dead. Found him bringin' up blood in the stables. Ate the poison set out for the rats back in January. Your father shot him. Put him out of his misery.”
I look away, staring up at the sky out of the windows at the top of the stairs, trying to work my way around the tempest of emotion that's spinning around the inside of my head. Everything's moving so fast. My thoughts are so blurred; I can't make sense of what I've just learned.
A warm hand takes mine. “Pickaxe?” Elodie whispers in question.
“Doesn't matter,” I say, swallowing down the hard knot in my throat. “Let's go.”
“Master Wren, your shoes!”
“Get fucked, Mariposa.”
“Dios Mio.” She crosses herself when I walk past like I'm the very devil himself. My movements are wooden and mechanical as I climb the stairs. Elodie follows after me silently, still holding onto my hand, refusing to let go. I walk down the hall, past Mercy's wing of the house, past the left-hand turn that leads to the library, my father's office, and the separate rooms where he and Patricia sleep. At the very end of the hall, I open the door, recessed out of sight in its own little alcove that leads up to what used to be the servants' quarters. This stairway is nothing like the one we just came up; it's narrow and tight, barely wide enough to fit a man's shoulders. It's also so dark that anyone who isn't as familiar with the uneven steps as I am must place their hand against the rough stucco to brace themselves to avoid tripping on the wobbly boards.
“Jesus, where are you taking me?” Elodie mutters. Her voice is soft, but it sounds harsh and loud, bouncing around the narrow space.
“Not much further,” I tell her. “You'll see soon enough.”
I turn the handle on the door at the top of the stairs. And it doesn't fucking open. “What the fuck?”
“What’s wrong?”
I squeeze Elodie's hand, then let go of her. With both hands, I feel the weighty, cold metal of a padlock above the doorknob—a padlock that wasn't there before. “That motherfucker,” I snarl.
“Wren, seriously. What's going on. I may not have mentioned this before, but I'm kinda claustrophobic.”
Ahh, fuck. How have I been this stupid? I know this about her. She might not have shared the information with me, but it makes complete sense, given what I’ve read about her. This isn't the kind of place to be hanging around if you're afraid of tight spaces. Grimly, I tug on the lock to see how solid it is. And it's really fucking solid. “My old man,” I say, sighing. “He's had Calvin put a lock on the door. And I don't have enough room to put my shoulder into it. We'll have to go back down so I can find a fucking screwdriver.”
“Or...” Elodie trails off. Her breath sounds a little labored like it's hitching in her chest. “Or I could just pick the lock,” she finishes.
Surprise creeps in, over the top of my anger. “You can do that? In the dark?”
“In the dark. Underwater. With my hands tied behind my back. How do you think I found my way into your bedroom when you took my phone?”
“I assumed you'd just come in through the back. We always leave the kitchen door unlocked.”
“Shit.” She laughs nervously. “That would have been nice to know back then, I guess. Here, can you...let me by?” She slides up the steps next to me, her tits brushing up against my chest, and my cock immediately stiffens. She smells like spring and sunshine and floral like the tiny little white flowers that grow all over the ancient, crumbling walls of my father’s chateaux in France.
I want to kiss her so fucking badly. My body wants far more than that but now is not the time. I press my back against the wall behind me, managing to give her just enough room to sidle by so that she's in front of me. I hear her fiddling with the lock—a light rattling, and then silence as she stoops over, her breath no longer labored; it evens out, into long, steady and even pulls at the air, as she focuses on her work. She's only been working over the thing for a couple of seconds when I hear the metallic snap and a loud clang as the padlock drops to the top step.
She opens the door and walks through it, into the light corridor ahead. Her cheeks