Silence: Part Two of Echoes & Silence (24 page)

Across from the foot of the bed, a pair of glass doors led to the balcony, but I didn’t really notice too much else aside from the fact that there was a kitchen of some sort to my left and what might be a bathroom backing onto the wall where the bed was.

“What do you think?” David asked, coming up the stairs with a suitcase in each hand.

Testing the solidity of the wooden floors before actually stepping in, I walked carefully over to an old fabric chair from the twenties and dusted off the seat. “Hard to discern an era.”

“I know.” He put the bags down by the door. “It was built in oh-eight, but we had a kitchen fire sometime around the twenties. I think Jason moved out here for a few months in the thirties to play house with some human, and he fixed up the damage from the fire then.”

As I leaned back comfortably in the dusty, rickety old chair, I looked across at a sturdy iron monstrosity in the kitchen. It was too dark to tell, but it looked as though the stove was once lime green and quite modern in its day. Beside it was a freestanding kitchen cabinet with cupboards up top and below, a counter between, and a gaudy-looking porcelain sink on fancy legs under the window. And that was it, aside from a small square table and two kitchen chairs. There was, however, still a red-and-white chequered tablecloth laid over the table. It was worn and chewed holey by moths; but in an abandoned, dystopian kind of way, it was quite homely.

The wind picked up a bit outside and swept across the floors then, pushing sixty years of leaves toward my toes. I lifted my feet off the ground, hugging myself. “I’m cold.”

“I’ll light a fire.”

“A fire?” I gasped, looking around. “Where?”

He laughed. “Behind the bookcase.”

“What bookca—” As my eyes took another scan of the room I saw it; at the foot of the bed—a bookcase no bigger than an average mantle, clearly built to hide the fireplace. “Why would you bury it away like that?”

“More use for a bookshelf than a fireplace,” he said simply, and appeared by it a second later. I watched in a numb, tired state as he gently took the books off in threes, laid them in a neat pile on the floor by the bed, and then dusted his hands off. I could see a tiny bit of his reflection in the grubby oval-shaped mirror over the mantle as he searched for something, smoothing his hands along the gilded frame.

“What are you doing?”

“There’s a catch here somewhere—behind the mirror. It releases the bookcase.”

“Oh,” I said, and he obviously found it because the bookcase sprung forward an inch on one side. David rolled it outward like a door and fixed it against the wall beside the fireplace, stacking the books he removed into the new shelf on the opposite side.

“There’s no firewood,” he announced, standing up.

I shut my eyes and leaned my head back. “After sixty years without tenants, are you surprised?”

“No. But it means I need to leave you alone for a few minutes.” His hand gently cupped my knee. I kept my eyes closed. “Will you be okay?”

“I’ll be fine. If anyone comes I’ll pretend I’m a ghost.”

David laughed. “If you feel up to it, I’m pretty sure the shower will still work.”

One eye popped open. “There’s plumbing here?”

“There is,” he said with a nod. “If the pipes aren’t blocked, and I doubt there’ll be hot water. But I’ll go light the pilot anyway.”

“Don’t stress it.” I showed him my hand. “I can heat a bath if need be.”

He grabbed my hand quickly then, startling me. “Where did you get this?”

“Drake gave it to me,” I said, looking at him then the bracelet. “It’s amethyst.”

“
Why
did he give it to you? And why would you
wear
it?”

“It helps me draw on Nature’s power when I’m not actually near Nature.”

“That still doesn’t explain why you’re wearing it.”

I covered it with my other hand. “I like it.”

He dropped my hand and stepped back. “We’re going to the market tomorrow. I’ll buy you a new one.”

“Why?”

“Because the man that killed our children gave it to you, Ara! And who knows if that bracelet has some kind of watching spell on it.”

As he said that, my stomach dropped—taking me back to my first day at the castle. Drake promised to let me call David once we could be sure he was an ally not an enemy. He said he’d use a watching spell to make sure.

My wide eyes took David in with a new sinking feeling. Maybe that was how Drake knew I’d planned to kill him. And if he knew that, it was highly likely he already knew about the soulless baby I was carrying.

“Are you okay, my love?” David asked, cupping my cheek. “You look… haunted.”

I shook it off. Surely if Drake knew that he wouldn’t have let me go. “I’m fine,” I assured him—saving
that
conversation for a clearer head. “Just tired.”

“Then I’ll light this fire and we can rest.” He bent down and kissed my hand, then vanished. A second later, in the perfect and still silence of the house, I heard the distant clicking of what I assumed was an axe on a tree. But that was the only sound; there was no chaotic chirruping of nocturnal creatures, or rustles in the bushes. It was unnerving to be so close to nature and hear nothing but the wind.

Then again, this site hadn’t been disturbed in so long that any foreign movement would still the creatures and insects into silence, for sure. Out here, David and I were the predators now, and while the crickets and frogs didn’t need to fear us, they instinctively did.

I rose from the chair with a bit of effort and shuffled over to the bed. An oil lamp and a damp packet of matches lay on the nightstand beside it, challenging my mind like a History teacher on the first day of school. I had no idea how to light the thing, but I’d seen it in movies—where they take off the glass and turn the nozzle thing and then strike a match—so I tried that, and thankfully there was enough oil on the wick to ignite the flame.

I gave the brass tub a little shake and heard the swish of maybe half an inch of liquid. It’ll be enough until David gets back, I thought as I put it back down. He lived through the ages of candles and oil lamps. He’d know what to do from there.

I placed the glass back over the flame and it brightened somewhat, giving me a more rounded glow of light to work by. And although the lake house looked like something from a horror film, it wasn’t altogether unpleasant. Soon there’d be a roaring fire and clean sheets, and David and I could lay in each other’s arms.

My heart skipped a fluttery little beat just thinking about it.

With my hands on my hips I appraised the mattress next; sunken in the middle, angling to the floor a little on the left corner where the springs had clearly worn away, and so dirty I wasn’t sure it’d be safe, even for my immortal lungs, to sleep on. It would need a good beating and some sunshine at the very least. Then maybe a bucket of bleach, because God knows how many people actually died on it.

“Something wrong?” David asked, coming back in with an arm full of dead tree.

“We can’t sleep on this, David. It’s way too gross.”

He laughed, rolling the pile out by the fireplace. He stood up then, dusting off his black shirt and hands. “Well, I guess we’ll camp out on the floor tonight then—by the fire. And we’ll go into town tomorrow and get some new furniture.”

“Is it safe to go into town?”

“Of course.” He bent and collected the smaller bits of wood. “Walt’s men aren’t just lingering around the department store, you know—waiting for us to walk in and buy a mattress.”

I smiled. He had a point. “You’ve done this before,” I said.

“What?” He squatted by the fire and neatly arranged the kindling on the bed of aged soot. “Lit a fire?”

“No.” I walked over and knelt down beside him, clearing away a patch of dust and leaves first. “Run. Hidden away.”

“Many times,” he said with a breathy laugh. “And not always from vampires. Sometimes from humans.”

“Really?”

“Mm.” He nodded absently. “In the war—both of them, actually. And when I’d get caught red-handed with a dead girl in my arms—”

“You’ve been caught by humans—identified?”

“Many times.”

I laughed, sitting down on my bottom to give baby more room. “You’ll have to tell me some of your stories while we’re here—hiding from the world.”

He reached up and grabbed a box of matches from the mantle, tapping them against his hand as he brought them down. “I’d like that.”

“Really?” I raised my brows at him. “Wow—David sharing. Times
have
changed.”

“I’m not afraid I’ll shock you anymore.” He struck the match. “You’ve read my journals. There’s not much I can tell you that you don’t already know.”

I looked at the bent match then at David. “Want me to light that for you?”

“What? This?” He held it up.

“No. The fire.” I clambered up awkwardly onto my knees and leaned toward it, and with my hand just above the kindling, I closed my eyes, built the warmth up in my fingertips—by aid of lustful thoughts about what came next—and sent the heat toward the wood, willing it to ignite. Like a good little pile of dead trees, it lit up beneath my palm—the blaze starting on the top and channelling its way deep into the kindling.

I drew myself back then, giving it a little blow to assist the flame.

By the gentle light of the oil lamp on the nightstand beside us, and by the slightly blue glow in the fire, David’s green eyes looked brown and dark as he took me in with a look of total surprise.

“What?” I asked self-consciously. “You’ve seen me use my powers before.”

“But not with so much confidence.” Before the flame could burn out, David grabbed a log and gently arranged it over the kindling. “It’s… sexy on you.”

“What is?”

“Confidence—like that day on the beach. The battle.” He sat back on the round rug and dusted off his knees. “Before everything went… wrong… I wanted nothing more than to take you up to our chambers and rip your clothes off.”

I laughed.

“You’re this sweet, sometimes naïve little thing, Ara, and I love that about you. So much so that, when you wield a sword to cut down bad guys, or use your powers, it is the sexiest thing in the world, because I always so easily forget that you can.”

My hair fell in my face as I tipped it timidly forward. David brushed it back and tucked it behind my ear. And we sat by the fire for a while, warming our hands, not really talking much. He’d catch the odd thought in my head here and there about something I did or saw at Drake’s, and answer with his own thoughts—sometimes memories. And I just kept going over and over it in my mind—how amazing it felt to finally be free—just a boy and girl by a lake. In love. Together. Married. Both finally immortal—without fear of what would tear us apart. Nothing would ever tear us apart again. Nothing. To prove the greatest love, you must face the greatest challenges. And we had been tested and tried. More times than fair. And we’d passed. More times than possible.

“I say bring it on.” David reached over and took my hand.

“Huh?”

He nodded to my head. “There will be more battles for us, Ara—things that will to try to tear us apart. And I say bring it on. Because it’ll never work.”

I shuffled closer and rested my head against his shoulder. “That was my exact conclusion.”

“I know.” He put his arm around me and kissed my head. “I can read your mind, remember?”

***

When the fire crackled down to a low flame and I started drifting off sitting up, my head against David’s arm, he gently moved me off him and jumped up, disappearing through the sitting room and into a nook. I could hear his footsteps above me, light, but just enough screech and bump coming through the floor boards to make me hope this house was as sturdy as David believed.

He came back down a minute or so later and dumped a pile of blankets and sheets on the floor.

“Where’d you get those?” I asked.

“Closet upstairs.”

“What else is up there?” I looked at the roof symbolically.

“Mostly junk. It used to be a room for Jason and I, but it’s just a bunch of boxes and picture frames, and pretty much anything else we didn’t want to leave at the castle or drag around with us every winter.”

My eyes lit up. “Can I maybe go through some of it tomorrow? Will there be pictures of you when you were human?”

“There may be,” he said, but his smile suggested that there definitely was.

I stood back while David shook and then laid out a few thick quilts. He lifted the blue suitcase he brought from Drake’s castle onto the bed, pulled out some sheets, and laid them over the makeshift mattress on the floor.

“These blankets haven’t been used in decades,” he said. “They need a good wash, but they’re not mouldy.”

“David, the
walls
are mouldy. It’s a safe bet the blankets are too.”

“The walls aren’t that bad.” He grabbed the last blanket from the pile. “Uncle Arthur came out here every few years to repair the roof and fix broken windows, so it’s a solid enough little house. It just needs a little TLC.”