Chapter 63 Neve
SIXTY-THREE
NEVE
Iwake in a tangle of heavy, hard bodies.
But I don’t wake because of them.
Something presses at the edges of my mind. A nightmare shroud in black veil. A distant thing I need to name, but my mouth is dry with sleep, my eyes heavy with the need for more, and I can’t focus.
All I know for certain is Faust has his arm slung around me, and Sylvan is sleeping with his back pressed up to my front, and it is two days past Christmas, and soon hockey will resume.
Everything will start again. Still no classes at Drayton, but I will go to their games and cheer for them and scream when someone hurts them and maybe they will get into more fights, but all the while, something hollow will light in my chest.
Nolan.
Nolan.
Mom and I exchanged brief Christmas texts, but nothing more about him.
Nothing more about the monster in the room.
The unnamed elephant. No news, no updates from the detective, nothing but the sense of feeling returning to me because of these boys spiraled around me, and sheer terror at what it all means.
But when my breathing gets under control again and my pulse returns to a regular rhythm, I let myself feel content in this moment.
Under the high ceilings of Faust’s bedroom, the closed black curtains, the darkness still looming outside, the fan on for my comfort, the black candles now lining his dresser, the pieces of me sprinkled in this estate like one day, I might own it too…
Then there’s the business cards we designed together, the matte black ones with my name in silver, the plan to get back into coaching, and this time, I might actually know a little more of what I’m talking about.
And these two boys. Men.
Mine.
But then it hits me again. The reason I woke.
A scream. Bloodcurdling and loud, obliterating through the stone and glass of the castle. A faint shriek but I know if I heard it outside, it would nearly pierce my eardrum.
It’s Faust I wake first.
I reach for his forearm, heavy over my chest, and I dig my nails in.
“Faust,” I whisper.
He stirs.
Slowly at first, then with a jolt, as if I burned him. I see his dark eyes snap open in the dimness of his room. Only the whites, really, without my glasses, but it’s enough.
“Faust.” I say it again, swallowing past the dryness of my throat. “Someone is screaming.”
The camera flickers, then a figure is there. In the small office that houses monitors showing the only camera angles that work anymore, I take her in.
Dark hair. Pale face under the moonlight. Cream, wool trench, the belt tied tight. But it’s only her clothes that look put together. The rest of her is a mess.
“Is Sylvan here?” She hiccups the words as she scuffs one platform Mary Jane in the dirt and snow. Her voice is grainy from the camera, but we hear her perfectly.
She hugs herself and twists back and forth. In the dark light and the copse of dead winter trees weighted with snow and ice, she looks eerie. “I just want to talk to him. Frostbite, I just want to talk to you, please. Please, baby. My phone is gone. Please hear me.”
I clench my fingers into fists as I turn to look over my shoulder.
Sylvan is there. Staring at me. His hair is sticking up at all angles, his silver-blue eyes sharp, but the shadows beneath them dull.
“What did you tell her to make her believe you loved her?”
He tilts his head. “Whatever is going through your pretty mind, stop,” he whispers.
“Did you tell her you love her?” I press as Tasia whines for him, her voice breaking on a drunken sob. “When you fucked her, did you promise her forever—”
“Does that sound like something I’d do, baby girl?” He leans closer, his lips over mine. “I thought you knew me better than that.”
I shift my eyes up, to Faust, on my other side. He’s my lie detector. Our leader. The only man I’d willingly submit to.
“He’s a dick,” he says softly. It’s his attempt at levity despite the fact his tone is full of granite. “He didn’t make her any promises, North.”
Tasia screams Sylvan’s name and I clench my teeth. If she keeps that up, I’m going to drag her off this property myself.
Then she says, “You don’t want, Neve, baby. Neve is a whore! She’s a stupid, slutty whore and—”
“I’m going to kill her.” Sylvan turns on his heel and yanks open the thick door to the surveillance room. Low light pools in as Tasia continues her tirade against me, and I look to Faust again.
Somewhere in this house, Cynthia and Tye are sleeping, and if Cyn hears her, she’ll help Sylvan with the murder.
We’re all dressed; were before we left the bedroom, each of us in black sweats and hoodies. And so all Sylvan needs is his boots, and his coat.
“Why is she here?” I whisper, staring at the screen as she embarrasses herself. She must be drunk, and she’s moaning about her phone, but my understanding is she’s come from a rich family. Why haven’t they bought her a new one? Or maybe they have, but Sylvan won’t answer her.
“She wants his dick.”
I clench my teeth and cut my gaze to Faust. “And you’re okay with that?”
“No, North.” He tilts his head. “But he doesn’t want her. Because of us.”
“Us.” I repeat the word, my voice cracking.
Tasia screams Sylvan’s name on camera. I want to explode, but I don’t look at her.
“This?” Faust jerks his chin toward me. “It’s us. The three of us.”
“What happens when—”
“Shh,” he says softly, and even with space between us, I shiver at the sound from his perfect lips. “It’s us.”
Tasia moans now.
My heart thuds hard in my chest and I see red inside my head.
Faust lifts a brow. “You gonna let her touch him?”
“You want me to chase him?”
He lifts one massive shoulder in a shrug. “You know I’ll be right behind you.”
But before I can move, Tasia’s yapping stops. Unsettled silence fills the room.
Slowly, I turn in the swivel chair.
Tasia screams at the exact moment a shadowed figure yanks her out of frame, toward the direction of the road.
Sylvan wouldn’t have come from that way. It can’t be him.
Which means he’s going to be headed right toward the attacker.
I don’t think. I’m on my feet and running, and I hear Faust close at my back.
The air is so cold, it shoots straight through to my bones.
My black winter coat is on, leather gloves, toque, fur-lined boots.
But it doesn’t stop the chill rattling underneath my skin.
I need a scarf, more layers, but with the snow-filled driveway twisting ahead of us, the gate slightly ajar, a muffled cry from the distance, there’s no time to think.
Faust tried to get me to stay inside when we saw Tasia yanked from frame. With the towering dead trees, the wooded lot surrounding Castle Darling, the subzero temperatures, and a murderer stalking Drayton, I don’t blame him.
But he should know better.
He is ahead of me, a tall, strong figure in black, jogging toward the road as I struggle to keep up, my breath unfurling in clouds of cold in the darkness. My boots crunch over ice and loose snow both, and I’m grateful I have proper winter gear. Paid for by Nolan. My brother.
Our murderer?
I shake my head a fraction even as Tasia’s body being yanked out of sight plays on a loop in my mind, making the chill that much worse.
I run faster, eyes trained on Faust’s back, and I see footsteps in the snow from Sylvan, but I don’t see him. There’s no sound, either, just my own breathing, my own heart beating too fast.
The trees break up ahead, allowing the drive to spill out, more snow and ice under moonlight, the gates thrown wide. Were they locked? But no, there… it’s cut. The heavy black padlock, dropped in a foot of snow, nearly buried just by being left.
Faust turns back to glance at me. “Stay. There.” He snarls the words, then he passes the gate, stares at the ground as if looking for footsteps, and turns left.
Silence fills the void.
In the darkness, I can’t see him anymore. The trees swallow him up.
It feels as if someone is watching me. Tasia was screaming, Sylvan isn’t afraid, and so where is the noise? The breathing? The bodies?
What if something bad happened to Sylvan?
I glance over my shoulder at the looming castle cutting toward the night sky. Cyn is in there. But there’s an iron fence around the property. In the snow, the cold, it would be near impossible to climb. Whoever is here, whoever took Tasia, they’d have to come down this path.
Fuck this.
I’m not waiting in the dark to die.
I take a step forward, intending to follow Faust, but I train my ears, listening.
Only the sound of snow falling.
Maybe Tasia was with a friend. She could’ve been put in a car. She could be far away from here by now, and we’re wasting our time, freezing in the dark.
But I take another step toward the fanned open black gate, and the padlock catches my eye.
Who cut that?
Another step.
I’m staring to the left, because there is nothing on the desolate, dark road that curls around Faust’s home.
My home, even if it’s only temporary.
Then I hear a voice at my back.
One that makes my throat strangle. My breath stop. My heart race.
I don’t turn around.
But he speaks again. “Neve, please listen to me.”
Nolan.
The chill in my bloodstream isn’t from the cold now.
There’s the crunch of snow. A tangle of breath. My emotions are in knots. I can’t look.
“I didn’t do what they say.” There’s sincerity in his words, but I’ve studied enough to know that it can be faked. “But I think you could be in danger. I think it was one of… them.”
“Where did you take her?” I see Tasia in my head, jerked away from the camera like a victim in a twisted horror movie. “Did you hurt her?”
“What?” Nolan sounds appalled. Upset. “Hurt who, Neve?” There’s such truth and rawness in his words; it pulls me like gravity.
I turn to face him.
My knees feel weak. He’s in a white puffy coat, white toque, black pants, white boots. He looks like ice himself, but there are shadows beneath his eyes. I can make them out in the moonlight. He has a pinched expression around his face, gaunt, hollow.