Page 95 of Black Curtain

I stared at Dalejem over Black’s shoulder, then, when all of them looked confused, I pointed at the floor.

As soon as I did, Nick jumped violently.

His vampire reflexes kicked in a few beats ahead of everyone else’s. He reacted so fast, he jumped back before the others noticed anything at all. Nick made it halfway to the door of the sunroom before I saw the others flinch. By then, he’d grabbed Jem’s arm, yanking the tall seer back with him, causing Jem to stumble into his body.

Nick caught him.

He backed up a few feet more, gripping his boyfriend by the arms. It was strange to realize how much stronger Nick must be than Jem, despite the fact that Jem stood a few inches taller than Nick, and looked equally muscular.

By then, Dex and Kiko had both flinched. So had Jax.

Of those three, only Jax took a half-step back, and he might have been reacting mostly to Nick.

Black managed to pull out of me, only to stare down and realize he’d left his pants a few feet away. Pulling my dress down over my legs, I hopped off the counter, snatched Black’s pants up off the floor, and walked them back to him. I stood in front of him, holding out my long, fluffy white skirts to shield him while he got dressed.

I never fully took my eyes off the floor.

There were bodies there.

Not one. Plural.

There were a lot of bodies.

I looked from one face to the next, even as I remained painfully conscious of Black getting dressed behind me. He touched me every few seconds, compulsively I suspected, and I shivered each and every time, biting my lip when he removed his hand.

I never stopped memorizing the details of the dead bodies.

It was disorienting, looking at them.

The first one I’d seen, the one that caused me to scream, was a woman with her throat slashed violently open. She was lying in an obscene-looking sprawl near one of the large potted plants.

There were more of those pots now, inside the virtual version of the room, and the plants looked huge and leafy, turning that whole side of the room into a jungle. I didn’t only see indigenous plants there either. There were Ficus and Fig, but also Banana trees and tropical plants like Dragon Dracaenaand Birds of Paradise.

Where I stared at the woman’s dead, blank face, it was daytime in that part of the room, and the walls and ceiling were all open glass.

Behind her, I saw a shockingly green yard through the glass walls.

Blue skies contrasted the fronds of willow trees and a massive lawn, as well as what looked like a pond in the distance, its banks choked with reeds. A chair swing hung from a thick branch of an old oak. Crocus, begonias, lilies, marigolds, and daisies filled the flower beds leading out to the taller grass.

Wildflowers created a subtle mosaic past the mown lawn.

Meanwhile, inside the glass-enclosed sunroom, a rose tree stood in the largest of the colored pots, blooming with red roses and pruned so that it resembled a tree with a rounded clump of leaves and flowers on top.

Five more of those rose trees stood on that side of the room. Interspersed between them were more fig trees and what looked like an overgrown tomato plant.

Nearer to where Black and I stood, a dark brown wisteria vine grew up a thick stick planted in the center of the pot. It grew all the way up the wall where purple flowers hung down from the top of the window frame. On the other side of us stood several pots with parlor palms so large, the group of them took up most of the corner window.

The “counter” where Black and I had been having sex now appeared to be filled with liquor bottles, wine, and unused glasses. Brown and clear bottles without labels filled every spot before the mirror, and on glass shelves that had long since vanished. To our right stood a low bar covered in ceramic bowls, animal figurines, hand-painted pitchers.

Another couch and set of chairs stood on that side of the room, as well, upholstered in green and yellow fabric.

The couch we’d seen when we walked in now appeared pale blue and brand new, as did the colorful straw mats, and a few low tables with half-empty drinks left on them.

The glasses held no ice, but their outsides beaded in the summer heat.

No wind stirred the plant leaves outside.

The air seemed to hang heavy, and I could hear insects.

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