22. Wilder
Wilder
“Alright, let’s go,” Willa says, heading for the hole in the floor.
Everyone starts speaking at once, warning her to be careful, to think this through, to just wait for a second.
But I know my sister, and she’s a dog with a bone in everything she does—making friends, solving mysteries, getting me good deals on things I want.
Which is why I don’t bother to try slowin’ her down when she heads for the stairs and promptly disappears down them.
Lemon spins and stares at me with wide eyes. “Is she always like this?”
I nod. If I keep saying it, eventually folks will believe me.
“We don’t even know where it leads!” Lemon exclaims, placing both hands atop her head as she stares at the spot where Willa disappeared.
Just then, Willa pops back out of the hole with a big smile. “You guys comin’ or what?”
“Fuck it,” Bluebell grumbles. “If we die, at least I won’t have a headache anymore.”
I’m torn between wanting to protect my sister and not wanting Oz to follow her into who knows what. But another part of me is curious and doesn’t think the house would send us willfully into danger.
Oz looks up at me, and for a moment, I find myself lost in the amethyst of his eyes behind those glasses he sometimes wears for show.
That decision fascinates me. The fact that he seems not to need them but chooses to wear them is so…
oddly adorable? Last night, those little glasses about did me in, the way his dark lashes fluttered behind the lenses, the way his lips dropped open, releasing those breathy little moans. The way he arched into me.
Just like that, I’m hard, the entire clock-and-stair mystery forgotten as I think about just how real last night felt to me.
It wasn’t staged; it wasn't necessary. Just his body beneath mine, melting against me, opening for me.
Sex with Oz was fucking poetic, transcendent, completely and utterly intoxicating.
Now he looks up at me again. “Shall we, Hubby?”
Play-acting again. I hate it only because I know it’s not real like this, and I don’t want the falseness of this relationship we’ve been forced into.
I want the real Oz because I want to know if last night was a sexy one-off, or if it was fully him.
We’ve blurred every line we started with, and I’m unsure where that leaves us.
“Lead the way,” I say. “I’ll be right behind you.”
“Hope you will,” he says with a little wink, rubbing my chest once before he disappears toward the hole in the floor.
Willa shoots me a quizzical look that I do my best to ignore. I don’t want her to read this and ask me a bunch of questions I don’t fully know the answers to. Oz and I haven’t even had a chance to talk about last night, and we probably should before I discuss it with third parties.
Even her.
I was more than a little enraged at how Saint treated him, and I might have let it get the best of me. Truth be told, as I watch Oz disappear down the dark stairs with Willa, that protectiveness rises again.
One of the only things I got from my troll lineage…
I’ve always heard protectiveness is a troll trait.
But I’ve never really experienced it until last night.
If Saint Ashbourne had been present when Oz got home, I’m not even sure what I would have done.
Being in close proximity to him brings out a darkness in me I didn’t even know existed.
Moving past Lemon, who’s still standing at the top of the stairs staring fretfully into the darkness, I step down and follow Oz.
His and Willa’s voices echo from below, revealing them to be thankfully still alive and headed downward.
Rushing carefully forward, I don’t stop until I can touch Oz just ahead of me.
Lemon and Bluebell come down next, the only sound Bluebell munching on her biscuit. Below, something clicks on and casts a faint ray of light around the stairwell.
“You had a flashlight this whole time?” Oz hisses at my sister.
Willa snorts out a mischievous laugh. “You can’t have an exploratory nature like I do without taking a flashlight and knife everywhere.”
That knife hasn’t always served her all that well, but she carries it nonetheless. The flashlight is far more useful.
I press my hand to Oz’s hip, hooking a finger through his belt loop. “Can you see the bottom, Wills?”
Willa places the flashlight under her chin and makes a spooky face up toward Oz and me. “Why, big brother, you gettin’ cold feet?”
“Just don’t want to walk off a cliff,” I say as I resist the temptation to hold Oz close.
“The bottom’s right here, silly,” she says as she disappears from view again. There must be a wall, because one minute she’s there, and the next she’s completely gone.
We make it to the bottom, where Willa lights a small landing surrounded on three sides by stone walls. Behind her there’s an emerald-green door, the paint faded with age. Once our whole group is at the bottom, we crowd around to examine it.
“No doorknob.” Oz runs his fingers over the aged surface.
“Wait, look.” I step around Oz, staring hard at the door. “Wills, there are carvings.”
She joins me and holds the flashlight close. Swirled lines that almost look like leaves cover the surface in wild circular shapes, spinning out from a green stone inlaid in the very center.
“The fuck is that?” Bluebell mumbles around a mouthful of biscuit. “Are those flowers?”
“Flowers?” I squint at the lines, and I do see leaves, but not—
“Step back.” Oz pulls me away from the door. “If you get a little distance from it, some of these do look like flowers, but also letters?”
Willa mumbles. “Anyone ever seen anything like this?”
Our group falls silent except for the sound of Bluebell chewing.
My sister looks up the stairwell. “House, any chance you’ve got a clue for us?”
The grandfather clock at the top of the stairs shakes from side to side like it’s saying no, but nothing moves down where we are.
Willa frowns. “So she can’t really interact with us down here, it seems, and she doesn’t know. Curious. Very curious.” She strokes one of her tusks as she stares at the doorway.
“So what now?” I run a hand through my hair, looking from Willa to the indecipherable door.
“Well,” she says, “the bar started us down this path for some reason. We’ve got to be smart. What would Sipan do?”
That’s a good damn question, but unfortunately, it doesn't seem any of us has the first clue how to answer it.