Page 86 of The Devil

I practically jump out of my skin as I leap to my feet, guilt etched on my face. In my hurry, I shove the diary under the pillow of the bed. I expect it to be Jet and I’m not ready to tell him about what I’ve found yet. I’m not ready to say out loud to another person, even the one I love, the truth about what happened to my mother. Why she ran away from home. Why she couldn’t love me. Not really. I can’t explain just yet the real reason she married a man like Malek Lombardi, someone who for all his faults could, given his connection to the Moretti mafia family, help her disappear from her past.

I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to tell Jet what I am. A product of rape. Violently begotten. Unloved, truly. And how could I blame her? Because what could I bring her but pain? Every time she looked at me, she saw her past.

She saw what my father did to her. What he took from her.

Except, it’s not Jet at the door. It’s Jameson. With him are two armed soldiers.

“Your husband isn’t here?” Jameson asks, and I get the feeling he already knew Jet was gone.

“He’ll be right back,” I lie. I was supposed to walk over to Sev’s room.

“Well, then we should go. The stylists are waiting for you. Come.” He snaps his fingers for me to step out into the hallway. Literally snaps his fingers.

“What stylists?”

“To ready you for the ball.”

Ready me? “I’d like to tell my husband where I’ll be,” I say, picking up the handle of my purse as I do because I know Jameson isn’t going to allow me to go to Jet. I just know. And I want to make sure I have Jet’s pistol with me. “He’ll want to know where I am.”

“Oh, I’ll make sure he knows. He will need to dress for the masquerade himself. Guests will be arriving soon. Now, if you will,” he says, pointing out the door. “I have a feeling Mr. Blackstone may protest and we don’t want any trouble.” Although he says it with a smile, it’s a warning.

One of the soldiers takes his cue and motions for me to walk ahead of him.

“No,” I say. “We don’t want trouble.” I walk out of the bedroom and glance down the hall toward Severin’s. Two armed men stand just outside that door. I turn back to Jameson who is watching me. He’s all faux polite expressions and hidden warnings. He’s waiting for my reaction at his show of power. Instead of giving him one, I keep my expression flat and walk in the direction he gestures.

“Oh, I cannot wait to see the surprise on Jethro’s face when he sees you descending the stairs of the great hall, my dear. You are the Belle of the Ball, after all.”

I want to ask what the fuck he’s talking about. Tell him I’m not here on fucking vacation. But I don’t. I don’t say a word, even as my anxiety ratchets up umpteen degrees. Instead, I walk along the corridor with one soldier ahead of me, another behind. Jameson opens a door in the wall that I wouldn’t have known was there and I wonder how many of these secret doors there are in this strange, terrible place. I can only guess at the maze of hidden corridors.

This particular one leads narrowly to a set of stairs. I glance back and Jameson gestures for me to go ahead. I start climbing. Seventeen steps later, the guard at my back reaches over my head to open another door and I step out onto a landing that’s dusty with disuse. It’s circular. We must be in one of the turrets of the castle. I’d counted four from the air.

“Where are we?” I ask as Jameson now moves ahead of me to the single door that looks like it’s about a thousand years old, the wood rotten in places, the ancient iron bar that can be drawn across and latched to lock it from the outside.

“The East Tower. The only way is through that secret passage although I admit it is not nearly as prettily done as the rest of the castle. But this room serves only one purpose. You can guess how long it’s been since its last use,” he says, glancing up at the cobwebs. “Here we are.” He pulls the door open.

The hair on the back of my neck stands on end and instinctively, I take a step backward. Warnings fire in my head to turn and run and find Jet and not leave his side again, but I can’t do that. I can’t run. I have no choice, none of us do, but to see this thing through, whatever the hell it is.

“Come now,” Jameson says. “The ladies don’t bite.”

I look back down the hall toward the hidden doorway, but it’s so well masked and the corridor so dim, I can’t see the outline of it. There are torches, but they’re unlit. I imagine at nighttime it’s pitch black.

I force my legs to move, and I step into the room.

There is a moment of relief when I see three women busy setting up hair and makeup stations while another is unveiling a gown. It’s hanging from what looks to be a meat hook from the ceiling, and the train is so long, she has to stand on a step stool to reach the top of the zipper. The dress is a bold bloody red. Crystals that seem to be sewn directly onto the fine material dance in the golden light of a fireplace inside which a generous fire burns. That fire is the only source of heat up here. I know. Even though they’ve modernized what I’ve seen in the rest of the castle, this room looks to be preserved, untouched from what it must have been when the castle was first built.

Once the dress is fully unveiled, I gasp at its almost otherworldly beauty. There’s something both ancient and modern about it and for all its beauty, it makes me shiver with dread.

“This room has remained exactly as it was first built centuries ago,” Jameson says, calling my attention. I take it all in, furnishings like museum pieces upholstered in various shades of deep burgundy. Portraits of men hang all around the circular walls some looking hundreds of years old, a few more modern. Beneath each is the name of the subject but it’s too dark and the lettering too small for me to read. “I hope it’s to your liking,” Jameson says in a smaller voice.

It’s not. The whole place smells musty and old and the fresh roses set in vases on every surface stink. But it’s when I look closely at the tapestry hanging over the fireplace that my blood runs cold. That I realize how my entire body is on high alert, my heartbeats uneven thuds against my chest.

It’s the pattern again.

Roses. Vines. The bird.

The impaled, dying bird.

Within it, I see the letters that match what my mother had drawn inside her diary. The name of the man I’ve been searching for.