House of Slide Hybrid (29 page)

I nodded and focused on the piano. I could do this. I could shut and lock the piano. I dropped his hand and leaned forward and try to close the lid of the keyboard. I strained, pulling as hard as I could as I struggled in my weakened condition until with a crash that I felt through my bones, the board shut. I turned the key with trembling fingers then collapsed on the bench.

Lewis dropped on the seat beside me, gripping my hand in his while I stared around us at the empty ballroom that had been so full of Lost Souls a moment before. I closed my eyes, trying to see with my soul, whether they were really gone, but all I saw was the back of my eyelids.

“Are you all right?” he asked, cupping my face with his hand until I opened my eyes and looked at him. He looked like an angel, all gold and red with his eyes glowing, making my heart beat faster.

“I’ve been worse,” I said, relaxing against his hand. “Why did you bring me here? It doesn’t seem like a very good place for anyone with Wild blood.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I didn’t know what else to do. You were dying.”

“I think I died,” I whispered while my heart thumped unnaturally fast in my chest. “I saw everyone’s souls when I left my body, but I didn’t stay gone.” My voice sounded strangely empty.

He squeezed my hand. “I brought you here to help the tattoos take, to keep you from dying. Staying alive is not the same as being fine, but you do seem well.” He smiled, sort of. His face was so white, bloodless, and his hand where he held mine trembled.

“This place sucks,” Jackson said from the doorway. I turned to look at him, to see him even more sick looking than Lewis.

“What happened to you?” I asked. Where had they been when I was searching the house?

Jackson took his time swallowing, like he was trying to keep something down. “Nothing worth mentioning other than having Lost Souls playing with my brains while your Intended sucked the life out of me. Not that he didn’t do the same thing to himself, but still. No one asked me whether or not I wanted to lose ten years so you could get runes.”

“Jackson,” Lewis began, quietly, but Jackson ignored him.

“Was this Devlin’s idea? Does he want everyone half dead or only his relatives? I did not sign up for this.” Jackson shuddered and put a hand over his eyes. “They’re still here. I can feel them.”

“No,” I said as I stood up, pulling Lewis with me. He leaned heavily against me for a moment before he straightened. “I put them back in the piano. Don’t play it, by the way.”

He laughed, a horrible sound that filled the room. The scary thing was when the room responded. Jackson’s echo rose higher and higher, sounding like the shouts of an angry mob.

We all held very still until the sound faded away.

Something knocked me sideways until I dropped Lewis’s hand. I stumbled towards Jackson. Behind me I heard a thump. When I turned, I saw Lewis sprawled on the floor, the tile twisting and shifting around him. He looked up at me and for a moment his eyes glowed bright gold and he smiled, a smile I’d never seen before, a smile that showed fearlessness to the point of insanity.

“Are you okay?” Jackson asked him, taking one step into the room before he froze then quickly stepped back into the doorway. “I hate to state the obvious, but we’ve got to get out of here.”

I took a step to Lewis and something knocked me spinning back towards Jackson.

“Go, Dariana,” Lewis said, his voice a dangerous growl as he climbed to his feet. He grinned at me, his white teeth terrifying and predatory.

I shook my head and braced myself so that the next time something hit me I didn’t move.

“They aren’t taking my dance partner,” I said with my own shaky smile. “We are going leave here together.”

I held my hand out to him, waiting with perfect confidence in our ability to accomplish any impossible thing as long as we were together.

Lewis stood for a moment, staring at me as though he’d never seen me before.

“Come on,” Jackson urged as I waited until Lewis moved suddenly, a blur of motion and energy, dodging around the invisible dancers until his hand found mine and we spun and tripped across the floor.

I laughed, gazing up at Lewis as we spun, caught in an invisible dance that we didn’t need music to follow. The unseen battering stopped as suddenly as it had begun. We danced, the only music the sound of our breathing and our hearts, pounding steadily until we reached the hall where Jackson waited.

He pulled us out of the room, scowling at us, like we should both be thoroughly ashamed of our behavior. He looked terrible, exhausted and older than he had been the last time I’d seen him as he slammed the doors behind us.

“Jackson, are you okay?” I asked as I touched his face, carefully.

Jackson shrugged off my hand.

“I’m great. We all look amazing. We should do this again sometime.”

“What happened?” I asked, holding onto Lewis while he wrapped his arms around me, burying his face in my hair like Jackson didn’t exist.

“Five inches,” Jackson answered. “And we’re still here. Why are we still here?”

“After you passed out, I brought your mother, Grim, and Jackson to this place,” Lewis answered me, ignoring Jackson. “The mosaics are like runes, only permanent, deeper. This place was used for healing,” Lewis murmured nuzzling my hair. “This house used to be one of the great Hallow Halls, the owner a famous healer. It makes most Wilds crazy, dizzy, sick. We’ll all go mad if we stay here too long.”

“We’ve already been here too long,” Jackson protested, but his voice seemed to come from far away.

“The mosaics in the healing room where we took you are laid out in a pattern that draws strength and energy from one of several places on the edge of the room, one of where your cousin Jackson became unconscious.”

“Unconscious people make crappy chaperones,” Jackson complained. “Why do I even bother?”

Lewis pulled back far enough that I could see the half smile and auburn hair fallen over his forehead in a mess while he stared into my eyes. “Don’t worry, Jackson. If I’m going to take advantage of Dari, I won’t do it here.”

My stomach tightened and my knees got wobbly, but in a good way, not in an, ‘I’m going to die’ way.

“This place is an abomination. We need to leave before I decide sanity is overrated. Dari, it’s awesome that you’re practically recovered. That usually takes more than a couple days, but what good is having runes if you’re a total nutjob?”

Lewis frowned at me before he turned to Jackson, still holding tightly to my hand. “I appreciate your service. You are welcome to leave with my thanks.”

“And Dari can stay here with you?” Jackson crossed his arms over his shirt that he’d managed to keep less wrinkled than Lewis’s.

I saw Lewis’s jaw clench before he relaxed and shook his head. “No. No one is going to stay here. Let’s go.”

We began walking down a long corridor that seemed to stretch out to infinity.

“How did you get this charming cottage,” Jackson asked, his voice strained.

“I won it in a bet.”

“You got screwed,” Jackson said, lurching to the side until he came up against the wall where he stood breathing heavily until he straightened up, balancing more carefully.

He really wasn’t okay. Lewis wasn’t doing that much better. Actually out of all of us, I seemed to be in the best shape, which made sense if Lewis had shifted Jackson’s energy into me. I shivered, repulsed at the idea of draining someone else just so that I could have runes.

We walked out, slowly, carefully, each of us taking a deep breath when we’d crossed the cavernous main hall and stepped out into the bitter cold. Lewis dropped my hand and closed the door, locking it with a golden key that matched the one for the piano.

He sat down on the top step, shoeless, without a coat, and I dropped down beside him. Jackson managed to stay standing as he leaned heavily against the wrought iron railing. I tucked my feet into the ugliest gown known to man, aware that Lewis wasn’t the only one without shoes.

“So, what now?” I asked, staring at his feet, bare, soft and delicate looking with white skin that had a few lines of faded scars.

“Jackson will take you home,” Lewis said, pulling a car key out of his pocket then tossing it to my cousin.

“What about you?” I stared at him, gauging the color in his face, whether it was any better than before.

“Your Intended can take care of himself, Dari,” Jackson interrupted, tugging on my arm. He seemed much better simply being out of the house. Lewis didn’t seem to be recovering quite so quickly.

“Don’t push me, Jackson,” I said, as the weight of everything built up around me. I’d gotten tattoos, or started anyway, and I’d died. Something had brought me back, maybe the runes in the tattoo parlor, maybe something else I didn’t know about. Lewis had done some complicated healing thing that he’d only been able to do by sacrificing my relatives and himself.

“Lewis, do you want to come home with me? You’re not wearing any shoes.”

“They’re in the house,” he said with a shrug and a slight smile before he glanced away, studying the snow with a frown.

“Why don’t you come with us? We’ll buy you some new shoes, or I’m sure someone has some in your size. I don’t want to leave you here.”

He laughed, took my hand and pressed a firm kiss to my knuckles that sent a shock of warmth up my arm.

“I have things to do, Dariana. I have duties as your Intended that I can’t put off until tomorrow. I’ll call you.”

“That’s what you said last time,” I said but didn’t object when Jackson pulled me down the steps.

“Come on, Dari. We are leaving before your toes fall off. It’s been a time,” he said nodding to Lewis as he dragged me down the stairs. I barely kept my feet. We were halfway down the long stone steps before I turned to look back at Lewis.

He watched me, a strange sad look on his face before he smiled and lifted a hand in farewell.

“Be careful,” I said, not sure what else I could say with Jackson right there. I wanted to run up and kiss him, but he’d told me to go and the longer I stood there, the longer he would sit and watch me.

“Lewis?”

He stood, slowly and came down the steps until he wrapped his arms around me. “Next time will be better, I promise,” he whispered then lowered his lips to mine.

“Five inches,” Jackson complained, but I barely heard him over the thumping of my heart.

When the kiss ended, I squeezed him tight, memorizing the feel of him before I let go and turned away, quickly so that I wouldn’t change my mind.

I walked down the steps and pushed through the iron gate.

“That house is not good for him,” Jackson said as we walked toward the car that hardly looked like Lewis’s with its three inches of white powder. I nodded as I looked at the iced over sidewalk beneath my bare feet. I didn’t feel the cold anymore. My feet must have gone numb. I got into the car like a zombie not paying any attention to Jackson as he scraped off the snow then drove me away from the Hollow house. At the last second I looked back, but there was no sign of Lewis on the front steps and the towering Victorian monstrosity seemed to laugh at me.

Lewis was all right, I told myself. He’d chosen to take me to the Hollow House and do whatever he’d done to keep me alive. It wasn’t my fault that he suffered for me. It wasn’t like I’d asked him to come to the gallery and take a knife through the chest for me. I wasn’t the one who kept hurting Lewis.

I dropped my head to my trembling hands. What would happen to him the next time I almost died?

Chapter 13

When I got home, I went to bed and didn’t really wake up for four days. When I woke up, my dad brought me a tray and it almost seemed like old times, back in the woods with him.

“How are you feeling?” he asked in his smooth, compelling voice.

I shrugged. “I’m tired,” I muttered as I pushed the beautiful bright vegetables around on the tray.

“Lewis has called every day morning and evening at eight o’clock, a.m. and p.m. respectively. Your mother appreciates his precision.”

I nodded but couldn’t say anything. I didn’t want to think about anything, not when I was still so tired.

“All right,” he said with a slight frown as he smoothed my hair and took my tray. “Rest. Take as long as you need.”

“Did he sound okay?” I asked before he left. I fiddled with my quilt while I waited for him to respond.

“He sounded concerned when he heard you were still asleep. We’re all very happy to see you awake.”

I nodded as I slid down my pillow and pulled my blanket over my head. He’d called me, just like he’d said he would. I almost smiled before I feel asleep.

Days seeped away, one much like the others as I “recovered”. That’s what they called it, recovering.

The next time I woke up, my mother stood at the window, staring into the gray February afternoon.

“You’re awake,” she said without turning.

“How did you know?” I asked in a rough voice. I needed a drink. I struggled to sit up and reach for the glass beside my bed with lemon slices in it.

“I can hear your breathing,” she said as she finally turned. She came to lean over me, helping me with the water so I wouldn’t spill.