Dark Duets

by Christopher Golden

  And if that happened, who would even know I was missing? Charlie? The stranger who’d left me the key?

  There was no one else. How could that be?

  I had only one option, and it was forward. As Charlie had said, sometimes it’s better to not look back.

  Ahead, the path loomed, waiting for me. Tendrils of fog spilled from the sea and seeped into the forest, leading the way like a campy horror set. What did I have to lose?

  Nothing.

  Everything important, I’d lost a long time ago.

  With a sigh I shifted my heavy purse from one shoulder to the other and began walking. The ground underfoot was soggy, and within a few steps my shoes were wet, my toes almost frozen.

  I silently added wool socks to the list of supplies I’d need to buy whenever I figured out where the nearest town was. In the distance I heard what sounded like sheep bleating, and I shook my head, fervently hoping I wouldn’t be expected to rely on them for my new attire. I didn’t know how to knit.

  The trek through the forest seemed endless, and more than once I feared I was walking in circles. Maybe this was some sort of elaborate prank. Of course I’d already wondered this before—more than once. The moment I’d seen the deed, the first thing I’d asked was, “Is this a joke?”

  But then I’d picked up the brass key lying on the countertop, and it had just felt . . . right. Something in my head had whispered, home, and I’d known this was where I needed to go.

  And, just like that, the path ended and I found myself on the edge of a mist-shrouded field. Something dark loomed ahead, a shadow through the fog. A sharp wind blew from the forest behind me, carrying with it the moaning sound of poplar trees bending until they ached.

  “That’s ominous,” I murmured to myself. And then I had no words because the clouds cleared and I caught my first glimpse of the castle.

  I burst out laughing. I’d assumed castle had just been a fancy word for “impressive house.” I’d been expecting something modest—perhaps nothing more than a quaint Scottish cottage.

  I’d been wrong.

  This thing was one hell of a castle.

  A wall of weathered dark stone rose several stories from the ground, all climbing vines and heavy oak doors and thick windows that hid as much as they revealed. The place was immense and looked like it came straight out of a fairy tale, complete with towers and turrets and crenellations.

  There was no way this was mine. Things like this didn’t happen in real life—not to people like me.

  What else could I do but head for it? I’d come all this way . . . taken all this risk. As I approached the immense wooden door, dotted with heavy iron nails from top to bottom, I pulled the brass key out of my pocket. It had seemed so large in the diner—bigger even than my hand—but now, in comparison to the door and the castle looming above, it was downright tiny.

  Holding my breath, I slipped it into the lock and turned. “No. Way,” I muttered when the door swung open. The gray light from outside spilled into the dim interior, revealing a threadbare rug and a tarnished suit of armor propped against the wall.

  The castle. Had a suit of armor.

  Of course it did.

  Suddenly, I felt giddy. Ridiculously so. It was like that first moment you open the door to a hotel room on vacation and you have no idea what lies ahead but you know it’s going to be awesome.

  And this castle was so much more than awesome. My jaw dropped when I stepped inside. The ceiling in the front hall was so high it was lost in darkness. The walls were covered in ancient-looking tapestries and dusty paintings of scowling men wearing kilts and brandishing intimidating weapons. On the far side of the room a curved staircase with an elaborately carved banister swept toward the second floor.

  I clapped my hands, no longer frozen, no longer wet, no longer hungry, no longer interested in anything but deciding where to explore first, when a dark, booming voice stopped me cold.

  “What are you doing in my house?”

  My heart exploded, fear making me light-headed. I jumped back, stumbling into an antique side table. The table tipped and crashed to the ground, one of the legs splintering.

  I winced as the sound echoed through the house.

  A curse came harsh and wicked from the darkness, and out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of a shadow moving at the top of the stairs. Coming closer.

  A complete stranger.

  A male stranger, judging by the voice.

  He took his time, moving purposefully, step by step, until I thought my heart would beat from my chest in equal parts panic, terror, and something less ominous—something like desperation.

  I glanced around the room, looking for anything I could use to defend myself. My eyes fell on the suit of armor, its hands clutched around an ax. Without thinking, I leaped for it, wrenching it free. It was heavier than I expected, and it took all my strength to face him, brandishing the weapon.

  “Don’t come any closer.”

  He reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped, just beyond the reach of light from the open door. His shadow spoke. “That ax is four centuries old and designed for someone much stronger than you.”

  “I think I can handle it,” I replied with bravado I didn’t feel, even as my muscles protested the heavy weight. He stayed in the darkness. Good. “Now why don’t you tell me what you’re doing in my house?”

  He didn’t say anything, but his shadow moved, crouching over a nearby table. Looking for a weapon, probably. I was going to have to duel with this man. Using an ax. And he would no doubt have something more useful. Something portable. And mechanized.

  The stink of sulfur rose in the air as he lit a candelabrum there—I watched as flame burst over five tapered candles, all with a single match. I would have singed myself more than once, but his long, graceful fingers didn’t waver in their task. I was transfixed by the play of candlelight over those fingers, and the hands to which they were attached—the rise and hollow of muscle and vein, the strong knuckles and long bones.

  And that was all before I got to his face.

  Good Lord. He was stunning—all dark hair that looked like thick sable, skin bright and bronzed in the candlelight, and cheeks and jaw and brow strong and powerful like some kind of statue—a Greek god. A Roman athlete.

  Except there were things about him that weren’t so perfect: a scar above one eye, long and wicked; a mouth set in a cruel line, like he’d never in his life smiled; and cold, gray eyes filled with weariness. With tragedy.

  Why?

  No. I wasn’t transfixed. I wouldn’t be transfixed.

  He was an intruder. In my house, lighting my candles.

  And he must be stopped.

  I hefted the ax with renewed vigor. “Are you a squatter?”

  One side of his mouth twitched, just barely. “I appear to be standing.”

  This wasn’t a joke to me. “I have a key.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “I—” Wait. I didn’t have to answer him. “It doesn’t matter, as I also have a deed.”

  “I assure you, not to this castle.”

  I raised a brow. “No, you’re right of course. To a different castle. Scotland is, I’m sure, overrun with castles just waiting to be inhabited.”

  “It is, rather,” he said.

  I ignored him. “Look, whoever you are, this is my castle. You’re trespassing.”

  “Where is this deed?” He sighed, as though it was he who was put out and not I—exhausted, without my luggage, my only worldly possessions a half-eaten package of almonds, a pocketful of change, and an ax.

  “I’d get it for you, but as you can see, my hands are occupied.”

  A very heavy ax.

  “You can put it down, you know. I don’t plan on attacking you.”

  “Would you tell me if you were?”

  “Probably not.”

  Oddly, his honesty was a comfort. I let the ax fall to my side with a heavy thud. “How long have you been living here?
”

  “Long enough to know that you shouldn’t be here.” With that, he turned away. Taking the light with him into the dark bowels of the castle, leaving me no choice but to follow, ax trailing behind me, through the massive entryway and down a long, unlit corridor to an enormous library, spanning two huge floors with a balcony of bookshelves that stretched high above us. I caught my breath inside the door.

  He turned to face me at the noise. I shrugged my shoulders and said, “What every little girl dreams of.”

  He placed the candelabrum on a desk littered with papers and sat in a large wing chair. “You like books.”

  In hindsight, I should have been surprised that the words weren’t a question, but there was a fire roaring in the fireplace, and he had already stretched his long legs toward the heat, the wool of his trousers pulling tight over muscled thighs and knees, shielding the tops of his shoes. He wore a fine white linen shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbow, collar open to reveal a perfect triangle of skin.

  The man was dressed for business and draped in wealth. He was no squatter. “Your deed,” he said, extending one long arm toward me as though saying the words could produce the document.

  And they could, apparently, as I was already reaching for my purse. Extracting the paper, I passed it to him. He looked at it, turning it over, inspecting every inch of it before setting it down on his great mahogany desk. My desk. “Where did you get this?”

  I inched toward him, dragging the ax along the floor. “I was left the deed and the key.”

  His brow furrowed. “An inheritance?”

  “Not exactly.” Not at all.

  “How, exactly?”

  “As a tip.”

  His eyes widened, and if I wasn’t mistaken, there was a hint of laughter buried in their depths. “As in, a gratuity? For services rendered?”

  It hadn’t seemed so insane until he said it aloud. My cheeks suddenly felt warm. “Yes.”

  “For what kind of services?” The question was filled with lascivious curiosity, and warm quickly became hot.

  “Not what you’re thinking, I assure you!” I crossed my arms at his disbelieving expression. No wonder this man lived alone in a castle. He was insufferable. “Someone should shave that eyebrow right off your head.”

  “That happened to me once,” he said, the smile edging toward fondness. “All right . . . you are not a lady of the evening.”

  “I am not.”

  “The gratuity, then?”

  “I’m a waitress.”

  He stilled. “A waitress.”

  I nodded.

  “And someone gave you a castle.”

  “Yes.”

  “In exchange for soup.”

  I scowled at him. “And a sandwich.”

  He let out a big, booming laugh. “Let me guess, a woman wearing red gave it to you.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “The same way I know she gave you the key.”

  Nerves made it easy for me to steel my voice and repeat myself. “How did you know that?”

  Instead of answering, he turned away and poured himself a glass of amber liquid from a large crystal decanter on a nearby sideboard. A brief smile played across his lips as he lifted the glass into the air and murmured, “Giving a castle to a waitress as a tip—fairly inventive.”

  He downed the scotch and poured himself another, without offering me one. After a sip, he leaned back against the sideboard, swirling the glass lazily in his hand. In the candlelight the scar slashing through his eyebrow appeared stark and severe.

  “How did you know that the woman who gave me the key was wearing red?” I said, clenching my hands by my side.

  The stranger grinned, but it was not a grin of mirth. His eyes bored into me. “Lucky guess?”

  Before I could argue, he cut me off. It was like a switch had been thrown, and whereas before he’d begun to soften, he’d once again turned cold and immovable.

  “You should leave here. Now.”

  Maybe he was right. But I wasn’t going anywhere. “No.”

  He turned on me, gray eyes flashing. “You can’t imagine where you are. What has brought you here. You don’t belong here.”

  “You don’t know that,” I said.

  “I know you’re lost,” he spat out. “I know you have traveled an immense distance—farther than you’ve ever gone in your life because you’re afraid of where you’ve been and even more afraid of where you are going. And I know it never occurred to you that where you were going might be worse. That here might be worse.”

  His words startled me, and I hated him then, this dark, handsome stranger in his stupid gothic castle.

  My stupid gothic castle.

  He didn’t seem to care, turning away. “You took the last ferry to the coldest, dreariest place in Scotland, Emily—to an isle at the end of the earth—and you thought that you’d find rainbows and faeries on the banks of the North Sea, all because some red-dressed bitch whispered a promise that offered you escape from the life you lived.” He drank, finishing the scotch and setting the glass down next to the castle deed before he added, “Following whispered promises isn’t brave adventure. It’s sheer idiocy.”

  For a moment the room was silent. In the distance came the far-off sound of something howling—a dog baying for its master. The sound brought the stranger’s attention back to me, the mask dropped from his face. His eyes glistened with something familiar.

  Pain.

  “You should leave this place and never come back.”

  Cold raced up my spine. “How do you know my name?”

  In two steps he was in front of me, his hand held out as though to cup my cheek but his fingers never quite reaching me. “Oh, Emily . . .” he whispered.

  Did he think it was a game? That I was a pawn, willing to be maneuvered?

  No. I was through being maneuvered. And this man was obviously everything that was wrong in my life. But I had a key and a deed, and if he wanted some fight, he’d get it. I’d get a lawyer. I’d fight for this.

  Like I’d never fought before.

  “ . . . You fall for it every time.”

  The words stung. I wanted to throw something at him. Wanted to clear the desk in a single dramatic gesture, sending his ordered papers and pens to the floor. Wanted to plant the ax that was still in my hand into the center of the heavy mahogany, through deed and blotter and centuries-old wood.

  But I didn’t. Instead I lifted my deed from the desk, folded it carefully, placed it into my back pocket, and said, “I’ll take idiocy over isolation any day.”

  I stormed from the room, leaving the ax and the man.

  I’d just made it to the front door when he caught up with me. “Stop,” he said, as though he’d never had to make a request in his life.

  I yanked open the heavy oak and stepped into the rain that had blossomed in the minutes since I’d entered the castle. His hand closed around my arm. “Where are you going?”

  Without bothering to answer, I wrenched free and stormed down the path marked by poplars and willows toward the boat landing.

  “The ferry won’t be back tonight.”

  I kept walking.

  “The castle is the only thing on the island!” he called out.

  The rain intensified. I turned back. “What?”

  He emerged from the fog, inches from me. “The island is all deeded to the castle.”

  I blinked. “So you’re the only one here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nowhere else to stay?”

  “No.”

  A gust of icy wind whipped around us, my hair coming loose from its moorings and whipping my face like a harsh, stinging lash. “Where am I supposed to sleep?”

  He looked as furious as I felt. “I think the better question is where are you going to sleep.”

  “Not with you.”

  “I do not recall inviting you.”

  I narrowed my gaze. “A good thing, too. I wouldn’t if we were the last two peop
le on earth.”

  He leaned in close enough that I could feel the warmth of his breath against my lips. “If I could do so, I would leave you out here to spend the night with the wolves and the rain. Maybe that way, you’d resolve to leave here forever.”

  Something lodged in my throat—fear perhaps. Because I didn’t think he was joking. A shiver passed through me at how callous this man could be, if he wanted to.

  And I was alone with him. Great.

  He turned away and headed back through the fog, which seemed to have thickened in the mere minutes that we’d been outside. The rain began in earnest now, and that’s what pushed me over the edge; I’d trade my pride to be warm and dry. I had to follow the godforsaken man or get lost on this godforsaken island in this godforsaken weather.

  What an idiot I was.

  Once we were back inside the castle, the door tightly closed, he lifted the candlestick from a nearby table and started up the large winding staircase toward the upper levels.

  I didn’t follow, watching him go, taking light and warmth with him, until he spoke again, the heavy, dark words falling down toward me. “Do you want a bed? Or not?”

  Like that, I was bone tired, as though the word bed were all it took to make me ache for sleep. It filled me with a desperate desire for rest. For peace. And like a stray animal, I followed him, desperate for the promise in the words, even as I hated myself for giving in to him.

  Even as I hated him for having power over me.

  For making me need.

  I STARED AT the ceiling, my eyes burning from lack of sleep. Wind pummeled against the castle, howling almost as though it were otherworldly. Of course it was storming. As if this night and this place weren’t foreboding enough already. I snuggled deeper under the covers of my bed, but that did nothing to block out the flashes of lightning.

  My jaw ached from clenching my teeth, maybe from the storm, maybe from the man . . . but every muscle tense, waiting for the next clap of thunder. For another wave of fury thinking of his words—of his insults. Whispered promises. Silly dreams.

  He was keeping me from sleep. He, who claimed the castle belonged to him, and who looked so much like he belonged to it.

  He, who’d laughed when I’d told him about the deed and the diner.