A Heart So Haunted, page 14
“I am a small issue to you.” A dark, delicate chuckle.
He leaned in. So close that I caught a whiff of ash and a hint of earth. A flash of hot summer days and sweat-slicked skin and tunic fabric stuck to a chest came to mind.
My breath shuddered.
“Do I look to be a small issue to you?”
“I’m tired, and if Emma sees you—if anyone sees you—I swear on my life—” I stopped myself before I said something irrational. Threatening him would only go so far and make me sound immature.
I cupped my face in my hands and took a deep breath. “So, please. Go back to your closet.”
A rumble came from his chest. “You cannot make me go back there, dearest. You have two options. You turn a blind eye to me wandering my own home, or this little agreement—which you already said yes to—is over. Unless your word is nothing to stand by? You promised to help me. Otherwise …” He flicked his wrist, gesturing to the hall behind me. “What’s yours is mine, yes?”
I rolled my lips together. “A promise is a promise. On both ends,” I emphasized.
I wasn’t going to win this fight. Still, the thought of him around the house made my skin prickle. What would he see or hear or do? Would the activity in the house get worse?
Or, would it be like having a cat? I would only see him when he needed something? What would he do now that he had freedom to roam? Did that mean now that he was out here, Haddy would follow? Would his memories trail after him, or would whatever was inside that room trickle in, too, like a disease?
I pushed the thoughts away. I couldn’t stuff him back inside if I tried. But that slipping control, that need for a plan, made my hands clench.
Finally, I managed, “Just make sure you stay out of the way when Sayer and Emma are here. If they can even see you.” Emma would probably break out an EMF reader and a Ouija board if she spotted him. She’d already tried to persuade me into letting her use the board when the book nook turned on and off by itself. If she saw so much as a curtain move the wrong way, there would be no stopping her.
He snorted. “I do not think that will be an issue. I already have difficulty keeping my human face during the day. I doubt you’ll see much of me until the night.”
My head fell against Emma’s doorjamb. I let my eyes close. Shoved the ball building in my throat farther and farther down. “What am I even looking for? To break this—what did you call it? A seal?”
I opened my eyes when he didn’t answer. He slouched a bit, close to the darkest corner of the room—his torso curved as if in protection of his open chest. “You know as much as I.”
I balked. “You don’t know? You said—”
“I never said I knew.” A smug head tilt. “You assumed. So, if you want to move things along, I suggest you start digging.”
This made me stiffen. “Are you threatening me?” Because it sounded like he wanted to make Harthwait unwelcoming.
“Not a threat. A polite nudge.”
A thought, barely a seed, sprouted into a seedling. I wanted to reach out and strangle him, demand he spill every ounce of detail he knew, every single seemingly unimportant fact about himself—where he was born, where he came from, when he lived, when he died, what he’d done—but I stopped myself. There were other ways of gathering information. Other places I hadn’t even dared sort through yet.
If Aunt Cadence had gone to such lengths to keep me away from the house, she must have known. I thought of the attic: Her boxes upon boxes of collectibles and antiques would be a good place to start. But what would I be looking for?
I couldn’t imagine her leaving me the house knowing there was a creature like him within it. But then, a slight, razor-sharp shred of doubt crept in. What if she hadn’t known? Or what if she had, and she had only been trying to cover something up before anyone found out?
I didn’t realize I had been staring at him, silently brewing, until he stood just inside the doorway. He leaned forward, as if to tell me a secret. “So, now do I have a deal?”
“Will you tell me what you know?”
This close, flecks of ambered gold broke up the sharp yellow of his irises. His pupils, though slim, were of the darkest skies. My reflection, warped and short, looked pale in comparison to the color. The light of the hallway cut edges over my cheekbones, my neck, my shoulders. Is that what he saw when he looked at me? An easy deal? An opportunity? A frail, badgered young woman with no other option?
Or worse: a doormat.
His cheek twitched. Barely. “Perhaps.” A non-answer.
“Okay,” I said. Because what choice did I have?
“Then we have a deal.”
Just then, footsteps thumped up the steps—and I watched, wide eyed, as Hadrian stepped back into the darkest corner of the room, and vanished.
I swung around. Emma, red faced, stared at me from the top of the steps.
“What are you doing?” she breathed.
I hadn’t heard the front door unlock or the grandfather clock starting to chime two in the morning.
“I was just—I heard something,” I stammered. My face grew hot as I gestured to the lit hallway. That old anger from our argument, now stifled, shimmied back to the surface like a bloated, dead body.
“So you turned on every light in the house and go in my room?” she pressed. Emma’s hair was tied in a loose bun, her shirt partially untucked, her face bare.
Because, yes, Landry, after giving yourself a pep talk about keeping Hadrian from Emma, the first logical thing to do was to mention hearing something that could make her bust out the EMF reader.
When I didn’t answer, Emma shook her head, forehead creased. She brushed past me, tossed her purse onto the end of the bed, and switched on her bedside lamp. “Don’t tell me that when I’m supposed to sleep in here tonight.”
I scooted closer to the door. Emma untied her hair, cheekbones still tight, and started pulling her shirt over her head. I searched for words as she retrieved a sweatshirt and a pair of old, worn shorts from the floor.
Here we were, in our late twenties, giving the silent treatment.
She kept her back to me as she pulled her sweatshirt on. I settled into my frustration as I stood there. It hadn’t been completely my fault—she’d stepped over a line, too. Still, I could almost picture Sayer, glaring at me, while eyeing Emma as if to say, Apologize.
I hardened myself. Apologizing meant I was wrong, though. And I wasn’t.
“I thought you were going to be out tonight?” I tried instead.
She eyed me. A chill to her words when she said, “Stetson isn’t that big.” Then, “What happened to the hallway?”
I couldn’t tell if her words were an olive branch. Not that I’d offered much else, so I gave my half-truth about expanding the hallway.
“Hm,” was all she said. Like she didn’t care.
I turned to leave but stopped at the last second. It was the thought of Hadrian eavesdropping from a recessive place that hooked me.
Pressure built at the back of my neck. I glanced back, hand clutching the doorframe.
“I’m sorry for before,” I said. “I kept Ivan’s packet. Just in case.” I swallowed around the words, like a thousand bees had stung my lips. “I might have him come take another look in a few weeks.”
Emma collected a trio of bobby pins off her nightstand and started spoking them around her hair. The fly-aways slowly disappeared.
“Emma.” Her name withered on my lips.
She stopped and turned toward me, her hands propped on her hips. “Why don’t you tell me things?”
My chin dropped. “I do tell you things.”
“No, you tell me what you think I want to hear. What happened to how we were in middle and high school?”
I didn’t meet her gaze. The floor became oddly interesting.
“You don’t tell me anything anymore. Secrets. Jokes. How you’re feeling. What you’re doing. All I get are directions on what to do, what to tear up, what to throw out or box away.”
“I don’t have secrets because I don’t do anything exciting, I don’t go out and drink or party or have this huge group of friends,” I said, exasperated. “I’m an amateur interior designer that reno’s. I don’t know what kind of exciting things—”
“No, Landry. You. Not your work. Even … even the funeral. You don’t talk about her. You don’t talk about your mom. You don’t talk about Dad.”
Her. Not Aunt Cadence. Her.
“Talk about her? What is there to say, Em? You weren’t even here for the funeral, so why should I think you’d want me to bring up Aunt Cadence?” I pressed, an ember catching hold in my chest. “And what if I don’t want to talk about Mom and Dad? I can’t change the past. I don’t want to reminisce on a childhood that wasn’t great. I don’t want to talk about feelings and emotions and feel-good energies like you do.”
She huffed. “I don’t talk about feel-good energies.”
“I was trying to apologize,” I said. “Not be told everything that’s wrong with me.” A broken, hysterical laugh bubbled out of me. She wanted honesty? I could unload honesty. “I get it. Everything is wrong with me. I don’t do anything right. I don’t talk enough, I don’t show enough emotion, I don’t do enough things, I don’t have any hobbies besides scouring mood boards, Reddit threads, and job leads, and I have one friend that isn’t family. I get it, Emma. I know I’m nothing.”
“That’s not what I’m saying—you’re not nothing.” She knotted her sweatshirt in her fist. “You know that.”
“But isn’t it?” I whispered. I shook my head. “I don’t need an intervention for things I know I do wrong. I get it. Boxes checked, signed, sealed, delivered.” I grabbed her door handle. “Goodnight.”
I shut the door behind me. She didn’t follow me. And I was glad.
I floated through the house like a husk, turning off every light, every lamp, closing every door and window. One by one, the rooms blinked into shadow. For all I knew, Hadrian followed me from room to room, mouth split wide in a smile.
Maybe Emma was right. If a problem followed someone continuously, it was the product not the user, right? That’s what a counselor in middle school had said. “If you can’t keep a relationship because everyone’s “too toxic,” maybe it isn’t the other person. Maybe it’s you.”
Maybe it was me.
What reason did I have to believe it wasn’t?
* * *
The door didn’t disappear again, but Sayer made a comment while I was cleaning that stopped me in my tracks.
“I cleaned out that hallway closet, by the way. At least I didn’t dent it.”
I stilled, dust rag in hand, standing atop a chair in the breakfast nook. The chandelier swung back and forth from where I’d wiped off a bulb. “What?”
He waved his hand from the pantry. “Where I hit my head. I’m glad I didn’t bust it.”
Then he walked out.
I didn’t have the courage to bring it up again.
Sayer left after dinner the following evening, leaving me alone in the kitchen with every cabinet thrown wide open. It had started simply enough: While he stood by the island and talked, I looked through each drawer for a can opener. I never did find it. I did, however, fish out a set of mushroom-shaped birthday candles, a stack of worn BoxTops from when I’d been in elementary school, and a yearbook photo from fifth grade.
“They still make these?” He’d examined the baggie, nose wrinkled.
Something about the BoxTops still being in the drawer, long forgotten, opened a hole from my heart that tracked straight down to my toes. What else had Aunt Denny saved that I’d never seen? And why did going through her things make the back of my neck warm? I felt like I needed to ask for permission, but when I looked up to find someone, anyone, the one person I wanted to talk to wasn’t there.
Each breath grew thick after that. I fought tears until they were nothing but a fat wad of cotton in the back of my throat.
Now, the sun had vanished, Emma was holed away upstairs, and the kitchen looked like it had exploded. And I couldn’t even remember why I was looking for the can opener in the first place.
“So much junk, Denny,” I complained, more to myself. Maybe she could hear me. “Why seventeen kinds of birthday candles?”
With a huff, I turned to the fridge. I wanted dinner, but didn’t want to make anything, so I opted for my go-to jar of pickles in the fridge door. I didn’t bother to close it, instead using the refrigerator light to see what I was doing. My knuckles purpled, then turned white, when I twisted the lid.
“Open,” I snarled. I ground my teeth, planted my feet, and tried again. My hand slipped.
“Stupid sweet-and-spicy,” I grumbled. Whatever sweetener they’d used had probably sealed the lid shut.
I shut the fridge and moved the jar over the sink, grabbed the dishrag, and used it to get a better hold on the lid. My grip-strength was better, but just as I thought the jar would give, my hand slipped again.
I sat the jar down beside the sink. The last thing I wanted to do was ask Emma to open it.
There was one more trick I could try. I turned the hot water on and grabbed a knife out of the cutlery drawer. Four quick taps, all the way around the lid, then I stuck the jar under the water when steam started to rise. Then I used the edge of the knife and tapped around the lid again.
“All right. Play nice.” I grabbed the dishrag—one last time. Gripped hard, planted my feet, and twisted.
I turned with the jar, twisting harder, harder, and pressed my left side into the sink to get better leverage with my arm. Then—with a sweet little pop, the lid released.
“Thank God,” I breathed. I started to straighten. Then I glanced up. My heart somersaulted straight up my throat.
A razor-sharp silhouette reflected in the breakfast nook window in front of me. I wasn’t alone in the kitchen.
I jumped with a yelp—and dropped the pickle jar. It shattered all over the kitchen floor in a wet, sticky spray, over the bottom of the opened cabinets, my feet, and the dishwasher. The lid rolled the opposite way, toward the living room.
At least I’d left all of Aunt Denny’s items on the island top instead of the floor as I’d found them.
I clutched my chest with both hands, frozen, as the silhouette stepped out of the wall behind me, almost as if from the pantry.
“The jar never stood a chance,” Hadrian said, low and slow, like he’d only just woken from a deep sleep. My first instinct was to look at the clock—it wasn’t even ten o’clock yet—but my attention latched onto our reflections in the window. He moved with languid grace, and before I realized it, he was behind me. I started to face him, but without hesitation, he dropped to a crouch and splayed a large hand against the tile. I’d have been lying if I said a part of me wasn’t relieved to see him.
“Don’t touch the glass,” I blurted.
“Never you mind. Your feet would get cut. Step here.” His voice remained matter-of-fact, gritty, and almost too placid. I didn’t notice I was staring until he looked up from under his brows. “Do I need to enunciate? Step on the back of my hand.”
My forehead creased. “Step on your hand?”
His jaw worked. “So you do not cut your feet.”
I searched the sharp points of his cheeks, the tendons of his neck, the way he hunched as if it weren’t just out of habit, but to keep a bit of distance between the two of us.
Did he find me repulsive in some way? Or was he scared to touch me?
A dead, shriveled part of my heart unraveled. Stretched a bit, and I didn’t know why.
I obliged, careful to move quickly and not put too much pressure on the ball of my foot, but teetered at the last second. I grabbed his horn without thinking, near the base of his skull. An unnatural stillness came over his shoulders. I tried to ignore the ridges of the horn, how cold it was to the touch, or how his head was right there.
I stepped over. Hadrian’s hand felt no different from stepping on a garden stone. There was no give. A catch of breath—but not from me.
I moved closer to the refrigerator corner. He stood without a word, his eyes not leaving the floor, slowly traveling up to the breakfast nook, then over the cabinets I’d left open.
“Quite an organizational process you have here.”
“Where have you been?” I asked, ignoring his comment. I crossed my arms over my chest and gathered a bit of snark. Really, it wasn’t to start something, but more to cover the fumbling heartbeat in my ears. If he’d heard it before, could he hear it now?
“You miss me already? I’m flattered.” He tore his attention away from the window with a pointed grin, then drifted between me and the island and into the hallway. Like his reflection bothered him.
“I don’t like having a guest in the house I can’t see.”
“You see me now.”
“After you vanished into thin air.” I inched forward. “How do I know you aren’t off doing something weird, like counting the dust bunnies under my bed or snooping in my closet?”
“So you do want me to hide in your room instead. I will do my best to keep that in mind.”
“I didn’t say—”
Upstairs, a door opened. I paused.
Emma—she would have heard me drop the jar.
Sure enough, there was a long, soft pause with the shuffle of sock feet, and then, “Are you okay? I heard something.”
“I’m fine, just dropped a jar. I’ve got it.”
Hadrian tilted his head to keep his horns from hitting the ceiling. Even in the nearly pitch-black hall, his chest glimmered where his sternum opened. I watched his heart flutter as blood oozed from the inside out then evaporated when it fell down his midsection.
Emma’s only departure was the shuffling of her feet and the gentle click of her bedroom door.
