Sharon Ashwood - Scorched

They crossed out of the open space of the hall and entered a long corridor mottled with patches of torchlight. The passageway angled, then branched into three. Constance went to the left. Finally she stopped at the entrance to a large room. Mac reached around her, opening the door. She nodded, accepting the courtesy, and walked in. Mac followed.

A waft of sweet-scented air greeted him. Mac looked around in wonder. It was like walking from Frankenstein’s castle into the Arabian Nights. “This is called the Summer Room,” she said. “I don’t think anyone knows it’s here.”

It didn’t look particularly summery, but it was extraordinary. The space was gently lit by a scatter of pillar candles. Tapestries hung on the walls, strange-looking birds and animals glittering with silver thread. Swaths of silk draped the high ceiling, giving the impression of a tent. There were couches and chairs and a canopied bed in the corner, piled with a mountain of gold and black velvet cushions. Books were scattered everywhere. A violin case on one shelf. A waterfall ran down one corner of the stone wall, splashing into an enormous marble basin that drained away below. Expectation hung in the air, like words formed but not yet spoken.

“This isn’t like anything else I’ve seen in the Castle,” Mac said, his voice hoarse. He turned around, and around again, trying to take it all in. “This is the opposite of the Castle. It’s beautiful.”

Then he remembered Holly’s description of the room she had found, and wondered whether this was the same place. The one place in the Castle where natural appetites were not repressed. This could be interesting.

Constance trailed her fingers down one of the tapestries, making the silver threads glitter in the candlelight. “There are a few havens like this. Remnants, I think, of another time. I found this place not long ago. It belonged to Atreus’s household once, but he doesn’t come here anymore. He left everything under a spell so that it wouldn’t decay.”

Mac touched the arm of one of the chairs, feeling a faint ants-over-the-skin vibration of magic. It went straight for the gut. Growing more and more curious, he looked around again, taking in additional details this time. A wardrobe, the door ajar to reveal feminine clothes hung on hooks. Soap, towels, a silver-backed hairbrush. Everything had a careful neatness.

“Do you live here?”

“I’ve always come here as much as I could, but now I... Yes, I live here now. I needed a new place to stay.” Her eyes seemed to go dark, as if she was retreating from him. Whatever Constance was thinking, it was painful.

Mac’s gaze fell on a stack of women’s magazines— Vogue and Chatelaine —that looked like they dated from between the two World Wars. A few were later, perhaps from the early sixties. “Do you read these?”

An inane question, but as he’d intended, it snapped her out of her thoughts.

Constance looked momentarily sheepish. “Oh, um. I found them. Sometimes people smuggle things into the Castle. I like to read them to see what people wear now. How they talk, what words they use. I don’t like to feel like I’m old-fashioned.”

Never mind her clothes look like they came from Colonial times. And her pronunciation was sometimes off—though some of that might have been the Irish lilt. It didn’t matter. He could understand her well enough.

Now she was busy as a model homemaker, straightening the ornaments on a dainty side table. There was a fleck of goblin on her skirt, which she cleaned off with a fussy little grumble. No, I can’t say I’ve met anyone quite like her before.

Mac picked up one of the magazines. It had been read so often it was nearly in shreds. “What do you think of the new styles?”

“Oh, they’re lovely, but clothes that fine would be wasted on this place. What I have is good enough for me.” Constance turned away and rearranged the cushions on the couch.

Mac set the magazine down. At least by his standards, Constance had been too young to begin living when she was trapped in the Castle. Now she was trying to catch up vicariously with magazines a good seventy years out of date. That was just wrong.

He slid the Jane Austen out of his jacket pocket and beneath the top Chatelaine. The gesture felt good, especially after blasting the goblin to chunky soup. Not that he had a big choice when Tusky came yodeling out of the shadows, but his karma still felt like a twelve-car pile-up.

Constance turned to face Mac, extending a hand to the chair where she’d just fluffed the cushions. “Please, sit.”

Mac sat down in the chair. The Castle’s magic felt thick in this room, almost touchable. Conscious. The vibes—or maybe it was the aftermath of the fight—were making him feel light-headed, as if he’d had one too many shots on an empty stomach. Which reminded him he’d skipped lunch.

Wait a minute. If he was hungry, that meant the lid was indeed coming off his appetites. This must be the same room Holly’d been talking about, the one that let a person’s natural desires run free. Keep an eye on your impulses. Keep an eye on the pretty little vampire.

His gaze traveled to Constance, who was pacing back and forth, her slim, straight back a fierce exclamation. Her hips swayed when she walked, twitching her skirts like a cat’s tail. Mac blinked, fascinated by her curves. It was getting hard to think.

Reynard. Incubus. Bran. Right.

At least where the guardsmen were concerned, it didn’t take a genius to figure out what would happen next. The captain might be an okay guy, but there was only one Reynard and a whole Castle full of Brans. With a prize like an incubus at stake, it was only a matter of time before the guardsmen’s already shaky discipline came tumbling down like a house of cards.

So not good.

Mac leaned his head against the back of the chair. Con stance took the seat facing him, her expression intense. “What can we do?” she asked, fingering her necklace again.

It was an odd moment, but in many ways the situation was familiar. He had a missing youth, a grieving mother, and a gang of bad guys. Not exactly a no-brainer, but he knew how this stuff worked. It was a problem he could wrap his head around and, with so much in his life that made no sense at all, that was good.

I’ll take kidnapping for two hundred.

“Tell me more about this demon trap. It will catch a demon in cloud form, right?”

“Yes. The traps are usually about this big,” she said, describing a small cube with her hands. “A demon can be forced to enter by a command, or they can enter of their own free will.”

“Sylvius?”

“He went in on his own.”

Mac heard her ragged, sawing drag of breath. He could almost feel her composure crumbling with the same inexorable collapse as his own body giving way to dust. He’d seen this with victims and witnesses so many times, and still it hurt him to watch.

No emotional investment. Keep a clear head. But that warning had lost all its teeth. He’d saved her from the bad guys. She’d offered him a case. There was mutual need.

Constance was still trying to talk. She gestured with her hands, but no words came out. She did it again, a strangled sound choking whatever it was she was going to say.

She covered her face with her hands.

Mac froze. “Constance, what happened?”

“Sylvius did it to protect me,” she said, pulling her hands away. She gulped back a sob. “He gave himself up to save me. And Atreus just watched.”

Fury hit Mac like a hook to the jaw.

Constance drew in another breath, the air dragging past the ache in her chest. Mac was kneeling by her chair now, looking at her with that worried expression men got, as if she were about to catch fire or foam at the mouth. In her experience, not one male could stand tears.