This house is my bell jar, Nadine thought, knocking on Cal’s door.
“Enter,” she heard him call out, and she walked through the little hallway, ducking beneath the medieval hunting tapestry that gleamed with its gilt threads. “There’s no need to knock, you know,” he said. “That rule is mostly for my sister. I leave the door unlocked for you.”
He was sitting on his bed with a bunch of papers spread out beside him, with a yellow legal pad balanced on his knee, although he set it to one side when she walked closer.
“Why?” she said, in a tone like ice. “It’s your brother who likes to watch.”
She had been hoping to spur some reaction from him, but apart from a slight tightening at the corners of his mouth, she was disappointed.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t find out about that,” he said. “I knew it would upset you.”
“Do youthink?” she said, folding her arms tightly. “He saw you—takeeverything.”
Something flickered over his face, like the expression she’d glimpsed briefly outside the Japanese restaurant. Regret—but hotter and darker. Like a tortured star about to implode.
“Iamsorry for that. I guard that memory rather jealously, you know. A breathless Nadine surrendering to me by candlelight, wearing nothing but the night itself—glorious.” He studied her through lowered lashes. “If I could make him unsee it, I would.”
Nadine wet her lips. “I think he saw us outside the civic center, as well.”
“Possibly.” He uncrossed his legs. “Has he touched you?”
Nadine took a step back. “N-no.”
“Good.” He shuffled the papers absently. “Stay away from him. He’s lost his sparrow and now he wants mine—but you belong to me. I’ve marked you, and I’ll be the one to finish you off.”
“Finish me—?” Her voice rose.
“You’ll like the way I do it, don’t worry.” He leaned back on the mattress, looking at her. “Was there something else?”
“What are you doing?”
“Just some probate litigation.”
“Do you like it?”
“It’s work but there’s a certain satisfaction in it, yes.” He tilted his head in a way that really did remind her of a raven. “But I don’t think that’s why you came to see me.”
“I want my phone back.”
“No.” He picked up the pad again and highlighted something. “Is that all?”
“It’s mine.” When he didn’t respond, she said, “I have friends. Friends who worry about me. If I don’t talk to them, they’re going to beworried.”
“They won’t be.”
“They—what? Why?”
“Because—” he turned a page of the document “—I took care of it.”
It took her a moment to understand. “Youimpersonated me. You impersonated me to my friends and family?” She shook her head. “But my phone has a lock.”
He arched his eyebrows and her face went pale as she remembered that dream that was not a dream. Of being held in the middle of the night and touched in a way that made herache.
He must have crept into her room in a similar way and taken her sleeping hand.
“You . . . psycho,” she gasped.
“You’re going to that festival. That was your fate, I’m afraid, from the moment you walked into this courtyard, demanding to know what happened to your sister. My family will see to it, even if I don’t. I can’t have you running around panicking, alerting all your friends.”
