CHAPTER EIGHT
The pale face shrieks, too.
It distorts and elongates as the mouth tears away and the eyes roll back into black sockets. Gray film clouds across its ashen complexion, molting the flesh from the bone.
“Rina!”
I scream again and whirl just as Lukan thunders into the foyer with Kellen and Roan right on his heels. His dark eyes are pits of fury as he grabs my arm and pulls me to him. They sweep over the room, searching for the thing that has me clinging to him.
“What is it?” he demands, crushing me closer.
Trembling, I peer back over my shoulder to where I’d seen the face and blink.
The face blinks, too.
An enormous, ornate mirror hangs over the table in the foyer. The kind carved by hand with elaborate foliage borders and curving design. Its massive frame extends to claim the wall with a mocking command that momentarily distracts from its actual defect.
The glass is warped. It teeters and shifts, stretching and pulling our bodies like the mirrors in a funhouse. The crude scuff bleeding up the bottom to spread like spilled ink distorts our features to appear ghostly and haunted.
But it’s the very existence of the thing that sends my thoughts into a spiral. Even as I pull out of Lukan’s arms and face the thing properly, I know ... I know it doesn’t belong.
“Where did this come from?” I rasp, daring a single step towards it and watching my features shift and pull along the bends. “This wasn’t here before.”
Was it?
I rifle through my thoughts to remember, but I can’t focus when my heart is still hammering. Even my finger trembles when I lift it to brush the glass.
Roan captures my wrist and tugs me away from it.
“Don’t touch that,” he murmurs, eyes fixed on the abomination.
“What is it?” I demand.
None of them seem to know, nor do they seem to like it. All three are studying the thing like they’re expecting it to attack.
“Doesn’t matter,” Lukan mutters at last. “It’s not for us.” He captures my other hand, the one not still clasped by Roan. “No more going anywhere without us. This place ... it’s not right.”
His narrowed eyes sweep over the foyer and drift up to the top of the stairs. A muscle coils in his cheek, but he says nothing.
“That wasn’t here when I did my walk through,” I state firmly, slightly more confident in that knowledge. “It was a painting.” I pinch the bridge of my nose and wrack my brain. “Dante’s Inferno, I think.”
“Get her back in the living room,” Kellen tells his brothers, attention fixed on the mirror. “Lukan’s right, little one. No more wandering off. Not until we can leave this place.”
I don’t argue.
I don’t resist when Roan and Lukan pull me away with Kellen on our heels. But I do hazard a glance in the direction of the clock.
Eight.
Roan nudges me into the living room ahead of them and keeps himself at my back. I don’t honestly know what they’re trying to protect me from, but I know it’s something in this house. There is something wrong with this house.
“Someone tell me what’s going on,” I demand, pivoting to face the trio.
None of them seem inclined to answer first. Lukan and Kellen exchange glances while Roan suddenly finds the patch of carpet between his feet to be the most interesting thing he’s ever witnessed.
“It’s a complicated situation, sweetheart,” Lukan says at last. “And a long ass story.”
Without hitting Roan, I swing an arm in the direction of the windows overlooking the front drive. “We’re stuck in a storm. We have nothing but time. Please,” I stress when they continue to hesitate. “I feel like I’m losing my mind.”
Kellen is the one who relents.
He blows out a breath and turns to his brothers. “You two gather the rest of the items.” Face solemn, he reaches for me. “You come with me.”
Roan gives my back a light stroke of his fingers.
Lukan presses a kiss into the side of my head.
Then both leave the room.
“Where are they going?” I demand, watching the darkness swallow them. “I thought we were going to stick together.”
“They’ll be fine.” My fingers are lifted to his face, and he lightly brushes each tip with his lips. “Are you okay?”
It’s a reflex to lie and pretend, but I don’t feel that need with him.
“No.”
No judgment. He gives a faint nod and guides me in the direction of the sofa. He claims the last cushion at the end and pulls me into his lap with my back against the armrest. The throw from earlier is dragged across my legs and tucked into place.
“Do you want me to make you some tea?”
I shake my head, highly doubting Aunt Laura would carry tea I like. “I just want you to tell me what’s going on.”
Despite the dark furrow of his brows and the conflict in his eyes, Kellen chuckles, though there is no humor in it.
“We did not come prepared for this.” He turns his dark eyes to my face. They roam and trace the lines before settling on mine. “You shouldn’t be here, little one.”
“Trust me, I’m beginning to wish I wasn’t here,” I assure him, tugging the blanket higher under my chin. “From the moment I arrived, nothing made sense.”
He strokes the curve of my chin with the pad of his thumb. “Your aunt was doing some pretty awful things in this house. She opened a lot of pockets to places that shouldn’t be open.”
The spit in my mouth has dried to ash. No amount of swallowing is helping unglue my tongue from the roof.
“What are you talking about?”
There’s hesitation in his eyes like he knows he’s scaring me but not knowing how else to continue. At last, he gestures to the fire.
“The books. The artifacts.” He nods to the cluster of jars and the tiny figure made of human hair. “These aren’t normal things people have in their homes, Rina. They are dark. Evil. Nothing in any of this is used for good.”
I work a trembling tongue over my stiff lips uselessly. “Are you talking about ... demons ... malicuri?”
“Worse.” He pulls me tighter against his chest and drags the blanket even higher around me when I shiver. “There are worse things than malicuri.”
I don’t want to know.
“How do you know?”
But rather than answer my question, he asks his own, “Do you know how she died?”
My shoulders give an awkward shrug. “Heart attack, I think. The ladies from her church noticed she hadn’t come in and...” A thought strikes me. “She went to church.”
“People can be two things,” he reminds me. “Your aunt was looking for something.”
“All her life, Laura was searching for something she never could seem to find, and the longer she went without finding it, the colder she became.”
Mom’s words sink into my soul with the ferocity of an icy drink getting guzzled too quickly. It chills my stomach.
“Are you saying this place is haunted?” I croak, hating the terror crawling up beneath my skin.
To a fraction of my relief, Kellen shakes his head.
“Haunted places are usually the domain of spirits. Ghosts. Poltergeists. This house is beyond that. She has created a stain that nothing short of fire will fix. There is an evil here that has crawled into the walls, and the closer it gets to midnight, the more active they’ll become—”
I clap a stiff hand over his mouth. The difference of our temperatures doesn’t go unnoticed as his heat burns the icy surface of my skin.
“Stop.” I can barely move my lips, but he understands.
His fingers curl around my wrists and he gently tugs my hand down. “Forgive me, little one. I’m not trying to frighten you.”
I was in this house alone, I think, horror scuttling down my spine. I moved through every room and planned to stay the night.
“What happens at midnight?” I ask weakly, desperately not wanting to know, but unable to stop myself.
Kellen must sense how close I am to falling apart when he captures my jaw in one hand. He tips my face up and kisses me with the sweetest gentleness that momentarily warms all the places filled with terror.
“You’re safe, my little love,” he murmurs lightly against my lips. “We would die before we let anything touch you.”
While I believe him with my whole soul, we’re still trapped in this place. We’re still isolated and powerless against whatever is lurking in the shadows. And it’s already eight.
“I want to go, Kellen.” I wind my arm around his neck and press my face into the curve of his neck. “Please. I don’t want to be here anymore.”
He strokes my hair. “As soon as the boys return and we burn the rest of the books—”
A cry and splinter crashes through the house. A deafening explosion of something slamming into wood and collapsing under the weight. There’s another cry and I recognize the voice.
“Lukan!” I gasp, hands already fumbling with the throw.
My legs tangle with the yards of wool and I nearly tumble off Kellen’s lap as I throw myself to my feet. My heart thunders in my ears as I race to the doorway.
“Rina!” Kellen captures me and drags me back. “Stay behind me.”
Frantic, I stare up at him. “Lukan...”
“Behind me,” he snarls, capturing my fingers.
I don’t protest, nor do I slow him down as we hurry in the direction of the sound. Of breaking furniture and bodies hitting the floor. I tell myself they’re okay, but nothing feels okay anymore. Nothing feels like it’ll be okay ever again.
It does register somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain that he could be lying to me.
That this whole thing is an elaborate joke they’re playing just to get a rise, but I know that’s not the case.
I know everything he said is true. The house has been a vacuum of oppressive darkness since my arrival, and I can no longer pretend I don’t notice all the evil.
At the top of the stairs, Kellen’s fingers tighten around mine. His strides slow. From around his massive bulk, I see the shimmering patch of light seeping through the door at the end of the corridor.
Aunt Laura’s room.
A chill scuttles down my spine and my fingers tighten around Kellen’s. Even while every instinct tells me it’s just the boys, the sour stench of rot tells a different story.
“Do not come inside,” Kellen hisses from over his shoulder. “Whatever’s in there, we will handle it.”