It’s weird that there is all this animosity between us right now when just a little while ago we were in the throes of passion. I was inside her. She was biting my shoulder and moaning into my ear with pleasure.
And now she’s hanging onto Tomas.
I am not jealous of Tomas. I feel sorry for Tomas. If she wants to shower him with personal attention, I’m OK with that. He’s had a rough time and I would be a huge asshole if I was jealous of this little bit of affection she’s showing him.
Because once she finds out what he really is, she won’t be acting like this, that’s for sure.
Pie seems like a nice girl. She is, at the very least, considerate of people. So she would not shun Tomas on purpose. But it’s inevitable. She won’t be able to help it.
“Finally!” Pie squeals and bounds off towards the door that has appeared in the trunk of an unnaturally large white-bark tree. She doesn’t open it. She waits. She’s had fun in here, that’s obvious. But she’s still not sure how it all works, so this waiting is her being careful.
I like careful Pie.
I don’t think she’s very careful in her real life or she wouldn’t have ended up as the slave caretaker of a cursed monster. So this is a good sign that she’s taking things seriously now.
Tomas pauses at the door too, both of them waiting for me to catch up.
“Ready?” I ask. They both nod, Pie’s being more enthusiastic than Tomas’s. This makes me wonder if she’s enjoyed herself here in the hallway rooms. Rather, did she enjoy herself with me?
I certainly had fun, and I would hate for it to be one-sided.
But this is not the time for that conversation, so I grab the door handle and pull it open.
Pie is pressing up against my back, almost using me as a shield as she peeks around my shoulder to get a look.
“Hmm.” Tomas and I both say this at the same time.
“What?” Pie asks. “What’s the problem?”
“Typically, dark hallways are a sign,” I say.
“A sign of what?”
“Fuckery,” Tomas responds.
Pie steps out from behind me and then all three of us are shoulder to shoulder. “What fuckery? I’m gonna need details. Is it bad? I don’t get it.”
“It’s not bad,” I say.
“It’s just… fuckery,” Tomas repeats.
“It means the hallway gods are playing with us.”
Pie steps forward, peering into the darkness. “Well, how do you know? I can’t see any fuckery.”
“Exactly,” Tomas huffs. “It’s gonna be like a little maze in there. You go around a few hallways, and come out into a room. And then bam. You’re inside the fuckery.”
“But what kind?” Pie is starting to lose patience with this explanation, but what Tomas said was accurate. “Are people gonna chase us? Kill us? What’s gonna happen?”
“None of that.” I chuckle. “It’s just…” She shoots me a look that says, If you people say ‘fuckery’ one more time I will lose it, so I just spit it out. “It’s gonna want something from us.”
“And there will be no way out,” Tomas adds. “Not until you give in and do what the hallway gods want.”
“What will they want?”
Both Tomas and I shrug. Then I say, “We won’t know until we get in there.”
“So you two are saying we should not go in?”
“We have to go in. It’s the door,” Tomas explains. “There won’t be another one. It’s move forward and find our way out, or stay here and hope the powers that be get bored with us.”
“Hm.” Pie is thinking. Then she shrugs. “To hell with it. Bring on the fuckery.” And she passes through the door.
Tomas and I both shoot each other a look. He and I have not been in the hallways together in… hell, over a thousand years, at least. And if there was ever a time when we were stuck inside a fuckery room together, I certainly don’t remember it.
He follows Pie in without comment and I follow him.
The door behind me disappears the moment I step through it. And then the hallway I’m in brightens a little, just enough to see where I’m going. Tomas is not that far in front of me. I catch a glimpse of Pie just as she rounds a corner, then disappears.
She calls out, “Holy shit. What is this?”
Tomas and I catch up with Pie and stare down at the contraption in the middle of the room we end up in. It’s not a large room. Maybe twenty feet by twenty. There’s a large window with billowing sheer curtains on one end, but no door. And the minute I step out, the hallway behind me disappears.
“That’s a hookah,” Tomas says, pointing at the contraption. And he’s smiling. “I’ve seen these before. This is gonna be fun, I think.”