Chapter 15 #3
I nod, but my head feels impossibly heavy, like someone replaced my brain with a bowling ball. I want to lighten the mood somehow because this is the only interaction we’ve had since the parking lot when he hasn’t looked annoyed, so I give him a smile. “Unfortunately.”
He exhales hard through his nose, and something flickers behind his eyes that looks almost like… guilt?
“Can you stand?” he asks.
“I think so.”
He rises to his feet in one smooth motion and extends a tattooed hand out to pull me up, lifting me with no visible effort. My knees wobble, and his other hand grips my elbow as I regain my balance.
His eyes run over me, up and down. “You sure you feel okay?”
“Yes.” I bury the memories of Rosie deep inside my box.
“Good.” He drops his hand, stepping away from me as his features harden. “Now we’ve established you’re all right, I can move on to being pissed the hell off. What the fuck were you thinking? Do you have any idea what you just did?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re not supposed to come down here.”
“I’m sorry.” I try to focus on the numbing soles of my feet on the rough iron floor, grounding myself because his face won’t stay in focus. “I heard Billy’s voice in my head, and it was like I was in a trance. My legs carried me down here. The door was open. Billy kept telling me to come find him.”
Nico goes still. So utterly motionless that I wonder if he’s even breathing.
“You heard his voice?”
The way he’s looking at me makes my skin prickle with something between fear and embarrassment. “Is that not normal?”
“No, Eden. That’s not fucking normal.” His voice drops to something cold and dangerous. “What did he say to you?”
“Nothing,” I say automatically, and he glares at me so hard that I step back. “I mean, not nothing, but—I don’t know. Creepy stuff. About how he killed girls like me.”
Nico’s jaw works, and I can tell he’s turning something over in his head. Something he’s choosing not to say.
“What is it?” My voice comes out smaller than I want it to, and I clear my throat, trying to sound more certain. “Why are you acting like it’s weird that Billy could talk to me?”
He blinks slowly, like he’s counting in his head. “Go upstairs. Never come down here again. Do you understand me?”
“Does this mean I could be a Type One?”
“Go.”
“No,” I say, my voice rising as my mind races. “If I’m a Type One, that’s a good thing. I’d be useful.”
I can practically feel the authority radiating off him, like he doesn’t understand why I’m not doing what he says.
You know what? I’ve tried to be understanding.
To give him the benefit of the doubt, like Mom would have, but this?
This thing with Billy happened to me. I was in bed, and that psychopath was in my head, pulling on my thoughts, and Nico’s standing here acting like I don’t have a right to know why.
“You can’t order me around,” I say. “You’re not my boss.”
“I’m Donny’s second.”
“Is this some assistant to the regional manager bullshit?” I fling my entire arm toward the stairs. “Billy put me into a trance from the basement. Does that mean the house defenses are broken?”
“The house defenses are fine,” Nico says. “Billy’s a manipulative psychopath who gets off on finding vulnerabilities and exploiting them, and he’s extremely powerful. Go back to bed.”
The condescension in his voice makes something inside me snap. I close the distance between us, tilting my head to glare up at him. The smell of cold wind and something woodsy clings to his hoodie.
“Either you tell me what’s going on right now, or I’ll drag you all the way over to Donny’s apartment so you can explain to both of us what you think just happened here,” I say. “Because I think he’d like to know.”
I brace myself for him to explode, to match my anger with his own, but instead the corner of his mouth angles up.
“There she is.” His face is serious, but his eyes are practically dancing. “The angry girl.”
I’m about two seconds away from going back on that whole ‘I’ll never punch you again’ promise. “Don’t patronize me.”
“I’m not,” he says. “Though I’m curious exactly how you plan to drag me anywhere.”
“You think I can’t?”
“I think I got a couple pounds on you, and five minutes ago, you could barely stand on your own, but please, by all means.” He leans in, daring me. “Give it your best shot.”
He knows as well as I do that I’m in no condition to manhandle him up those stairs—let’s be honest, even after a full nine hours of sleep and a line of cocaine, I still wouldn’t be strong enough to manhandle him anywhere—but I’m so mad that I want to try.
His tone may be lighthearted, but there’s an edge to the look he’s giving me, something hungry underneath that makes my pulse kick up for reasons that have nothing to do with anger.
I hate how beautiful he is. Even now, when he’s glaring at me like he wishes he could will me up those stairs with the power of his mind, there’s something so magnetic about him.
Like I’m a flimsy refrigerator magnet, and he’s one of those super strong ones you buy at the toy store, which renders me incapable of thinking of anything other than needing to be closer to him.
He steps back, and just like that, his walls slam back up.
“Go upstairs,” he says, his voice flat. “Before I carry you up there myself.”
Picturing it makes the floor feel a tiny bit less solid under my feet. If I were any redder, someone could hang me on the porch in December and call me a holiday decoration.
I could push it. Could demand answers until he loses patience and tells me, but I still want him to like me, or at least tolerate me, and I don’t think pressing him will help my case.
Ugh.
“Fine,” I snap, holding my hands up. “But for the record, I don’t understand why you can’t just answer my question, and why you feel the need to be a complete ass about it.”
Nico shakes his head minutely. “Is that what I’m doing? Being a complete ass?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t realize saving your life made me a complete ass,” he says.
“You know what I mean,” I say.
“Was I being a complete ass when I stopped you from going blind?”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” He’s purposefully misunderstanding me. I’m so furious I feel like I could bite through steel. “I’m grateful you saved me. Obviously.”
“Eden—”
“I’m going.”
I climb the stairs. Nico follows me, his footsteps booming on the metal a couple of steps behind.
“I can go upstairs on my own,” I snap over my shoulder. “I don’t need an escort.”
“Just making sure you don’t get any ideas.”
“Ideas like what? Turning around and bulldozing my way through you so I can have round two with Billy? Why the fuck would I want to do that?”
I reach the top of the stairs and step through the doorway, greeted by warm air. I turn in time for the door to slam in my face.
My breath comes hard and fast as I stare at the door. The big, industrial door that’s always closed. Yet somehow, was left open.
Billy couldn’t have opened the door. At least I don’t think he could have, trapped inside that dome.
Apart from Donny, who hasn’t left his apartment since we got back, Nico’s the only one allowed in the vault unsupervised. He must have been down there before I was, working late. He could’ve left the door open when he came upstairs to get something, thinking everyone else was already in bed.
I hear Billy’s words ringing in my head as clear as day: I didn’t tell her what you did.
I shake the horrible thought from my mind.
Nico had no way of knowing I’d hear Billy, or that Billy would try to talk to me, so it doesn’t make any sense that he set a trap for me.
He also couldn’t have known I’d be awake at this time.
How would he have made sure I wandered all the way there from my room?
Come to think of it, why was Nico working at this hour? What could he possibly have to talk to a killer about at two in the morning?
Maybe he was the one to catch Billy. But there was so much anger in Nico’s voice… maybe Billy targeted someone close to Nico. His sister? Girlfriend? Mom? Given the years Billy operated, it’s plausible.