Chapter 23
“Fuck,” Theo hissed. “Where—”
“Follow me.”
Cloudtree’s warm hand wrapped around his and pulled him from a room full of armchairs with old clothes and curtains tossed over them to a door that was almost hidden in the peeling cream-colored wallpaper.
He pulled it open and went inside ahead of Theo, then stopped, pulling the door shut behind them and Theo to his chest in almost complete darkness.
“What the—”
“Hush. We wait until they pass before we…do something else.”
“That’s your plan?”
Theo kept his voice down, but not his irritation and certainly not the way his heart was beating hard, his pulse ringing in his ears. He clutched the hammer tightly.
“All will be well.”
Cloudtree sounded like he was trying to convince himself, which was not at all convincing Theo.
As they waited, his eyes got more used to the darkness.
The room had cabinets, maybe a chair, but otherwise it was pretty bare.
Light filtered in from above Theo’s head, and when he turned, he could see a fine crack in the wall, and by the way it illuminated Cloudtree’s face, he was peeking out through it, right into the room they’d come through.
“You don’t need to cuddle me like this.”
“I—oh. Apologies.” Cloudtree let Theo go.
Now that he was no longer pressed close to a too-firm Fae, Theo turned and got on his toes. He could see part of the room through the crack, hear footsteps he also felt on the aged floorboards under his feet. They were coming for them.
“I can hit one of them with this.” Theo lifted his hammer. “Can you handle the other?”
Cloudtree’s throat clicked. “I…am not a fighter.”
Neither was Theo, but he would fight if he had to. If they tried to hurt Peter or the others.
“Right. Then we wait. But if they find us, I’m using the hammer.”
Cloudtree relaxed. “Yes.”
“…and mistreated me, Father!” Miel said, sounding petulant.
A deeper voice said, “You shame me. To be taken advantage of in your own home, and by that dimming spark of a barnyard fire, no less. What are you doing? Why are you walking like that?”
“They hit my knee with a hammer, Father!”
“I am beginning to think they should’ve hit your mouth. Where are they? They went in here. I saw a flash of green.”
“Th-that was a human. He used magic to hide himself. I didn’t even see him at first.”
The father stopped just where Theo could see, and he felt Cloudtree inhale sharply.
“You missed a human walking into our house and let him kick you in the balls?”
“Th-the knee, Father. And it wasn’t him. I think…it was a dwarf? You know how dwarves are, carrying hammers all the time and…attacking people.”
A beat of heavy silence was followed by booming laughter.
“Oh, you foolish boy! You bare yourself and our house to the most base of creatures. It is one thing to line your bed with them—we all must take care our loins don’t overheat with loneliness—but it is another to be fooled by them.
I should disinherit you and give your brother everything. ”
The father took another step before he turned to face Miel as if he was squaring up and getting ready to look down on him. Theo didn’t like Miel either, but this guy sucked at least as much; clearly a trait he’d passed on.
“B-but…how would I know? It was Ash Mouth’s fault! I thought he had brought them. He did bring them, and I thought he’d run away to look for his fortune, but in order to get us to take him back, he’d brought gifts. And as you say, when the loins are heated—”
“Ugh. Not for that boy, surely?”
“Well, no. But he had a pretty Elf with him who looked very limber.”
There was another pause, and it had an entirely different quality than the first.
“Limber?”
“Yes! Very. Finely formed mouth, as well. He reminded me of that field hand who ran away with the first two families to leave the estate.”
“Hmm. Well. Where is this Elf, then?”
“I think he might have been looking for the other gift Chambord and I—mostly I—have prepared for you.”
The father sighed. “You may as well show me.”
The footsteps, one set of them still limping, moved away. Theo could hear them for another minute or so, but after that, it was just the sounds of him and Cloudtree breathing. He looked left and right, but the room outside their hiding spot was abandoned once more.
“Do we move? If they attack the others—”
“We can go upstairs. To my room. There should be some weaponry up there, I think, and at any rate, it will be a better hiding place. I was only ever allowed upstairs to clean. They won’t expect me there.”
Theo turned. “They won’t expect you where you’re forbidden to go? And you just said your room’s up there. How’s your room upstairs if you can’t go upstairs?”
Cloudtree shifted from one foot to the other. “Well, my room before my mother left. I didn’t always sleep in the kitchen.”
“You sleep in the—never mind. Okay. Let’s go upstairs, find weapons, then let’s come back to help the others. I don’t even know where they went, do you?”
“No. There is a greenhouse and a shed that connects to the main house, so mayhap there. We will look later. Be ready.”
Cloudtree took a few steps, and Theo heard him carefully turn the doorknob. When he opened the door and the light sliced into the small room, Theo saw the cabinets as well as a set of chairs, plates and piles of linen along with several cases that looked like they had valuable stuff inside them.
“Follow close behind. I will lead you.” Cloudtree let out a long breath, almost a sigh, before he straightened.
“I will protect you from my stepfather and stepbrothers if it comes to that. I offered you as much when I mistook you for having been thralled. Now there is danger, and I will stand between you and it as a son of Faerie should.”
Theo adjusted his hood. “That’s really nice and all, but maybe save the speech. Let’s just go and do the thing and find Peter. Come on, I want more weapons.”
In the light coming in from the room, Theo saw Cloudtree’s Adam’s apple bob much like it had back in the entrance hall.
“As you wish.”
Theo decided that there was something lonely and sad about the building, like the smell of wet clothes improperly dried.
After having lived with Peter, he knew something about a ridiculously large place that was objectively lonely, given it was only lived in by a vampire and his client and blood donor.
This house though, with four inhabitants if you counted Cloudtree, had none of the warmth Peter’s house had. Even Peter’s kitchen, one of the least used rooms in the house before Theo had moved in, was bright and sunny in comparison.
Cloudtree had led him through a set of rooms that came with odd corners and strange turns.
Dust ruled everything, but there was a lot of disuse too, with moth-eaten cloth and spiders scurrying in corners.
The wooden staircase clearly had seen more traffic since there was less dust there, but the paintings that hung on the walls didn’t match, had been placed over the rectangular impressions of older paintings that had been taken away.
Possibly to sell them. What remained was more or less strict-looking Fae in boring, ostentatious costumes that all blended into sameness pretty quickly.
“You know, your interior decorator really sucks,” Theo whispered as he followed Cloudtree up the stairs, keeping to the sides rather than the creakier middle. The sides were creaky enough, even if they moved slowly.
“Sucks what? And what is an interior decorator?”
“It’s—forget it. Or get Peter to explain it to you. Peter is great at explaining things.” Theo looked back down, hoping against hope that Peter would just appear there at the mention of his name, but of course he didn’t. “Can we hurry, please?”
“Yes. This way.”
Cloudtree led him away from the stairs on the first floor. A deep red runner lay in the center of the hallway here, decently clean though somewhat scuffed. Cloudtree stopped at a room at the end of the hallway and carefully opened the door.
“I thought we could use the pokers.” He went straight to the fireplace, while Theo stopped, only for a heartbeat.
This room was a child’s. It had fallen completely into disuse.
On the left, the shelves were empty but for three dolls, two fallen over and the last sitting up there in the leftmost corner.
Books were strewn around, but many remained in the bookcase next to the doll shelf.
A wardrobe was half-open, and clothing far too small for Cloudtree had yellowed on the hangers.
“This was your room?”
Cloudtree rattled the pokers to the right of the fireplace.
“Yes. Until my stepbrothers came in and told me I was to tend the kitchen from now on. They played with my things, but we really had different tastes.” He looked at the dolls.
“They broke most of the things I loved, but they largely ignored the books. That was lucky.”
Theo pressed his lips together before he said, with feeling, “Fuckers.” He shoved the hammer into his bag and went forward and took the poker out of Cloudtree’s hand.
It had a better weight than the hammer and gave him range.
There was also the pointy end to it. “Come on. Let’s find them and put these where the sun don’t shine. ”
Cloudtree hurriedly picked a poker of his own. “Where the sun—is that a human riddle? Am I supposed to solve it?” He gasped as they headed for the stairs at almost a run. “Is this a friendship ritual?”
“Not for most people, but who am I to yuck your yum, poker or otherwise?”
“I…do not understand.”
“Well, I don’t like your stepbrother or your stepfather. They acted badly toward you, so now I feel inspired to act badly back.”
Cloudtree hummed. “Retribution. It’s an old habit of the Fae. I wasn’t aware it was the same in the human realm. And on another’s behalf, that’s… I do not even know what that is.”
Theo carefully swung the poker at one of the paintings. It dropped.
“It’s probably unwise. Which is why we should also prioritize finding Peter and the others and asking them to help us with the retribution.”
Peter is probably going to be mad when he hears I was ready to hit a Fae with a poker. And I’ll take a Peter who’s mad instead of one who’s hurt any day of the week.