We ate at the kitchen table while the storm battered the glass and the ocean roared beneath the cliff. Ben carried most of the conversation, telling a story about a charity dinner where an especially drunk woman had tried to impress Tobias by mispronouncing cephalopod three different ways. Tobias corrected one detail halfway through, followed by Ben correcting his correction.
All in all, it was a nice meal with pleasant conversation.
Afterward, Ben showed me to a guest room.
There was a king-sized bed, a wall of windows looking out toward the storm-black ocean, a sitting area, a desk, a wall-mounted flatscreen, and an attached bathroom with stone tile and an obscenely huge shower and bath.
“This okay?” Ben asked from the doorway.
I turned to stare at him. “Ben.”
He grinned. “I’ll take that as yes.”
“It’s nicer than my entire apartment.”
“I’ll bet.”
I laughed under my breath, overwhelmed, and looking around like I might find a price tag hanging from something.
“Tobias had this one prepared already,” Ben added.
I looked back at him. “Aren’t they all technically prepared? They at least look like it.”
“That they are,” Ben mused. “This one had been set aside for you though. Just in case. For situations like this.”
“Okay..? That was nice of him.” I wasn’t sure why he was speaking like he was trying to tell me something I didn’t know.
Ben’s grin widened. “Rest up, Cove. Text me if you need anything. Tobias’s room is down the hall, but I wouldn’t recommend texting him unless you want him to appear like a summoned demon.”
“What? Does he do that?”
“Yep,” he chuckled, turning to leave.
I sat down on the edge of the bed, watching the storm through the windows. But after a few minutes, I got up and headed to the bathroom.
The shower situation was a problem.
Not because it wasn’t a nice shower, because it definitely was. It looked like something from a luxury spa where people whispered and drank cucumber water.
But the storm was right there.
Logically, I knew showering during a thunderstorm was only risky under incredibly specific conditions, and the odds of anything happening in a house this modern and heavily engineered were probably microscopic. Tobias’s estate probably had grounding systems that could survive the wrath of several gods.
Still…
Fear wasn’t always interested in engineering.
So I took the fastest shower of my life.
In, wash, rinse, out.
Every time thunder rolled, my shoulders shot toward my ears, and by the time I stepped onto the bath mat, my heart was beating like I’d done something much more dangerous than clean myself.
I quickly dried off, then just stood there checking if I felt any tingling anywhere. Once I’d concluded that I had not, in fact, been electrocuted, I brushed my teeth and headed back into the bedroom.
On the bed were dark blue pajamas, silky and soft-looking, folded with impossible neatness.
As I dropped the towel from around my waist and pulled the pajamas on, the silky material slid over my skin, light enough that I almost felt naked and covered at the same time. I stood in front of the mirror for a second, face hot, trying not to notice how the fabric hung on me. It fit perfectly. Of course it did.
