24

 

Siyah’s club, the Black Adder, looked very different than what I remembered from my first night back on Noble. The artificial smoke and lights were gone, but carved wood and velvet couches still gave an old world opulence to it. Small marbled tables dotted the perimeter of the room. But it was the large stained-glass windows that dominated the space. Three panels high above the dance floor depicted an obsidian serpent as it rose above a sea of intricate blooms, done in shades of crimson and scarlet. Morning sun rays shone through the colored images lighting up the room with a kaleidoscope of dancing shapes.

I did a double take. It was my design. I turned to look at him as he strode across the polished wood floor with my blanket still in his grasp.

“You bought this?” I was shocked. “I sold it at a school show years ago, to an art dealer.”

“He was working for me,” Siyah said. Slipping behind the bar, he rummaged underneath the counter, placed a glass on the surface and filled it with orange juice from the hose dispenser. He pushed the glass towards me.

“That was the seed money for my jewelry line. I made it at a community college studio, a communal one.” I stared at the windows, now sure of how my sister found me, first wrote to me. It was Siyah who left that business card for my father. All this time and he had been quietly working to get my family back together. “It’s not…it was such a big project. I’m still not happy with how it turned out.”

“No one can see it at night when the club is open and all the lights are turned down.” Tilting his face up, the slivers of tinted sun caressed his skin, made his cobalt eyes glimmer. “I keep it to myself.”

I couldn’t tear my gaze from his beautiful features. Every time I convinced myself that he’d moved on, pieces of me showed up in his life long after I’d left him. How could I separate the man who stood on that cliff with a bloody dagger from the man who took my breath away now? So entangled, my heart raced with worry over what Siyah might have done, and with a longing to be in his arms no matter what the cost. I felt hopelessly lost.

“You know about my jewelry?”

“I do, yes.” His brows furrowed. “I always said you were a true artist.”

“And what else did you know all this time, Siyah?” I thought of the lonely nights. The days spent working so intensely because anything less would let my mind wander to him and my family and Noble. Everything I’d loved and left. “Five years and you never…” I took in a shuddering breath and closed my eyes, willing the anger and hurt to quell. Tired and confused, I just wanted to sleep.

“Raven, please have something. You have not eaten.” He nodded to the orange juice, his face impassive.

“I should go back to the hospital. My father might wake up soon.” I walked over to the leather stool and sat down. Taking a drink, I slid the glass back and forth between my hands across the black marble.

Siyah moved behind the counter, gathering fruit and cutting it. I watched as he arranged it on a small plate, the sedative blunting the edges of my anxiety. He set the plate in front of me and placed a napkin next to it.

“Eat first.” He half sat against the back of the bar, arms crossed.

“I’m not really hungry.” I poked at the fruit, nerves still frazzled from all that had happened. I pushed my long sleeve up to my elbow and Siyah took in a sharp breath.

“What happened to your arms?”

“Nothing.”

I tried to yank the material back down, but he stopped me, gingerly pulling it up further. He winced as he ran the pads of his fingers over the healing scrapes.

“They’re just scratches.”

“You said you saw me yesterday morning…” His eyes met mine, concern darkening them. “Why were you out on the beach that early?”

“Just walking.” I wouldn’t meet his gaze.

“In a field of thorns?” Siyah let my arm go and smoothed a lock of hair from my forehead as he glanced at the bandages on my face. “What were you really doing?”

“I was trying to help Sonja.”

“Did one of the families she questioned do this to you?” There was steel in his voice and I shook my head vehemently.

“No. I didn’t go with her.” I bit my lip, debating whether to reveal what I’d been doing. I meant to tell the sheriff, but now I wasn’t sure if telling him would put me under more suspicion. I’d come here with Siyah, I told myself. I made a choice to try to trust him. “I got the scrapes from a tunnel under your funhouse.”

He looked at me, startled, but recovered. “They were sealed.”

“This entrance was not in the original assessor’s report. Someone took a jack-hammer to the floor of one of the maintenance rooms.”

“Assessor’s report?” He shook his head, leaning back. “How do you know what is in that report?”

“I–I ordered a copy on the Internet.” His raised brow made me nervous so I kept talking. “I was just looking up articles about strange happenings on Noble, for Sonja, and came across it.”

“You can just order one?” He shoved his hands in his pockets, a preoccupied look on his face. “Can I see it?”

Nodding, I rose, grabbed my bag and rifled through it. A twinge of worry snapped in my gut. “It’s not here.”

“When did you last have it?” Siyah walked over, his brows furrowed. “Think back, Raven.”

“At…in the funhouse when the, whatever it was, tried to crush me with the mirrored walls—”

“What?” His voice rose, and I froze.

“T–there was someone or something in the funhouse with me.” I clutched my skirts with sweaty hands. “It chased me, tried to topple the hall of mirrors on me, across the tilting floor. It almost…” My voice shook. “It sounded so weird, so inhuman. And it groaned.”

“Groaned?”

I nodded, unable to describe the unearthly anguish and strange snuffling at the door that sent icy fingers of fear gripping my heart.

All the color drained from Siyah’s face.

“I didn’t see it, just a form in the darkness before my flashlight broke, but it moved…wrong, somehow.” I took in a shuddering breath, the memory of that trapped feeling shaking through me. “Do you think it was the same thing that chased me in the woods?”

“I did not see anyone else in the woods with you,” Siyah said, his jaw working.

“You were right there, how could you not see?” Frustration roiled in me.

“It was hard to see with the rain and lightning.” His gaze slid from mine. He didn’t believe me. “I am not sure I saw anything other than a trick of shadows, Raven. And you were panicked, injured. I don’t think you know what you saw.”

Exasperated, I pushed back from the bar, nearly toppling the stool. “And the carousel, the face in the mirror, do you believe me about that?”

“I believe you about everything.” He took my hand. “You saw something.”

“You’re just not convinced it was what I described.” I paced, helpless to convince him. I had no proof other than the ruined funhouse, which looked like common vandalism, not the work of an angry specter. All I had were whispers in the night wind and dark moonlit forms, but I had seen and heard those things. Still, I wondered which made me more afraid; that I might be truly haunted, or that I might be going mad.

“Raven, what concerns me, is that something or someone chased you in the funhouse and you dropped the report.” A shadow passed behind his eyes. “That means they may know who you are.”

The slow sinking of dread pooled in my gut. I hadn’t thought of that. Ordered with my credit card, I remember my name across the top of the page. I sat, my chest squeezing. The fear I harbored from last night flashed through my mind. “D–do you think that whoever attacked my family was after me?”

“I don’t know,” Siyah said as his gaze scanned the room, going to each camera. “But outside of the sheriff’s station, this is the safest room to be in.”

“And then what? I can’t stay locked up here forever. What about my family? What about Sonja? What if Thompson is right and someone is after her?”

“I will think of something,” Siyah said quietly.

I knew that look. It was brooding, like he didn’t want to say something. “What?”

“Raven, I don’t want you to…” He raked a hand through his dark waves. “You will not take this suggestion well.”

“Just…just say, it, Siyah.” Insides twisting, I knew what was coming, but let it leave his mouth, anyway.

“If you left Noble—”

“Leave the island.” I stilled, the words finding their mark. Nodding slowly, I gathered the contents of my purse from the counter, shoving them back into my bag. “I see.”

He rounded the bar, taking my hands with his big ones. “I don’t think you do see, Raven. You nearly died last night. An attacker almost killed your father.”

“I know what happened,” I snapped, my voice shaking. “I was there. And the last thing I want to do is leave my family after that.”

“No, I meant that they could visit you. That all of you…” his voice trailed off as I turned to face him, my cheeks hot with anger.

“You mean to get rid of all of us?”

“Not ‘get rid of’, Raven, keep you safe.”

“Conveniently off the island and out of your way.”

“What is it you think I am planning to do with the Nevasta family ‘out of my way’?”

“Well, I don’t want to distract you from your goals here on Noble.”

“What does that mean, exactly?” He took a step towards me, backing me against the wall, eyes dark.

“You know what everyone is whispering about me. That I’m back to throw your carefully devised plan off track.” I jutted my chin out, daring him to deny it.

“My plan?” He caged me with his arms. Palms on either side of my head, he leaned in. Only inches apart, I felt the heat roll off of him, his impossibly broad shoulders blocking everything but him from my view. “My only plan is to keep you out of harm’s way.”

“Safe, but not close,” I said, and hated the hurt I heard in my own voice. “Guilt is not a replacement for care, Siyah. I don’t want your help.”

“I don’t do this out of guilt. I don’t seek to protect you out of some long ago duty, Raven.” His mouth was so close I could feel his breath on my lips.

Heart racing, I held his gaze with my own heated one, refusing to cower, to look away. “Tell me why, then, despite what the families may think, you bring me here?”

“You ask me why…” his voice, thick and hoarse, faded.

Awareness crackled between us. He shifted, his hand sliding to the curve of my waist. I sucked in a breath. The warmth of his palm bled through my blouse and I felt a thread of longing pull through me. Siyah leaned in, his head tilting to meet mine and my heart stuttered.

A knock on the glass doors of the club yanked a gasp from me.

Siyah pulled back, frustration lining his handsome face. He moved away slowly, his hand leaving me with a soft glide, and then he was striding towards the side door. Palm to my chest, I struggled to calm my heart, the loss of having him so near left my skin damp.

“Raven,” Sonja called and walked over to me, her arms outstretched, a relieved smile on her face. “They said Papa will be OK.”

“T–that’s good,” I said and licked my lips.

Siyah spoke to his cousin and nodded in our direction.

“Are you all right?” she asked, and put her hand to my face. “You look fevered.”

“I’m OK.” I laced my fingers with hers and led her to the couch. “I’m just tired.”

The cousin pulled up a chair at the door, crossed his work boots at the ankles, and pulled a magazine from the table.

Siyah glanced back at me, his face impassive. He nodded once and then slipped out the door.

What was I doing? Maybe Siyah was right. Maybe my family and I should leave Noble as soon as possible.