Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
“The hell?” Myles jolted at a sharp crack of sound echoing down the street. He reared to his feet, almost knocking over his dining table when it came again.
Kreed appeared in the kitchen pass-through, and Lucky’s head came around from where he’d been clearing a table.
“Uncle Myles?” Jet’s face went pale.
“Take your sister upstairs,” Myles ordered as the sound came again.
From the kitchen, there was a crash, then Tris’s voice, too high and thin, calling Ozzy’s name. When he glanced over, Kreed was vanishing from the opening, saying something to Ozzy, and then there was another bang.
“Go, Jet.” He didn’t have time for Ozzy.
Jet nodded and picked Shelly up. “C’mon, Shells. We got some yummy snacks and a movie for dessert, yeah?” He stopped at the bottom of the steps, turning. “Where are you going?”
There was another bang, clearly coming from outside, and Myles peered out the window. “Go upstairs,” Myles said again.
“Come with us.”
“Jet, do as you’re told!”
“Uncle Myles!”
“Go!” Myles shoved Jet up the first two steps. “I’ll go see what’s going on.”
“No!” Jet grabbed onto his wrist and clung. “You have to stay with us.”
“You go with your sister. Stay up there until I come back.”
“What if—”
Myles freed his arm and took Jet’s face between his hands. “Go. Nothing is going to happen. I promise.”
Jet glowered, yanked free, and pushed him away. “You can’t promise that.” But he spun and ran up the stairs, going faster than Myles would have anticipated, considering Shelly’s weight in his arms.
When he turned back to the dining room, the other diners were already being herded into the kitchen, Lucky looking pale but holding the door for them. “Go,” he whispered.
From outside came another bang, drawing Myles’s attention back to the window.
“Be careful!” Lucky called as Myles hurried out the front door.
Quickly, he slipped behind the thick bole of one of the front-yard oak trees to survey the street.
The loud bang came again, pulling his attention to the bookstore across the street. The windows flashed and sputtered, every window lighting and dimming independently, like a dozen people flipping the switches randomly.
“What the…” Myles glanced at Lucky, who now stood staring out the B and B window. “…hell?”
Lucky pointed across the street, and Myles turned back to see that the windows had settled into a repeating pattern of blinks, every one of them lighting and going dark in a predictable, familiar pattern.
“Something’s wrong,” Lucky said from the door.
Myles nodded. “S.O.S. I’ll check. Stay here.
He dashed across the street, freezing as the front door opened just when he reached the middle of the street with no place to find cover. His heart thundered, but not loud enough to drown out the memory of Jet’s angry words.
You can’t promise that.
Then the door slammed closed with a loud CRACK and relief flooded Myles, weakening his knees even as he made the sidewalk and hurried up to the bookshop’s porch. The banging had been the door, not, as his first instinct had feared, gunfire.
He reached for the door handle, which turned under his fingers. It should have been locked at that time of night. In fact, he’d seen the pale-haired man—Steven—flip the sign while he’d watched out the window over his dinner.
The light in the foyer popped on as he stepped inside, followed abruptly by the light in the main front room.
Myles moved into the book-lined space, and the light behind him clicked off.
Ahead of him, the light over the door leading to the private parts of the house turned on.
The door separating the two halves of the main floor creaked open partway.
Myles followed the not-so-subtle hint and pushed the door the rest of the way open. The light in the kitchen, already on, flickered, and he headed for it.
“Hello?” Even to his own ears, his voice was tremulous, weak partly from relief, knowing there was no real danger, and partly from worry, because obviously the house was frantic and Myles wasn’t sure he wanted to discover why.
Myles peered past the tangle of kitchen table and chair legs and saw two feet stretched out on the floor near the back doorway.
“Steven?”
A low groan greeted his call, and the feet shifted. Steven stirred, blinked at Myles as he rounded the table, then grimaced and turned green around the edges. “So stupid,” he muttered.
“What happened?” He crouched, caught sight of Steven’s bloody hand, and turned it carefully, palm up, by the wrist. Another whoosh of relief left him as he realized the wrist itself was intact, though Steven’s fingers were a mess of blood.
Steven blinked improbably long, pale lashes at him. “Hey,” he whispered. “You… who—?”
“Hey. I’m Myles.”
He hadn’t thought it possible for Steven to lose any more colour from his face, but he did, becoming practically transparent.
“Come on, now.” Myles cupped the back of his neck. “Don’t faint on me again.”
Water ran into the sink behind him as he caught Steven’s gaze.
“Oh, shitty,” Steven whispered.
Myles chuckled. “Nah, it’s all good. You with me?”
Steven nodded as he tried to push himself more upright from his slump against the wall.
“Hang in there. I’ll be one sec, okay?”
“Okay.”
Gently, Myles placed Steven’s hand on his thigh, then stood and went to the sink, where he braced himself on the edge of the counter and breathed in the cool evening air drifting in the window that slid open at his approach.
“Your house is really attentive,” he remarked.
Behind him, Steven grunted. “I should hope. This is all her fault.”
The kitchen light dimmed as if in acknowledgement.
Steven sighed in response to that. “It’s fine, Shirley. I know you didn’t mean anything to happen.”
The light went out and the water turned off.
“Okay. Not Shirley.”
Everything came back on.
Quickly, Myles found a clean towel in a drawer that slid open about an inch, all by itself. He wetted the towel, took it back to Steven, and draped it across the back of his neck.
Steven jerked at the chill, but blinked wide, brilliantly blue eyes to gaze at Myles.
“Okay?” Myles asked.
Steven offered a half-hearted and crooked smile. “Not dying or anything. Feeling pretty dumb, though.”
“I’m just going to call Lucky, tell them everything is fine, then I’ll help you bandage that up. Sound good?”
Steven let out a breath, closed his eyes briefly, but nodded. “Thanks.”
“I’ll be right there,” Lucky said as soon as Myles informed him the sound had been the bookshop’s front door, and everything was fine. Or going to be, as soon as he had Steven’s bleeding stopped and bandaged up.
It was only moments before Lucky and Kreed appeared in the now brightly lit kitchen.
Kreed abruptly turned almost as pale as Steven, and Lucky tugged him back from the mess, then stepped forward to hand Myles a metal first-aid box. “Brought you this.”
A sharp keening sound erupted before Myles could respond.
“Jake!” Steven shifted, trying to get to his feet, but the colour drained again, and Myles held him down with just the weight of his hand on his shoulder.
Glancing up, Myles noted the two figures hovering in the back door to the kitchen.
“I got them,” Kreed said quietly. “If you’re good here?”
“Yeah, sure. Go.” The strange noise was clearly deep distress, though Myles wasn’t sure why. If Kreed knew how to handle it, Myles was going to let him. Physical injury, he could deal with. That soul-tearing sound was out of his wheelhouse by a long way.
Kreed backed the two newcomers out the door with his signature soft-but-controlled voice and soothing words Myles didn’t bother to listen to.
“Let’s get you off the floor, yeah?”
Steven nodded and allowed Myles to support him as he wobbled to a chair.
“Thanks.”
“Not a problem. Can I have a look?” He tapped the wrist of Steven’s bleeding hand.
“Better you than me,” Steven whispered. “Might pass out again.”
“I got you,” Myles assured him.
As he gently uncurled Steven’s fingers, Lucky reappeared with more wet cloths.
“I called to let Jet know everything was okay. He’s got Shelly with him in the kitchen, and Jet’s helping Tris out until Kreed gets back.
You okay with this, Myles?” He gestured at the hand.
“I’m going to go check on Kreed and Jake. ”
“Yeah, yeah. Go.” Myles took a moment to open the kit and arrange what he needed. His first glimpse of the cuts told him they probably weren’t as bad as all that. Fingers tended to bleed a lot, and if the sight of blood made a person squeamish, was it any surprise Steven had fainted?
“Stay put,” Myles told him, going to the sink to wash his hands. When he returned to kneel in front of the chair, he found Steven rocking slightly, alternately biting his lip and reciting… “Robert Service?”
Steven nodded. “‘Cremation of Sam McGee.’ We had to memorize it in eighth grade.”
“Why?”
“Cruel English teacher?” He almost smiled. “Or so I thought at the time, but now it helps me stay focused. Jake isn’t the only one with a spicy brain around here.”
Myles took the opportunity of distraction to restraighten Steven’s curled fingers.
“Fucking hell!”
“Sorry.”
Fresh blood oozed from the cuts.
“Oh, yeah, that’s…” Steven swivelled in his chair, leaving his hand in Myles’s grip but lowering his head to the crook of his elbow on the table.
The kitchen lights brightened as Myles leaned over the injured hand, partly in an attempt to block the sight from Steven’s view.
“Oh. That hurts.” Steven tried to pull his hand away when Myles dabbed at the first cut to clean it.
“Well, it will.” Myles shaded his tone of voice to as reassuring as possible. “Who’s Jake?”
“What?” Gingerly, Steven lifted his head from his arm.
“Jake? I assume that was the guy at the back door? Who’s he?”
“Oh. My little brother. He’s autistic. God, he’ll be frantic. I should—”
Myles pressed him into the chair with his free hand and clamped his other tight around Steven’s wrist. “You have to look after you, first. You can’t calm him down if you’re dripping blood everywhere. That’ll just make it worse, right?”