Nick snorted.
Laurence flashed him a quick, irritated scowl. Then, he moved his attention back to Jasper. “And, okay, yeah, I’m tiredtoo.” Having finally admitted it, Laurence yawned. “And my legs are killing me. Should we soak in the hot springs?”
“In the morning,” Jasper suggested. He walked to the dresser, and Laurence trailed after him, already firing off questions about the ‘monster with the lizard eyes’. Nick would put money on Jasper’s gentle voice lulling Laurence to sleep in seconds.
Nick retreated quietly to the hall and caught Jasper’s eye, miming locking the doors. Jasper’s chin jutted down in a quick acknowledgement.
“Goodnight,” Laurence called to Nick through the closed door. Then, “Why is the veranda shut?”
Nick stopped dead. He stared at the closed door, listening as footsteps tracked across the room and those damned veranda doors creaked open. For long, long seconds, Nick just stood there, listening as Laurence went back to Jasper, as Jasper began to tell him stories. With heavy limbs, he forced himself to move on.
Nick’s room was a few doors down. The bed was covered in luxuriously soft furs, and clothes for sleeping in were folded on top. Nick eyed them suspiciously, but they were an ordinary enough soft shirt and shorts. No frills or embroidery.
He stepped out onto his veranda.
A sky filled with too many stars lit a horseshoe bay. A solid stone pier was filled with jetties, skippers and a gleaming white yacht that made them look like toys. Outside the protection of the bay, larger ships anchored in deeper water. All but one had their canvas sails furled and tied, stationary for the night.
Nick leaned out over the stone rail, wide and easily climbable, and counted three doors down to Laurence’s room. With a sigh of relief, he saw the doors had been pulled shutagain. He checked the other direction and saw that Trevor’s doors were the same.
Nick had no way to check on Connor, but he’d been forced to get used to that fact over the past year. Adonis, oddly, was his mental consolation for his inability to check Connor’s sleeping arrangements. That clingy brat would be by Connor’s side, and nobody was getting throughhim.
Nick’s college roommates were driven half mad by him quietly going into their rooms at night to make sure their windows were properly latched, but they seemed to sense there was a very genuine issue with Nick because they never actually asked him to stop. A small, silent war with one roommate reopening the window whenever Nick shut it had ended in Nick buying him a very expensive silent fan to keep him cool at night, which apparently was an acceptable bribe because the window stayed shut after that. Nick had tried to stop. Never succeeded. He hadn’t slept through the night once since Connor was abducted from the house.
Nick left his own veranda doors open—perversely, his own window being wide open never bothered him—and he enjoyed the fresh ocean breeze as he pulled on the soft nightclothes. As he righted the shirt, Nick wandered back to the veranda to double-check that Laurence’s and Trevor’s doors were still shut. They were.
Nick climbed into the luxuriously soft bed and sighed.
Five minutes later, he was padding down the hall to Trevor’s room. The veranda doors were shut and latched, but this door? The one leading into the room? Left unlocked. And sure, their rooms were in a different wing of the villa than the party had been held, but there was still access. Andsurethere had been a guard, but maybe he was only supposed to work a few hours? Nick could at least ask.
Nick peeked into Laurence’s room. Laurence was under the blankets, snoring softly, while Jasper was stretched out along the bottom of the bed, using Laurence’s legs as a pillow. His tail twitched when Nick opened the door, but his breaths stayed soft and level. Nick snuck inside, entirely silent except for the tiniestclinkof metal on metal that he couldn’t control, and he checked the handles to confirm the veranda doors were latched properly. They were,andthere was an ornate key in each door too, so nobody could unlock it from the other side even if they somehow had a key.
Nick knew that he wasn’t being reasonable. When Connor was kidnapped, nobody had broken into the house. There was no window pried open, no lock jimmied or broken. Connor’s biological father, Ben, had been let inside through the front door. Trevor didn’t welcome the man but allowed him inside with a sort of grudging acceptance that even though he despised how he treated Connor, Ben was still his biological dad.
Yet Nick needed to check the latches on the windows. He needed to make sure that the doors were closed and locked.
Nick quietly shut Laurence’s door and went in search of that guard. The guard didn’t make him feel too good, honestly. He was as much a stranger as anyone else in this world.
The sconces lining the wall lit a silhouette ahead in pale blue light. A man more slender than the guard stood in his place. Nick stopped. The little, imperceptible metalclinkhad the silhouette turning. A black tail slid through the air.
“Kit,” Nick identified as the man’s face turned towards the light.
Nick didn’t feel any sort of relief at recognising the man, only a growing sense of wrongness. Kit’s eyes fixed upon Nick. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t wear the embroidered finery from the party; instead, he stood dressed all in black. That tailcurved from one side to the other, the motion too controlled to be casual.
“Why are you here?” Nick asked, while in his head he was assessing who was in the nearest bedroom.Laurence. His heart gave an unhealthy kick. But also Jasper, and his wicked tail. But where was the guard? Nick hesitated.
Kit moved fast.
Nick had only just got in the breath to raise the alarm when a fist buried into his stomach. He crumbled, lungs spasming as he tried to make noise. He realised at once he couldn’t. A thin band caught him by the throat, yanking him backwards. Nick fell into Kit, whose elbow locked around his throat, cutting off his airflow.
Nick reached for his eyes—his fingernails scraped into soft flesh, and Kit hissed in pain. “Do not struggle, and you will not be harmed,” he warned in a harsh whisper.
Nick’s vision blackened at the edges. Oxygen deprivation roared an alarm that if he didn’t breathe soon, he’d die. Nick threw his weight into Kit. Nick’s head caught his chin, drawing a pained groan from the man. The lock on his throat tightened. Nick wasn’t small. He wasn’t weak. But he grew weaker, felt smaller. He ineffectually pried at Kit’s arm. His movements grew clumsy and dumb, limbs turning wooden.
Red splotches met black edges, blotting out the rest of his vision.
Chapter Four
Nick tasted iron and breathed in musty, stagnant air. His arms were pulled behind his back, wrists lashed together by something metal. Splinters dug into his cheek as the floor swayed. Nick opened his eyes to a dimly lit room with oddly shaped shadows. Ropes? Crates? Barrels? Boots, attached to a lean, lithe man.
