Page 102 of Dance With Death

I pause in the dining room which still smells faintly of the meal we ate.

Oh.

Oh.

Holly wouldn’t…

I march from the dining room and cross the house’s wide central hallway towards the other wing, walking by the pastel blue wall where Eloise painted over the old Reznik raven crest. Nobody uses the west wing of the house, and the door between the two parts of the home is left closed, but not locked. When others visit, Dorian wards the area, but it seems that Holly doesn’t count.

I step through to the wing I haven’t explored since childhood. The unlit hallways infused with death weren’t the best place for a child obsessed with the dead and necromancy, and my mother wasn’t happy to discover my explorations. Eloise doesn’t lose her temper often, but when she does, she really does. This is the old Dorian’s home, where his parents trained him to hone his hybrid skills, and people died. A lot of people.

Again, a past rarely spoken about.

I asked Dorian why he didn’t demolish this part of the home, especially considering what happened to Eloise inside the walls. Dorian told me he wants reminders of the past to focus on the future, and I held back from telling him how unhealthy that is.

So, the family pretends the wing doesn’t exist unless they need to house unwanted guests. As we rarely have unwanted or wanted guests, the rooms aren’t used much, leaving the place as dead as the visitors who never left the Rezniks.

Echoes of the evil performed here permeate the surroundings, along with a danker smell from the untouched rooms. The whole place is consumed by a familiar darkness that calls to me. I didn’t answer Holly with a number of how many died within these walls because I don’t know. Too many, and not only my grandparents. Hopefully the death that shrouds the place, and a ‘vibe’ she’d hate, should dissuade Holly from walking in this area.

But what if the desire to see Dashiell dragged Holly from her bed and into this wing? A spell forced her to locate Dashiell and he’s trapped in a room nearby?

The bedrooms are on the second floor of the wing, all with iron-barred windows from when the Rezniks kept their victims incarcerated. Dashiell must be in one of those, if that’s what’s happening here. I tread up the wide staircase, my footsteps muffled by the mildewed burgundy carpet, then pause the moment I turn to the left hallway.

Several doors intersperse the peeling burgundy and ivory wallpaper and wood paneling, and Holly kneels by one of them, intent on the bottom corner of the frame.

What is she doing?

Holly isn’t aware of my approach, whispering to herself as she scrapes at the door frame with a knife. She’s no longer in the pink and white striped pajamas she wore to bed, instead dressed in jeans and the same jacket as earlier.

Is that a rucksack beside her? I balk. Holly has managed to scratch through two runes painted into the wood frame, one on the bottom right, the other on the left.

“Good grief. What are you doing, Holly?” I ask.

Holly jerks and drops the steak knife she used at dinner then looks round at me. “Violet.”

“Luckily not my father.” I grab the knife.

“Give me that!” she demands.

“Explain yourself, Holly.”

“I need to see Dashiell. He’s in this room.”

I close my eyes in despair and hold the knife behind my back. Holly tends to easily attach her emotions to good-looking males who indicate their interest in her, but Holly’s obsession with Dashiell is rooted in the supernatural.

“This is beyond normal now, Holly. Why do you need to see Dashiell?”

Holly’s eyes brim with tears. “I heard you talking to Dorian.”

“What about? Where and when?”

“Don’t be angry. I was looking for you after dinner and heard your voices. And what he said about Dash.”

Oh, no. “How much did you listen to?” Because if Dorian discovers that Holly heard the conversation, including his plans and findings, my friend is in danger.

“I walked away as soon as I heard that Dorian wants to use Dashiell as bait!” Holly’s jaw tightens. “That can’t happen. I have to free him.”

“Free him?” I shake my head at the imbecilic plan. “If, by any miracle, you succeeded in entering the room, where would you both go? Eloise drove us here; you’ve seen how isolated the estate is. You can’t hop on the bus. The closest stop is over an hour away at a human walking pace, and it’s the middle of the night."

---