Page 30 of Beautiful Deception

I take up her offer and hook my hand in the crook of her elbow. She guides me out of the room, walking faster than I expected, but I appreciate the normalcy instead of treating me like a fragile doll.

The number of times I’ve had people fuss over me when I was a young child can be in the hundreds.

“What happened to Peter?” I ask, a bit too nosy for drama because I simply can’t find an ounce of sympathy for him.

“We brought breakfast and found him on the floor. He was vomiting a lot of blood,” she explains while adjusting the walking pace when she notices her inattention to my foot.

“Dr. Kian came in to check, but Mr. Peter put up quite a struggle. He seemed truly frightened.”

She goes on to say that Peter is only terrified of Dr. Kian. While Peter was guarded and volatile, he didn’t attack anyone who approached him. The butler, the other maid, Kimberly, and Joe weren’t met with that much hostility. She mentions the nightstand being flung at Dr. Kian’s head, and there may have been some suppressed laughter when she said he sidestepped coolly as if he had experience.

He does work with dangerous criminals, so I wouldn’t be shocked if he had some bad experiences with them.

I let go of her arm as we stand in front of the threshold, the door wide open for the lights to break through the solemn shadow of Peter’s room and rake over the shrieking darkness.

Peter’s scream blasts through the air.

He thrashes against the white bindings on his limbs; his arms and legs are tied to the corners of the bedpost, and his panic cries ricochet off the walls. His eyes are bulging out of their sockets, bloodshot and dry, but they pierce into mine with fear clinging to his soggy lashes.

Dr. Kian and Remo stand by the bedside, whispering to each other while dissecting the flailing man with shrewdness. Remo nods in response to something said by the other man, and the contour of scrutiny returns to his eyes.

Remo approaches me and glares disapprovingly at my feet while Dr. Kian reaches down to check on Peter, who has gone silent. The blunt scolding comes quickly, like a whip across my face. But rather than being insulted or annoyed, his concern makes my heart skip a beat because—

Because who does he think is, is what my mind concocted. It’s weird, and I don’t know why the thought even came up.

“I’m fine,” I gripe with a huff when he opens his mouth to continue.

At this point, I’d consider it a scratch rather than a slash. It’s not too deep or serious, somewhat like a paper cut.

The maid beside me gasps as his head tilts back to Dr. Kian. Her palm smacks over her panting mouth, her pupils dilate comically, and I can feel her ogling the sore spot on my neck.

“There’s a bite mark—”

“We talked about this, Maya.” Dr. Kian’s voice floats from behind Remo, a grim luster from his glasses destroying the maid’s voice, and he smiles blithely. “Off your feet.”

“I can walk,” I mumble as I rub my neck, my fingers briefly tracing some indents on the skin where it aches.

I narrow my eyes at him, remembering what the maid said before she was interrupted, but out of my trust for Dr. Kian, the combative thought retreats like timid creatures seeking refuge from the encroaching cyclone of reality.

“But you’re not wrong.” I concede defeat.

With another curious look at Peter, my eyes widen as he frees himself from the restraints with sheer brute force. All four broken bedposts dangle from the binding around his limbs, and it would’ve been comical if he hadn’t jumped out of the bed to bash his forehead against the closest wall.

A spatter of blood enters the periphery of my eyes before Dr. Kian presses his palm over them with a whisper of reassurance immediately after.

The room erupts with the screaming maid, the butler’s call for help, and the two guests’ thunderous scrambling to rush out of the room. Dr. Kian throws his arms around me, shielding me from Kimberly and Joe as they sprint out the entrance.

I shove my face deeper into his chest, greedily feeling the swell of muscles and scorching heat emitting from his shirt. This might be the last time I get to be pillowed by firm yet bouncy muscles; we’ll be back to doctor-patient once we get out of here, or worse, he’ll drop me as a patient because we’ve clearly crossed the professional boundary.

This tug-of-war coyness is more subtle than the obsessiveness that pervades their touches.

“He’s dead,” Remo says, cutting off the butler’s urgent request for a first-aid kit.

The news sits at the front of my mind, but nothing really comes from it, and Dr. Kian’s finger threading through my hair brushes away the supposedly bad news.

Kimberly’s delayed scream of terror rips through the dwindling noises. I hear Joe trying to comfort her and encourage her not to be afraid, but Kimberly corrects him on ghosts and their ability to haunt the last person they saw.

“Which one is it?” she demands, her tone rising and falling as she paces frenziedly. “Which one of you did he see last? I have to avoid you!”

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