Happy treasure hunting, my dear, and remember: I believe in you, my graceful little swan.
Love,
Uncle Felix
At the bottom of the original letter there was a Hadley House crest stamped onto the paper, though the red ink was bleeding with age and dampness. How long ago had he written the letter? Clearly, he’d known he was dying for quite some time. He had time to set up an entire wild goose chase for me.
I should have listened to my parents’ warnings about my uncle. If they’d told me he was next level delusional and kept a house full of imprisoned creatures, I would have believed them. My parents would never lie to me and I’d been sure of that up to the day they died. As it was, what they’d told me hadn’t quite hit on this.
He’d locked me in here.On purpose.Knowing I might die.
What was up with the ‘little swan’ and ‘prima ballerina’, too? My parents hadn’t called me any nicknames. No one had. Grace wasn’t one of my talents, either. In fact, whatever the opposite of grace was — I had that in spades.
More confused than ever and with a renewed fear of my beastly housemates, I banged my forehead on the desk a few times. So much for finding a new job when I got back to the city.
I might not ever make it out of this house.
Chapter 5
Nothingelseintheoffice gave me a hint of how to break the seal and escape the house.
I rifled through every paper in the desk, then moved on to the ample shelving. A few items gave off hints of magical energy, but nothing indicating a powerful spell. On a lower shelf, shoved behind a stack of botanical textbooks, I found a bedraggled wool doll I vaguely remembered from my childhood. I had no idea when or how it had gone missing from my childhood home, but I hadn’t seen it since before my parents died. Uncle Felix had been watching me.
Watching me fucking struggle.
Then again, accepting help from a man like him would always come with strings. Him being absent was likely a good thing. Though if he’d shown his true colours before his death, I wouldn’t be here.
By the time I reached the bottom shelf on the final bookcase, my arms were trembling from the strain of raising them above my head and lifting so many thick books. Sweat drenched my skin, and I had to assume I smelled like I hadn’t bathed in weeks. I was lucky I couldn’t smell myself. I desperately needed soap and to wash my hair, but before I left the office, I opened the door off to the side of the main door and peeked through.
A small bedroom. Thick drapes hung over a window facing the front of the house, but there were gaps to let light in, unlike the tightly sealed office. The bed was a king-size, deep red bedspread rumpled and unmade with throw pillows tossed haphazardly among the sheets. This room wasn’t as cluttered, but had a vanity with a mirror in the corner covered in skin care and hair products and a bench seat along the base of the bed. I stepped forward and lifted the top of the bench, coughing at the plume of dust the movement displaced.
Clearly, Uncle Felix hadn’t stayed here in a while. His last few visits must have been day trips.
The bench was filled with moth-eaten old blankets, a couple quilts with stuffing falling out, and a set of dusty sheets. Nothing interesting. I dropped the top back down with a sigh.
Bath. Maybe soaking in warm, sweetly scented water would help me figure out where I was supposed to start on a hunt for ‘clues’.
Shoving the note and my translation in my pocket, I left the room and quietly closed the door behind me. Then I went into the bathroom with my still-damp suitcases and cleaned myself up.
I stayed beneath the water until my toes were pruning and the water was room temperature, scrubbing my body and hair multiple times. The clean clothes wrapped around me in a comfortable blanket of familiarity, my thickest wool sweater warding off the ever-present chill. I left the suitcases open in the bathroom when I left, hoping any damp fabric would dry faster.
Then I went back to the living room, pausing outside the carved doors.
Felix said they might kill me. Would Kirin be the first to snap? No, I couldn’t think about potentials, or I would live in terror. I had to take what came at me, without theorizing about the future. I really hated not knowing what the future held.
Steeling myself, I stepped through the doors with my shoulders pulled back, trying to project more confidence than I felt. Kirin was sitting on the couch I’d been on, legs pulled up to his chest and a book propped on his knees. He was wearing glasses, too small for his face. My breath hitched. I’d never thought an orc could look peaceful or harmless, but with his legs pulled up he looked smaller.
He glanced up when I walked in, then down to his book for a solid thirty seconds. His thick fingers placed a bookmark between the pages, and he placed the book face down on the coffee table. I couldn’t even read the spine, but I was curious about what he was reading. Not curious enough to move closer to see, though. Especially when he rose to his full height and took the glasses off, intimidating once again.
“Ready for the grand tour?”
I nodded choppily, taking four large steps back when he moved. Four of my steps were two of his. He kept his distance, though, going back into the hallway. “You already know everything down here. Felix’s office, storage, bathroom, living room. The second and third floors are bedrooms and some more common areas, which I’ll show you.”
He turned right down the hallway at the top of the first set of stairs, pointing to doors as we went. “Bathing room. Abraxas’ room, as you would remember. Mine is this door at the end.”
Kirin didn’t offer to show me the inside of his room, and I was grateful. I might have fainted. I didn’tthinkhe was going to assault me. But I also didn’t know him, and my uncle’s letter had renewed my fears. I scrambled back from him when he turned around to show me down the other hall. This was where the pine tree had grown through the window, the broken glass cleaned up on the inside.
On either side of the window tree, were doors. Kirin pointed to the one I’d burst through to find Bennett and Waylon fucking during my mad dash through the house. “Bennett’s room.” He pointed to the opposite door. “Waylon’s room.”
