When I woke, the room was lit with the soft glow of the bathroom night-light, and Heath was sleeping beside me. The window was still open and I inhaled a lungful of cool, pungent air. I guessed the months of nightmares really had depleted both of us, more than I’d realized. If nothing else, the two of us might actually be able to catch up on all our lost sleep in this creepy house. I groped around on the nightstand for my phone. Right. I’d turned it over to Dr. Teague. Reggie. Crap.
I found my glasses under my pillow, then dug under the comforter for my pants. Easing out of bed, I crept to the fireplace, trying not to think about the fiery fiend’s grotesque, leering face. I ran my hands along the mantel. A small brass clock on it ticked softly: 9:40 p.m. I bit my lip. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept like that.
We’d missed our first meeting with Dr. Cerny. As well as the tour and the signing of the releases, which was not at all the way I’d planned to start things off. I was not usually one to oversleep, arrive late to an appointment, or forget details of clients’ orders. But then again, I usually had a phone glued to some part of me, pinging alerts right and left.
We’d also missed dinner. Damn. Scallops, I remembered with longing. Reggie had said it was scallops and wine. It was possible somebody had saved our meals in the fridge or something. Possible, but not for sure, and that was the thing that really got me, the not knowing. And right now, with the house spreading out like a maze around me, the worry that I wouldn’t be able to find anything to eat—I could feel the old food obsession dancing around the edges. Could feel myself close to panicking.
Daphne. Stop.
I went into the bathroom and dug in my makeup bag, pulling out a hair band and slipping it over my hand. I snapped it against my wrist—once, twice, three and four times. Then inhaled and exhaled, letting the pain pull me back to the physical room. I couldn’t panic. Not now. I needed to get organized, be thinking about my plan. How I was going to find the car and check my email. How I was going to deal with the information, if any, that Annalise Beard decided to share.
I peeked through the door at Heath and watched him breathe for a moment. It was a relief to see him like that—practically comatose, arms flung out and mouth open. How odd that he couldn’t sleep in our cozy little house, but here he conked out like an innocent babe. I had the feeling sleep wasn’t going to return so easily for me, not with my gnawing stomach and my nerves. But being up wasn’t such a bad thing. I might as well try to find where Reggie had put our car keys.
Out in the dark hallway, all the doors were shut. The McAdams and Siefferts must have turned in early too. The pocket door with tarnished brass fittings at the opposite end of the hall—the one leading to Dr. Cerny’s quarters—was open just a couple of inches.
I tiptoed to it and peered through the crack. Beyond it was a spacious landing area, as big itself as our bedroom. At the far end, I saw another closed door—Cerny’s suite, no doubt. On the left side of the landing, there was a set of stairs that probably led down to the kitchen. From the right, another set of stairs, narrower than the others, wound up to the next floor.
The attic.
I heard a noise, coming from the attic stairs. A clicking sound, then a low drone. I glanced at Cerny’s door at the opposite end of the landing. It was far enough away that I could probably slip in unheard, if I was careful. I pushed the pocket door open and eased through.
I crept to the attic stairs, put my foot on the first step. Waited. When nothing happened, I mounted the next step, then another and another, keeping to the edge so the boards wouldn’t creak. At the top of the stairs, I found a black fireproof door, cracked open just the slightest bit. The drone was louder; I had definitely found the source. I listened for any indication that I’d disturbed Cerny. When I heard nothing, I pushed open the door and walked in.
The tiny, hexagonal garret was crammed to bursting with all sorts of oversize metal hardware. Machinery and shelving ringing the room like a cabal of mechanical giants. Dozens of thick black cords snaked across the bare wood floor. To my right, a row of three boxy video monitors sat on a sagging plywood shelf. On the left were two enormous machines as big as refrigerators, covered with rows of multicolored buttons, dials, and gauges. And more unidentifiable machines next to those.
“Hello, Dr. Strangelove,” I whispered.
In the center of the room, a battered metal desk and folding chair faced the monitors. Only a yellow legal pad and pen were on the desk. I opened the drawers—all six of them—but they were empty. No car keys. I crept around the desk, taking in the strange setup. The computers, if that was what they were, must have been the main servers, linked to the cameras downstairs and to the monitors up here. To timers, as well, most likely. And there was probably, somewhere, a mechanism for recording the captured footage so Dr. Cerny could review it later. I could see slots that looked like they might fit VHS tapes, but I was hopeless at technology, and the rest of the knobs and buttons and dials were meaningless to me. Frankly, the whole tableau looked very KGB circa 1980.
I examined the monitors. Feeds from our in-room cameras, maybe? They were dark, at least they appeared to be at first glance—but then a curtain fluttered in the corner of one, and I jumped in fright. The cameras were running, even though it was after ten. Either somebody had screwed up or the timers were off.
I moved closer.
Each camera must have been mounted near a fireplace mantel, allowing for a wide shot of the suite, even a bit of the windows. On our monitor, the one on the far right, I could see the bed, the door to the bathroom, and the small sitting area. The monitors were illuminated the slightest bit, by some light source outside the house, maybe. The moon or a floodlight on one of the eaves.
Heath was still sprawled out, his leg kicked out from under the comforter now. On my side of the bed, the comforter was thrown back, and I noticed, with a guilty flush, the twist of underwear lying on the floor. I turned my attention back to my fiancé—that beautiful, strong, tormented man—and, as I watched him sleep, thought back six months ago, to the night of his first nightmare.
Heath asked me to marry him on a perfect April night.
We were at our house—the bungalow Lenny’s father had agreed to sell to us to bolster Heath’s fledgling private foray into Atlanta real estate. We’d eaten pizzas loaded with every leftover vegetable I could scrounge from the fridge and now were relaxing on the back deck. The sky was perfect and clear, promising a star-sprayed canopy after the crisp spring dusk had passed.
We were stacked together on one of Barbara Silver’s hand-me-down Adirondack chairs, my head resting back against Heath’s shoulder. As we’d watched the night settle around us, he’d been gathering my hair over my shoulder and gently twisting it. It felt so good, I’d nearly fallen asleep.
After a while, he ran one finger down the length of my arm. His skin, pale like mine but with an olive tint, was warm. He turned up my hand and laid a ring in the center of my palm. It looked like an antique, a simple silver band, but heavy, engraved, and set with diamonds. The lines of my palm converged in the ring’s center.
“It was my grandmother’s.” Heath’s voice was soft in my ear. I tore my eyes from the ring, twisted in the chair to look at him. The kitchen window was a bright block of light behind him, so I could barely make out the expression on his face, but I knew he was smiling.
The Silvers were wonderful, but I’d never had a family, not a real one of my own. All my junkie mother had left me with was an enormous need for privacy and an annoying eating disorder, not family heirlooms. But now, starting that night, everything would change. I was about to become a part of a new family. The family Heath and I created together.
“Daphne,” he said, and this time his voice had a ragged edge to it. A vulnerable, open need that made me feel scared and exhilarated, all at the same time.