It made her want to ask,which book?Then of course her mind automatically went to the ones with Gram’s recipes in them.Maybe he wanted to make Feel Better Soup too, she found herself thinking, and kind of wanted to laugh.
Only here was the thing: she couldn’t laugh. It wasn’t possible.
Because that thought felt true. Right in her bones. Deep in some weird part of her. It felt completely and wholly true. And oh man, she just did not know how to deal with that in any way whatsoever. It was too at odds with everything she knew about him, and all her own feelings about how this was supposed to play out, and by the time she’d managed to process both issues enough to ask him about any of this, he was halfway into the woods. Like he knew his cause was lost, so felt no need to continue talking to her.
Even though for the first time in years…
She actually wanted to talk to him.
CHAPTER THREE
Cassie wasn’t sure how she managed to get to sleep after her last encounter with Seth. But she knew why she jolted awake at what had to be the darkest depths of the night. It was the sounds, again. The haunted house kind of sounds, that she still couldn’t quite shake off as nothing. A thud on the stairs, she thought it had been.
Then it came again, louder this time. Louder, and clear enough that she knew it wasn’t a ghost. Or a demon. Or something from the fifth dimension. There was someone in the goddamn house. There was a whole intruder, clearly—though she tried to tell herself otherwise for a second.You’re just inventing new threats now that you’ve almost gotten over the terror of spooky things, her brain calmly informed her.
But it didn’t work.
It couldn’t work, because there was the noise again.
And this time, it was loud. It was massively, preposterously loud. As if someone had dragged a massive piece of furniture across the floor. Or maybe not even something as innocuous as a piece of furniture. It could have been a terrible thing, like a dead body. Or a sack full of body parts. Or possibly a big weapon that someone was going to use to turn her into mincemeat.He has an axe, she thought,and it’s so gigantic that he can’t lift it all the time. He has to just trail it behind himself until he’s ready to swing it.
Then all she could think about was it being swung at her head.
While she just sat there in bed. Waiting to be murdered.
Get up, she instructed herself. And somehow she made a start. She slid out from underneath the covers, as stealthily as she couldmake herself be while also shaking with terror. Then once she dared to put her feet down on the floor—a difficult process at the best of times, considering her constant fear of what was under this giant brass bed—she tiptoed across the room to the door.
And ended up banging into the table that stood there. She had to fling out her hands and catch it before it fell. But even that made a noise. She froze. Breath held. Body tensed. Every inch of her suddenly icy with sweat.
Yet there was no relief when she got nothing.
Now she had to keep going. She had to actually go out into the hall, without so much as a big knife or a baseball bat to protect her. All she could think of was the hatstand in the corner, and it wasn’t ideal. It was so heavy she could barely pick it up. It almost toppled her over, as she swung it out in front of herself.
But it was long. And it had prongs at the end.
It would keep anyone who attacked her at a distance.
And that thought kept her going.
She crept along with the thing held out, every bit of her braced to suddenly see the intruder’s shadow looming in the endlessly gray and gloomy hall. Then she got to the top of the stairs and braced again. Because now there was moonlight filtering up from the kitchen window. And she was certain moonlight would reveal his hideous visage.
In fact, it took almost everything she had to peep down into the foyer. She held her breath, and tried to keep as much of her body back as possible.
Only to see absolutely nothing.
No axe murderer. No axe. Not even a sign anyone had been there. She even went to breathe out, with relief. Sagged back against the nearest wall, let the hatstand drop a little. Started to gather herself together, to get back to bed.
And that was when she glimpsed it.
Just out of the corner of her eye, barely anything at all. Merely a stretch of floor that looked a little blacker than it should, lying between the archway into the kitchen and the archway into the living room.
But of course she knew what it was. The hatch that led down into the basement. The one whose trapdoor she had definitely closed before she’d gone to bed. But which was now as open as the maw of a starving beast, about three seconds from a long-awaited meal.
Fuck,she thought.
Because, yeah, okay, if the intruder was down there she could probably get to the front door. Maybe even make it to her bike and pedal to the nearest place with a phone signal.
However, she had to maneuveraroundthat hole to do it. And that was terrifying. So terrifying, in fact, that she had to force her foot onto the top stair. Then force the other to follow suit. And even though the next steps came faster, it took her five full minutes to get to the bottom. And another five to start edging around the hole. And all the while she was getting sweatier, and shakier, and oh god now her grip on the hatstand was starting to falter. Another thirty seconds of this and it was going to fall right out of her hands.
