Was it a test? Did he want them to kill me for some reason?
He seemed surprised when I saw him, like it was the last thing he expected. I turn, looking into the foyer. I dumped my purse in there as soon as we walked inside, and I want to hold the feather.
“Callie?” Kristy says, and I don’t think it’s the first time she’s said my name. I spaced out thinking about the man and the feather. It sounds so insane when I think about it like that.
“Sorry.” I bring my hands to my face and yawn. “I’m tired.”
“You should sleep,” Lucas urges.
“I know,” I agree. “But I don’t think I’ll be able to fall asleep. What if some kids break in tomorrow and find Jumanji or something?”
“Then we’ll figure out a way to stop the city from becoming a jungle.” Lucas pulls me onto his lap. “But I don’t think you have to worry about it. That creature is dead, I’m sure of it.”
“I know.”
I don’t want to say it and freak my friends out, and I’m not even certain it’s true myself. But I still think that hellhound was guarding something, and it’s not a children’s game. Whatever is hidden in that building is much, much worse.
“There are automatic blinds that go down around four-thirty,” I tell my friends. We’re upstairs and ready to crash for what’s left of the night. “The house is light-tight after that, so you’ll have to turn on lights.”
“Makes sense.” Nicole tosses decorative pillows onto the ground. “This place is really nice and not what I expected for Lucas.”
“Right? I thought the same thing.” The guest room, like the rest of the house, is very modern.
“Saying I assumed he lived in some old gothic mansion seems stereotypical,” Nicole admits. “But I kind of thought that.”
“They will be living in one soon enough.” Kristy leans against the door frame.
“I do plan to have at least one room look like it could be part of the Haunted Mansion, but we want to keep a similar color scheme to this house, actually. I like the light gray and white.”
“Me too.” Nicole climbs into bed and Naomi comes out of the bathroom. She hugs me goodnight and I walk Kristy to another guest room before going into the master bedroom. Lucas is already in bed waiting for me. I get under the covers and immediately snuggle up next to him.
“I love you,” I whisper as he spoons his body around mine.
“I love you too, Callie.” He kisses my neck and holds me close. My eyes fall shut and then I spin around in his arms.
“You lost a lot of blood today.”
“I’m fine now.”
“You should eat.” I push my hair back and offer my neck to him.
“I’m fine,” he presses.
“What, does my blood smell rancid now too?”
“Not at all.”
“They why don’t you want it?” I ask. “Aren’t you hungry after losing that much blood?”
“A little.” He moves me onto his chest and runs his fingers up and down my back. My eyes fall shut. “I don’t want to take too much from you, Callie. I will be fine and getting a few hours of extra sleep will make up for the blood I lost. It takes you longer to recover and I’ve drank from you recently.”
He has, and he’s right. If I were a normal person, I don’t think our arrangement would work as well as it does. Lucas told me my blood is more filling than the average human and he doesn’t need to drink as much to feel satisfied. He’s a beast of a man and it’s actually a wonder we’ve been able to sustain him only drinking my blood for as long as we have.
I haven’t really let myself think about it, and I want to say I’d be okay with it…but I think it would bother me if he drank from someone else. Maybe? If he needed to eat, though, and I were unable to give him my blood, then he’d have to. It’s not like he’s cheating on me. He’s simply feeding himself.
But feeding is rather sexual, or at least it is with us.
Ugh. It’s too complicated to think about right now.
“In the morning then,” I whisper.
“Yes. In the morning.”
I close my eyes and drift to a sleep so deep not even the automatic blinds coming down wakes me up. Lucas is in bed next to me when I do wake up, and he’s in that deep, dead, vampire-style sleep. I conjure a small energy ball so I can see my way into the bathroom.
It’s ten-thirty AM and I’m sure my friends are awake. I change into a black romper, use magic to braid my hair, and go downstairs to find them. Binx is sitting at the top of the stairs, waiting for me.
“Morning, Mr. Prickle Paws,” I tell him, reaching down to pick him up. I find Kristy and Nicole in the kitchen. “Hey, guys. How’d you sleep?”
“I passed out like a baby,” Nicole says. “Naomi is still sleeping.”
“How are you feeling?” Kristy sips her coffee. “I think I’m hungover.”
“I’ll be better with coffee.”
“I wasn’t sure if there would be food here,” Nicole admits, biting into her bagel. “But then again, you live here half the time.”
“I get groceries whenever I come into the city. I think the kitchen is happy to finally be used.”
“Lucas probably never came in here before, did he?” Kristy adds more sugar to her coffee and circles her finger over the mug, using magic to stir it in.
“I don’t think so. The house was staged before he bought it and he had them leave all the stuff here. I’m not sure why, though.” I shrug. “Maybe for resale? He buys and sells properties a lot.”
“There’s a lot of money in that,” Nicole says.
“There is,” I agree and pour myself a cup of coffee. “So…who wants to go check out that old building with me this morning?”
“You’re joking, right?” Kristy deadpans.
“I want to make sure the rats are really dead. And I don’t have to go inside to do that. Binx already offered to check it out for me.” I put the coffee pot back on the warmer.
“You’re just going to look?” Nicole asks and I nod. “Then I’m in. If that thing…the rat-dog or whatever…if it’s dead, then the glamour might be gone, and people will wonder where the hell that building came from.”
“I didn’t think about that,” I tell her. “It’s too early in the day to try and sort it out, but unless there are photos, people will just be confused, right?”
“Even in photos, which I’m sure there are, it’ll show up as hazy,” Kristy says. I take my coffee back to the island. Lucas’s laptop and a folded piece of paper are on the center of the island. My name is written on the paper in his freakishly neat handwriting.
“Is it a sex note?” Nicole jokes as I pick it up. A flash drive falls from the
folded paper, bouncing to the floor. She picks it up for me.
“No, it’s security footage from the bar.” I set the note down and open the computer. We all crowd around the computer as I stick in the flash drive. There’s footage from last night, of course, as well as going back a week.
“Start with last night,” Kristy says. “It was around midnight, I think.”
It takes a minute or two of clicking through the different recordings until we find a camera angle that shows a bit of the alley. The building behind the bar is showing up all hazy, just like Kristy said. It makes it look like something it wrong with the camera, or that something was smeared over the lens and has distorted the way it recorded.
I rest my hand against the cool quartz counter, needing to remind myself to breathe. The man with blue eyes should be appearing any second now, followed by me. Something flashes across the screen, startling us all.
“What was that?” Kristy reaches over me and rewinds the footage, playing it back frame by frame. “Is that an outline of a man?” She stops it, right in the middle of the second-long flash. “It looks like an outline of a man.”
“It kind of does,” Nicole agrees.
“Yeah,” I say, unable to dispute it. It does look like a man and is roughly similar to the man with blue eyes. “Keep playing it.”
Kristy hits play and we see me go into the alley. The diseased man staggers past next, and then we move out of the camera view. We skip forward, slowing to real time when Kristy, the twins, and Eliza show up. We can see the backs of their heads, but the actual point of entry into the building is out of camera shot. Kristy fast forwards again, stopping when a dark shadow blurs across the screen.
“That’s Lucas,” I tell her.
“We go in soon after this,” Nicole says. We let the footage roll in live time for a few minutes before skipping forward again. Nothing of interest happens until we come out of the building. Lucas carries me across the alley and the others follow.