Chapter 8
Theydidn’tletmeget away that easily, proving they were very sentient hallucinations. Kirin stepped in front of me before I made it to the stairs, and I felt his presence acutely, rendering me mute as he insisted I come downstairs and introduce myself. I’d hoped I controlled the direction of this fake reality, but apparently I didn’t have enough backbone for that.
We repeated an altered version of the conversation we’d had in the morning, with me dropping half answers as I tried to get through the inquisition as fast as possible. I wouldn’t be unconscious forever. My time was limited to do some extra research.
“And what was your name?” Bennett asked, drawing me back into what they were saying.
“Hadley,” I said without hesitation.
This time I watched their faces instead of running from their reaction. Everyone’s eyes widened the tiniest amount, looking me up and down. I couldn’t see much of Zan’s face since he was across the room, taking my fear of him to heart. Kirin still looked horny, Bennett curious, and Waylon disinterested. Abraxas’ expression was flat, which was typical. I’d only seen flat and furious. His slitted gaze was sharp enough to slice through my soul, though.
“Guess my uncle named this prison after me. What a great family I have, right?” I said.
“Hadley House isn’t a prison,” Bennett said.
“Then why are we all stuck here?”
Waylon snorted, pulling himself up from Bennett’s lap. “He tries to pretend we all came willingly,” he said. “Makes him feel better. Besides, technicallyhecame willingly. Benny just didn’t have any idea what he was getting himself into.”
“Don’t call me Benny.”
“You’re going to have to make me stop.”
Bennett’s expression morphed from the caring protector to the dominant alpha male. He didn’t say anything, but when Waylon looked back, he smirked. He’d drawn out the side he wanted, and I knew he would revel in the consequences of his words later.
Hey, look. An upside. I could ignore the fact I’d watched them fuck, Kirin included, mere hours earlier, because the fake versions of them didn’t know about it. When I came to again, I wasn’t looking forward to having to converse awkwardly with them.
“What was he getting himself into?” I asked.
Four sets of eyes avoided mine. I caught Zan’s gaze and raised an eyebrow. “We’re all locked in here because people think we’re dangerous. Bennett originally came for help,” he said, his voice quiet enough that it barely carried to me.
Uncle Felix, their warden, thought they were dangerous. And surely someone else, too, because he couldn’t maintain this level of control over five powerful creatures all alone. I’d already known his opinions, considering the letter. This conversation wasn’t helping, but going back to the library might.
“I’m going up to the library,” I said, standing.
“Do you want a tour?” Kirin asked, making to follow me.
I waved him off. “No need. I know where I’m going.”
Swinging into the kitchen first, I grabbed a bowl of the most boring oatmeal known to magekind and brought it with me up to the top floor. In the library, I realized exactly how much of an annoyance it was to start my hallucination from the beginning of the day. “Fuck,” I said under my breath. “My cataloging efforts haven’t happened yet. I’m going to have to start all over.”
Or come up with a different plan. I went with the second option, since any cataloging I did during a delusion wouldn’t count for much in reality.
Finding the book I’d been looking at when I’d been bit, I flipped through to find the picture and noted which pages it was stuffed between. I stared at the cursive, fingers tracing the hard to read letters. The first words were my parent’s names. Below the names looked like numbers. A date? That could be a one, for January. And the year… when had they been young like their images here? I counted back through the decades in my head. This would have been in the late eighties, early nineties, before we hit the first millennium After Ixaris. The numbers at the bottom could be 989 AI. They looked similar enough.
January 989 AI, my parents smiling up at me from the worn photograph.
This might be a clue from Felix to me, but it could just as easily be a memento he’d kept around and forgotten about when he was setting up this little game. The book being in the section beside the lamp, which was most definitely a clue, was a big coincidence, but not hugely impossible for the placement to mean nothing.
Either way, I had no idea what to do with it right now, so I placed the old book face down on a side table and continued combing the shelves. Directory. You’d think one would be easy to find, but no such luck. With the sheer amount of books, all in different colour schemes, even the typical brown spine with vibrant purple inking didn’t stand out much.
I was seated on the floor, rifling through the pile in my hands, when I heard the door open and close. My body tensed, but the opening of the door made me less nervous. Zan would have floated through, and he was the one I was most scared of. Glancing over my shoulder, I spotted the short form of Waylon on the couch. With the high back and his body hunched over, he couldn’t be seen from the door.
“Are you hiding from Bennett?” I asked.
He whipped his head around to look at me. “Why the fuck are you hiding in the corner?”
“Not hiding,” I said. “I’m searching for something, and there wasn’t much point in moving the books.”
