Page 117 of Black Curtain

From the faint, lingering smell, Nick guessed it was a combination of dust and cigarette smoke, baked into the walls and paint over a period of years.

Nick had no idea what they’d done with this room since it had been Virginie D’aureville’s kill room, but it still felt rotten. It felt like the blood had seeped into the ceiling and walls. Nick could imagine it turning anyone who spent too long in here slowly insane. The gray, dingy-looking carpet looked like it was beginning to rot.

This room, strangely enough, had been “modernized” at some point.

Unlike the rest of the house, it had newer fixtures, wall-to-wall carpet, light switches that could have been installed fifty or sixty years earlier. Even so, it appeared to have been mostly ignored for most of the last sixty or so years.

Nick was still staring around at the empty walls, noting graffiti in one corner, and a burnt bureau near one window, when he heard footsteps coming up the staircase behind him.

Kiko’s shriek had been enough to bring the seers upstairs.

Jax led them.

For the first time, Nick realized the locked door to the corridor had only existed in the simulation. That same door to the second-floor landing stood entirely open in real life. The more modern handle didn’t even appear to have a lock.

Nick and the others met them by the door.

Jax reached the end of the landing and walked directly up to Kiko.

Without slowing his steps, he wrapped his arms around her, cradling her up against his chest. Only then did he seem to notice Dex and Nick, and then it was to glare at them. From the hard look in his eyes, Jax held them both personally responsible for whatever upset his girlfriend.

Nick sighed.

His eyes found Dalejem then, who had come up behind Jax. The tall, preternaturally handsome seer was looking him over now too, worry in his pale green eyes.

Nick could only stare back at him.

God, how the hell had he ended up withthatas his boyfriend?

Jem smiled. Relief flickered in his pale eyes, right before he rolled them, letting out a snort at the ridiculousness of Nick’s thought. Then he was pushing past Jax to reach him. He wrapped Nick in strong arms and for a few seconds, Nick forgot about Virginie D’aureville and her son, Armel, and what they’d done in this fucking house.

“You found another of the recordings?” Jem drew back enough to meet Nick’s gaze. He frowned faintly at whatever he saw there. “A bad one?”

Nick hesitated, then nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “Illuminating, at least. It’s one you should probably all see, but I can’t promise you’re going to enjoy the experience very much.” He grimaced, thinking about the teenaged boy. “We might want to ask more questions of this one. Black and Miri should question the woman at least… maybe the son, too.”

Dalejem quirked an eyebrow.

He didn’t ask for more information, though.

Black and Miri appeared in the doorway then.

They glanced around at all of them, taking in faces, expressions, probably reading things off their light, intentionally or not.

Black, scowling faintly, spoke first.

“All right,” he growled. “We haven’t got all day. And we have things to tell you, too. Where do you go to trigger the damned thing?”

Snorting a faint laugh, Nick rolled his eyes, glancing at his boyfriend.

Clicking under his breath, Dalejem laughed, too.

* * *

“Where did Kiko go? Has anyone seen her?”

Miri looked over, a frown on her face from where she was staring around the room at the end of the hall after Armel broke in for the second time.

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