Page 68 of Black Curtain

“Do you see any more buttons?” Black asked me.

His fingers caressed my bare back above the corset, and again I remembered I still wore my wedding dress. He pulled at the fabric gently, then at my hair, but I could feel him looking around the room, trying to focus. He almost didn’t notice he touched me while he did it. I felt him look for something that might be significant, that might help us get out of here, and I realized I should be helping him.

I should be looking for clues, not musing about the origins of the house.

“All the windows are boarded up,” I observed, frowning as I looked at the partitioned glass panes. “Is that for our benefit, too?”

Black stepped closer to the nearest one, with a long, narrow table under it, covered in a faded runner with the bare remnants of a flower pattern. I saw metal soldiers there and an old chess set, made of wood, next to an oil lamp, a half-decayed basket, pewter steins, and a set of ceramic geese. Black barely glanced at all that, looking at the window itself, which reflected back light from the overhead fixtures and the fire in the fireplace.

“Not boarded up,” he said after another beat. “Metal.”

He gave me a grim look.

“They covered the windows with metal. I doubt we could get through without tools of some kind. We might do better to try to get out through the roof… or maybe the basement.”

I nodded, frowning with him.

I didn’t bother to tell him out loud that we’d likely be wasting our time.

Brick wouldn’t be careless about something like that.

He clearly went to significant lengths to make sure we couldn’t get out.

If he wanted us in here until we did this thing for him, then he would make sure we couldn’t get out until we did this thing for him.

Anyway, it totally ignored the other thing.

“I know.” Anger rose in a hard flicker to Black’s gold eyes. “I know, Miri.”

They had all of our friends.

That fucker was holding hostage just about everyone we loved, everyone who wasn’t already locked in this house with us.

If Brick was telling the truth, they had everyone Black and I had invited to the seer wedding. They were likely all high, too. And Brick said he wouldn’t let them go until we solved this thing… whatever the hell this thing even was.

He said he would pay us and let us all go.

The whole thing was just so weird.

I suspected it might strike me as even weirder if I wasn’t high right now.

“Why?” I asked aloud, looking at Black. “Why would he do this? He could have just paid us, couldn’t he? He could have hired us for the job and we would have done it for him. Probably. I mean, if it is what he says it is in that recording, we would have. If it’s just some mystery he wants solved. If it doesn’t involve murdering people or hurting puppies or whatever.”

Black didn’t answer.

I felt him think about the question for a few seconds, then shunt it aside.

He didn’t care about whys. Not until we got free of this.

I agreed with him.

Unlike Black, I’d already resigned myself to doing this thing. I’d already decided that trying to get out without completing Brick’s task was a total waste of time. Somehow, we had to solve the puzzle he wanted us to solve.

I just couldn’t for the life of me see how.

Had he left a binder for us somewhere?

Were a bunch of file boxes sitting in a closet, with all of the stuff he’d mentioned he’d collected on the case?

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