herself. “Courage from the grape, which may also counteract the very late-night coffee and adventure. How was everything at home? In Boston?”
“It was good. Really.” If she needed to talk about something else, he could talk about something else. “Gran looks stronger, my parents look less stressed. And my sister’s expecting her second child. So there was something to celebrate.”
“That’s wonderful.”
“It switched the gears, if you know what I mean,” he said as she poured wine for both of them. “Instead of being careful not to talk about why I moved here, we stopped thinking about it.”
“To fresh starts, new babies and electricity.” She tapped her glass against his.
After one sip she decided to take the bottle down to the basement. Maybe she would get a little drunk. It might help her sleep.
The basement door creaked. Naturally, she thought, and hooked a finger in one of Eli’s belt loops as he started down. “So we don’t get separated,” she said when he glanced back.
“It’s not the Amazon.”
“In basement terms it is. Most houses around here don’t even have basements, much less Amazon basements.”
“Most aren’t built on a cliff. And part of it’s above ground level.”
“A basement’s a basement. And this one’s too quiet.”
“I thought it made too many noises.”
“It can’t make them without the furnaces, the pumps and God knows what other intestines are down here. So it’s too quiet. It’s waiting.”
“Okay, you’re starting to freak me out.”
“I don’t want to be freaked out alone.”
At the base of the steps, Eli took a flashlight from its wall charger in a well-stocked and meticulously organized wine cellar.
There’d been a day, he imagined, when every niche would have held a bottle—the hundreds of them systematically turned by the butler. But even now he calculated a solid hundred bottles of what would be exceptional wines.
“Here. Now if we get separated you can send me a signal. I’ll get the search party.”
She released his belt loop, turned on the flashlight he gave her.
Like caves, that’s how she thought of Bluff House’s basement. A series of caves. Some of the walls were the old stone where the builders had simply carved through. There were passages and low archways, section to section. Normally, she could have flipped switches and flooded it with welcome light, but now her beam shimmered and crossed with Eli’s.
“Like Scully and Mulder,” she commented.
“The truth is out there.”
Appreciating him, she smiled and stayed close behind him as he ducked an archway, turned left and stopped, with Abra bumping into him.
“Sorry.”
“Hmm.” Eli shone the light on the chipped red paint of the mammoth machine.
“It looks like something from another world.”
“Another time, anyway. Why haven’t we updated this? Why haven’t we hardwired a new generator into the house?”
“Hester didn’t mind power outages. She said they helped remind her to be self-sufficient. And she liked the quiet. She’s well-stocked with batteries, candles, wood, canned goods and so on.”
“She’s going to be self-sufficient with a new, reliable generator after this. Maybe this bitch is just out of gas.” He gave it a light kick. He took a glug of wine, set the glass down on another utility shelf and, crouching down, opened a five-gallon gas can. “Okay, we’ve got gas here. Let’s check the creature from another world.”
Abra watched him circle behind it. “Do you know how it works?”
“Yeah. We’ve gone up against each other a few times. It’s been a while, but you don’t forget.” He looked back at her. His eyes widened as he aimed the light on her left shoulder. “Ah . . .”
She jumped, spun around in circles, glass in one hand, bottle in the other. “Is it on me? Is it on me? Get it off!”
She stopped when he laughed—full, deep, helpless laughter that struck a wonderful and warm chord inside her even as it infuriated.
“Damn it, Eli! What is it with men? You’re all such children.”
“You took out an intruder, in the dark, alone. Then you squeal like a girl over an imaginary spider.”
“I am a girl, so I naturally squeal like one.” She topped off her glass, drank. “That was mean.”
“But funny.” He gripped the gas cap on the generator, twisted. Got nothing. He rolled his shoulders, tried again. “Suck it.”
“Want me to loosen it for you, big boy?” She fluttered her lashes.
“Go ahead, yoga girl.”
She flexed her biceps, came around with him so they stood hip to hip. After two mighty attempts, she stepped back. “Apologies. It’s obviously welded on.”