Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
“What if Ash is behind that door, Lu? That would change everything.”
I got the keys. Immediately lost hold of them, my fingers tiny frozen sausages.
The metal sticks fell to the landing in a discordant cacophony.
“Damn it.”
Aaron was already grabbing them and handing them over. “Before you start to try them, let’s take a breath. Just . . . settle.”
My fingers tingled sharply as I flexed sensation back into them, my mind a rabbit that raced from one thought to another. “Good idea.”
“We can drink a bit of this, too, warm up.” Taking the sleek bottle of coffee out of his pocket, he unscrewed the lid and winced. “I think it’s black. Grace must’ve forgotten you like your coffee to be hot milk with a dash of coffee.”
I punched him lightly on the arm. “Smart-ass. You can have your bitter water.” Black coffee might as well be tar as far as I was concerned. “I’ll grab a drink when we go downstairs. And I’ve got the cookies for when I need an energy hit.” I patted my pocket. “No use letting the coffee go to waste when Grace went to the trouble of packing it.”
Aaron nodded and took a deep gulp of it, after an initial sip to test that it wasn’t too hot. After he was done, he put the bottle back in his pocket and exhaled. “Okay, let’s do it.”
I took out the keys.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
The lock snicked smoothly open.
42
Aaron’s pupils were tight dots when he glanced at me. “I really hope he’s not there.”
Swallowing hard, I nodded and stepped slightly back so Aaron could push open the door. It flowed into the darkness beyond, no hint of a groan or creak, no sudden shower of dust. My chest compressed in on itself, my heart a drumbeat that wouldn’t slow down. I licked my lips with my tongue, tried to swallow. It stuck. I was glad that I hadn’t decided to eat one of the cookies.
“Look.” Aaron pointed down.
When I cast my gaze that way, I saw not footsteps but a wide streak that wasn’t clean, but had obviously been disturbed—brushed to swirl all the dust and remnants of ash from the fire together.
But why? It was obvious that—“Oh.” My gut clenched. “It’s so we can’t tell the size of the shoes that walked through the dust . . . and how many pairs there were.”
Aaron moved the beam of the flashlight around the darkened space. This particular area had no windows, so all we saw were charred beams and furniture distorted and damaged by the fire. Macabre sculptures in the dark.
“I didn’t realize they just . . . left it all here.” Aaron crossed himself. “All that suffering and pain allowed to fester for generations.”
I shivered, but not in fear. Now that I was here, I knew I’d been right not to believe what Ash had told me about Darcie saying Bea was the reason for the ruin; the entire scorched setup was too nineteenth century, not an inset power plug or even slight indication of modernization in sight—every shred of surviving fabric could’ve come straight out of some English country estate.
I couldn’t guess why Darcie had even made up the tall tale—perhaps part of her ongoing war with Bea, even now that Bea couldn’t fight back—but her lies meant Aaron was right about the suffering, the miasma of death.
Yet . . . to a photographer, the frozen firescape was fascinating. Eerie and draped in mystery, no scent to the place at all. The latter was explicable, given the passage of time and the fact that the building was open to the elements in multiple places, but it still felt “off” to my brain.
We had no time to linger, however, and carried on after a quick but careful look to ensure Ash was nowhere in this room.
“Be careful.” I touched Aaron’s back. “The floor beyond this point could be dangerous. Test before you step.”
He nodded, and we moved with slow care until he paused at the next doorway. There was no door there, but the structure itself looked solid enough, as did the floor beyond it.
Aaron still tested it with one foot before putting any weight on it. “I think I know which part this is from the outside. It’s at the top, back section.”
Inside my head, I flipped through the photographs I’d taken. “Then we’re in luck. That area seemed relatively stable.” Quite unlike the devastated front section.
We continued to take extreme care regardless, still following that wide streak in the dust and ash. When I glanced backward, my flashlight beam picked out our footprints, ghostly echoes all that remained of our passing. Everything was black and white, as if the fire had sucked all color out of the world.
I turned forward, my movement rapid. And my vision wavered. I’d have to talk to my specialist about that, I thought as I waited for it to settle again. He hadn’t warned me of this kind of disruption. He had, however, advised me to find ways to alleviate the level of stress in my life.