Now I knew how Dagen felt. It sucked.
“Is there a way to bring him back?” I asked, feeling whatever hope I had about my plan fading with each passing second. This…it couldn’t be the end. Not for Lucien. Not for me. Not for all of us.
God, I wanted to cry, but I’d already lost it before. I couldn’t lose it again. Lucien had been dead once before my eyes; at least there were no gashes in his stomach tonight. At least there was a way for us to bring him back. Maybe.
But what if the cost of bringing him back was me forfeiting all that I had left to this place? Would I do it? Would I hand over my body and soul just for the chance of Lucien coming back? After all, if this place truly was some kind of Hellmouth, misery and agony seemed to be its thing. Knowing I’d given myself to this place and Lucien still being frozen in time would be the worst kind of punishment there was.
Again, Victor said, “I’m not sure. I’ve never…I didn’t know this could happen to him.” To me, he asked, “Why are you here?”
I shrugged. “I had an idea, but…”
“An idea for what?”
“Something we could try to…no, you know what? It’s stupid, and it’s not going to work.” I shook my head, biting my lower lip. Staring at Lucien’s still body, I wondered if this was how he felt when I was knocked out, locked in a daydream with the men as children and Victor.
“We do lack ideas right now,” Victor told me, moving closer. He looked as if he wanted to touch me, to hold me and hide me from the terrors of this place—which truly seemed to be never-ending—but he held back. “If you have an idea, tell me. Even though Lucien is…unresponsive, it’s no reason to stop trying.”
My heart literally hurt as I looked at Lucien’s still frame. So wide and strong, he was the picture of manliness, even while frozen. Even with his arms crossed over his wide chest and his jaw clamped shut.
“The room,” I whispered.
“The room?” Victor obviously did not know what I meant by the room, so I had to clarify.
“The Desire Room.” I turned toward Victor, memories fighting their way to the surface even though now was not the time to think about what Victor and I had done in that room. Victor and I, Lucien and I…both these Grimmstead men. “It shows us what we desire most, doesn’t it?”
Victor’s lips pursed, and he held his hands behind his back. “It does, though if you’re thinking about using it to try to turn this place’s power back around, I’m not sure it’ll work. I’ve never tried to change what I saw in that room before.” His gaze, as serious as it was, fell to my mouth, and I fought the urge to lick my lips.
“You never had a reason to,” I told him, knowing it was true. He and Lucien were content to see me, to be with me—even if the image of me in that room wasn’t real and they were only losing themselves in a copy. A copy of myself was better than nothing, especially since they’d dreamt of me forever.
So, yeah, Victor and Lucien never had a reason to try to change what they saw, but now?
Victor studied me. “You truly believe you can change what you see? No more fire?”
My face heated up at the mention of the word, of the thing I loved the most. Truth be told, with everything going on, I hadn’t even thought of it that much. Fire, what I did, how I got to be under the watchful eyes of my father. My past, my ex-boyfriend and his family. My dean’s office. Every fire I’d ever set, for whatever inane reason.
Now…I knew there would never be another fire, not unless I got out of here, not unless this thing, whatever it was, was stopped for good.
Was it even possible?
“All we can do is try,” I said.
“You’re right, of course,” he spoke quickly. “The others have never been in that room before. Perhaps if we all try, we could figure something out. I can find the others, tell them to gather downstairs. The key—”
Crap. The key. That was the foil in my plan. Lucien kept the room locked at all times, so no wandering eyes or bodies could accidentally stumble in. Made no sense how I’d wound up in there one night, but then again, this was Grimmstead. Enough said.
Maybe the door would miraculously be open once again, but that was probably too much to hope.
“I believe I might know where he keeps the key,” Victor added. “If it’s the same place I kept it.”
“Okay,” I told him. “I’ll wait here. Once everyone is ready, come get me.”
“One of them will have to remain with your body—”
“Dagen. He’s there now. Tell him…tell him we’re going to try something. Explain the plan, but say we need him to keep watch just in case.”
Victor gave a little bow of his head. “Of course.” Once he straightened, his eyes met mine. “I shall be back.”
I watched him go, my gaze dropping to the way he walked. Though he was skinnier, he moved the same way Lucien did. They both wore suits, both had brown hair and light, hazel eyes. They had the same propensity for anger and violence. Though they did not get along, when things came to the wire they could each be counted on.
This…this was my fault, no doubt about it.
Once I was alone with Lucien, I let my gaze fall to his motionless body. My heart broke on the inside, cracking into a thousand pieces. I hated this. So, so much. “I’m sorry,” I told him in a whisper, breathing out a sigh I felt in my bones. “I never wanted this.”
But to give myself to the darkness in order to save the man I loved? Seemed a simple choice, at first, but when you really looked into it, when you realized that the darkness could take back its gift of life at any time, what was the point? I was all for choosing love above all else, but that was in a perfect world, and I knew this was anything but.
I set a hand on Lucien’s arm, squeezing gently. “I’m going to do everything I can,” I said, meaning it. Everything I could for me, everything I could for him. Everything to stick the metaphorical middle finger to this place and its unrelenting shit—forgive my swearing.
I couldn’t say how much time passed, but soon enough I was with everyone, gathered at the foot of the steps. Dagen was still upstairs, with my body. Lucien was still in his bed, comatose like a rock. Everyone else huddled around me, listening to what Victor was saying.
My plan, basically. My idea to say screw you to this place.
Ian looked tired, but at least he was awake and not drowning himself in his booze. Payne frowned as he listened to Victor, his arms folded across his chest, his white hair sticking up just above his forehead. Koda was beside me, and he kept throwing looks at me during Victor’s little speech.
Oh, yeah. No one knew about Lucien yet. Now they did, and they were rightly concerned.
“Anything we do will merely anger the house more,” Payne spoke, a vein in his forehead popping with the intensity of his demeanor. I adored seeing all of this emotion from him, loved how he was so quick to jump to my defense now. “There’s no guarantee this will work.”
“Forgive me,” Ian started, glancing to me with eyes a beautiful blue, “no, really, please forgive me because I’m about to agree with Payne. Do we know for a fact Grimmstead won’t try to get back at us for even trying this? We could be putting ourselves in a world of hurt, for what? For the chance that the room Lucien has kept to himself all these years will hold the answer?”
Koda remained quiet, but I could tell he was listening to Bram.
“We don’t have any other options at this point,” Victor stated.
I knew the guys wanted to argue, but my mind was made up. Even if we laid down and took the beating like a good dog, there was no telling that the house would stop now, that this place, whatever it was, wouldn’t get worse anyway.
“Bram agrees with her,” Koda finally broke his silence, earning himself questioning stares from the others. “He doubts it’ll work, but he doesn’t want to submit to Grimmstead. He wants to rebel.”
What a topsy-turvy day this would turn out to be, with Lucien being frozen, me being still dead, and Bram agreeing w
ith me. Would the wonders never cease?
Victor was about to say something more, but a sound low to the ground caused everyone to stop and stare. Midnight had walked in, plopping himself in the center of our huddle, his black tail puffed and flicking back and forth as his yellow eyes studied each of us.
“Midnight,” I told him, “now isn’t the time—” I stopped when I watched Midnight turn his head toward me, baring his teeth, and hissed. A deep growling sound came from the cat’s chest, and he darted out of the circle, running down the hall, where both Lucien’s office was and the room that was our destination.
“Survey suggests we follow the cat,” Ian mused, his voice dripping in sarcasm.
I held myself back from rolling my eyes, the first to trail after the angry feline. I spotted his black, fluffy tail disappearing in Lucien’s office, and as I turned inside it, I froze.
Midnight had hopped onto the top of his desk, turned itself around, and sat like the king of everything he was. The only issue here? His eyes were no longer a bright, reflective yellow. The cat’s gaze had turned an ungodly black, no color to be seen, just like my doppelganger in my dreams and the children from before. Each and every time it’d been the house speaking and acting.
Black eyes were never good.
The guys funneled into the room behind me, skidding to a stop as they spotted Midnight and his peculiar, demonic gaze.
“Okay,” Ian spoke slowly, pointing at the cat, “am I high, or does that cat have black eyes?” When Koda and Payne threw him a look, he shrugged. “What? I could be hallucinating all of you. I wouldn’t put it past me—”
“You’re not hallucinating,” Victor spoke, cautiously stepping in front of us, moving closer to the desk. The cat’s chest rose in a growl, and I couldn’t help but wonder if, all this time, it really was the cat.
Could this place have been watching us this whole time as Midnight?
No. No way.
Victor slowly moved closer to the desk, and the closer he got, the louder the cat atop it grew, until the sounds of our own breathing were blocked out by the rumbling coming from the cat’s chest. Midnight watched him with its blackened eyes, though once he started to round the desk to reach its lower drawers, the cat returned its stare to me.
Me.
As if, through its growling, I was supposed to know.
Everything that would happen from here on out was my fault.
Chapter Sixteen – Felice
Victor found the key in the lowest drawer. Midnight kept up his growling, but he did nothing else. He didn’t lunge, didn’t dart away, didn’t make any moves, even as we hurried out and closed the door behind us. None of us were stupid enough to believe that, just because the office door was closed, Midnight was trapped in there, but it was at least one barrier between us.
“That was strange,” Victor murmured, leading us to the Desire Room, to its closed doors. The old iron key sat in his hands, radiating an aura of cold. “I’ve never seen the cat possessed with the power of this house before. Actually…” His brows furrowed. “I cannot remember when Midnight first came into the picture. Has he been here forever?”
Payne was the first to speak, “You’re right. I can’t recall the first instance of the cat. Until now, I was certain he’d always been here, like us.”
“Right,” Ian mused. “Not creepy at all.”
Koda muttered under his breath, “Nothing in this house is real. Nothing.”
“Midnight aside,” Victor paused, inches from inserting the key into the room’s lock, “I believe it’s, as they say, now or never.”
I moved to stand beside him, craning my neck back to meet his eyes. Such a tall man. Such a handsome one, too. Maybe, if this worked, we could explore whatever was between us. The man had been dreaming of me for what certainly seemed to be an eternity, so it would be a lie to say there was nothing. I was just as drawn to him as I was to the others, and to Lucien.
Lucien…somehow, someway, I would help him—but first I had to help myself.
“Let me try first. I think…” I trailed off for a while, trying to figure out what to say. “I don’t know, it just feels right.” And it did—somewhere, deep inside of me, it felt right to go into the Desire Room, to let it show me what I desired most.
Until recently, it always would’ve shown me fire, but now there was too much on my mind. Now the stakes were life and death, happiness and misery. As Victor said, it really was now or never. The question was, would any of this matter in the end?
Guess we’d have to wait and see.
Victor nodded once, saying nothing as he inserted the key and turned it. Inside the door, we were able to hear the lock unbolting, the mechanics that kept the closed door from opening. Victor took a step back, and I traded places with him. With one hand flat on the wooden door, I turned and tossed a look over my shoulder, meeting the guys’ stares.
I looked at Payne, at the silent but intense expression he wore. His peculiar silver stare and that jagged scar around his neck.
I looked at Ian, at his ruffled yet cute blonde hair, sparkling blue eyes, and his smile that faded into a wince, as if the very last thing he wanted to do was watch me enter the room all by myself.
I looked at Koda, at the way those green eyes sparkled at me from under that black hair, how he stood, leaning slightly towards me, as if Bram whispered into their shared mind space that this could either be what was necessary or one of the biggest mistakes we could make.
And, lastly, I looked at Victor, at the man who I’d been so close to having and yet so far. The man I felt like I knew so much more than I did. The man who wore both a smile and a frown interchangeably. Victor was everything that encompassed this house, his touch having lingered on each of these guys and on Lucien.
As I turned my focus back on the door and the room dwelling just past it, my thoughts traveled to Lucien, to Dagen, the two men who couldn’t be here right now. The ones who were not with me, and yet they were. In my heart, in my mind, in my soul—the very thing Grimmstead wanted to take from me.
No, the thing Grimmstead wanted me to give it.
This place might have my blood, but that’s where it would stop. No more. Felice Fairday was done submitting. Now, it was time to throw the gauntlets onto the ground, play as dirty as I could.
I pushed into the room, finding it hadn’t changed a bit. Nothing at all except the red velvet chair in the center, no carpet, no hanging portraits or windows. No closets or anything; just that stupid, ugly chair gilded in gold. The door locked behind me, and I gathered my courage as I walked to the chair, sitting myself down on its plump cushion.
At least it was comfortable, I’d give it that.
I closed my eyes, giving myself to the room, allowing it to manifest whatever it would to me. Almost instantly, I felt heat prickle my arms, and I fought it.
No, there would be no more fires for me if I didn’t get out of here. If I let this place swallow me whole, there would be nothing left. To set another fire, to see licks of flames devouring anything again, I had to find out a way to beat whatever darkness radiated from downstairs, from that crack.
From the frigging Hellmouth.
The heat on my arms dissipated, and suddenly there was nothing but the cold. Ice cold air enveloped me, and I found myself quickly freezing. My body began to shake, and my mind was attacked with memories. Every single thing that had happened here, all of the truths I’d discovered, the terror I’d felt when Bram was after me in the rain, not to mention every single time I’d been with one of the guys—everything and more, all at once, jumping on my brain like it was some kind of party.
It was too much. It was way too much. My brain hurt thinking of so many different things at once, being forced to remember, with such painstaking clarity, my time here at Grimmstead.
My mind made me think of everything Victor had told me, the legends of this place, every word Lucien had ever said to me. I replayed the moments when I’d found my body, when I’d lost my
mind.
Everything, as small as the incidences were, came together to paint a grey, sorrowful picture. The picture of Grimmstead and its mysteries. Pieces that didn’t seem to fit together came and interlocked, showing me something in my head I never thought I’d see.
A possibility.
A new hope.
A way for us to get out of this God-forsaken place.
There was no telling if it would work, or if this was merely Grimmstead playing with my head and forcing me to see these things, but it was a shot in the dark I was willing to take. The guys would, too. For me, for them, for Lucien.
I was dead, but my soul was still here, and though Grimmstead wanted it, I would not hand it over on a silver platter. No, I’d do it one better.
My eyes opened, my heart about to burst. I could not hide the smile on my face as I got off the chair. The room was untouched, no fire, no apparitions, no doppelganger. Nothing but me and my excitement.
I headed to the door and unlocked it before flinging it wide open, ready to tell the guys what I’d discovered, how I could possibly find a loophole in this place’s dark desires. But as the first word left my throat, I found that the hallway just outside the door was empty.
The guys weren’t there.
Stepping out, I gazed both ways down the hall. I saw not a single soul, no other presence nearby beside my own. That wasn’t right. I knew for a fact none of them would leave me without a fight, unless, somehow, the house got to them.
And if that was the case…
I took off in a run, sprinting as fast as I could up the steps to the third floor, turning into the west wing. I reached the room where Dagen should’ve been and found an empty room, save for my body on the table. No Dagen in sight. Outside, a new day dawned, and yet, under this roof, it felt like the worst day ever.
No.
Grimmstead Academy: Defiant Rebellion Page 17