Chapter 6
Quinn
Rain hits the windows like darts, and I jolt, coming out of my trance.
“What the hell…” I breathe out, gaping at the wall mirror that’s open like an actual door.
I pat my leg, feeling for my phone. Quickly, I snatch it out of my leg pocket.
Between this and the scene with the old Dodge, I can’t catch my breath.
I unlock my screen, thinking. Jared? Jax? I could call them. They’re closer.
They’ll overreact, though. There has to be a better option.
Dylan? One of my nephews?
But I scroll my phone, lingering over Lucas’s name.
He would come. Immediately.
I try to push away the suspicion in the back of my mind that it’s just a reason to see him, but it’s not that. I… I just don’t want to ask my family for anything. Before I know what I’m going to say, I dial Lucas.
I hold the phone to my ear, hearing it ring, but as if I’m waking up, I quickly jerk it away from my ear. “Shit.”
I hang up before he answers, even though he’s going to see that I called. I don’t want his help, either. Not after this morning.
Taking a step, I start to move toward the kitchen, but I stop. Someone could be in there. Someone had to open the mirror. Were they going in or coming out?
I could go out the front door, but the car could be out there.
I dial Hawke. He’s the one who made me keep the damn mirror in the first place.
But as the line rings, realization swirls in my head.
He made me keep the mirror...
Actually, he was adamant about it. It’s beautiful…it adds character…a great Instagram shot for customers…
And you have no idea what problems are behind it. Deal with it down the road, he’d said.
My heart pounds in my ears, drowning out any other noise.
He knew about this.
They all knew about this. Kade, Aro, Hunter, Dylan…
Memories surge of the times they just seemed to show up and I hadn’t seen them enter the shop. Or when food would go missing overnight, but I hadn’t gotten a notification of anyone entering on the exterior security cameras.
My mouth falls open as shock and rage flood my chest and head.
The ringing stops, Hawke picking up the line. “You’re up late.”
I just stand there, words on the tip of my tongue, but they’re the wrong words, and I don’t know how to be sly. I’m not like them.
Do I want to call him out?
“Y–yeah,” I stutter. “Sorry.”
I’m not sure a fight is the way I want to go yet. I need to be certain he lied to me.
“Just wanted to touch base before I forget,” I tell him, swallowing to wet my throat. “You seemed to love the mirror in my shop. Do you want it before I donate it? I’m having it removed tomorrow—”
“No, don’t…”
Heat instantly courses through my muscles, and I exhale.
Oh, he knew all right. The whole damn time.
I open my mouth to yell at him, not just because I should’ve known about a secret entrance to my business, but he lied to me. They all lied to me. For how long?
My mind races, going back over the years and knowing they were in and out of the shop while I was away at school, but I just assumed they were being protective and checking on things for me. Or having some fun with the kitchen.
Why didn’t they tell me?
My eyes sting. They didn’t trust me.
“Why shouldn’t I get rid of it?” I ask him.
“It’s…” He pauses, then continues. “It’s a surprise. Your birthday is coming up, so be patient.”
A surprise…
I approach the open mirror, the ache in my chest steeling hard and cold. “Sure.”
He’s quiet for a moment, then asks. “You won’t remove the mirror?”
“Nope.”
There’s a tense silence, and I don’t think his mind is eased. Once we hang up, he’ll probably call Dylan to panic. I might smile if I weren’t so pissed.
I stop at the entrance. “Goodnight,” I say.
“’Night.”
I hang up, Hawke forgotten before I even take the phone away from my ear. If they’ve been in here, then it must be safe.
Heading to the opening, I stop myself just before I put a foot in and peek inside. “Hello?”
A long black tunnel lies before me, and I think I see an opening, but I can’t make out much else. Black walls, dark floor, and it smells like a cave. Wet rock, earth, deep…
I open the flashlight on my phone, shining it inside.
The tunnel is bare and empty, the long walls a black or deep gray. I step inside and spin back around, pulling the door closed and seeing my shop through the two-way mirror.
“Those little shits,” I grit out under my breath.
It’s not a mirror from the inside. It’s a window. I can see everything in the shop. Who comes and goes, who’s working, what’s stocked on the shelves, the register with the cash… But no one out there would be able to see me in here.
Raising my phone, I find the latch on the upper left and secure it, now knowing why the fingerprints I found last night looked like they were made from someone gripping the mirror from behind.
I unlatch it again and open the mirror, making sure I know how to get out. I close it again, just in case one of my family members with keys come in. I turn, light from my phone showing me the way.
My running shoes squeak on the floors as I step down the long corridor, the faint light at the end getting bigger.
I stop at the end, spinning my flashlight to the hallway to my right and back again to the room that spreads before me.
All at once, everything looms—the expanse of the massive space.
The ceiling as high as three floors, bigger and taller than my parents’ foyer.
The high windows, wet with rain. The rusted, spiral staircase to the far-left corner, leading to a door in the ceiling.
The kitchen with half-eaten bags of chips on the counter, and the living room beyond with the massive TV, couches, PlayStation, and liquor bottles on the coffee table.
I run my eyes over some Latin words drawn in thick white paint on the back wall. Vivamus moriendum, est.
‘Let us live, since we must die.’
It’s an inscription on some statue at City Hall. I feel like I’ve seen it somewhere else too.
There’s also some diagram with documents, pictures, and writing posted on the brick. Yarn links one idea to the other, creating a web, as if mapping a story.
I don’t know how long I stand there, but it must only be about four seconds because I press my foot to the floor, realizing I stopped mid-step.
But still, I take all that in, fire spitting from my eyes. “Little. Shits.”
They’ve been crashing here.
Hiding out to party and drink and have sex, and they were doing it in high school! I charge into the kitchen, whip open the fridge, seeing all the food. Sandwich stuff, condiments, leftover pizza, beer…
In a matter of minutes, I walk down the hallway, through the workout room and the two bedrooms, seeing clothes, a tube of Aro’s red lipstick in one room and one of Kade’s baseball caps in another. Not to mention a nightstand with at least five empty condom wrappers. I cringe. “Goddammit!”
Barreling out of the room and charging back into the great room, I head up the spiral staircase, open the hatch, and peek out onto my roof.
Or Rivertown’s, I don’t know. I need to find blueprints and see who actually owns this hideout.
I take in the scope of the space and the escape routes, and I descend the stairs, noticing another door.
I peek inside, taking in another hallway.
At the end is more light, and I make out Rivertown Bar & Grill through a window that I know before I even get there is another mirror just like the one in my shop.
So…
There are three entrances. Two mirrors and a roof hatch.
Is only my family using this space, then? They moved in the exercise equipment, the beds, and the TV. I recognize most of this stuff.
Heading back out to the great room, I scan the event map-slash-timeline they’re puzzling together.
Carnival Tower…
Rivalry Week…
Winslet MacCreary…
I knew Hawke was researching the urban legends. This must be home base. I shake my head, turning my eyes away.
I start to walk out. I’m not sure what I’m going to do. My gut wants to react. Call them all and start screaming, but then what?
I pass the kitchen counter, heading to the hallway that leads back to my shop, but I put my hand on the cover of a book I don’t remember seeing when I passed by here just a minute ago.
The brown leather is soft and flimsy, like a journal, and I can tell before I open it that the paper is old. The edges are yellowed and tattered. I pick it up, seeing a thin gap inside, as if something is stuck between the pages.
I look around the hideout again. I remember smoothing my hand over this counter when I came in. Was this sitting here then? Shit, I don’t remember. I was high on adrenaline.
“Hello?” I call out. “Hello?”
No answer.
Flipping it open, the pages immediately spread to where a photograph sits.
I lift it out, staring at a young blonde.
She sits on the edge of a bed, I think. The headboard rests behind her, her bare arms stretched in front of her, just covering her naked torso.
I can’t see anything else of her. Long locks drape in her eyes, and a pink neon light casts a glow on her hair from somewhere behind.
I narrow my eyes, studying her. She kind of looks like me.
I turn the picture over.
Don’t look at me like that. You make me wanna die.
-M
Who’s M? Not Madoc.
I fan through the pages, looking for a name, but there’s so much writing, it’s so small, and I can’t make out anything. The writing looks different in the journal versus on the back of the picture, though.
I stick the photo back inside, but her eyes catch me before I close the book. I stop, gazing at her hair too long until I feel my own tickling my cheek. And the soft lips as if they’re mine, swollen from a thousand kisses.
For a moment, I’m there—sitting on the edge of that bed, my body alive, and goosebumps spreading over my body as he takes my picture.