Where the Devil Says Goodnight (Folk Lore #1) - K.A. Merikan Page 0,66

of at least some of the dusty aroma, and called Adam, desperate for company.

The blond head popped through the trapdoor moments later. “This place is huge.”

“I live here alone, so I never really needed extra storage space. Haven’t been up here in ages. Hope you don’t have any mould allergies. And we have to be done by evening. That’s when the spiders come out.”

Despite his heavy heart, Emil smiled at the look of dread on Adam’s face.

“My parents took me on vacation to Hungary once. I’ve never seen so many spiders. Mom insisted on keeping the windows closed at all times, and it was so damn hot,” Adam said and burst with laughter. “But I won’t play the hero. Hate them too.”

“I’d be your hero—” Emil said before he could have bitten his tongue. He was almost thirty, but Adam made him feel like an infatuated teen. Of course he had to fall for the most unavailable man around—the story of his life. “My gran’s chest of creepy shit is there,” he rushed over there in the hope that Adam would disregard the first part of the sentence.

“Like what? You mean she dabbled in the occult?” Adam asked, climbing into the attic with the broad skirts of his cassock gathered in one hand. The garment didn’t cling to his ass, but as he kneeled facing away from Emil, it showcased its curve enough to push Emil’s thoughts back into the gutter. Oh, how much he longed to take Adam downstairs and lie with him in his bed. Even if just to make out.

“It’s… something else. She had notebooks about healing. And she did rituals and prayed to your God at the same time. But if she had diaries as well, it could be either useful, or painfully embarrassing.” He crawled all the way to the back, where a wooden chest was tucked away under the slope of the ceiling. He coughed when a cloud of dust blew into his face as he pulled the chest his way.

“Are there any other women like her around?” Adam asked, shifting closer to Emil, co close in fact that the citrusy aroma of his cologne became overwhelming and made Emil sweat.

“No, she was the last one in the area. I’ve heard desperate people sometimes go to this lady over the border, in Ukraine.”

The top of the chest had been hand-carved, and Emil realized it might have been Grandpa’s handiwork. While it didn’t have the artistic merit of some of the items produced by experienced artisans, a lot of heart and effort had been put into the carvings of plants surrounding a frontal view of a horse head with huge spiraling horns.

He’d been so reluctant to look through those personal items, but fate finally made him face his family’s past. He opened the chest.

Adam shifted closer, and Emil had to stifle a gasp when Adam nudged him with his knee as he sat cross-legged next to Emil.

“What is that?” Adam asked, picking up a Y-shaped branch that had been carefully peeled of bark.

Emil turned it around in his hands but shrugged in the end. “No idea. Maybe there’s an explanation in one of the books.”

But what instantly drew Emil’s attention instead was a large photo album bound in leather. The label at the front read, Kupala Night.

“Now, this is a treat,” he said and leaned that bit closer to Adam, all too eager to torture himself with the popsicle he couldn’t lick. “You’ve heard of that holiday, right? It’s also called Midsummer night. Or St. John’s Night for the very religious.”

Adam shrugged. “There’s festivals. People put wreaths with candles on the water or something, but in the cities it’s just another opportunity to drink and have fun. I’ve never been.”

Emil opened the album. “Let me guess, Mommy didn’t let you? Look, it goes back to the twenties. That’s really cool, actually.”

He briefly stopped breathing when Adam reached over his thigh to trace the somewhat overexposed photo depicting a group of men and women in pale clothes and large wreaths in their hair. People of importance were there too, including a man in elegant clothes, a priest, and a nun. The beginning provided little material, but the farther forward the pages went in time, the more photos there were and of better quality. All of them depicted the holiday his grandmother considered the most important in the year, far above ‘Church Days’ like Christmas or Easter.

He smiled in surprise when one of the pages featured a