Page 73 of Guarded By the Nightmare

“Nonsense. Everyone wants money. Let’s just nip this thing in the bud, shall we?” she said, bringing out a pen as well, and dotting its tip on her tongue.

“One million dollars,” I said, picking a number out of thin air. Her eyebrows rose, but then she gave a weary sigh and opened her checkbook up. “No—wait—four,” I pressed, curious what she would do, and how high she would go. “Five,” I said, watching her eyes.

“Don’t get greedy,” she said andtsked. “You’re not buying a racehorse.”

She started writing my name across the top of the check in swooping letters.

“And just what do you think me being assaulted by your grandson and his friends should be worth?”

That made her pen stop in its track. “Playing helpless after you’ve played house isn’t a good look.” And then she glanced up. I followed her gaze quickly, and saw a tiny black spot in the ceiling’s corner.

We were being watched—and there was no way they were going to let someone who knew as much as I did out of here alive.

I took my mug and flung the tea at her.

She gasped and sputtered, and then the color drained from her face, making her look as pale as the rest of her belongings.

“I—” she said, then began to rise up. “You slut!” she shouted, coming for me across the table—before collapsing with a gasp. She rolled off of the table and hit the floor with a sickening crunch.

“Oh shit!” I hissed. “Sylas?”

“My queen,” he said, from the space around me.

“Did I just kill Garrett’s grandmother?”

“No,” he said. “I slowed time, switched your mugs, and neither of you noticed. However, I knew you wouldn’t drink anything she gave you.” He was on the verge of coalescing.

“Don’t—we’re being watched,” I said, pointing up to smile and give whoever was manning the camera stream a cheerful wave.

Sylas laughed, and I knew he was speaking only for me. “This place is very interesting. I killed several security guards, both upstairs and down below. But there are things there I want to show you.”

I stood up and took Sylas’s invisible hand to help me step over Garrett’s grandmother. “Let’s hurry—I’m sure they’ve called the cops.”

He pulledme through the mansion to a library full of leatherbound tomes, and I let go of his hand to clap mine. “Oh my gosh—this place has a secret room!” I ran to the wall and started pulling books down and trying to twist sconces off of walls.

“It does,” Sylas said, making a portal in the wall for us to go through.

“Ugh, you’re no fun, Mister Smoke,” I said, faking a pout, before walking into a dimly lit hall set behind a bookcase. It went down and looped in on itself. There were hieroglyphic looking symbols carved on the walls all around us—and etched into the floor. “What the fuck?”

“They’re not real,” Sylas said, in a tone of disdain.

“How do you know?”

“If they were, I would be able to read them.”

I snorted. “It’s an interesting design choice for sure though. Lot of commitment, for some rich white people in the club-urbs.”

Sylas got us through another locked door, into a wider open space, although the walls still verged on amusement park. There were marks on them, too, of where...pictures had once been? And been taken down?

“And this is where the ceremony takes place,” he said, drifting over to a table where there were a row of sticks with sharp points all carefully laid out, beside an old ornate gun safe. “I can sense the remnants of the dye for their marks at the end of these.”

“And I can still smell the bad decisions in the air,” I said, jerking my chin at the safe. “What’s inside? Flintlocks, for ceremonial duels?”

Sylas reached into the safe’s door with a hand, worked the dial, then opened it up, revealing a small bag. He stroked a hand through this, and said, “It’s ash.”

“That needs to be locked up?”

He opened the bag and poured it through his fingers, and it reminded me of the sand dropping in the hourglass on my arm. “It’s magical too. Ever so slightly.”

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