30. Piper
Chapter thirty
Piper
After discovering vampires are real, I think the universe owes a person at least eight hours of unconsciousness. Possibly nine. A small coma would not be unreasonable.
But I don’t sleep. I don’t even go to my room.
Instead, I sit in the library with Murphy's head on my knee, Tristan's note on the table beside me, and a castle full of secrets pressing against the door.
I google everything I can on my phone about vampires. I need knowledge. The fire dies sometime after midnight. I don’t relight it.
The room goes silver and gray with early morning, all the warmth draining slowly from the bookshelves and the velvet chairs and the ridiculous carved mantel that probably costs more than my last house. Rain still moves against the windows. Not hard. Just steady.
Scotland, apparently, is committed to the bit.
Murphy snores. I stare at the note again.
Murphy was distressed.
I will not come to you unless you ask.
The handwriting is beautiful. Controlled. Infuriatingly calm. I hate that it comforts me. I hate more that he knew exactly what would.
By dawn, my fear has become something else … anger, betrayal? A sick, aching confusion.
And beneath all of that, still alive and deeply inconvenient, is worry.
Because Tristan did not come after me.
He didn’t force an explanation on me. He didn’t trap me in a corridor or appear dramatically in the rain or do any of the things a man in a Gothic novel might be expected to do while wearing a tragic expression and an unreasonable amount of black.
He sent me my dog. Then he left me alone. That should make things easier.
It does not.
I rise too quickly, and Murphy lifts his head.
"No," I tell him. "You stay. Someone in this relationship needs to make good decisions."
I open the library door.
The corridor outside is empty and hushed. Morning moves through Glenhaven Castle slowly. The castle doesn’t feel haunted today. It feels awake and watching. I hate that I understand why people say that now.
Murphy pads by my side, deciding not to stay in the library. Every familiar detail feels slightly altered. The portrait with the severe woman in green. The niche with the cracked urn. The runner I almost tripped over last night while fleeing like an idiot in a cardigan.
I see Mrs. MacLeod arranging flowers on the entry hall table. Because apparently everyone here experiences supernatural catastrophes and then immediately returns to tasteful domestic tasks.
She looks up.
"Good morning, Miss Monroe."
That almost does it. That calm and kindness, the same voice that has offered me tea, towels, directions, gossip, and scones.
"You knew," I say.
"Aye, lassie."
No denial and no performance.
"Everyone knew. Justin, Liam, Duncan…"
"Aye."
"The village."
"Most of them."
"That makes it so much better." I almost laugh.
"It doesn't, lassie."
Murphy sits beside me, very solemn, as if he is chairing this meeting. She arranges the vase on the table and then turns to me.
"I won't insult you by pretending it wasn't a lie."
"Good."
The bluntness knocks some of the fight out of me. I was ready for excuses. For evasions. For some elegant Scottish nonsense about old families and duty and secrets kept for my own good.
She only looks at me like a woman who has cleaned up blood, soot, grief, and male stupidity for decades.
"I’m sorry," she says.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because it wasn't my secret to tell, lass. And because if I'd told you on your first morning here, you'd have been gone before supper."
I open my mouth. Close it. Because she’s right.
She steps closer, slowly enough that I can stop her.
"I let you see him first. He let you see him. The real him."
My chest tightens.
"That sounds like manipulation."
"Maybe it was." Her eyes are steady. "Or maybe it was mercy."
"For whom?"
"For both of you."
I look away. The hall blurs for a second, and I blink hard because I’m not crying in front of a housekeeper before breakfast. There are standards. Low ones at the moment, but standards.
"Is Justin all right?" I ask.
"Aye. Of course, lassie. Our family has fed the laird for generations. There’s something noble in it.”
"So this is … normal?"
"For us. It’s not what you think."
"You don't know what I think, Mrs. MacLeod."
"No. But I know what outsiders think when they first learn."
"Outsiders."
She sighs. "Miss Monroe—"
"No. That's what I am, right? The American who bought the castle. Or thought she did. The outsider. The only idiot in the room who didn't know the man across from her at dinner needed blood to survive."
Mrs. MacLeod’s face tightens with sympathy, which is worse than anger.
"You are not an idiot."
"I bought the castle online in an auction, Mrs. MacLeod"
"Aye, well." Her mouth twitches. "That part was perhaps ambitious."
Despite myself, a laugh escapes. It’s small and broken, but it’s real. And it hurts.
Mrs. MacLeod sees it and wisely says nothing.
I wipe under one eye with the heel of my hand.
"Where is he?"
"In his rooms, I expect."
"Is he avoiding me?"
"He gave his word. He won’t come to you unless you ask, lass."
The note burns in my pocket.
She hesitates and then says, “There's something you should know."
"Please don't say there are werewolves in the dungeon."
"He has asked Duncan to prepare papers."
"What papers?”
“If you wish him gone, his occupancy of the castle, he will go."
The words don’t make sense. I stare at her.
"He'll go where?"
Her mouth trembles once before she controls it.
"I don't know."
"But he lives here. He’s always lived here. This is his home."
"Aye."
I turn away from her. The staircase blurs. The portraits blur. Murphy presses his body against my leg, warm and solid.
Of all the things I expected this morning, this is not one of them.
I expected explanations. Apologies. Maybe more lies. Maybe a dramatic confession involving candlelight and a shocking number of ancestral crimes.
I did not expect Tristan to be preparing to leave the only home he has ever had because I saw the truth and ran.
“He can’t just leave!”
I grip the banister again. For several seconds, I stand there breathing through a feeling I don’t have a name for. Anger is still there. Fear too. Betrayal, absolutely. That one has unpacked a suitcase and appears to be staying.
But now something else has joined them.
Panic.
Not because Tristan might hurt me. Because he might leave.
"His rooms," I say. "Which way?"
She points toward the east corridor.
"Second staircase. Third door past the music room."
Murphy follows me.