Page 56 of Black Curtain

The dining room had lime green carpet. It was faded, stained, ugly.

I saw what looked like moonlight, but none of it looked right.

Still, it must be night.

It must be night still.

We had to be in the same period of no sun.

I saw Dex, crouched on one of the lower steps of the massive, dark-wood staircase, which started to the right side of the foyer when looking from the front door. The heavy, very old-looking stairs, which looked like they’d been gorgeous once but now had lost most of their finish, and all of their frayed carpet runner, had scratches running all up and down the railing and pieces broken off the steps. They sloped steeply, angling straight up to a wide landing, which turned into a corridor leading to more doors and rooms on the higher floor.

The chandelier, which was maybe the biggest I’d ever seen, looked like a glass wedding cake. It had to be at least a hundred years old. It filled the space in theexact centerbetween the staircase and the far wall, giving the room a strangely unbalanced look.

The yellowish light it exuded flickered like real flames.

They created odd, disjointed shadows on the hardwood floor.

Most of that floor in the entryway was covered in a dusty, blue-green, Persian rug.

The sheer symmetry of it all bewildered me.

How was something so beautiful allowed to become so dingy and neglected?

This house had to be worth a lot of money, wherever it was located.

Yet someone had let it sit here and simply continue to rot.

Black sneezed.

He and I were lying on the Persian rug.

I could smell the dust that made him sneeze. As soon as he sneezed, I felt my own nose twitch. A few seconds later, I sneezed, too.

I noticed Nick and Dalejem kissing by the wall.

They were kissing hard.

It felt a little obscene to watch.

I maybe felt too much off both of them… off Jem at least.

Jem leaned into Nick, groaning softly against his mouth, lowering his head to kiss his shockingly white neck. Jem had his vampire boyfriend half-pinned to the striped wallpaper. Nick looked like he was crying, but he didn’t stop kissing the green-eyed seer, or gripping his long, half-wild hair in his muscular hand.

Jem must have felt me notice them.

He looked over at me, his pale eyes fierce, the violet ring around the green nearly glowing. He stood strangely, his arms held out and tensed, and I realized, like Jax with Kiko, Dalejem was trying to hide Nick.

“Well, that’s just absurd,” I muttered under my breath.

Under me, Black nodded emphatically in agreement.

“Absurd,” he muttered.

“Is it?” Jem snapped. “Is it, Miri?”

He motioned at Nick’s pale skin, and I realized what he meant. I could see cuts, bruises, and bite marks marring Nick’s throat and shoulder, more bruises down his chest where his expensive suit shirt hung half-open.

Nick looked like someone had beat the shit out of him.

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