But if she had run away, why hadn’t she come home? Nikki would have welcomed her back in a heartbeat. Nadine would have, too.
That, more than anything, implied that something terrible had happened.
She noticed that her belongings had been tidied up in her absence. The clothes she had tried on and discarded on the bed had been put on hangers and arranged in the closet. Nadine didn’t like that. It felt like an intrusion, suggesting at a permanence she had no intention of fulfilling.
She paused beside the made bed, noticing a white triangle sticking out from her pillow. It was a note written in a jagged longhand that was very much not her sister’s.
I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR
COME TO THE MINE TOMORROW AT 9
C H A P T E R
N I N E
? rule of first blood ?
If she had dreams that night, she didn’t remember them, but every time she woke up it was with a catch of breath and a wild look about the darkened room.
(the raven with a rabbit heart)
She thought of the note—I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR.What did that mean? Did someone in the house know the truth about Noelle and were they trying to tell her something? Or was the marriage referring to something far more abstract?
The handwriting looked slightly familiar but she couldn’t remember from where.
She gave up on sleeping around six, pulling on capri pants and a navy and white polo shirt. She went to the window seat and curled up with one of the romance novels from the library, but she wasn’t in the right mood to read about a duke and his ward. Her eyes kept drifting from the pages she wasn’t reading, lingering on the blur of the trees beyond the glass.
She could hear the distant rattle of pipes through the walls as she ventured into the hallway. Soon the rest of the family would be coming downstairs for breakfast, she supposed. Thomas had said it started at seven. Nadine decided she wouldn’t be joining them. After yesterday’s dinner, she had no intention of dining with them any more than she had to.
Her mind kept playing back to her interaction with Nathaniel, and the way he’d bent over her before Cal had interrupted. Her fear had seemed to excite him and spur him on.
What would he have done to her if there hadn’t been an interruption?
(Some dreams are worth remembering)
Corrine had just sat there while her husband spoke of his ancestor’s debauchery while leering at her from across the table the entire time. His crass behavior hadn’t seemed to bother her at all; she’d been staring into her plate in a fugue. The only thing that had raised any sort of response had been her relatively innocent comments about the décor.
And then there was Ben, the distraught widower. Ben, who looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks, and who had aged about ten years since she’d seen him at the wedding. He’d mocked her disdain of firearms and accused her of not doing enough to find her sister, and maybe that was coming from a place of pain. But something about his reactions and his looks seemed . . . off.
It had surprised her that Cal had called him out for that. As much as he enjoyed provoking her when they were alone, he had taken pains to defend her from his family.
The heavy front doors slammed behind her with a bang as she walked out into the courtyard. She edged around the woman-deer statue and fumbled with the iron gate, which was damp and cold enough to sting to the touch. The gates had been closed at first and wouldn’t open.I’m locked in, she thought.They’ve locked me in. But then she found the latch, which had been duly fastened to its metal bolt. Presumably to keep out the wildlife and not keep in their guests.
She closed the gate behind her, making the gesture emphatic to prove to herself that she could come and go as she pleased. Then she looked up at the house, sitting back on its sprawl of land like a mean dog guarding its bowl.Killraven Castle, she thought, remembering what Odessa had said. She looked up at the shuttered windows. One of the drapes on the upper floors twitched, almost like someone was watching her leave. Whose room was that? Cal’s? Nathaniel’s?
Nobody’s looking at you, Nadine.
But that wasn’t true. The person who left that note had certainly been watching, waiting for her to leave for dinner before slipping into her room sight unseen. She wondered if one of the cowed-looking staff members had left it as a warning. Or had it been someone from the family?
Was it the same person who had come into her room as she slept?
The person who left the note hadn’t specified whether they meant nine in the morning or nine at night. Just “tomorrow,” which was vague. But the urgency of it made Nadine suspect that they had meant the earlier time. Which, paradoxically, made her feel a tiny bit better.
Who murdered people when the sun was shining?
It won’t be shining in the mine, though.
She found herself walking to the diner, since she had nowhere better to go. As soon as the door was open, she felt the heat of all the bodies packed into it as well as the radiation from the sweating grill. Older customers who were clearly locals were playing some kind of card game in the corner while they ate, peering at each other suspiciously from beneath trucker caps as they drenched their pancakes in maple syrup. There was a group of backpackers sitting by the door, laughing and taking selfies. They’d piled their bags around their chairs like a fort, making it hard for the grumbling server to reach over and grab their plates.
