Chapter 28
Chapter twenty-eight
Lying
Becky
The footsteps stop. For a single, suspended second, there’s nothing. Only the pounding of my heart.
Then the faint edge of his shadow spills down the first curve of the stairs. It stretches, elongating, distorting, until it becomes monstrous, flickering and shifting as if alive. Whatever light he carries makes it dance.
I trace the shadow to its source in time to see his feet on the stairs, followed by his legs, his trim waist, his chest, his shoulders, his arms.
He comes down slowly, giving me enough time to regret every decision I’ve ever made in my short, somewhat miserable life, a life that probably ends tonight.
By the time his head should come into view, I squeeze my eyes closed. A child’s instinct, if I can’t see him, he can’t see me. Like if I try hard enough, I can make this all go away.
There’s the snap of flame, its flicker bright even through my closed eyelids.
Carrson must’ve brought a torch to light his way, maybe one of the ones I saw protruding from the wall in the staircase.
He stops.
Even with my eyes closed, I can feel him staring at me.
“Becky,” he says after a minute of tense silence. “Look at me.”
It takes every ounce of willpower to pry my eyes open.
What I see makes me want to slam them back shut.
Carrson stands at the bottom of the stairs, a blazing torch held high in his right hand. It casts one side of his face in red, the other in shadow, as if he’s split clean down the middle.
Neither of us speaks.
His gaze moves from me to the room, sweeping over it, taking in the table, the knife, the symbols carved into the floor, the brazier, the rod. Then back to me.
There’s no confusion in his expression.
Only understanding.
Still, he asks, “What are you doing down here?”
“I—I didn’t know where you went. I was—” My words fall apart before they even make it out.
His gaze flicks to my hands, wrapped around the flashlight. “Was what?”
The question is a trap, claw-edged and ready to spring shut.
I shake my head, pressing my back further into the stone. “I found the key. I didn’t think—”
“No.” He cuts me off. “Stop lying.”
The words hang there. Final.
I swallow, my pulse hammering. “Carrson, I—”
“You went snooping.”
I can see he’s angry, but there’s more.
Hurt.
Betrayal.
A hole opens where my heart should be.
He takes a step toward me, then another, until he’s right in front of me, so close the heat from the flame sears across my skin.
“You searched this house,” he says, each word dropping like handfuls of dirt thrown onto my coffin. “Opened things that don’t belong to you.”
“I was curious—”
“Curious,” he repeats. “You were curious.”
The way he says it, flat, disbelieving, dismissive, makes anger flare in my chest. It’s the disdain in his voice that makes me push off the wall and take a step forward.
“Yes. Curious,” I snap, lashing out. “If there’s one thing about me you should know, it’s that if I see a locked door I’m going to want to know what’s behind it.” I throw his own words from months ago back at him. “I’m going to open it.”
I cross my arms over my chest and refuse to look away.
Silence falls, broken only by the hiss and crackle of the flame.
“I think,” Carrson says, his eyes moving over me, “that might be the first real thing you’ve ever said to me.”
His attention shifts past me, checking the room again, the symbols, the table, the knife.
Everything.
Then he laughs. High. A little hysterical.
As if the night has spiraled for him too.
“You came to the right place if you want locked doors.” He gestures toward the ceiling. “I’ve got a house full of them. Where should we go first? Tell me, what do you want to know?”
Even though I know it’s a hypothetical question, my eyes jump to the wall behind him. To the strange words carved there.
“What’s The Order?” I ask.
Carrson shakes his head, grinning, but it’s not kind. “Oh no. Don’t start with that one. I’d have to kill you if I told you that.”
I almost laugh because now I know. The Order is real, and it’s big.
Important enough to kill over. This is the thing I’ve been chasing since I moved to Ashville.
The thing behind Carrson, his family, all the people who matter.
It’s The Order. Are they all in on it? I wonder.
All the people who decide how the world works?
“Aren’t you anyway?” I challenge, refocusing on him as I raise my chin. “Going to kill me?”
At the same time, we both glance at the knife, sheathed on the table.
I calculate. Wondering if I could get to it first.
“Please,” Carrson says, mocking, reading my mind. “I’d like to see you try.”
“What? I wasn’t going to do it,” I lie.
He’s right, though. There’s no way I’d reach the knife before he does. I won’t reach the door either.
No way out.
Unless I can make Carrson let me go.
He puts the torch in a holder on the wall, then stalks closer and paces restlessly a foot away with his hands behind his back and his eyes on the ground. “You think this is a game,” he says.
I don’t answer.
“You think you can walk into this,” his gaze flicks around the room, “and come back out the same.”
My hands ball into fists. “Then tell me what it is.”
“No.” He comes to a standstill in front of me. “You’re confused. You’re not the one in charge here.” He leans down slightly so I’m forced to meet his eyes.
“I am.”
That comment sparks an idea. A dangerous one, but a way out if I play it correctly.
A way, maybe, to get what I want.
“You’re right,” I say, stepping backward until I hit the wall. “You’re the one in charge.”
He quirks his head, eyes narrowing, instantly suspicious.
“As a matter of fact,” I add, “let me show you.”
Moving as slowly as possible, I lift my hands over my head, reaching for the manacles that hang right above me.
“You don’t want me to touch you.”
I rise onto my toes and slip my hands through the cold metal rings.
“What if you knew for sure I couldn’t?” I continue, lowering my voice. “That you’d be safe, but you could touch me all you wanted.”
I don’t break eye contact.
“Would you like that, Carrson?”
My voice drops as low and seductive as I can make it.
“Tell me,” I ask him, “do you want to touch me?”
Carrson throws his head back and laughs, an actual laugh, and my stomach falls.
“That might work on some idiots,” he says. “But I, unlike most of my fraternity brothers, am not led around by my dick.” He chuckles, shaking his head indulgently. “So, nice try.”
I almost give up right there. Almost let it go, but on that last word, his eyes flick down.
To my lips.
Not my body, like I’d expect.
My lips.
It’s small, but enough.
“Are you sure?” I ask, rattling the chains.
He seems about to laugh again, then he stops. Carrson’s eyes move over me, slower this time. Thoughtful.
Like a kid deciding which wing he’s going to pull off a butterfly first.
Foreboding wakes, nausea rolling low in my belly.
“You know what?” Carrson says, stepping into my space. “I changed my mind.”
With his free hand, he reaches up and snaps one handcuff closed.
Clink.
Then the other.
Clink.
The metal clamps painfully around my wrists, locking tight.
Uh-oh.
“This might actually be a fun game.” He grins at me, wide, all teeth, then turns to the table and picks up the knife. Tilting it, he slides the sheath free, exposing the clean, curved gleam of the blade.
His smile widens.
Oh shit.
Dread coils low in my gut, and, for the first time, I wonder if I’m going to make it out of this room alive. And yet, some traitorous part of me can’t stop thinking about what was done to him down here, how it shaped him into this.
Still smiling, he lifts the knife high, like he’s showing it off.
With his other hand, he grabs the torch off the wall and presses it into the stone at his feet.
The flame dies instantly.
Darkness crashes down around us.
Right before it swallows everything, I hear him say,
“Let’s play.”