Please, please don't let him hurt me.
The ground disappeared from beneath her feet and she screamed, only to have it return with a heavy thud beneath her feet that seemed to shake the very walls of the house. Just when she thought she was going to be sick or faint or both, he stopped.
With a shaking hand, she reached out and felt mottled wallpaper scant inches from her face. Her fingers slid down and hit hard, polished metal.
A door.
He'd led her to a door.
Right into a door, almost.
Pure, dumb shock settled over her like fog. She fell to her knees when her legs gave out, cradling her stomach. “You…” You could have killed me, is what she almost said until she realized that the hand around hers was gone.
Besides; it wasn't anything he didn't know already.
Chapter Ten
Wild
The black- and white-clad teens filed awkwardly into the room as they waited for their host, and Lisa had the disconcerting feeling that she was back in grade school, awaiting a reprimand from a teacher. James went to the buffet table to pour himself a drink, undoubtedly wishing there was alcohol. There was a brief scramble for chairs.
She found herself seated off to the side, on the fringe, next to the heavier of the two boys on the white team. James was three seats down, flanked by Blake and Charlie. Jason sat on the other side of the larger boy, trying to catch her eye. Since the chairs were arranged in a U-shaped formation, she could ignore him easily—especially since her friends were nearly parallel to her.
Blake was looking at her with a quizzical, owlish expression. She arched her own eyebrow in return before turning her attention to James, who was staring sullenly at the wall, as if trying to burn holes through the plaster. He was gripping his plastic so hard that it let out a crinkle of protest every now and then. Indulging in a private hissy fit. And once he checks into the grouch motel, he doesn't check out.
Val could sometimes coax him out of it. Sometimes. But Val wasn't here. And neither was GM. I wonder if there's a connection, Lisa thought idly. Even if there wasn't, James was insecure enough that he might imagine that there was.
“James!” He didn't appear to hear. Or maybe he was ignoring her. Asshole. Charlie shot her a glare. “James!”
James started. “What?” If he had been ignoring her, he was hiding it well.
“Where's Val?”
His face creased into a sulky pout. He shrugged.
“You don't know?”
How could he not know? More importantly, why didn't he know? James knew better than anyone else how high-strung that girl was. Being lost in a dark and dusty manor home was not exactly the best situation for someone in that kind of mindset to be in.
And why, she wondered, is he sitting so close to Charlie? His pants were almost brushing her leg.
“I'm not her keeper.”
I can see that. “So you didn't find her,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm.
“I did.” He looked her squarely in the eye. “Last I saw, she seemed to prefer GM's company to mine.”
Charlie stiffened. James—the idiot—didn't notice. Aware that nearly everyone in the room was looking at them now, Lisa growled, “What are you talking about?”
“I found her first so she got put into penalty round. They seemed pretty cozy,” he said sourly.
“I knew it,” Charlie muttered to herself. “Bitch.”
“You are an idiot,” Lisa said. “She's afraid of him. You didn't see? God, James, how could you do that to her?”
“Hey!” James held up his hands. “I tried to bail her out of it, but, you know.”
“No, I don't know. How hard did you try? Hard as in, 'not very?'”
Red crept into his cheeks. He said nothing. Jason laughed meanly; both Lisa and James ignored him.
“You threw her to the wolves because GM threatened to dock you points, didn't you?”
“Shut up.”
“You did!” Lisa said. “I knew it. What is it with you jock-types and going to pieces in front of authority figures? Are you afraid of him, too?”
“I'm not afraid of him!”
“Well, you could have fooled me.”
“That's enough,” James said in a low voice. “I swear to God—”
She laughed incredulously. “You are. You are, aren't you? Why else would you get all butt-hurt?”
James was saved from responding as the heavy parlor door creaked open. Six heads turned in that direction. GM walked into the room, looking rather pleased with himself; his cheeks were tinged with a faint but distinct blush and his breathing was quick and light—almost as if he'd been running. Or participating in some other kind of exertion, Lisa thought, as he caught his breath.
There was still no sign of Val.
He wouldn't—
“Well,” GM said at last, looking at each of them in turn, though his eyes seemed to linger when they met hers. “How did you find the first round?”
He might.
“Long?” Blake ventured. “How much time did it take?”
“An hour.”
She remembered with resentment those seemingly endless minutes she'd spent crouched behind the fake rubber plant. Smears of dust were still evident on her dress, try as she might to brush it off. Her knees were still sore.
An hour.
Where had Blake been hiding? James hadn't even found him; apart from GM, he'd been the last to enter the room, only coming out of hiding when he heard their footsteps on the floorboards.
“Nobody found me,” Charlie pouted.
GM turned one of the chairs around. The wooden legs hit the floor with a crack that made them jump. “The hunter filled his role well.” He straddled the seat, folding his arms over the back. “However, this next game will be different in both theme and mode, which should please those who weren't left…” he paused, appearing to taste the word, “satisfied.”
That prompted Lisa to jump in with, “Where's Val?”
“Valerian is sitting out this round.” He turned his full attention on her and smiled charmingly, but there was a cold edge to it that set her on her guard. It was the smile of a man who knew the full measure of his strengths and was not afraid to abuse them. “She'll rejoin us for the next.”
“Where?” Lisa repeated, with the slightest bit of emphasis.
He glanced at James and his smile grew enigmatic, and slightly taunting. “I couldn't say.”
“You see? He doesn't know, Lisa,” Charlie said. “Drop it already.”
“He didn't say he didn't know,” Lisa said darkly. “He said he wasn't going to tell us.”
The expression on his face nearly made her shiver; it was flat with dislike, and yet filled with a kind of appraisal. And then it was gone, making her wonder if she had seen anything at all. But then, without another word, GM slipped his hand into his pocket, producing what appeared to be a small plastic toy. She flinched in her chair when the toy whizzed towards her face, and cried out, “Jesus!” even as it clattered harmlessly at her feet.
There was a very long silence.
Lisa glanced at GM, not quite able to wrap her mind around what had just happened. He tilted his head, his eyes flicking from her to the toy, as if saying, “Go on.”
She pulled up the bodice of her dress before bending to retrieve it, aware of the eyes watching her. He threw it at me.
The toy turned out to be a chess piece: a white pawn. She frowned. A piece of binder paper was furled up inside the hollow at the bottom. She pulled it out curiously, shooting another look at GM as she did so. The writing was cramped but legible, written in expensive, gleaming ink.
“Time,” she read. “Time for what? What is this?”
“I have hidden thirty-one chess pieces somewhere inside this house. Each of them contains a clue that, when assembled, will spell out a message. The importance of it will be crucial—though you won't see why until much, much later in the game.” And he smiled again. At her.
“So it's like a scavenger hunt?” James asked warily.
It was a reasonable enough question, but it made GM throw back his head and laugh. “Exactly.”
▪▫▪▫▪▫▪
Val drew in a deep breath and opened the door.
She wasn't sure what she had been expecting—another morbid museum of the macabre, perhaps. After that closet, and the waltz in the dark, nothing would have surprised her.
The room was lit, but dimly. A worn desk that had seen better days was the focal point of the room. It had a computer, though the monitor and the keyboard were both yellowed from age. There were a few oil paintings on the wall, as well, but none of them had human subjects.
Déjà vu swooped down on her like a large bird of pray with midnight wings. She was reminded of a different room, four years in the past, where she had first discovered the depths of a young man's twisted obsession in a leather-bound journal inside an unlocked drawer.
This isn't the way it was before.
But things were going to be different this time. He had said so himself.
She bent to examine the contents of a nearby bookshelf. Charles Darwin, Niccolo Machiavelli, and the Marquis de Sade were included among the authors. Those, she remembered from before. But they seemed out of place here, more like props.
She bit her lip, staring at a three-dimensional case that held some butterflies. Butterflies of Europe. Poor things. She stared at them sadly. They reminded her—of something unpleasant.
(Tell me you belong to me)
Her hand seemed to touch her throat of its own accord. She swallowed nervously, looking around, wondering if this was another display meant to frighten her out of her wits. If he was here, cloaked in shadow, watching her, waiting for the perfect moment to catch her off-guard.
He was good at that. He always had been.
A draft blew in and she spun to face the door, her heart fluttering in her throat so quickly that she thought she might choke. But the doorway was as empty as it had been when she came in.
Or is it?
She looked away from the butterflies as nausea made her stomach roil like a witch's brew. Those had been in his house the first time. Goddamn you, she thought, feeling tears jump to her eyes. What are you doing to me?
She could almost imagine the response, dark and smooth as velvet. What did you have in mind?
Val fell to her knees, clasping her hands as though in prayer. She couldn't do this. Not again. The worst part was, she couldn't even tell anyone—because if she did…if she did…he would do something awful to Blake, Lisa, or James. He'd said as much from before, when he asked her oh-so-casually if she'd sacrifice herself for her friends' sake.
(you would, wouldn't you?)
“No!” she gasped, stumbling to her feet. She turned wild eyes on the bookcase and hurled the books into the corridor, half-expecting to hear a hushed gasp of pain.
But no one was there.
She was alone.
Mostly alone.
His kiss still burned her lips. His voice still whispered in her mind. And all she could think was, He doesn't kiss like James. James wasn't that forceful or that thorough. James couldn't paralyze her with a glance. James didn't make her feel like she was standing with her back to an abyss. She wished James was here. Jerky behavior or no, she wanted to curl up in his arms and disappear.
Well, you can't. So suck it up—unless you want to wait here…for him. Val exhaled shakily, turning away from the bookshelf. “Right, then,” she whispered. “Suck it up it is.”
She pushed the computer's power button. Nothing happened. She peered over the top of the monitor and immediately saw why; the computer's back had been pried off, roughly, probably with a blunt instrument judging by the deep gouges in the casing. Wires and chips and glinting pieces of metal spilled out. The computer had been gutted.
Rain spattered against the shuttered windows, sounding like the pattering of tiny feet and she jumped, throwing a sharp glance in the direction of the window.
It was a dark and stormy night.
She shivered again and turned to go, ready to run if need be, but something about the keyboard gave her pause.
What's that?
Nestled in the groove between the spacebar and the letters was a black queen from a chess set. Not the nice one from his bedroom, but a cheap plastic replica.
(The queen is arguably the most powerful piece in the game)
With a trembling hand, she picked it up. It was slightly warm to the touch. A piece of paper was wadded up in the bottom, folded several times, reminding her of the secret notes she used to pass along to her friends in grade school. There was no question who had written this note. The handwriting was the same as that which had been on the envelope she got in the mail.
A single word was printed in the center of the wrinkled paper. Just one word, but it caused frost to glaze over her skin, crystallizing the air in her lungs and stopping her heart, making her freeze from the outside, in.
The word read: “dangerous.”
▪▫▪▫▪▫▪
Deep and unrestrained, GM had the type of laugh that Lisa would have found attractive under ordinary circumstances; there was a bit of the wild in it. But these were not ordinary circumstances and in this present context, it chilled her to the bone.
“What's so funny?” James demanded.
Still chuckling, he said, “You wouldn't understand.”
But Lisa thought she might. Scavenger hunt. It was a play on words. Predators again. Blake nudged her and her thoughts dissipated like smoke. “Yes?” She glared at him. “What is it?”
“Are you all right?”
“Why wouldn't I be?”
A faint, pinkish blush tinged his cheeks as he nodded down at the chess piece, still in her hand. She had been gripping the pawn so tightly that it had left a reddish marking in her palm. “He, uh, threw that at you pretty hard.”
“Well, he missed.”
“Not if it was a warning shot,” he said quietly.
“Warning shot?” She snorted. “Don't be ridiculous. He overthrew.”
“That's not what Val seemed to think.”
Lisa frowned. “You talked to her? When?”
“Earlier. Before the game.”
She waited for him to go on, but he didn't elaborate. That made sense if it was something he didn't want GM to hear since he was still in the room. She looked away, then back. Blake was looking at her just as intently, prompting her to say, “What?”
His face reddened further, the flush spreading to his ears and nose. “Uh. Your dress…it doesn't have any pockets. Do you want me to hold that for you?”
What does he have to be so nice for? Why can't he get mad like a normal person? Lisa gave him the pawn, feeling both sheepish and spiteful as she watched it disappear into the pocket of his white slacks. I wonder what he wants from me.
“Thanks.”
“Well.” GM cleared his throat. “I apologize for keeping you all...hanging. I'm sure you all are quite eager to begin the next round.”
Because the last game had just been so thrilling she could barely reign herself in. First hide and seek, now a scavenger hunt. What was next? Musical chairs? Lisa scowled. If he decided to initiate a creepy version of Duck, Duck, Goose, she was out of here.
Maybe they should leave anyway. Jason was a creep and she trusted GM about as far as she could throw him.
As soon as we find Val, we'll go.
“I have a question.” The boy next to her—Brent, she remembered—said, throwing up his arm.
GM leaned forward on the chair, resting his chin on his folded arms. “Shoot,” he said lazily.
“Is there one piece per room? Or do some rooms have more than one chess piece?”
Good question.
“This house does not have thirty-one rooms. Do the math.”
Lisa sighed loudly.
“Any other questions?” GM paused a beat. “No? Excellent.”
He swung his legs
off the chair. His black boots—the only other article of clothing that wasn't white, apart from his incongruously dark shirt—echoed dully as he walked over to the solid oak door, pulling it open with a screech of rusted hinges that made Lisa wince. He leaned back against the door, keeping it from swinging shut.
Holding the door open. Lisa stood up slowly, as if in a dream. What a gentleman.
Except … with his current position, he was blocking the entryway, leaving only the barest amount of space for her to get by. She was the last one in the room. How had that happened? And had he been so much of an obstruction for the other players? She thought not.
“Where's your chess piece?” GM inquired, neatly stepping into her path as she attempted to squeeze by, tilting his head in a vaguely feline gesture.
Lisa was startled into responding, “I gave it to Blake.”
GM nodded absently, settling back against the door again.
A heady scent surrounded him, too refined to be cologne, and very familiar. Earthy, somehow. God. He was even more intimidating up close, like some kind of wild animal. “Why did you throw it at me?”
“You were the closest.”
“What? No, I wasn't.” Lisa hiked her chin up a notch. “Charlie was. She was sitting right in front of you. I'm not even on your team.”
“I try to stay impartial.”
“Bullshit. I think you're hiding something.”
That made him laugh. Not the free laugh, from before, but a deprecating one that Lisa found particularly offensive. “Forthright, aren't you? What on earth gave you that impression?”
She didn't let herself rise to the bait. “I'm going to find out what it is. It has something to do with why you put Val in penalty round, doesn't it?”
He frowned. She half-expected him to lunge at her and flinched when he raised his hand to push his errant bangs out of his eyes. “You're very protective of her.”
“Only when I have to be.”
“And you think she's in danger…from me?”
“I know that she's afraid of you. I don't know why. Maybe there isn't a reason. Maybe you did nothing to her. But I'm telling you to back off right now. She has a boyfriend,” Lisa said bluntly.
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