23 - Jocelyn
~ 23 ~
JOCELYN
It didn’t know what the hell was happening, but I knew it wasn’t good. I knew enough to play along, though. If not for my sake, at least for Andre’s.
But I strongly suspected it was for my sake, too.
“C’mon,” said Andre, extending a hand. “I’ll show you your room.”
Gritting my teeth, I shook my head. “In a minute. I’m supposed to see the head chef, remember?”
Andre nodded numbly for a moment. Then he blinked. “Jocelyn! Wait—”
I shoved his arm away and pushed past him, walking straight into the kitchen. Bishop saw me first, standing at one of the giant, stainless steel refrigerators. He went stark white, and his expression was like someone who’d seen a ghost. It might’ve even been funny if I wasn’t so pissed.
“Hello everyone!”
Kayden and the brunette were standing side by side, going over several pieces of paper spread out over the island. At the sound of my voice, they looked up. Kayden was open-mouthed, and utterly speechless. But not the brunette. Standing there in her sleek black dress, the look she gave me was angry and suspicious.
“Who the hell are—”
“This is Emily,” Andre cut her off, scurrying into the room behind me. “She’s one of the servers.”
Now the brunette’s mouth dropped open as well. I wanted to punch it.
“The servers are here!?”
“No, no,” Andre said quickly. “Just one. Just her.” He cleared his throat. “She came a day early because—”
“She came early because I told her to come early,” Kayden finished smoothly.
Bishop, still holding the milk carton he was about to drink out of, looked even more thunderstruck. But the raven-haired woman was looking at Kayden in confusion.
“You… you did?”
“Yes,” Kayden affirmed. His eyes met mine, and silently they conveyed the same message Andre had: that above all else, I was to play along.
“Does Raif know?” the brunette demanded. “Because he’s going to—”
“Yes,” Andre jumped in. “Raif knows. He already cleared it.”
That seemed to satisfy her a bit. The alabaster shoulders exposed by her dress had rolled forward the second I’d entered the room. Now they relaxed again.
“Okay then, I guess,” she shrugged, giving me the once over. “Any particular reason she looks like a drowned rat?”
She laughed, elbowing Kayden, before closing a possessive hand over his shoulder. After an awkward pause, he laughed too.
“That storm outside is crazy, isn’t it?” Kayden asked me nervously.
I tried to tone it down, but I’m pretty sure my look was murderous.
“There’s a lot of crazy going around,” I shot back.
He couldn’t even look at me now. He looked down at the floor.
“It’s supposed to break tonight,” Kayden continued. “Tomorrow morning you’ll come with us, early. I want to be at the markets when they open.”
“The markets?” the brunette asked, confused. “You’ve been here a week, and you still haven’t finished shopping for everything?”
“There are still a few specialty ingredients we haven’t picked up yet,” Andre chimed in. “They’ll be ready tomorrow. Special requests.”
“Oh.”
The woman looked thoughtful for a moment. Maybe even conflicted.
“I should probably come too, then,” she offered. “I mean, if you need the help—”
“No,” Kayden said, almost too quickly. “No, Evelyn, we’re fine. Emily’s all the help we need.”
The brunette’s eyes lingered on Kayden for a moment, then shifted to me. Her mouth was pouty, her body language, defensive.
“Fine, then. Raif and I need to receive the arrivals, anyway,” she argued. You know, the ones who came on time , rather than early.”
The woman he’d called Evelyn leaned subtly into Kayden again, marking her territory in the sly way only another woman would understand. At this point I was too angry to care. Too tired, too wet, and too hungry.
“C’mon,” Andre said again. “Let’s get you settled.”
I shot them all a last, scathing look — Bishop included — before following Andre down the hall and up the staircase. We stopped first to grab my bag, where we encountered the man called Raif again. But he was so preoccupied with his tablet, he barely gave us a glance.
“What are we doing? ” I hissed, as Andre led me along
“Not now.”
“But—”
My sentence was cut off as he pulled me down a different upstairs hallway; one with much heavier doors. Just like the manor’s front doors, each had a rectangle of smoky black glass beside it. Andre produced my keycard, opened the door, and ushered me inside.
When he didn’t follow me in, I got worried.
“Andre…”
“Jocelyn, listen to me,” he said, in a voice barely above a whisper. He glanced over his shoulder and down the hallway. “Because I don’t have much time.”
“If these are your guests, they’re real fucking assholes,” I spat.
“They’re not guests. They’re the forward people, the ones who arrive before the guests.”
I glanced around in confusion. My bedroom was small and sparsely furnished, and looked more like a hotel room. It had a built-in bathroom and everything.
“What kind of room is this?” I demanded. “And why does my room have a keycard?”
“Because these people lock the doors at night, for safety reasons.”
A chill ran through me. “Whose safety?”
“Theirs,” Andre murmured. “Look, these people have a lot of enemies. They live an underground life. They rarely come out, and when they do, they don’t trust anyone.”
“Who are you talking about?” I pleaded. “Which people?”
Andre only shook his head slowly, his gaze drifting inadvertently down to his forearm. I followed it there, to where the strange, scrolling names intertwined with the rest of his tattoos.
“Something happened a while ago,” he said distantly. “Something very, very wrong.” He looked back into the hallway again, then growled. “And we’re going to make it right.”
I was still staring at those names when he leaned forward, grabbed me around the waist, and pulled me gently against him.
“We’ll explain everything in the morning,” he whispered, pressing his lips against my ear. “Once we get you out of here. Until then, sit tight. Play along. And don’t make waves.”
With that he pulled back, looked deep into my eyes, and kissed me. The kiss was slow and comforting. Loving, even. It somewhat eased my tension, but did nothing to assuage my raging curiosity.
“We’re going to keep you safe,” he said. “I promise.”
“But—”
“See you in the morning, Emily.”
He pulled back, the door closed, and the electronic latch engaged with a heavy mechanical whir. When it finished, the smoky glass pane on my side of the door bloomed with a tiny red light.
That’s when I realized he never gave me the keycard.