Tomas pounds on the door, yelling to be let in. But his voice is muffled and his exact words unclear.
The beast snorts, but it’s a sound of satisfaction. Presumably he is happy about Tomas’s banishment. His attention abruptly turns to me. “Get up.” Then he crosses the room to a very messy desk near a tall, stained-glass window and picks up a notebook. He spends a moment thumbing through it, then, apparently satisfied that this was what he was looking for, he tosses it onto the floor in front of me. It lands with a loud thump. “I said get up.”
I get my feet underneath me and rise, one hand covering my bloody nose, the other grabbing for the book. But this is not a one-handed kind of book. It’s thick, and wide, and feels like it contains a million years of information within those pages. I have to use both hands to pick it up, so my nose drips blood onto the cover until I can shuffle it around and hold it tight to my chest and use my other hand to cover my face.
The beast points at the book. “That is where Grant left off. You will pick up there.”
I put the book down on a black stone counter, take off my flannel, and bunch it up so I can use it to stop my nosebleed.
When I look over at the beast, he’s staring at my perky breasts because I am wearing a scarlet-red bustier that looked very sexy and cool last night, on Halloween, but is getting more and more ridiculous as this day progresses. I glance over at the beast and when I look down, I find him…
“Oh. My God.” I cover my eyeballs, then nod at his semi-hard, male appendage and glance up at his face. “That’s gross. Put on some pants, for fuck’s sake.”
He doesn’t even blink. But his eyes do migrate upward from my breasts and meet my gaze. “Do you understand me, witch?”
I close my eyes and shake my head, trying to banish the image of his beastly dick from my brain, and turn back to the notebook. Again, it is a very hefty book bound with glue, and cloth, and leather with studs pounded into it. And when I open it, the paper is thick and has a coarse texture. One quick glance at the pages is all I need. I will be disappointing the beast tonight, because… “I do not speak Latin.”
“What?” I look over my shoulder and find him sneering. “You’re speaking Latin right now. It’s the common tongue.”
I turn all the way around to face the monster. He is intimidating. But facts are facts. And I don’t have very many to work with at the moment, so I feel like taking a stand on the language we’re both speaking. “It is not the common tongue. It is a dead language. Even I know that, and I failed three history classes in my high-school career. And no, sir, I’m not speaking Latin right now, I’m speaking English and so are you. This?” I pick up the notebook and drop it onto the counter with a dramatic thump. “Is not something I can help you with, even if I did speak Latin. Which, once again, I do not. I am not a…” I pause to choose the correct word. “I am not a witch. So I won’t be breaking any curses, or conjuring up any spells, or whatever. I live in reality, thank you. And these are the facts.”
He blinks at me.
And for some unknown reason, I burst out laughing. A proper guffaw. Because I don’t live in reality. I have never lived in reality. Because my one and only friend in this world is a talking bird. And she’s not a parrot, or a mynah bird, or a starling, or any other kind of bird that mimics talking.
She is an invisible sparrow.
The beast scowls at me and I just laugh harder. He ignores my outburst and continues to boss me around. “You will stay out of the cemetery, do you understand?”
I laugh again. Not as loud. It’s more like… one of those stifled giggles you see people do in public places at the most inappropriate times.
“You will spend your days in here. In this room. Reading those books—because you can read them, and you can speak and understand Latin, and you will find the cure.”
This time I don’t even bother laughing. I breathe out the word, “Ohhhhhh,” then suck in air through my teeth. “Here you go. Here’s what I’m gonna say. Are you ready? OK. Fine. No problem. I will pretend to read your books and learn how to break your curse. But if you honestly expect me to be of any help to you, you will be disappointed. So you should seriously consider getting yourself another… witch. Or whatever. Because the longer I stay here, the more behind you’ll be.”