Chapter 17 Karia
Karia
“Tell me why you want to go to Haunt Muren. Tell me what your son did to you. Tell me how Sullen got out, and you knew where to go to escape. Tell me who was wearing the stupid fucking mask in the woods.” Since Sullen refused to answer me.
I keep my voice low as I glance at his sleeping form under lavish bed sheets, his body turned away from Sanford and I, huddled inside the door.
Dreary is a town that lives up to its name in the strangest way.
The urgent care was relatively full, but when Sanford said his grandson had a stab wound, the staff moved quickly, including the receptionist, then the intake nurse.
I’ve never seen black walls in a medical setting before, but inside Dreary First, that’s all they had.
The contrast of white scrubs was a shock and I wondered who designed such an aesthetic.
Sullen didn’t need to undergo surgery; whoever glued his wound did a decent job, but I still heard his muffled grunt when it was repacked and stitched. He didn’t want me nor Sanford inside the patient room. We sat on a bench in the busy intake center, neither of us speaking.
When Sullen stumbled out all dressed, eyes darkened and a scowl on his face, complexion pale, the doctor gave him a wary glance, lingering on the cut along his cheek, before they both approached us.
I asked where we should stay for the night, not bothering to offer a reason for why we were passing through.
I don’t know if Sullen told him anything about how or who stabbed him, but I doubt it.
Either way, the doctor said Dreary Inn was only a mile away. He also warned us he wouldn’t be refilling Sullen’s pain meds.
I was surprised he offered them at all, and even more shocked that from the look on Sullen’s face, brow cocked and dead expression locked on mine, he’d already taken them.
It’s why he’s sleeping now.
After the urgent care visit, Sanford and I overruled Sullen and we didn’t walk. We got inside a transport car oddly hanging around the entrance, cab sign lit atop a black car.
Now, dark burgundy walls and floors surrounding us on the second floor of the inn—alongside a shocking, almost unnatural silence—I feel as if I am guarding Sullen and his rest from everyone, including grandpa over here.
Sanford’s gaze stays on Sullen with my demands, but I don’t let him cross the threshold of the door.
We asked for two separate rooms at the check-in, and the middle-aged woman dressed completely in black didn’t question anything, with her voice or her eyes.
Just gave us two old-fashioned keys like it was entirely normal for three ragged out-of-towners to show up past midnight inside a four-star inn.
At least, that’s my guess on the star count.
Neither Sullen nor myself have a phone, and if Sanford does, he isn’t letting on.
He sighs now, his hands in his pockets as he hangs his head and closes his eyes a moment, the lines in his pale skin deepening as he does.
His suit looks worse than it did with more spots of filth and dirt, some grime along his neck, too.
I feel a pang of empathy; I need a shower after our foray under yet another hotel, and Sullen didn’t seem to have the energy or care to take one at all, despite the fact we thankfully have more clothes in the bag Sanford thought to grab for us.
Like grandfather, like grandson, in that way.
After a moment of silence with the door propped open along my throbbing shoulder, I clear my throat, ready to send Sanford to his room. But before I can speak, his gaze is on mine once more, staring down at me from beneath his lashes.
“I gave you what I could, on how he became what he is,” he says, voice gravelly. There are red spiderwebs of exhaustion and bleariness in the whites of his eyes. “The masked man? He is Stein’s personal doctor, Klein.”
The closeness of their names does not escape me and even though I don’t want to find out more—I remember how Sullen desperately wished to keep me away from the doctor’s clutches—I still demand, “Tell me about him. Why did he throw a knife at us? Why did he miss?” Whose blood was on the blade? I don’t ask the last part out loud.
I think I already know. I think it’s the one Stein used to stab his own son.
Sanford shakes his head once. “There is nothing to tell. Not from me. His existence, his origin, it is a mystery to me as well as you. He was not in the picture when I was still… living.”
“He chased us with a knife.” It’s still in the bag, set along the bench at the end of the bed. I had to put it away before we got into the first cab that took us to the train.
“I’m aware,” Sanford says softly. “It’s a good thing he has poor aim.”
“But does he?” I counter, reiterating my original questions. “Or did he intentionally miss?” My mind drifts to the prognosticator Stein was scheduled to see.
Sanford shrugs. “I know nothing about Klein save for his name. You’re wasting time asking after him.”
I grit my teeth but decide he’s right. I want answers, and if he doesn’t have them about the doctor, he must know other things.
I move on swiftly. “Stein said he let you out, then you disappeared when you knew Stein was going to do something vile to Sullen. How did you manage that?” I snap, keeping my voice low but vicious, my gaze narrowed and my body vibrating with anger.
I don’t know who I’m most mad at. My friends, for not believing me.
My parents for the same. Sanford, for abandoning Sullen and making me look crazy.
Stein goes without saying, but if he isn’t dead yet, I’m not sure he’s not fucking immortal.
“There are many traps and secrets and terrors inside each Hotel Number Seven, Karia,” Sanford says lowly, his tongue hitting the bottom of his top teeth when he enunciates my name.
I glance behind him, to the burgundy damask wallpaper, the golden, electric scones on the wall. At any moment, it’s as if I am anticipating the lights will go out. Another monster will emerge from the shadows, ready to rip mine away from me.
I tense, staring back at Sanford once more. “So you fell through a trapdoor, is that it?”
A small smile curls his lips and I’m reminded so forcefully of Sullen, it unnerves me. I could never hate him, but I don’t want to feel any warmth for his grandfather until I know he’s not about to lead us to something darker.
“Perhaps,” he answers quietly.
“And, what? Before that, you were locked away back in downtown Alexandria until your son let you out like a guard dog? You were sent to play fetch with your own grandson? I thought you despised Stein. He killed your wife.”
Here, his gaze darkens and his brows pull together, but he doesn’t interrupt me and I don’t give him much of a chance anyway.
“So which is it? You roam beneath the hallways of Number Seven befriending serpents and rats as eternal punishment from Stein the Sadist, or you’re full of shit and you do his bidding when he calls on you?
” I tighten my arms over my chest, and not from fear.
So I don’t fucking swing at the older man and tell him to stop playing games.
I’m tired, delirious, confused, and if one thing would make sense for me, I’d be able to curl up next to Sullen all night and rest. “And if you’re so good at popping down into hidden doors in the floorboards, why did Stein have to let you out at all?
Why couldn’t you crawl out yourself? You ran with us, kept up, dragged your body out of a well.
Make some of this shit make sense, or we’ll leave without you. ”
He cocks his head, a strand of brown-gray hair falling over one brow, giving him the appearance of someone much younger.
“If you think Stein is incapable of keeping people trapped exactly where he wants them, then you are in over your head.” He nods toward Sullen’s sleeping form at my back without looking away from me.
“His body should have told you the stories even if he can’t bear to speak them himself. ”
My face heats and I swallow hard, wondering if he thinks we’ve slept together. If I’ve seen him naked. Sure, I know of some of his marks, but it’s just the way Sanford said it, I want to slam the door in his face.
His eyes roam over my cheeks and he correctly infers what I’m thinking because he adds, “Well, I suppose I’m not surprised.
Why would he trust anyone enough for that?
” The last part he seems to ask himself, glancing at the red carpet beneath our feet for one second before flicking his gaze up to mine.
“I don’t think you need to be imagining your grandson’s sex life,” I spit out.
Maybe because I’m embarrassed. Maybe because I’m worried that the fact Sullen doesn’t trust me, despite what I’ve done for him, means he never will.
Or perhaps it’s something more twisted, inside my head.
I think because he doesn’t want to sleep with me, he doesn’t care for me at all.
I’ve used sex to get close to Von, to Cosmo, and what do I have to offer without it? Pathetic. The word echoes in my head.
Sanford rolls his eyes and it’s almost amusing.
“Regardless, sometimes you have to play the long game, particularly when you’re dealing with someone with no moral compass.
” He looks down his nose at me. “What should matter to you is this: I opened the door in the dungeon you were too naive to find the switch for. I turned on the power to make it work. I—”
“Was it you all along? Fucking with the power at the hotel?” I ignore everything else he said, wanting concrete answers so I can inform Sullen in the morning.
Sanford shakes his head once. “Not always.”
“Then who else?”
“The door won’t slide open without electricity. It was Stein’s way of keeping him trapped.”
“And before? When the lights went out as you found us in the hotel room?”
A small smile tugs on his lips. “I feel more comfortable in the dark. Besides, you’re welcome, for the warning.”