CHAPTER 6 #4
"Marcus." I'd forgotten about Marcus—the brother sleeping in the studio, the drywall in the basement, the whole complicated world above our heads. "What do we tell him?"
"Nothing. This room stays between us. At least until we figure out what it is. What she is." He pulled on his jeans and retrieved my shirt, draping it over my shoulders. "You're sure you're not scared?"
"I'm sure." I buttoned the shirt with shaking fingers, my body still humming with the aftermath of pleasure. "She could have hurt me. She didn't. She led me here. She showed me—" I gestured at the room. "This."
"Which brings us back to the question."
"What question?"
"Who the hell is she?" He picked up the note from the chest, squinting at the faded handwriting in the dim beam of the flashlight. "And how does she know what's in my building?"
His building. The phrase snagged on something in my brain. "You bought this place three years ago. What was it before?"
"A warehouse. Before that, a textile factory. Before that—" He paused. "I don't know. I never checked. The real estate agent said the records were spotty before 1920."
"1920." I looked at the note, at the slanted script, at the velvet curtains and the black and white tiles. "This room is older than that. Much older."
"Then we find out." He folded the note carefully and tucked it into his pocket. "When the sun comes up, I start making calls. City records. Historical societies. Whoever keeps track of old buildings and older secrets."
"And the woman?"
"If she shows up again, you call me. Immediately." His hand found mine, fingers interlacing. "No more wandering off in the middle of the night. No more secret staircases without me. Promise."
"Promise." I leaned into him, letting his warmth seep through the borrowed shirt. "But you have to promise me something too."
"What?"
"Don't treat me like I'm breakable. I'm not. I haven't been for five years."
His arms tightened around me. "I know. I've always known." He looked down at the swing, the restraints, the glass toys glinting in their silk nest. "This room proves it."
The climb back up the spiral staircase felt longer than the descent had. The stone walls closed in around us, and the air grew warmer as we ascended, until we emerged into the back office and the smell of coffee and old vinyl and the faint, lingering trace of Marcus's bourbon.
The bar was still dark. The pendant lights were still dead. But through the windows, a pale gray light was beginning to seep over the rooftops—morning, arriving whether we were ready for it or not.
Cole checked the breakers in the basement and restored power with a flip of a switch. The lights flickered on, illuminating the bar in amber warmth. The turntable still sat on the back bar, its dust cover closed, the white-label record motionless beneath it.
"What do we do with the record?" I asked.
He picked it up, examined the label, then slid it into a paper sleeve and tucked it under the register. "Keep it. Until we know more."
"And the woman?"
"Until we know more about her too." He pulled me against him, one hand cupping the back of my head. "But right now, I want you in bed. Asleep. Recovering. We can solve mysteries tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?"
"Today. Later today. Whenever I've had three hours of sleep and a pot of coffee." His mouth found mine—a soft kiss, no urgency, just comfort. "Deal?"
"Deal."
We descended into the panic room together.
The fern was still on the nightstand, the bed still unmade, the clock still ticking.
5:47. In two hours, Marcus would wake up and start hammering drywall.
In four hours, the city would be fully alive.
In twelve hours, I had to be at the hospital for another shift.
But none of that mattered. Not now. Not yet.
Cole locked the panic room door and climbed into bed beside me, pulling the covers up around us both. I curled against his chest, my ear pressed to his heartbeat, and let the exhaustion of the night pull me under.
Somewhere above us, in the bar, a hidden door waited behind a brick wall. A spiral staircase leading to a circular room. A swing suspended from an iron beam. A chest of glass toys and a note in dead handwriting.
And somewhere, watching—or not watching, or waiting, or simply existing in the spaces between what I remembered and what I'd forgotten—was a woman with my face and Cole's shirt and a scar that matched the one I'd never let myself examine too closely.
She'd said the room was mine.
She'd said it had always been mine.
And when I finally slept, I dreamed of her again.
This time, she was sitting on a velvet chair in the center of the circular room, and she was smiling—not sad this time, but satisfied.
The smile of someone who'd been keeping a secret for a very long time and had finally found someone to share it with.
"You're welcome," she said.
And then she was gone, and the dream was just a dream, and Cole's arms were around me, and the fern on the nightstand unfurled another frond toward the grow light.