Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
I also spotted rice nearby, a bag of flour, dried fruits and nuts. More cans.
And the painting on the far wall.
My face dropped, my skin melting. “Her eyes weren’t like that before.”
Glancing over his shoulder, Aaron blurted out an expletive I’d never before heard come from his lips. Grace, meanwhile, had her hand over her mouth, her eyes awash in tears. She ran out of the pantry the next second, Aaron behind her.
I stayed, stared.
And took a photograph of the painting’s bloody, scratched-out eyes.
“Lu,” Aaron hissed from the doorway. “Get out of there.”
A niggle at the back of my mind, I nonetheless followed, all the way through the door from the kitchen to the lounge—behind him and a pale Grace. She’d dried her eyes, but they remained rimmed in red.
“That was quick.” Kaea looked at my hair, winced. “Um, Lunes, it’s not just a cobweb this time.”
I forgot everything, would’ve given in to the urge to flail and scream like a little girl, but Grace reached up to gently collect whatever it was that had decided to live on my head. “It’s only a wee thing,” she said, her voice soft. “I’ll go put it somewhere it won’t bother anyone.”
I stared after her.
Aaron’s pride was squared shoulders, a curve of the lips. “She’s not scared of bugs, any bugs.” A grin as he watched her take the bug out of the living room. “She wanted to be an entomologist as a child, but life took her in a different direction. My girl still loves bugs, though.”
Grace walked back in right as Aaron and I finished explaining about the secret passageway. “He’s got a nice cozy spot now,” she said, dusting off her hands. “And it looks like we proved our theory. Darcie must’ve been taking the shortcut to the pantry when she slipped, hit her head.”
No hint of our squatter theory. I didn’t bring it up, either—we had no proof, had been telling ghost stories in the dark.
Vansi frowned. “What position was Darcie in when you found her? Did it look like she’d fallen?”
I glanced at Ash slumped in an armchair, his face in one hand, and figured he must’ve been too distraught to give them anything useful. Flicking backward through my mental snapshots, I stopped at my first glimpse of Darcie’s crumpled form, the way her hair had lain around her in a halo.
“She could have,” I said slowly. “She was on her side on the ground, in a position it’d be natural to fall into in terms of the space.”
“I just . . .” Kaea chewed his lower lip. “It’s weird, that’s all. For her to injure herself that way when it’s obvious she knows the house inside out.”
“Freak accidents happen.” Phoenix’s pragmatic contribution.
Vansi nodded. “You’d be surprised how many people come into the ER because of household accidents. Slipping on a puddle of water in the laundry and getting a skull fracture from the edge of the washing machine, forgetting a step that’s been there for three decades and breaking a leg, grabbing the scalding handle of a cast-iron pan, we see it all.”
“Our bodies are far weaker than we think.” Phoenix put one arm around Vansi’s shoulders, hugging her to his side. “One mistake away from catastrophic failure.”
Hard to argue when they put it in such stark terms.
A rasp of air. “Uh . . .”
All our attention snapped immediately to Darcie. Ash dropped to his knees beside the sofa, took one of her hands in his. “Darceline?” A gentle touch to her hair, Ash careful to avoid the wounded area.
It took several minutes for her to come out of it, and she did so with a grimace. I’d moved to the end of the sofa by now, trying not to crowd her but also wanting to see how she was. When she opened her eyes, it was with a look of confused blankness . . . that turned to biting rage. “They hit me!”
Everyone froze.
“It’s okay, darling,” Ash soothed. “You’re safe. You’re with us.”
Darcie looked around wildly, whimpered. “My head . . .”
“You took quite a blow when you fell.” Phoenix took her wrist, fingers on her pulse. “Do you remember what happened?”
“Fell?” Darcie’s voice rose at the end in a questioning upstroke.
“That’s what we think happened,” Vansi began.
“Hold on, guys.” Kaea’s voice, firm and authoritative as he hobbled over using his cane.
I gave him my shoulder and he braced the heat of his muscular body against mine.
“She said someone hit her,” Kaea continued. “Didn’t you, Darcie?”
Rubbing at her forehead, Darcie struggled to sit up. Ash helped her.
Smeared red marked the checked blue-and-white fabric of the towel that had been under her head. Grace, closest to it, picked it up and slid it out of sight behind her back. Catching her gaze, I nodded in agreement. Darcie was barely holding it together as it was. The last thing she needed was to get upset by the sight of her own blood.