Chapter Two #2
Priscilla just about jumped out of her skin.
“Sweet mother of—” Her hand flew to her chest. It was the first time Millie had seen the woman looking anything but serene.
It was reassuring to know that her poise could be shaken.
“Millie. What are you . . .” She looked over her shoulder, through the open door. “I was just . . .”
Millie arched an eyebrow, waiting for the excuse. Priscilla sighed, and retreated back through the doorway onto the front step, and Millie followed, leaving the door ajar behind them.
So they could talk.
“Go on.”
“I just needed a little fresh air,” Priscilla explained, with condescending calm. “My head was a little fuzzy . . . too much wine at dinner. So I took a little walk.”
“In the middle of the night?” asked Millie, twisting her face into a mask of innocent surprise. “To the editor’s cottage?”
That wiped the smugness off her face. Millie smirked. “I thought we were given strict orders not to interact with Mr. Beaumont,” she said, feeding Priscilla’s exact words back to her.
“I . . . I wasn’t . . .” She rolled her eyes.
“I was worried he might have a concussion. Didn’t want him going and dying on us in the middle of the night.
” Her tone had slid into something chummy, almost conspiratorial, and Millie might have bought it, if she didn’t sound so flustered.
She gave the woman a once-over, and then it dawned on her.
“Oh. My. God,” she said, dragging out the words with giddy glee. “You were trying to seduce him.”
Priscilla recoiled. “What?”
It made so much sense. “That’s why you tried to get him up to your room earlier, isn’t it?
No wonder you didn’t want any of us fraternizing with Rufus .
. . you wanted to fraternize the shit out of him!
” Millie shook her head. “I guess that must be one benefit of writing romance . . . knowing a trick or two in the bedroom.”
Priscilla’s mouth hung open, but she didn’t deny it, which in Millie’s humble opinion was as good as confirmation.
“I knew it,” said Millie under her breath. “I knew there was something up with you.”
People got a lot of things wrong about YA writers. They said they weren’t mature, that on some level they hadn’t grown up, were still working through their high school trauma, most of which was bullshit. But one thing was true.
Like real teens, YA authors lived for gossip.
They treated it like currency, they bought and sold and bartered. They knew the value of a piece of news, when to share, and when to hold it.
“Don’t worry,” said Millie, “I won’t tell.”
She even meant it. At least for now. She expected Priscilla to be grateful, but the woman let out an exasperated breath.
“Do whatever you want, Millie,” she said, heading for the door.
“Some of us have a contest to win.” Her hand was on the knob when she looked back.
“Not that you need to worry, of course. Must be feeling pretty confident. I mean, you already turned in your pages. And with so much time to spare . . .”
“Goddammit,” snaps Millie now, sitting at the desk.
She’s lost track of the number of words.
Again.
Millie groans in frustration. She was past twenty-five hundred, with a page and a half still left to scan.
Surely it’s enough. She throws the pages down and gets up, stiff from sitting in the wooden chair.
She needs to stretch, and there’s a new character to introduce, one who doesn’t have a name yet.
Normally she’d go online, find a list of creative baby names, and pick one exotic enough to be memorable but not so weird that it looks entirely made up.
She racks her brain, before remembering the shelves of books in Fletch’s library.
Maybe she can find something in there.
Millie heads for the door.
In order to get to the stairs, she has to go past Jaxon’s room. It shouldn’t be hard, but tell that to her body, which slows down as it reaches his door, the air going thick around her limbs until she comes to a stop.
Just then, she glimpses Priscilla across the way, on the opposite side of the stairs. She doesn’t know if she’s coming or going, and doesn’t really care.
Millie presses her ear to Jaxon’s door. But she can’t hear anything.
“Jaxon?” she calls into the wood.
No answer. Millie clears her throat and raises her voice.
“Jaxon?” she says louder. Still nothing.
Her hand goes to the handle before remembering it’s locked.
She frowns. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? But it isn’t my fault.
You really scared me, and I know this sucks, but it’s not like you’re in prison, it’s a castle bedroom, and you have everything you need to write, so don’t be mad at me, or if you are, I don’t know, channel it into your work! ”
She trails off, met only by silence. “Fine,” she snaps, kicking the door. “Be an ass about it.”
Millie storms off down the stairs.
She reaches the landing, is already pivoting toward the second set of steps, when she realizes she’s standing on the spot Sienna landed when she fell. The dark patch on the runner where her head had stopped, the bloodstain no longer red but not yet brown.
She gasps and jumps out of the way, horrified by the way her shoes leave fresh stains, because the blood’s still damp. The death, still fresh.
Thud thud thud, goes the body.
Clack clack clack, go the keys.
As they both tumble toward the end.
“Millie?” Her head snaps up. Kenzo’s standing halfway down the other set of stairs, his typewriter wedged under one arm and the ax in the other, a look of worry on his face. “Are you okay?”
Her full-wattage smile clicks back into place before she realizes it’s the wrong expression to be wearing, given all that’s happened. Old habits. She tamps it down, softens the edges into something sad, a small furrow in her forehead.
(She used to practice in the mirror, so she wouldn’t look weird in the candid photos that made the rounds after every YA festival, but over time it just became a kind of habit, whenever other authors were around.
Lights on, showtime. Millie Mitchell, charming, happy, sweet.
A little ditzy, maybe, but hey, it’s better to act dumb and be smart than the other way around.)
Kenzo’s still looking at her.
And something about it makes her go cold. Maybe it’s the casual way he’s holding the ax, the wooden handle hanging from his fingers. Or maybe it’s the fact that two people are dead, and he doesn’t seem that bothered. Or surprised. What was it he said at dinner?
I get to kill people, for fun.
“Millie?” he asks again, with just enough concern in his voice that it makes her wonder if he practiced in a mirror, too.
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry.” She shakes her head. “I guess my head was somewhere else, and I was rushing down the stairs, and I just—I forgot. Isn’t that weird?
” She nods down at the stain. Kenzo looks at it too, and as he does, she studies him, searching for any sign of guilt.
But there’s nothing. She pushes a little harder.
“How can you forget something so awful . . .” She trails off, frowning at the typewriter under his arm. “Re-creating the crime scene?”
Kenzo shakes his head. “Didn’t feel safe up there. All alone. Thought I’d set up in the kitchen.”
“Good idea,” she says, even as she takes a step away from the stain—and from him.
“Careful,” she adds. “It’s still wet.”
Kenzo’s head bobs. “It takes a while,” he says. “For that much blood to dry . . .”
“Spoken like a crime scene analyst. Or a horror writer.”
One corner of his smile tilts. “You should see my search history.”
She laughs. A bright, nervous sound.
And then she turns and escapes, as calmly as she can, down the stairs.