52. The Closed Door
THE CLOSED DOOR
ASHER
L ev pushed open the door to their room with his back after he’d insisted on carrying Asher over the broken glass in the hallway.
“How are you feeling, baby?” Lev asked, lowering Asher to the ground, one hand still curled around his waist as if Asher had forgotten how to stand when he’d forgotten how to breathe.
“I can’t believe you didn’t think to tell me you almost got struck by lightning.”
“It would have been counterproductive to share it while coaching you out of a panic attack— Try to slow your breathing. Say, have I told you about that time I was almost struck by lightning?”
The joke took Asher by surprise, and he burst into laughter.
Lev smiled slowly. “Lichenmoor is the tallest thing around for miles and miles. It gets struck by lightning all the time. Why do you think there are so many windows without panes? Father couldn’t be arsed to replace some of them.
Honestly, I find it far more shocking that the power is back on already. ”
Asher narrowed his eyes. “Shocking? ”
“It was a slip of the tongue. I’d never make such a dreadful joke, unless you thought it was funny…”
“No.” Asher rolled his lips inward to hide his smile.
“You can try to look cross all you want—particularly because I find it adorable—but you can’t hide your dimples.”
“If Lichenmoor gets struck by lightning all the time, shouldn’t you have put a disclaimer in your invitation?”
“That was rather careless of me, wasn’t it? I’ll be sure to add that the next time I invite you, but seeing as you’re already here and I’ve no intention of letting you leave…”
Asher rolled his eyes and took off his hoodie.
The muscles in Lev’s throat flexed as he raked his gaze over Asher’s bare skin. “Why don’t I nip to the loo and start a bath for us?”
“Okay.”
“Splendid.” Lev took a few steps and stopped when Asher didn’t join him, pointing a far too casual thumb toward the bathroom. “Do you need to use the loo?”
“No.”
“Very well.” Lev stepped into the bathroom. “Are you sure you don’t want to join me?”
“No, thanks.” Asher bent beside the unlit fireplace. “You can leave the door open if it makes you feel better.”
“Ah, I’ve found the candles,” Lev called. “I’m going to light a few in case the power goes out again.”
When Asher didn’t answer immediately, Lev called, “Asher?”
Poor Lev. “I’m still here.”
“As you bloody well should be.”
Asher smiled and lit a match, igniting the crumpled up rejected sketches Lev kept in a trash can for kindling. The log caught quickly, coaxed by the wind wafting down the chimney.
He brushed the dirt off of his hands, and moved to stand, then stopped. The end table had been moved to the side. A small wood panel rested on the floor, a little bigger than a sheet of paper, a perfect match for the empty space in the wall above it.
What the fuck?
Asher looked over his shoulder, but Lev was still bustling around the bathroom lighting candles.
Dread filled him as he kneeled in front of the hidden compartment, bracing for a rat to leap out and scare him. There wasn’t a rat, but something was inside. Multiple small shadowy somethings.
Lev had insinuated that he’d hurt Silas, and was the reason why Silas had died. Was the evidence inside? Had Silas opened it for Asher or had Lev forgotten to close it in his haste to find him? Maybe he stored emergency equipment there.
The first thing Asher’s hand touched was a brown paper bag stuffed with what felt like a thick stack of cards or cash. Asher pulled out a tarnished silver box no bigger than his palm, etched with thorny rose vines.
Inside, he found a thick lock of silky black hair a few inches long tied together with powder blue ribbon. It was the same color as Silas’s eyes.
Asher rubbed the hair between his fingers, soft and slippery as a spider’s silken threads.
Okay, so that was creepy as fuck, but it could still be explained.
Maybe Lev had saved a neat clipping of Silas’s hair, and stored it reverently beside his bed to stroke like a stalker while he and Silas were apart. Or he’d clipped it from Silas’s body.
Asher closed the box and pulled out a stack of photographs with Silas’s passport on top. Someone had stashed a photograph of the two of them inside.
They must have been teenagers or a little bit older, and the pose they shared projected innocent brotherly love.
Lev smiled at the camera, fair skin and freckles stained sepia with sun-kissed skin, one long arm slung loosely around Silas.
Silas smirked more than smiled, staring into the lens so intensely it was like he knew one day he’d be dead and his replacement would try to fill the space he’d left.
The arched window behind them looked like one from the ballroom art studio.
Sun sparkled off the ocean and in through the window, transforming Lev’s ginger hair into strands of sunlight.
He was beautiful. At first glance, Lev looked happy, but there were signs of strain in the tightness of his lips, in the way his other hand hung clenched against his side, in the shadows underneath his eyes.
The washed out passport photo couldn’t have been more different. That version of Silas glared at the camera with a sullen pout.
Wind tousled the hair at the base of Asher’s neck. He shivered, imagining the passport version of Silas standing over him as he snooped, and cast a paranoid look over his shoulder, but no one was there.
The snippet of Silas’s hair was suspect.
The passport could be rationalized away, but Asher couldn’t lie to himself about the thick stack of photographs taken from every angle and distance.
Some of the photos were so zoomed in, they framed only a single fingertip or the arch of an eyebrow, the soft shell of an ear, all of which belonged to a single person.
Silas.
Silas, the man from Lev’s paintings, the sad specter of himself in his passport photo, not the brother Lev had posed with.
His eyes were flat, no longer fae-like, his skin taut over sharp bones.
Worst of all, the flushed cheeks and red lips that had given him a Snow White appearance had faded to a pallid grayscale.
This was Silas after he’d died.
Lev should have chosen a better place to hide his murder evidence—if it was murder evidence. Photographs of Silas’s corpse didn’t mean Lev had actually killed him, right?
Lucian was known to take hundreds of reference photos to master every detail and angle. He’d probably done the same with his wife and Wendell. Lev used reference photos too. Maybe Lev had found Silas and he or Lucian had taken the photographs.
Asher rolled his shoulders, shrugging off the bug-crawling sensation.
The last item in the paper bag was a piece of old paper folded into a square. He opened it carefully to reveal Lev’s original self-portrait, the one with the eyes scratched out all the way through the paper, the one Asher had tattooed over his heart.
Why had Lev kept it? Why had he kept any of it? Asher shoved everything back into the bag. He’d seen enough.
“What are you doing?” Lev asked.
Asher jumped. A violin string of fear from a horror movie sliced through his thoughts. He dropped the bag with a loud clatter of the silver box striking the floor, and turned.
Lev stood in front of the bathroom door. A muscle in his jaw ticked. How long had he watched? How much had he seen?
“You scared me.” Asher rushed to his feet. “I was just starting a fire for us and found that piece of wood on the floor and tried to put it back, but then the bag fell onto the floor and well… You saw the rest.”
Lev pushed off the door, exuding danger. “You must think I’m stupid.”
“No, sir.”
“Don’t call me that,” Lev snapped.
Asher’s eyes darted to the exit.
Lev followed his gaze. “You’re not thinking about leaving already, are you?”
“No. Of course not.”
Lev prowled closer, putting himself between Asher and the door. “The water is still rising.”
“I know.” Sweat trickled down the back of Asher’s neck. He breathed slowly through his nose, and begged his panicked pulse to slow. He didn’t dare look at the secret door to his right, the best chance he had at getting out.
“Well, what do you think now that you’ve seen my most treasured possessions?”
“I think you loved him very much, but I already knew that.”
“Come now, Blakely. I know you saw the photographs.”
“I didn’t look, but if I did, I’m sure I wouldn’t find any evidence of wrongdoing,” Asher said slowly, buying himself as much time as he could, down to the milliseconds between words.
If he threw the end table at Lev would it slow him down enough to get out?
“You wouldn’t kill him unless you had no other choice,” Asher continued, slower still.
“Nice sentiment, but you’re wrong,” Lev said. “He always had a choice, and he chose to hurt me.”
Wait. What?
“Lev…” Asher oozed empathy he hoped was convincing, and didn’t acknowledge the mistake that had slipped into his speech.
Because that wasn’t Lev. It was someone else.
“I’m so sorry he hurt you,” Asher continued, then grabbed the end table and hurled it at him.
The lamp fell. Glass broke. Lev roared.
Asher flipped the tapestry up, and hurried through the secret doorway.
“Oh, no you don’t.” Lev snatched Asher’s ankle and yanked him off his feet.
Asher hit the ground with only his knees and chin to break his fall. His teeth sank into his tongue. At the taste of blood, the room started to sway.
Pushing through the pain, and nausea, and mounting panic, Asher scrambled to find something to use as a weapon. But Lev was too fast and too strong, and ripped Asher back by his ankles, while Asher could do nothing more than leave a trail of fingernail marks in the floorboards.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Lev laughed cruelly.
No. Not Lev. Dr. Jekyll had left, and Mr. Hyde was home. Silas was in control.
Asher was sure of it. He’d worry about the why and how later.