Darcy snorted, “Uh, yeah.”
Dickhead.
I stumbled back when something hard collided with my chest.
“Bloody hell, Neala. Where are you?” Darcy snapped.
He’d walked into me, yet he was the mad one.
Typical.
I grunted and extended my arms, grabbing at thin air searching for him. I clutched onto what felt like his bare arm, patting my way down it until I interlocked my fingers with his.
My heart pounded at the skin-to-skin contact.
“Okay, you won’t bump into me now. Lead the way.”
Silence.
“Darcy?” I pressed.
He cleared his throat. “I heard you . . . I’m just wondering why the power went out.”
I thought about it, then grumbled, “The weather, maybe? It seems to be fucking up everything else, so why not the electricity?”
Darcy groaned. “Bollocks. We have to get out of here, man. My central heating system requires power. We’re fucked.”
“Just ring one of our brothers to come and get us.”
I looked to Darcy’s phone when the screen lit up.
“Oh, shite,” Darcy muttered.
That didn’t sound good.
“What is it now?” I asked.
Darcy shoved his phone in my face. “I’ve only two percent battery left.”
That was all?
“So charge it.”
I felt Darcy turn his head to look at me. “The power is out . . . remember?”
I cringed and felt stupid for my snotty suggestion.
“Forgot,” I mumbled.
Darcy snorted lightly as he pressed on the screen. Justin’s picture came up as Darcy’s phone tried to connect. He brought it to his ear when Justin answered.
“Justin? Bro, you have to help me and Neala. We’re snowed in at my house, and we need— What do you mean, you’re snowed in too? You can’t be serious!”
My stomach sank. I clutched Darcy’s hand more tightly, and he gave me a squeeze back, which both surprised and reassured me – slightly.
“Is it bad everywhere? The snow, I mean,” Darcy asked.
I strained to hear what Justin was saying, but his voice was very muffled, so I couldn’t hear his reply.
“Justin? Hello? I can’t understand what you’re saying. Bro, can you hear me?”
That didn’t sound good.
Darcy cursed as he pulled his phone away from his ear, and I could see that the home screen was visible, indicating that the call to Justin had ended. I was about to suggest he redial Justin but the screen suddenly went black; his battery was drained. I gripped Darcy’s hand again as darkness consumed us once more.
“We’re never going to get out of here,” I said, and gnawed at the inside of my cheek.
Darcy grunted from my side. “We will. If our families can’t come and help then we’ll just have to help ourselves and get out of here.”
I laughed humourlessly. “We’re snowed in, you bloody gobshite!”
Darcy growled. “I’m going to get us out of this house even if it kills me.”
I pulled my hand free from Darcy’s when he moved away from me. I heard him make his way into his bedroom. I snorted once or twice when he cursed because he stepped on something or walked into something. He was making a lot of noise, and just as I was about to ask what he was doing a candle’s light appeared in the hallway.
“I’ll look for a torch, but for now I’ve a bunch of candles we can light to brighten the place up. Hold this one.”
I took the candle from Darcy, and when I inhaled, a sweet vanilla scent filled my nostrils.
“Scented candles? Really?”
Darcy playfully shoved me as he passed me by. “Go ahead, laugh it up. Vanilla scented candles smell lovely, and if you disagree, hold your breath.”
I chuckled. “I like them. I just didn’t think you would.”
“Why, because I’m a man?” Darcy asked.
“If I say yeah, will you think I’m sexist?”
“Yep.”
“Then no.” I grinned.
He laughed. “Typical.”
I smothered a warm smile and forced down the giddy feeling that, since the conversation between us a few minutes ago, things were . . . changed. I didn’t know if it was Darcy’s admission of what he had done to help me when we were teens, but I could say I didn’t one hundred percent hate him anymore.
That freaked me out more than a little.
To get my mind away from my thoughts I focused on the situation at hand.
“So . . . what’s your plan to get us out of here?” I asked, and leaned my shoulder against the wall in the hallway.
Darcy looked to me and smirked.
I didn’t like it, not one bit.
He cracked his knuckles, then his neck. “The time on me phone before it died said it was close to seven in the evening. We woke up late; the temperature is already on its way to dropping so I can’t execute my plan now. Instead, first thing tomorrow morning when I wake up I’m going to dig me way out of here, and you are going to help me.”
I laughed, but Darcy didn’t, and it caused my stomach to sink.
We were going to dig our way out of here?
Well . . . crap.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Neala was gone.
I’d woken up roughly five minutes earlier, and after I went to the now safe-to-enter bathroom to relieve myself, I opened the sitting room door and popped my head around to see whether she was okay, but she wasn’t there – which was weird. When I‘d gone to sleep last night she was snuggled up on the couch, but now she, and the spare blanket I had given her, were nowhere to be seen.
It was darker than last night because a few of the candles were blown out, but I relit them to brighten the room up. I had a large lit candle in my hand as I walked around the living room and checked behind the couch and every other part of the room where Neala could be sitting or lying down, but there was still no sign of her.
There was a sign of the doll box, though, so I picked it up and brought it into my room, where I put it in the top drawer of my dresser. I wasn’t thinking of keeping the doll from her; I just wanted it in a safe place. I resumed my search for my unexpected houseguest. I checked my dining room, and like the living room it was empty.
“Neala?” I called out.
No reply.
I didn’t like silence when Neala was in close quarters with me; it would be a foolish and dangerous move to assume she wasn’t up to something.
“Neala?” I called out again.
I knew she wasn’t in my room, but went back and thoroughly checked it again anyway. When that room was in the clear, I went back out into my hallway. I don’t know why, but I went to my front door. A vision of Neala somehow getting through the wall of snow flashed through my mind, so I rushed forward and opened the door. I breathed out a sigh of what felt like relief when I saw the wall of snow perfectly intact.
I reminded myself that I wasn’t relieved that she was still here somewhere, just that she wasn’t out there dead and encased in a block of ice. Her ma would kill me if she’d died while I slept.
I closed the door and turned around. I walked down the hallway and stopped at the bathroom. I hadn’t looked into my bathtub while I was in there, so I knocked on the door and called out Neala’s name again. Again, no reply. I opened the bathroom door and shivered; the vent in the ceiling definitely wasn’t clogged with snow, because cold air from outside was flowing through it perfectly fine.
I closed the bathroom door and continued to walk down my hallway. Pausing at my kitchen door for just a moment, I reached for the handle, opened the door and stepped through the doorway.
“Neala?” I murmured as I poked my head around the door.
No Neala.
Where the hell was she?
I stepped into the room and frowned. It was pretty dark, so I used my candle to light the ones on the counters. When the room was lit I was about to shout Neala’s nam
e as loud as I could when I heard the faint sound of a snore. A smile stretched across my face when my eyes locked on the door of my storage room. I walked over to it and knocked on the door.
“Clarke! Are you in there?”
Another snore.
I smirked to myself as I placed my candle on the kitchen counter, then moved back to the storage room and used both of my hands to bang on the door as loud as I could. I stopped when Neala screamed, and then laughed when I pulled the door open and found she was sleeping against it. I watched as she fell back.
“You’re a bastard!” Neala moaned from the floor, her voice raspy from sleep.
I couldn’t disagree with her, so I didn’t.
“Are you okay, Harry Potter?” I asked as I looked down at her.
Neala cleared her throat. “Harry lived in a cupboard under the stairs, not a kitchen storage room.”
I shrugged. “He had no option; you, on the other hand, had a perfectly good couch to kip on, and yet you came in here to sleep . . . Why?”
Neala rolled over onto her back and stared up at me. “Your house makes funny noises at night-time and it kept me up . . . so I came in here. Einstein talking every so often made me feel a bit better . . . like I wasn’t alone.”
I hated that I felt bad.