I slurped at my soup, nodding. I still felt uncomfortable, but I supposed I could understand what Riley was saying.
“Anyway,” said Riley. “I hope it’s not… a problem for you. Are you… offended?” He looked at Logan.
Logan choked on his soup.
“Sorry,” said Riley. “Not to put you on the spot.”
“We’re just not used to all this formality,” I said.
“Yes, last breath of a dying era and all that,” said Riley. “This may be one of the last suppers served in this room.”
“You won’t be staying on here, then?” said Naelen. “I know you said you had a home up north.”
“Yes, I’ll be selling,” said Riley, “as I soon as I get this place cleared out. Honestly, the gargoyles have approached me with an offer for the place, and I’m seriously considering that. I think it’s more their home than mine.” He ate some soup, looking around. “My father was eccentric, and towards the end, he started to really lose it. He would never leave the house, and he became more and more frightened of losing his things. He collected more and more junk. In the end, I’m not sure if he didn’t care more about all those trinkets than anything else on earth.” He sighed. “But that’s neither here nor there. Enough about me. Let’s talk about you. What sort of business did you say you were in?”
“We, um, solve magical problems,” said Naelen.
“Oh, really? How exciting. And so you’d be using this cup to right wrongs and set things back on course?” said Riley.
“Sure,” said Logan. “Kill bad guys, that kind of thing.”
Riley winced. “I hope you aren’t implying anything by that.”
“Of course not,” I said, giving Logan a look.
“I’m not a bad guy,” said Riley.
Logan smiled, but maybe his smile was too wide. “Of course not. I didn’t mean to suggest anything.”
“Well, you’ll find your cup soon,” said Riley.
“Hopefully,” said Logan.
* * *
The rooms we’d been given to sleep in seemed to have been given a quick but thorough cleaning. New sheets were on the beds and everything seemed tidy, even if the atmosphere up here was just as gloomy as everywhere else in the house.
“You get the feeling that the place is going to split in two and fall into the tarn like the house of Usher?” said Logan. He was looking around my bedroom, making sure everything was okay.
“What’s a tarn?” I said.
“You don’t remember that?” he said. “In English class in middle school? It’s a story by Edgar Allan Poe.”
“Creepy story then,” I said. “Sorry. Don’t remember. And I don’t need you to check out my room. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.” I had positioned my bow and arrows right next to my bed. If anything happened in the middle of the night, I’d stop it.
“Just want to make sure,” said Logan. “This whole place makes me feel…”
“Creeped out?” I said.
He shrugged.
“You okay with the gargoyles?” I said. “That’s got to be weird for you.”
He wriggled his shoulders, making a face. “Yeah, weird is putting it mildly. I know that they’re paid now, and it’s not the same, but I guess I’m having trouble believing that they all voluntarily stuck around. Who stays in a place like this willingly? Who wants to clean some rich mage’s house and cook his meals and wash his clothes for a living?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe they were frightened of going out into the world. Maybe this was all they knew.”
“Oh, right,” he said. “Defend the rich guy. You’ve got a soft spot in your heart for men with money, right?”
“That’s not fair,” I said.
“Sorry.” His jaw twitched. “Guess I’m just on edge.” He leaned against the wardrobe in my room, a big wooden thing with carvings of snarling wolves at the corners. He was right. This place was creepy. “But your room seems okay.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You staying?”
“I don’t think it’s my night,” said Logan. “Besides, we’re guests in this house. Should we be…?”
“Maybe that’s rude,” I said. “Kind of makes it more Rocky Horror Picture Show than Edgar Allan Poe, though.”
Logan wrinkled his nose. “I don’t think I ever saw that.”
“No?” I said. “Well, you should. After we get out of here, we’ll watch it. You can be in antici…” I waited. “Pation for it.”
He hadn’t seen the movie, though, so he didn’t get it. “Yeah, okay, whatever.” He crossed the room and gave me a kiss.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed my body against his. “Maybe I should come make sure your room’s safe too.”
He chuckled, low in his throat. “I’ll be all right, but thanks for the offer.”
I didn’t end up walking him to his room. I only walked him to the door. He had said that it wasn’t his night, and I guessed that since we’d slept in the same bed the night before, that meant it was Naelen’s night. But the door to Naelen’s room was shut tight. I watched Logan disappear into his room, and I wondered about going to Naelen’s room.
In the end, though, I thought maybe it was rude to have sex under a stranger’s roof, so I shut my door.
That was when I noticed that there were gouge marks on the inside of it.
I stepped back from the door to take it in. They were all over the side of the door, mostly concentrated near the doorknob, but also reaching up high enough that they could have conceivably been as high as someone about my height could reach. It looked to me like someone had tried to claw their way out of this room. Someone had been sealed inside.
Shivering, I took several more steps back from the door. I couldn’t stop staring at those gouge marks. How hard did you have to press with human fingernails to make marks like that in the wood?
I decided to go down the hall to the bathroom. I padded down there, and I hesitated first outside Naelen’s room and then outside Logan’s.
But I didn’t knock on either. What was I supposed to say? I think someone was locked in my room once, and it’s making me freaked out? I wasn’t that kind of girl. I didn’t hide my face and scream and beg to be kept safe.
I went back into my room, determined not to look at the door.
Instead, I got into bed, pulling the covers up to my chin. And then I forced myself to turn off the light beside my bed.
But I couldn’t close my eyes.
In the darkness, I could make out the shadowy forms of everything in my room. The wardrobe, which loomed large and ominous, the bureau, and the foot of the bed. The whole room seemed far too small.
I thought about the person locked in the room.
I had the urge to get up out of bed and open the door.
But no. Because if I did that, anything could get in.
Not that there was anything out there to get in. I was being stupid. I hated being afraid. It was irrational. Sure, there was a time and place where fear put me on my toes—like when I was hunting rogue dragons. But fear in a place where I was safe? Just a pain.
I rolled over in bed and pounded my pillow. I was going to sleep now.
A noise overhead.
Footsteps.
I looked above my head. This was the highest floor, wasn’t it? This was where we’d been going through all the junk today, and there hadn’t been anything higher than this floor, at least not that I knew of.
The ceiling above me creaked, as if someone was standing over it, rocking back and forth.
Maybe there was an attic up there. And maybe Riley was up there working on going through more junk. Maybe he couldn’t sleep.
Sure. Or maybe there was something else up there. Something with dark claws and red eyes, something with sharp teeth. Something that was going to rip through the ceiling and open its jaws wide before it bit pieces off me as I screamed.
I rolled over again. Get a grip, Clarke, I told myself.
Reaching over the side of the bed, I grabbed my bow and arrows. I pulled them into bed with me and wrapped my arms around them, hugging them. I forced myself to close my eyes.
I heard footsteps again.
This time, though, they weren’t coming from overhead, but from outside the door.
My heart started to race.
It had come downstairs for me. It knew I was down here.
I sat up in bed, tugging out three arrows and notching one in my bow. I pulled back the string and glared at the door. Waiting.
It was quiet. There was no noise except the harsh sound of my rapid breath.
Still, I waited, tense and ready.
The doorknob turned.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Oh my God, Naelen, I almost put an arrow in you.” I was out of bed, my body pumped full of adrenaline. “I told you to knock.”
“Your light was out,” he said. “I was checking to see if you were awake.”
“Well, I am,” I said.
“Good,” he said, and he shut the door. “I would have come in earlier, but I wasn’t sure if I should. We are on a job and everything.”
I drew in a shaky breath. “I don’t like this house,” I said, and I realized I was whispering. It was a forceful whisper, but it was too dark for full voices.
“It’s just a house.” He was whispering too.
“I know, but it’s kind of ominous.”
He closed the distance between us. He ran his fingertips through my hair. “It’s my night.”
“We’re on a job,” I said.
“Yeah, I don’t think I care. That’s why I’m here.”
“You don’t think it’s kind of rude to get it on in some guy’s house?”
“No one will hear,” he said and he kissed me.
I opened my mouth to him. My heart was still racing, and my body was still feeling the aftershocks of the adrenaline that was coursing through me. It made me feel sensitive. All the blood in my body seemed to be streaming to all the wrong places. “Naelen,” I said against his mouth.
He pulled back. “What?”
“I don’t know if we should do this.”
“We definitely should.” He was wearing a thin white t-shirt over a pair of boxer shorts.
I reached out and touched his arm, ran a finger around the place where his shirt sleeve ended.
He shut his eyes for a brief second. When he opened them, they were half-lidded. He kissed me again. His hands were under my pajama shirt.
I gasped.
“It’s my night,” he whispered in my ear. “And you’re mine.”
The words went through me like a jolt, and my whole body convulsed. I grasped handfuls of his shirt and peeled it up, revealing his belly, his pecks. I put my mouth to his warm, smooth skin.
He made a strangled noise in the back of his throat. “Mine,” he said again.
I peeled his shirt off, kissing him in the places I uncovered.
He threw his shirt onto the floor. Pushed me back onto my bed. He covered my body with his own. “Mine, mine, mine,” he said in a dark voice.
I kissed him.
He yanked my pajama shirt over my head. “Say it, Clarke.”
I just moaned.
He kissed me between my breasts. “Whose are you?”
“Yours,” I whispered. “I’m yours.”
He shuddered against me. “Say it again,” he demanded. “Say my name.”
“Naelen,” I said. “I’m Naelen’s.”
He grunted. “Again. Keep saying it.”
And I whispered it like a litany, over and over, as he found his way back into me, and I found my way back into him, and we became us again.
* * *
But afterward, I couldn’t sleep, and it wasn’t only because I wasn’t sure what to make of all of that. I felt guilty about what I’d said, because it wasn’t exactly true. I wasn’t Naelen’s. I belonged to him, I felt like I belonged to him, but I didn’t belong only to him. There was Logan, and how could I be doing this to them?
My whole life, I had never been one of those girls who was obsessed with sex. Sure, I thought about it, and sure, when I didn’t get any for a while, I got as frustrated as anyone else. But that was why I killed dragons. Taking out my aggression with my bow channeled all my frustrated sensual energy in productive ways. I thought sex was a good thing, but that it was best enjoyed in a certain way, and that was between two people in a committed relationship. End of story. That was who I was.
Hell, I had resisted Naelen for so long because I was sure that he wanted to transgress on my idea of how sex and relationships were supposed to work.
But never in my wildest dreams had I thought he would have led me here.
And he hadn’t, not really. Cunningham had done this to us. It all made sense—at least sort of. I knew that what had happened between us in that room had twisted me up, messed me all up inside my head and my body. And I knew it must have done the same thing to the guys as well. Maybe we were just screwed up enough that this was the only solution to an impossible situation. And maybe going through an experience like that, no matter how perverse, had united us in some awful way. So maybe we needed each other.
But this wasn’t me.
I wasn’t this kind of girl.
In the room, in some ways, it was easier. It was all in the open. Anything I did with one of them was witnessed by the other. But this? How did I stop feeling like having sex with Naelen wasn’t cheating on Logan or vice versa. And why, why, why was sex with Naelen so different than sex with Logan? Did that mean something?
But I couldn’t leave either one of them. I couldn’t leave Logan on his own. He needed me. He loved me, and he’d always loved me.
And Naelen? I could feel his desperation every time he touched me. He made love to me like a man dying of thirst and I was what quenched him. Shitty thing was, it made me hot to see him that desperate. Anyway, there was no way I could leave him.
I couldn’t quell the thoughts.
So, eventually, I pushed aside the covers and left him there, sleeping in the bed. Quietly, I fished up my pajamas and put each piece on. And then I tiptoed over to the door and eased it open.
It groaned a little on its hinges.
I looked back at Naelen.
He stirred in his sleep.
I held my breath.
But then his own breath steadied.
I pushed through the door and out into the hallway.
Now that I wasn’t feeling irrationally frightened, I wondered if there really was an attic above us. I walked all the way down to the end of the wing and tried all the doors. There were two other bedrooms down here, but they were empty. They smelled sort of musty inside as well, as if they hadn’t been used in a while. It made me appreciate how clean our own rooms had been.
I headed down to the other end of the wing. I opened a door and the heat of the night hit me. I was leaving the air-conditioned wing.
Now, I was back in the rooms we’d been going through, looking for the cup. I peered inside each one. It was dark now, and they were only full of dark piles of stuff and stacks of shadowy boxes.
But at the end of the hallway, I pushed open a door that didn’t lead to a cluttered room. Instead, it led to a set of very narrow, steep steps. I clutched the wall—there was no railing—and began to climb them.
As I did, the air seemed to get mustier and even hotter still. Sweat broke out on my back, under my pajamas. It broke out on my forehead too. I wiped at it with the back of my hand.
And then I came to the top of the stairs.
I turned a corner and there was a huge window, spilling moonlight inside. The moonlight illuminated a painting that was propped against the wall.
I peered at the painting. In it, a man and a woman stood against the sunrise. The woman’s hair was caught by the wind, blown and tumbled to the side, just as was the skirt of her black dress. They weren’t pretty people, not exactly, but they were magnetic. Severe, but charismatic
.
The woman was holding a golden cup aloft in one hand.
Was that the cup?
“What are you doing here?” boomed a voice.
I started, jumping so high that I almost fell around the corner and tumbled down the steps.
It was Frederick the gargoyle butler. He hadn’t come from the steps, though, not from behind me, but from deeper into the attic of the house.
“I, um, couldn’t sleep,” I said in a squeaky voice. “Just walking around and exploring a bit.”
“Don’t explore,” said Frederick. “This part of the house is off limits.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, I’m sorry.”
Frederick pointed to the stairs, expressionless. “Go.”
I pointed at the painting. “Do you know anything about—”
“Go.”
I nodded once. “Okay, sure. I’m going. Sorry again.”
* * *
I awoke the next morning to Naelen kissing me, and I didn’t put up much resistance to the idea of making love to him again. It was less frenzied than our past two couplings, sweeter and warmer, and it made me feel even closer to him.
After, I lay in his arms and I felt ridiculously happy. “I like waking up with you,” I murmured.
He kissed my nose. “Me too.”
“We never really did this before,” I said, wriggling against him, feeling loose and sated and pleased. “This is the first time waking up with you on our own terms.”
He grinned and started kissing me again.
I could have got caught up in it again. I still wanted him. Part of me wondered if I’d ever stop wanting him.
But he stopped himself. “I should probably save some energy to find the damned cup, shouldn’t I?”
I sighed. “I guess so.”
He chuckled, crawling out of the bed. “I could definitely get used to this.”
I lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling. “Me too.”
There was only one bathroom with one shower at the end of the hallway, so we took turns showering. Naelen let me shower first and then he took one—even though he seriously took longer in the shower than me.
Anyway, at that point, figuring that everyone else was awake and moving around, we went out into the other part of the wing, where we’d been searching for the cup. But no one was out there. All the rooms were empty.
Ashes (The Slayer Chronicles Book 3) Page 6