***
My legs were cramped, and I had a crick in my neck. The neck made sense, because the last thing I remembered was being stabbed with something. Possibly bitten by a ferocious little bug. I had no way of knowing for sure what happened.
However, the cramped legs made no sense. I’d been seated normally on the couch and last I remembered, they’d been fully numb and limp. Had they seized up? Did I have some kind of odd seizure? I kept my eyes closed, the phantom pain in my neck from the pinch fading until I realized my neck crick was on the opposite side. How?
And why was I in the bathtub again?
Being cramped in my temporary bed was what my legs were protesting. There was no reason the men couldn’t have kept me on the damn couch, injured or not. “Oh no, I wonder if she’s alright…”
My eyes slammed open at Zan’s voice, and I bolted upright. “What are you doing in here?” I asked, pressing myself in the corner much like I had when I’d first woken up in the bathroom. “Haven’t you scared me enough?”
He hovered backward a bit, biting his lip. I could feel the panic closing in with every second he spent in the same enclosed space as me. In a few seconds, I would be hyperventilating. “When have I scared you?” he asked. “I didn’t mean to, but you didn’t look too good passed out in the bathtub.”
“You know when you scared me. This exact situation? Yesterday?”
I didn’t know if my first day at Hadley House was yesterday. After the bite — the centralized pain felt most like a bite, so I was going with it — I could have been passed out and feverish for days or weeks. But Zan would remember our first encounter. Hard to forget, when I’d screamed bloody murder. I was proud of myself for holding back the full scream this time around.
“… Yesterday?”
He paused for too long. How did he not know what I was talking about?
“For the love of Ixaris, yes. Yesterday. Or ten days ago. Or I don’t fucking know. Either way, you need to fucking leave.”
Zan’s eyes widened. They looked like they were brimming with tears, but he backed up through the door, vanishing into the hallway. My tense muscles relaxed a tiny amount, coming back from the brink of panic attack territory. I hadn’t quite tipped into it, unlike the last time.
Pulling on fresh clothes from my suitcases, I had my pants halfway up my legs when someone twisted the doorknob, breaking the lock and entering the bathroom without so much as a knock. I screamed, frantically trying to pull the fabric up over my ass while simultaneously hopping around to see who it was. Kirin. Of course. The orc’s frame filled the doorway, his gaze sweeping appreciatively over me.
“Get out!” I said, using my head to gesture down the hall. “What are you doing? Bennett told you not to freak me out. I think barging in on someone in a fucking bathing room counts.”
He cocked his head to the side, not looking away from me. I finally got my pants all the way up, belting them and breathing out a sigh of relief to have my hands free. “Bennett didn’t tell me anything about the pretty human in our bathroom,” he said.
Kirin also… had no idea who I was.
I was getting a bad feeling about this.
Waving him back, he complied this time, and I slid out past him. Up the stairs, I saw the familiar tree branch growing through the window, and turned to Bennett’s bedroom door. Noises. Faint, through the wood, but familiar. Kirin had followed me, his confusion emanating off him, but it couldn’t trump mine. There was no. Fucking. Way.
I tore the door open to find Bennett balls deep in Waylon’s ass.
Bennett turned to look at me. “We’re almost finished,” he said, his voice a growl. “Kirin. Don’t be fucking weird to her.”
My breath hitched.
No.
No, no, no.
Turning on my heel, I sprinted down the hallway to Abraxas’ door. “I wouldn’t go—” Kirin said, but stopped when I threw open the door.
I took a few steps inside, finding the end of his tail exactly where it had been. Yesterday. Except, not yesterday. When I reached his tail, I spun to meet him, catching him on his descent down from the rafters. Black eyes. Hissing. Forked tongue. Abraxas was absolutely murderous, because he’d been woken up from a nap.
And I must have woken up in the underrealm, Halsyn, because there was no way this was real life. This wasn’t possible. Why was everything the same as yesterday, and what kind of damn bug had bitten me?
Maybe I was hallucinating. That made sense, actually. I would wake up when the toxin was out of my system, the men would remember me, and I’d continue with my task of finding my way out of this house. I should play along with my dream version of today, and work on finding the directory. Although, was there any point in continuing with my task right now? Nothing I wrote down would still exist when I went back to the real world. But I’d remember it if it was important.
Unless I didn’t, but if I remembered nothing, it didn’t matter what I did at all.
Dragging in a few deep breaths, I registered Kirin and Abraxas staring at me, the slow hiss coming out of the basilisk fading away. There was no need to panic when none of this was real. Convincing my body of that was harder, but my hands were only trembling the tiniest amount when I turned on my heel. “I’m going to the library,” I proclaimed, and made my way past them so I could sneak up the stairs.
