Chapter 2 #2
Cal stiffened, his fists flexing at his sides.
It was a subtle reaction but his brother was a hunter, and even he was not so entirely lacking in observation that he wouldn’t notice when he struck his mark.
The tight line of his mouth relaxed into a sneer as he rammed his shoulder into Cal’s aching chest with the confidence of one who feared no repercussion.
“Same old Cal,” he said, taking the bottle with him as he weaved his way towards the exit from the library. “You’re still waiting in the parlor for the dead to come back to life.”
???????
But the dead didn’t come back. He knew that, now.
What he hadn’t realized was how thoroughly the effects of it permeated Ravensgate—not until Noelle was gone, and the house sank into lifelessness like a stone into brackish stillwater.
The gloom that had settled over the interiors muted thought and sound alike, and the low wattage lights had a strange effect on the Chinese wallpaper, adding a liminal depth that was unsettling. Nearly interdimensional.
Part of that was intentional, of course.
Caledon Cullraven had employed the use of hostile architecture before it even had a name, adding extremely close halls and sharp, unwelcoming fixtures that were specifically designed to put guests at unease.
From the gleam of the walls, to the overuse of knife-sharp finials, every element was a line drawn between hunter and hunted, forcing any potential guests at bay.
The parlor where he had once entertained his guests was filled with artefacts of the hunt.
All those dead things, the cabinets of morbid curiosities—even now, the current staff could barely manage to clean it, working as quickly as they could so they could move on to other rooms, as if the veil separating the dead from the living was spread more thinly here.
Even the unicorn room, the most feminine and delicate space in the house, had strange lies that drew to a focal point at the wind rose in the ceiling. When lying back on the bed, one could also imagine oneself spiraling away into a bone-white nothingness.
He would know, he had done so as a child.
For so long, he had taken all of this for granted, but then Noelle had blown into their lives like a gentle breeze, and he had felt the first presence of real warmth from a hearth that had long grown cold and grew even colder now.
Cal felt her absence keenly, particularly at dinner, when he noticed the empty space that would have been hers, at Ben’s right.
As they all at in that black-and-white-painted dining room, seated beneath the chandelier of antlers, eating from the five chargers that should have been six, Cal had a thought that wouldn’t leave: it was not the dead that were restless here. It was the living.
We are the custodians of a beast with a taste for blood.
“Cal, what’s wrong?” Odessa looked at him through narrowed eyes over the top of her glass. “It’s been at least twelve hours since you’ve used the word trustor. Are you sick?”
Ben paused in the act of cutting his meat, looking up with interest. His father barely glanced his way, as if the conversation was of no interest to him, but only a fool would think he wasn’t paying attention.
Cal eyed Odessa with a tight expression before taking a bracing drink of wine.
“I didn’t realize you were so interested in my work. ”
“You have been acting strange,” his father said.
“Have I?” He swept his thumb over the curve of his glass. “I’ve never felt more like myself.”
“How unfortunate for the rest of us,” Ben muttered, drawing a clotted chuckle from his father, who had yet to take his eyes off him.
(Remember, this is the price of betrayal)
Noelle’s death was like a galvanizing agent, a cruel alchemy.
Cal threw himself into his work because it allowed him an opportunity to escape what he was becoming.
He had gotten hired shortly after he passed the bar, much to Ben’s irritation, and the job in the city gave him an excuse to purchase a property that was far away from his family.
Something that belonged, entirely, to him, regardless of who—or what—he might be.
But he could feel Argentum’s tug as if it were affixed to him by a tether. For more reasons than one, he was unable to leave, and he was not entirely sure that he could leave, any more than the figures in those various family portraitures could claw their way from their frames.
The town and its vast surrounding forests were a part of him, and he, of them. His family’s legacy had been drilled into him before he could even speak, the message clear as a clarion bell: ambition must be your hunger and their bones are not fit to pick your teeth with.
His office in the city was close enough to walk to after talking the ferry and he’d been doing that long enough that he’d started to recognize the locals of the area.
The barista at his preferred coffee shop had even written her number on his receipt once, and he had smiled back pleasantly, taking it with grace while making a mental note to switch to a different venue that was several blocks away.
They all come to you, Ben had said, and he supposed it was true that they did. Women, responding to his dark elegance and easy charm, often wanted to please him.
Sometimes, it marveled—their willingness to be devoured, the things they let him do.
Such a rise to provocation seemed tantamount to baring one’s throat to the wolf, and it struck a rather sour chord on the strings of his disintegrating scruples.
Especially when he knew the fate that awaited them, should he ever become involved enough to bring them home.
Noelle’s sister popped into his head—Nadine, her name was.
Ben had called Nadine submissive but that expression in her lowered eyes was not exactly subservient, and neither was the way she had talked back to him.
A nervous energy had surrounded her that could not be calmed and Cal suspected she would be a little terror in the right lover’s bed.
But you’ll never find out, will you? that insidious voice whispered. Such a shame you killed her sister.
That hadn’t stopped him, though, from touching himself, pleasuring himself to that memory of Nadine in that clingy scarlet dress, now rucked up to her full, round hips in his mind’s eye as she sat astride his rocking thighs with her wrists gathered behind her back, her breasts vaulting as if she were a cathedral to the profane, with her head tilted back to bare the long, smooth column of her throat in offering to his claiming bite.
Cal had woken up the next morning with the taste of blood in his mouth; he had bitten through the flesh of his own lip when he came and in his dreams, he had apparently done so again.
After that, he’d gotten in his car and driven back to Argentum. The city and its noise must be getting to him. He wasn’t suited to its fast-paced lifestyle. Working from home at his firm was allowed and even sometimes encouraged, and he would manage far more effectively alone.
He took his client roster into the library and slammed the door behind him hard enough to rattle the pictures on their frames.
Cal specialized in estates and trusts but the Plata County court system was a backwater and he detested dealing with the judges here even more than he did the San Francisco circuit.
He hoped this case wouldn’t end up in one but his client was like a feral dog with a bone, and he was soon pacing around the perimeter of the library while they ranted, jittery with repressed energy.
Sunlight poured into the poorly insulated room. He had already rolled up his shirtsleeves and now that he knew this wouldn’t be a video call, he had loosened the neck of his shirt as a concession to the sweltering heat.
The man believed his mother had been coerced into changing her will by one of his siblings while suffering from dementia.
But the estate and the money were part of a trust and the mother, perhaps anticipating such a fight during one of her better days, had put in a terrorem clause, which meant that fucking with the trust or suing for more would lead to a forfeiture of the inheritance, thus reverting that party’s share back to the trust.
Cal had an intimate knowledge of terrorem clauses, since his own inheritance was bound to one, but his client furiously believed that this was all just an elaborate set-up to scam him.
“She always liked my sister better,” he ranted.
“She went to medical school. My mother’s nurse came from the very same hospital she worked at.
It would be just like her to send over a nurse on her payroll, just to fuck with me.
She probably had the nurse change the will. ”
Cal ran his fingers through his hair, wishing that he could close them around his client’s throat. “Are you certain that this is something you want to pursue?”
“You want to get paid, don’t you?” was the heated retort.
He decided to ignore that. “I ask, because it’s fairly serious. Accusing someone of tampering with the will to the estate is no small matter.”
“If you don’t want the job, I can fire you and hire another lawyer who will actually do the work I’m paying them to do.”
Cal swallowed back a growl. “Well, you’re going to need statements from witnesses who were present when the will was signed, as well as medical records proving unsound state of mind.
” He spoke quickly, purposefully not giving the other man time to respond.
“Howevr, because there’s a terrorem clause, fighting might only make things worse. ”
And right now, he thought, I would dearly love to see you lose.
A sound from the hallway drew his attention, and he turned, expecting one of his parents’ servants or perhaps even Odessa, and—there she was. Like he’d summoned her, she was standing there, clinging to the doorway, staring at his chest with those decidedly unsubmissive eyes.
Nadine Harnois.
She had come to see him, after all.