7. Chapter 7 #2
“You’re okay, I suppose,” she said, substituting every ‘s’ with a ‘th’. “Bear says you’re funny sometimes.”
“Who’s this Bear?”
She tipped her head up in the direction of the stairs where her uncle was coming down, hair wet and dripping down his white shirt. He shook his head once, splattering water everywhere, and then combed it all back before reaching for the jacket Christof was offering him.
I tried my best not to laugh. Or stare too hard at him.
He was Bear?
Well, he was as big as a bear, so she was right in that aspect.
She looked like a speck of dust in his arms when he picked her up to kiss her cheek. “You’ll be late for your piano lessons.”
There was a tiny pause in my thoughts as I took in the two of them together. Something about the two made me awfully, violently melancholic. Maybe it was the way she felt so safe and free in his arms. Maybe it was the fierce look in his cold eyes that warmed up when he was looking at her.
Her tiny grubby fingers grasped his ears. “She says she’ll let me play with her rat.”
He smacked another loud kiss on her fat cheek. “You have to be gentle with it. Or your aunt will fine me handsomely.”
“I be gentle,” she said somewhat defensively.
The kid swung her hands back and forth when he put her down. “Bye, Boo.”
I waved back. “Name’s Willow, kid.”
She shook her head once. “I can’t say that.” With that, she dashed to her governess’s side.
Logan hadn’t stopped looking at me for a second since he’d come down. “You’ll get a nickname until she has your name figured out. Everyone in the house has one.” He buttoned his jacket. “But I wouldn’t hold your hopes up. So far, only Liam has made it on the other list.”
I reached to fix his tie, and he let me. “I was wrong. She’s cuter than my rat. Actually, my rat isn't that cute at all. Maybe sometimes in certain angles. Darkness works in his favour mostly. Especially if you’re partially blind. Or like completely.”
“Willow.”
My fingers slipped down his tie as I tucked it in his vest, and I felt his heartbeat against my knuckles. “Yes?”
“I’m sure your rat is fine.”
“He’ll be very flattered.” I glanced up at him. “How bad is it out there?”
He watched me button his jacket. “I’d skip the library today.”
I nodded, holding the door slightly ajar to watch him join Henry and Arthur. The latter spotted me and shook his head when I waved my fingers at him.
The estate fell back into its ghostly state, as it always did when he wasn’t here.
A disjointed off-key piano melody crashed and shattered against the dark walls.
Taking the opportunity of the distraction caused by Piper’s horrid playing skills, I slipped from shadow to shadow until I reached my husband’s study.
I held Thomas up against the keyhole as he morphed into his gelatinous tar state, fitting through the keyhole. Not even ten seconds later, the door lock clicked open.
The air was filled with the scent of cloves, vetiver, and bergamot.
Brown leather armchairs lined the front of his mahogany desk and another sat behind it.
The walls were all lined with bookshelves.
Only one tiny section of it stood out from the rest; every book was in colour.
I ran my fingers down them, picking one out and flipping through the sticky, colourful pages.
Piper had of course doodled on all of them.
I somehow could imagine her on his lap as he read her these stories.
“The vampire will be back to eat you if you keep messing about,” Thomas warned, sniffing the pages. “He really wants to.”
“Not everyone is a little greedy, peckish monster, Tommy.”
“You don’t know what he is,” he hissed, humour coating his raspy tone.
Wiping away my ridiculous smile, I set the book back in place and tiptoed to his desk.
A few documents were piled on the corner, right next to a pen holder filled with all kinds of colourful chalks.
On the other side stood a few account books.
Ten minutes into flipping and skimming through them, I set them back in place with a groan.
He was surely strict and meticulous on how he managed his estate, that much I could say.
A rich crimson tie with golden leaf veins was draped against his chair. I brought it to my nose, inhaling the scent of cloves.
“What?” I whispered to Thomas who loomed over me in his dark, foggy shape.
“You want to eat the vampire. You think he tastes good.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, sliding it under my corset.
“I am Thomas,” my ridiculous familiar fiend echoed. “I don’t know who ridiculous is. I can’t be like him.”
His hot, stinking-of-corpses breath hit my face. “If you eat the vampire, I eat the little girl.”
“No one will be eating anyone.”
He scoffed. “Ethel would have eaten the vampire.”
Ethel. My Ethel.
I grabbed a piece of paper from his desk and dipped the fountain pen in ink and scribbled: My dearest horror, it’s me, your favourite grotesque paramour.
My husband hasn’t eaten me. Yet. I hold up hope I am not to his palate.
Despite my odds, I’m alive and still kicking. I love you. Do not mourn me.
Folding it neatly, I scribbled my initials on top of it and handed it to Thomas. “You’ll take it to her. Don’t tell her what you heard Agnes tell me or I will be starving you until I die.”
“If you die when I’m gone?”
“I won’t die until you come back.”
“I eat your corpse. That was our deal.”
“I will hold up our bargain, you ugly pettifogger.”
Dropping on my husband’s chair, I ran my fingers back and forth along the length of the wooden table. Only more account books were stored on the shelves. When I pulled on the last shelf, it was locked. Pulling a pin out of my hair, I worked the lock in under a minute.
The shelf was mostly empty, except for the stack of letters still on their envelopes and a photograph that most likely was Piper when she was a baby.
The letters all had one sender. Cassandra Clemonte-Duncan.
Running my finger over the broken seal flap, I decided to open one.
My dearest brother,
I feel strange. John’s presence makes me uneasy, and I miss him so much at the same time. I can’t help but push him away. He can’t understand what I am feeling. Nor can I.
It’s happening to me, too, isn’t it? Like the others. Maybe our mother wasn’t insane. Or am I? And the others, are they insane, too?
Please, return to Mortdale.
I fear for my baby. You’re the only one who can protect her.
If something happens to me, don’t let it happen to her, too.
I am scared, Logan.
-Your beloved sister, Cassandra
I folded the letter back, placing it how it had been before I stared off into the distance. Words floated in echoes around me, each letter pounding against my ears.
Like the others.
It’s happening to me, too, isn’t it?
Like the others.
I’m scared, Logan.
My eyes slid over his table. To the three framed photographs lined up along the left corner of his work desk. I grabbed Cassandra’s.
Heart near jumping up my oesophagus, I brought it closer and closer and closer to me until I spotted it. A mark on her shoulder. An upside down half-moon mark.
Impossible.
No.
How could it be? She was a vampire.
Just when I reached for another letter, the door handle rattled, and I ducked under Logan’s table, hiding.
“The door’s unlocked,” I heard Rupert tell someone. “He never leaves this door unlocked.”
Shit.
Grabbing Thomas, I threw him in the air towards the door. “Go!” I whispered.
The door slid open, and then a wave of screaming ensued. “Catch the fucking rat!” Edwin bellowed while Rupert howled in agony.
Please don’t catch the fucking rat.
With my heart racing, I opened the window and slid out into the gardens. Looking around to see if anyone had noticed me, I smoothed the fabric of my skirts and hopped my way back inside from the garden entrance.
I took a peep out to the entry hall, noticing Edwin holding a napkin to Rupert’s face, which was bleeding from the looks of it. Something my fiend was going to pay a price for and add to his cosmic debt. I didn’t know who to feel worse about, Rupert or my poor rat.