Chapter 6
Amara
As it turned out, It only took a vicious injury and a near-death experience for my solitary wife to acknowledge my presence from time to time. Three days had passed since Dylan burst into the apartment and bled all over the carpet, and in those three days she had been near-friendly at best and cordial at worst. The uneasy truce between us seemed to be holding. It felt like a breakthrough.
While her eyes were still guarded and she kept up her disquieting disappearing act, she took the time to respond to my pitiful attempts at pleasantry with small talk of her own. She had been particularly interested in my nursing skills and I’d often catch her running her fingers over the stitching in her leg, inspecting it with a furrowed brow like she was trying to decipher a code.
I suspected I had discovered a chink in her armor, a way to earn her trust.
A flaw to be exploited. I tried not to feel guilty about it.
One morning, after waking up to an empty apartment, I decided to try breaking onto the rooftop once again. I scaled the rickety staircase and tentatively tested the trapdoor above my head. It was unlocked, which was surprising, and I entered the garden holding my breath. After the last time she’d caught me up there, Dylan had told me to do what I wanted. While I assumed it was penance for her outburst, I didn’t expect her to leave the secret garden accessible to me.
The rooftop oasis was just as enchanting, even more so in broad daylight. I had half-expected to find it mundane, stripped of its mystery and allure now the sun was out. But the lush foliage was vibrant in the sunshine, and the ivy overhead cast mottled shadows over the serene scene.
I settled down on an ornate bench, half-hidden behind a cluster of fig trees, and pulled out my sketchbook and pencils. Drawing was a way to lose myself in the moment, to forget the complexities of my situation, if only for a little while. But as I sketched, the gears in my head turned, and my mind tugged toward my enigmatic housemate despite my best efforts. When I inspected the contents of my heart, I was surprised to find a growing fondness there, an infatuation I hadn’t expected.
I blew a curl out of my eyes and hunched over my sketchbook, roughly dancing the graphite pencil over the paper.
Dylan was, above all else, a stubborn, prickly asshole. But I’d slowly come to suspect that was a front, her best defense against whatever it was she thought was going to hurt her. And she was right to be wary. I was there on a mission and I couldn’t afford to lose sight of it, not when freedom was so close.
I twisted the ring on my finger, the cold silver a constant reminder of what I had to do, what I wanted more than anything. A life untainted by my father’s presence. Aliyah and I had shared that dream once. Just thinking about it made my chest ache with a desperate longing that had not dulled with time.
And yet, just as I was wearing down her defenses, Dylan was testing mine. I found her captivating, even when she was scowling at me in a drunken stupor. Whatever it was she had drunk the night she’d been injured had muddled her mind – at least enough to make her relent and let me help her. And thank god she did. She’d been half-dead and bleeding out, all the while defying my concern with an unflinching, ferocious glare.
My hands had been steady when she finally let me near the wound, but my mind was far from quiet. My eyes had traveled to her face between stitches, mapping out the pale curve of her throat while she stared at the ceiling. She had tensed up when I tugged the thread a little too hard, jutting her jaw out in a way that made my cheeks flush with heat…
My pencil stuttered in my hand and I looked down in surprise to find that I’d broken the tip off, digging it into the paper hard enough to pierce a hole. I tsked, irritably flipping the page and starting again, steering my mind to more pressing matters.
The wound on her leg. A deep, jagged gash, the edges uneven and torn. It looked less like damage caused by a weapon and more like she’d been attacked by some kind of animal. Her blood had been tinged with a faint, greenish fluid.
When I pointed that out, Dylan brushed my concerns aside with a half-baked explanation. A broken bottle, she’d said, a drunken adversary from a deal gone wrong. I found that hard to believe. Her so-called “first-aid” stock was just as mystifying. Simple herbal medicine, according to Dylan, but the labels on the bottle said otherwise. What kind of herbal medicine counteracted ‘lycanthropy’?
That was just one of the mysteries surrounding Dylan. Whenever my wife was out doing god knows what, I took the opportunity to snoop around the apartment. The previous day I had decided to search her bedroom. It was the one place I had avoided since moving in, partly out of respect for her privacy and partly because it felt invasive. But desperation drove me to push past those boundaries.
I opened drawers and rifled through her wardrobe, careful to leave everything exactly as I found it. There were no photos, no keepsakes, nothing to suggest she had a family or a past worth remembering. It was as if her life began and ended within the confines of the apartment.
My only notable discovery had been a small jewelry box, shrouded in cobwebs under her bed, holding a single, slightly charred arcade ticket and nothing else. The faded ticket was an anomaly amongst the otherwise impersonal items, the edges blackened like it had been snatched from a fire. I had no idea what to make of it and was careful to return it to its resting place.
I was determined to uncover something – anything – that could shed light on Dylan’s perplexing life. But every search left me frustrated and more bewildered than before. Dylan had caught on to my antics – I opened a random drawer to discover a note addressed to me:
Dear Amara,
Still snooping? Stop.
Regrettably your wife,
Dylan
I would have loved nothing more than for her to take her letter and shove it somewhere unpleasant.
So much for subtlety. I was a terrible double agent.
Irritated all over again, I banished that particular train of thought and settled back in the present. My pencil drooped in my hand and I sighed, straightening up and examining the completed sketch. I had been trying to draw the flowers in front of me, dainty white buds I couldn’t name, but somewhere along the way, I had changed course. I stared down at the paper in my lap. Dark, brooding eyes stared back.
I had etched her face from memory, a rough but detailed iteration of Dylan during one of her sulks. The bold lines gave it a raw, unfinished look that captured her essence perfectly. Her eyes, always so guarded and intense, were the focal point. I had spent extra time on them, shading and re-shading to get the depth just right.
They seemed to follow me, exuding both a simmering ferocity and a vulnerability I had only recently begun to notice. Her lips were parted slightly like she was on the verge of saying something important. I traced my thumb over them, the appendage coming away smudged with graphite.
I quickly shut the sketchbook, gathered my pencils, and hightailed it out of the garden before my head caught up with my heart.
I had just reached the bottom of the staircase when the front door opened and Dylan stepped inside. When our eyes met, her usual guarded expression softened for a split second, before she masked it again just as quickly. She leaned a shoulder against the doorframe, tucking her hands into the back pockets of her jeans.
“Hey.” Her stance was casual and she sounded her words slowly. “How was your day?”
I stared for a moment, examining her from top to bottom. Aubergine lipstick, slightly smudged like she’d wiped a hand across the corner of her mouth. Strands of hair escaped her ponytail and fell over deep violet eyes. A protruding collarbone under a tight black tank top. Lanky legs and steel-toed boots.
No new injuries.
I exhaled softly and shrugged, trying for a smile that probably looked more like a grimace. I gripped my sketchbook tightly.
Dylan hovered in the doorway for a moment. Then her eyes snagged on something above my head and she strode forward with alarming speed. My heart jolted in my chest and I flinched, but she stopped a few steps away. Reaching over, she plucked a small green leaf from my hair.
I braced for a scathing glare and possibly a reprimand, but Dylan just turned the leaf over in her fingers. Her expression morphed from tense to angry, before her placid mask shuttered and settled back into place.
“Fig leaf,” was all she said, handing it over to me. “Come fall, every tree will be heavy with ripe fruit. They’ll flower again in spring. It’s very pretty.”
I had no idea what to do with that information and Dylan gave me no time to respond. She sidestepped me and headed for her bedroom, shutting the door behind her without another word.
That night, I was curled on the sofa eating cold spaghetti for the second week in a row when Dylan appeared from her quarters. Dressed in leather and donning a grim expression, she came to stand behind me, raising a brow at my abysmal dietary choices.
I blinked up at her, inspecting her outfit. Black leather jacket zipped to her throat. Her long dark hair was braided tightly in a single plait that disappeared down her back. Her signature heavy eyeshadow. An odd-looking knife was strapped to her forearm. She would be out late, I could feel it.
Before she could leave again I dove for my phone, nearly sending my spaghetti flying in the process. Dylan noticed and shook her head, muttering something about her poor Persian carpet. I managed to save my spaghetti and balanced the bowl precariously on my knee, holding up my index finger to shush her while I typed on my cell screen.
I had decided not to use the phone my father gave me, but I was getting tired of having to jot down all my words on paper. So long as I only used it for the mission, Don listening in to my conversions shouldn’t be a problem, even if it was incredibly invasive.
I typed what I wanted to say into the app I had downloaded and turned the volume up on the cellphone. “Where are you going? Anything dangerous?”
Dylan blinked when the app spoke my words for me, and her lips moved in a barely readable flurry. “Why haven’t you been using that this whole time?!”
More typing from my end. “I’m old-fashioned. But you read too slow.”
“I’m wounded,” Dylan said, but her withering glare said otherwise. “And I have to head out now. Do not get that spaghetti on my carpet.”
The bowl wobbled on my knee while I quickly typed. “You know, if you ever need a sidekick out there, I’m available. I make a mean distraction.”
A bemused smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, and Dylan shook her head. “Thanks, but I think I’ll manage. Don’t wait up, okay?”
I nodded and gave her a thumbs-up, nearly knocking my spaghetti to the floor in the process. Dylan stared at me and let out what looked like a long nasal exhale before turning away. I watched her go, smiling until the door shut behind her. Then I looked down at my phone.
I had one new message from an unknown number.
We’re due for a chat. Illerey Manor, Wednesday 8AM.
We will discuss your progress in person.
There was only one person who would have my number. Don wanted to meet back home, he wanted intel. Setting aside my spaghetti, I tried to shake off the cold feeling that settled in my chest. It was critical that I gained Dylan’s trust, and I was running out of time.
As I was so often reminded, my father was not a patient man.