Chapter 22
“I’ll send an SOS text to Mack on the satellite phone.”
Thora went into the house to where she kept the phone, and it wasn’t there. Shit. She ran back through her memory to recall the last time she had it. The system had quickly broken down, to Mack’s obvious
annoyance. Mack had told her to keep it on her person, so she would be less likely to forget. It was in her jacket pocket
when Mack picked her up yesterday. How had that only been a day ago?
Wait. She’d noticed the power was low and charged it in Mack’s car. And left it there. Neither of them had noticed.
The only way they could get help was hiking down the mountain into cell phone reception. It was a good ten miles at least.
In the dark. The clouded-over skies didn’t even let the nearly full moon shine through. They were screwed.
“It’s okay,” Lee said calmly. “The rain must have been heavier than we knew. It actually explains the snake in the bathtub. That snake probably knew we were in for a gully washer and headed to high ground.”
This indeed calmed her. Unexplained things could be connected. They could have natural sources. The house did not have to
be conspiring against her.
“Mack will come in the morning and get us out,” she replied.
“She’s going to be pissed as hell.”
“I’m going to sleep,” Thora said. “It’s been a long day.” Then she paused. “I’m taking the Bird Room.”
She left the rest unsaid. You take the Bell Room.
“Not the fucking Bell Room,” he said quietly.
She couldn’t help but smile weakly. Awful as everything was, he still wanted to make her laugh. She was going to miss that.
They took turns in the pantry bathroom. She rubbed his toothpaste onto her teeth with her fingers, something she hadn’t done
since the first night she spent at Cody’s. He’d provided her with her own toothbrush after that. Before that had been a sleepover
where she’d forgotten her toothbrush but was too embarrassed to ask for one.
Smearing toothpaste around her mouth was pure failure. It didn’t make her teeth feel clean. It made her feel like she was
missing something fundamental. Like she was back at a larval stage, waiting for some critical development that would make
her able to fully deal with the world.
She spat into the sink and rinsed it out.
She looked at Lee’s toiletries, which she hadn’t noticed before.
She might have expected a lone wolf type to have nothing more than a three-in-one product in the shower, toothpaste, and deodorant.
But he had expensive moisturizer, a hair oil that explained his shiny locks, and a quilted floral toiletry bag.
Probably borrowed from Denise. Thora wondered if she’d turned him on to the moisturizer, too.
She sniffed the hair oil, confirming it had the herbal scent she’d smelled on his jacket.
Making a mental note of the brand, she pledged to avoid it.
It was silly, the way this evidence of his everyday life in the bathroom of the house she owned made her cry, but it did.
It was because she knew he was everywhere. Even if she tore out his superficial work, the room would remain a bathroom, and
she’d always know it was his idea. The perfectly gleaming wood of the Wood Room would remind her of George, but it would also
remind her of Lee, who brought it to a state of beauty she hadn’t known was possible. Someday, like it or not, she’d encounter
someone who used this same brand of hair oil.
But that was life. You had to carry around bits of people with you whether you wanted to or not. At some point in her life,
someone else’s toiletry bag would provoke curiosity, and she could be free of this one. Until then, she knew she was cursed
to think about those dainty florals and how she loved that a burly man had them.
She wasn’t going to be able to sleep anytime soon, so she took all the candlesticks from the bedside table and moved them
to the mantel, making room for the quail lamp. Putting things back in order, she told herself. Surrounding herself with trusted
entities. Did she trust a taxidermied quail? It hadn’t replaced itself with a living quail, so it was one up on the barn owl.
A Bryony Brooks novel might be good a distraction. Having finished Schuss, she picked up a new one, called Vocation. It was about a nun, who was placed in a convent orphanage as a baby. She joined the order because she had no other prospects,
until learning that the sinking of a luxury cruise ship killed so many people that now she was the heir to the throne of a
small fictional European state.
This was written before Bryony paid people like Thora to do research for her, so the fictional country had a confusing blend of attributes.
Bryony had probably read encyclopedia articles about Andorra, Monaco, and Lichtenstein, Frankensteining them into one impossibly opulent principality.
Much as Thora tried to get immersed, it wasn’t working.
A young woman not knowing what to do in the new-to-her ancient castle she just inherited was not providing escapism—go figure.
Not to mention, the duke of the neighboring state who promised his dick could make anyone see God had fucking topaz eyes.
Not the topaz eyes! She’d never felt more cursed.
She noticed a faint smell of smoke, stronger than the typical base level emanating from the beams. Lee must have been building
himself a fire in the Bell Room. Staring into a fire was one of the best things to do when sad, so she couldn’t blame him.
Also, she had the only space heater, and it was getting cold.
The smell grew stronger, making her worry there was a blockage in the chimney and Lee was about to roast a raccoon alive.
She had hoped he would go to sleep, figure out how to deal with the downed trees in the morning light, and leave quietly without
further conflict. That would have been kind. Instead, he had to drag her out of bed to see what was up.
Lee opened the door of his room at the same time as she did.
“Were you building a fire?” he asked.
“No, I thought you were.”
Then Thora saw it.
Wisps of smoke snaked into the hallway from under the basement door.