pillow.
Cradled there against his body, she let herself drift off again, strangely safe in his arms.
Chapter Seventeen
In the morning, the rain had stopped but not the wind. Looking out the window, Alyssa sat up without thinking about her broken body and only remembered it at the most extreme parts of her morning stretch routine.
She stuck her head out the window, looked down at the tremendous rose bushes crawling up the side of the house, the manicured hedges framing the courtyard, then back to the bed where Preston held her.
"I wonder how long he stayed after I went to sleep," she said.
His leaving before she woke hurt worse than any sprained ankles or cracked ribs ever could. After a long drink of the wet morning, Lys turned back and reclined against the bed's massive headboard. Beside her, on the nightstand, she was surprised to find the old hairbrush returned.
"Oh Preston," she said in a whisper, taking the brush from the table and running it through her hair. "How can I convince you that it's okay? That I don't blame you for what happened?"
A moment later, just like the day before, two soft knocks at her door preceded Gadsen's entry. He looked more vampiric than he had last time, very tall and stooping slightly. When he smiled, she returned the pleasantry.
"How are we feeling today?"
"Better, for sure," she said as warmly as she could manage. He has no idea you know about his threats. Keep it that way.
"Good, you were in quite a shape when we found you yesterday. Very silly thing you did, climbing out on that ledge." He had a smile that pulled tight on his teeth that seemed to be tucked around fangs. Fangs that would stick in Lys's neck the first time she wasn't looking and wasn't wearing a collar. "What possessed you?"
"Oh, I don't know. I just panicked, I guess. Saw a way out." Changing the subject, she asked about breakfast.
"You're strangely perky," he said with just the hint of a sneer behind his voice. "I expected you to convalesce for some time, especially after your injuries."
Lys just shrugged. "Quick healer, I guess."
"Indeed." He stared for a moment before arranging her tray over her legs.
"Well, that's a relief." Gadsen fidgeted with the silverware, his hands shaking slightly. "Oh, by the way, have you seen Mr. Webb lately? I've not been able to find him since yesterday afternoon. He missed a meeting with the board."
"No, can't say as I have," Alyssa put on her best I'm-not-lying-really voice. The eggs and bacon were cooked perfectly. "Last time I saw him was when he came to check on me yesterday."
"I see," he said. "Hm, where did you find this brush? I thought that I – I thought Mr. Webb took it with him the other night. He's very fond of his mother's things, you know."
Lys looked over at the nightstand and shrugged. She also noticed a rather discrete envelope tucked between the lamp and a cylindrical candleholder she hadn't seen before. Turning her eyes back to the butler, she tried her best not to draw attention to the note.
"No, no, I mean it was just right there." She poked her head forward, in the direction of the dresser with all the perfume bottles. "I found it when I got up to look out the window this morning. Didn't think anything of it."
"Well, if he didn't take it, that means he trusts you. He never lets anyone touch his mother's things."
Something in the way Gadsen spoke stuck in Alyssa's mind. The way his voice turned up slightly when the Webb matriarch was mentioned. She couldn't tell exactly what it was, but she couldn't bury the thought, and she couldn't un-hear his quirk once it was heard the first time.
Sentimentality, maybe? Why would this man be protective of the mother, though? Makes no sense. Then again, not much else does either, so maybe it fits right in.
"Maybe so. Like I said, it was just there." There was more of a twinge in her voice than Lys meant to have. "Can I take a walk today around the house? I just want to get out of this room for a little bit. I won't poke around anywhere I'm not supposed to go. I learned that lesson." She faked a laugh.
"You must never venture into the rooms at the east end of the house. Anything to the right of your room is off limits. There are things in those rooms that have to be kept where they are. There you are. No going right down the hall from this room. The doors are all locked anyway, but I trust you to be reasonable."
"Alright," she said with a little glimmer in her eye. "I won't. Anywhere else?"
"Downstairs."
"What's downstairs?"
"For you, only the front door and the steps up to this room. You'll go nowhere else."
"So that gives me free reign up here and – wait, did you say I can go outside?"
The butler with his crooked nose and vulture-like posture nodded. "That's fine. There are guards anyway, so you can't get yourself into any trouble."
"Trouble? What are you talking about? I just want to stretch my legs and get a little exercise. This is the biggest house I've ever seen in my life and I want to take a look around. What could I possibly do to cause problems?"
"Nothing, probably. But remember, Alyssa. Criminal trespass and felony theft are two things that are hard to beat when you're in the house where you committed the crimes."
She had to fight herself not to inform him smartly that kidnapping was significantly more serious than stealing mushrooms, and then it hung in the back of her mind that blackmail was also illegal, which he seemed to be indulging in quite a bit as well.
"Of course. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you."
"Not a problem. Emotions run high at times."
"So I can go outside and look around the gardens, and I can go all
the way to the west end of my hall?"
He nodded. "If I think of anything else, I'll let you know. Don't stray too far. Mr. Webb has left a message inviting you for dinner tonight."
"Like, downstairs?"
He chuckled. "Yes, in the dining room. I assume you're going for a stroll now, so try to be back by early afternoon. There will be clothes and so on arranged for you."
As he turned to leave, Gadsen told her to enjoy breakfast, and wrung his hands.
"Of course, thanks Gadsen."
She picked up a piece of bacon and put it to her lips, the salty deliciousness making her mouth water. As soon as he was out the door, she dropped it, went to the window and dumped the whole platter.
"See if you can drug me that easily. I don't know your game, but I'm going to find out what it is. Just wait. I'm not gonna let you ruin Preston or me. Not on your life."
Lyssa pulled on her shorts, still in a rumpled pile in the chair, and found a loose white spaghetti-string top in one of the drawers. There was a bit of a chill in the air, but the temperature was the last thing on her mind as she crept out into the hall, looked both ways for lurkers, and immediately turned right.
"Good thing I learned how to do this in middle school," Alyssa said, sliding one of the bobby pins from her bun and working it into the lock on the first door immediately to the right of hers, exactly where she was told not to go.
The lock was so old and stuff that Alyssa's pin broke and she had to fish out another one. This sort of heavy, ancient mechanism required a little bit of shoulder action alongside wrist flicking to unlatch. Once everything was in place, she stood on her tiptoes and grabbed one hand with the other and took a deep breath.
"One...Two..." she whispered. "Three!" she grunted with a strain and turned her bent pin in the keyhole. A heavy thump of the lock retracting echoed down the hall. Alyssa shot a quick glance in either direction to make sure no one had heard, and to reassure herself that Gadsen was nowhere to be seen.
Thick, heavy musk hung in the air of a room that, judging by the layer of dust that she dragged her finger through, hadn't seen a visitor since sometime before the Cold War.
Aside from the fossilized, dingy clutter, the room just held some old furniture and a few books on a table beside a large wing-backed chair.
"Someone's got a thing for Russian literature," she said, reading the spines. "Crime and Punishment and War and Peace, huh? Someone was in for a nice, light night of reading."
She picked up and examined a few more items, but nothing struck her as important.
The next two rooms were much the same. Dusty, mostly empty, two or three books in each one. In the third – the corner room, peeking out from underneath folded up linens – she found something that looked like a scrapbook, but upon opening it, the pages were all blank, as though someone bought it with the intent of making a keepsake, and then gave up the idea before getting started.
By the time Alyssa got to the fourth and final lock, on the East end of the second floor, she was down to her last pin. She stuck it in, gave the doorknob a turn, and started when it just swung open.
"Well then."
An old spinning jenny style loom was propped up in the corner, years out of use. A curious smell hung in the air, the way the smell of beer remains in a bar long after closing. But, strangely, there was also a little hint of rose in the air. Just a bit, nothing more than a suggestion, but it was enough to catch Lys's attention and pull her further inside the room.
"Preston, are you here?" She said. "Hello?"
An old rocking chair with two missing back-slats creaked. Air pressure change. Must have been. I opened the door and the air made it move. That must be what happened.
Her eyes moved over the multi-generational furniture. Neatly arranged in some parts of the large space, simply piled up like garbage in others, she couldn't quite figure out what this room was all about.
"No dust." She ran a finger along the armrest on the chair she most certainly set to creaking by opening the door and changing the room's atmosphere. "What on Earth...?"
Whistling wind caught her attention. The window, she saw, was slightly ajar, the way windows end up when they're just pushed shut but not paid any attention to as a person walks out of a room.
"Without thinking too much," she repeated under her breath. "Careless. This is the first room that doesn't have a planned appearance."
Thinking back, the books in the first room were arranged very carefully, and the same in the other room. Throw rugs, pillows, seat cushions. Not a single thing out of place, no matter how thick the dust. Her thoughts went back to the empty scrapbook.
"That was the only thing that wasn't right. Of all that stuff, why an empty scrapbook? What was I supposed to think?" She shook her head and thumbed through some magazines piled under an old desk.
"National Geographic, 1932. Mysteries of the Cavemen." She flipped to a page in the middle, and the fold-out map secreted between the pages unfolded. The spine on the magazine crackled gently. "Has...no, that's too weird. Has no one ever opened this?"
Checking all the others, an old Time, and an issue of Woman's Day from 1942 that promised to instruct the reader on how best to care for her husband's affairs while he was off fighting the Nazis, she found none of them had ever been opened. Alyssa ran her thumb down the spine of the Woman's Day.
"This is the weirdest damn thing. Hey, what's this? Another of these scrapbooks?"
Just like in the other room, a marble-patterned bound volume, red and yellow and black, with age-yellowed paper inside, was stashed under some linen sheets in a basked that occupied a corner of the room. It looked to have been carelessly tossed.
Unlike the one she found before, this one was jammed full.
"May 2, 1942," she read aloud. "Dearest Marissa, it looks like we won't make it back for Christmas. The enemy is pushing harder both in Europe and out here in the Pacific. We're making for an island (funny to say that, since there's nothing else) that may win us the war. I can't say more in case this gets intercepted, but my carrier is quite safe for now. We're floating, and floating, and floating. Not a whole lot else. We just service airplanes all day long. They go on night missions, and when they come back, we fill them up, patch the holes and out they go again the next night. I'm told there's a lot more like this one, but no one knows how many. Our Master Chief, Daniels, he said the Japs thought they blew up most of the fleet in the Harbor, but they were, evidently, very wrong. Oh, planes are coming in. I'll write soon. Love you always, Mari."
She sat back down in the rocking chair, careful to avoid the broken slats, and thumbed to another one. Letter after letter, hundreds of them, were jammed in between the pages of this tome, and interspersed between those were newspaper clippings, reports, and even little bits of film negative. Every now and then, a Polaroid popped up, all depicting the same man. He was tall, dark haired, not muscular, but obviously fit and very good looking. There were no close-up images, but there was something familiar about him nonetheless.
Sinking further into the rocking chair and unconsciously falling into a rhythm, she flipped to another letter, this one pinned to a photograph. She plucked the tiny thumbtack out and set the photo aside after taking a look at the familiar image of a shirtless man on the deck of an aircraft carrier There was no date on the letter, but "5/5/42" was scrawled on the back of the photo. She read:
"Dearest Marissa, I'm afraid time is short right now. As you can see from the picture, the planes are coming in much the worse for wear these days. The Japs have gotten better at spotting these big, slow things, and punching them full of holes before we drop our presents on them. I'm taking a terrible risk by telling you this, but I can't keep myself from doing so. In the next few days (I'm not sure how many), there will be reports of an attack on an island called Midway. I'm not sure entirely what this will do, but our MC told us a big chunk of the fleet was headed there. Supposed to end the war. Here's hoping it does, because the longer I'm away from you, the long
er all I want to do is go back home. I'm not sure I care how anymore. I hope this letter reaches you before news of the battle. I'm sure I'll be safe; I'll just be here fixing the planes. I think, anyway. Love forever, P."
Alyssa tried to get up, to explore more of the house, but her attention was absolutely stuck to these letters. Thumbing through another and then another of them, she read of how the elder Webb not only survived Midway, but excelled. He seemed to have saved a number of people, and when the crew was forced into combat for the first time, he saw some terrible things, but pulled through with an injury so minimal he wasn't recalled home, but taken off the carrier to convalesce in Hawaii for some time before going back to Japan.
The photos continued, but instead of a shirtless, working seaman, they were all of ocean scenery, or islands off in the distance. One of them had "wish you were here" scratched into the back, and on the 'i' the pen dropped a healthy blob of ink.
Another letter, in the middle of the bundle, caught her attention. It was the first she'd found from Marissa to Preston instead of the other way around, and it was a short one. "Dear P.," she read, "G acting very strange. I know he's your man and all, but in your next letter, could you give me something to tell him that'll get him to back up some? He's become amorous of late. Love Always, M – 4/18/56."
"Well now isn't that a funny thing? A letter out of place, way out of place time-wise, and complaining about Gadsen."
When Alyssa finally looked up from the scrapbook, she had all but forgotten the first one, the empty one, and tucked both of the books under her arm.
"Oh my God!" She said, looking out the window to see dusk looming. "I hope no one's gone looking for me. Forgetful, Lys! It's shameful."
There was enough caution in her to avoid running straight out into the hall before checking both ways. Lucky, too, because when she stuck her head out of the door she heard the creaking of Gadsen ascending the stairs. At the sight of his bald head ringed in silver hair, she pulled back, closed the door as softly as she could, and gathered herself behind it in case he went looking.