Page 77 of Black Curtain

He reached out, gripping Dalejem’s hand.

He pulled the seer closer to him, wrapping an arm around him in a way that struck me as overtly protective. He barely seemed to notice he did it as he glanced around at the rest of us.

“Yes,” Nick repeated. “Yes. I think that’s what we have to do.”

There was another silence.

It stretched.

Then it grew weird.

“So look at the fucking body!” Black snapped, clearly unable to take it for as long as the rest of us. “Stop groping your boyfriend andhelpus!”

Nick jumped.

He glanced at Dalejem, as if just now realizing he stood there.

Releasing the green-eyed seer with an obvious effort, Nick stepped to one side. Then, still seeming to be struggling to make himself leave Dalejem’s side, he walked up to the dead body on the rug. He stared down at it, then began walking around it like Dalejem had done.

“And don’t just tell us he wasmurdered,”Jax added sourly. He gave Dalejem an openly scathing look. “We allknowthat already. Okay? We know he was fuckingmurdered.We can see theknifesticking out of his chest. And the… you know… blood.”

From Jax’s other side, Kiko grabbed his arm, tugging him back.

She brought the tall seer nearer to the wall where she stood.

As we watched Nick walk around the body on the floor, Dex approached us, too. I realized only then that he’d been standing off by himself, near one of the tall, curtained windows. He’d stood so still he’d been nearly invisible, hiding in the deep shadow away from the one working lamp resting on an empty bookshelf.

When I looked back at the body, the bookshelves were all full, though.

It was so strange.

“Like a virtual reality field,” Nick commented.

The way he said it, I guessed he’d heard me, likely through Jem.

Nick continued to stare down at the body as he spoke.

“…I can smell the blood, though,” he added. “I have no idea if I can trust anything I smell. Given that it’s Brick, part of me wants to. But I don’t know how he could get blood smells out of historical records. That seems impossible, unless he was here in person. If it was some memory he had, or a memory he pulled off someone else by feeding on them.”

I thought about that.

“Has anyone tried to look at the body with their seer’s sight?” I glanced at Dalejem, Jax, and finally Black. “Out of the seers. Has anyone tried?”

When Jem frowned at me, I added,

“We can use our seer’s sight inside the house. Just don’t try to use it anywhere else. Don’t try to contact anyone outside of here… in New Mexico, or San Francisco. Don’t even try to look at the house from the outside. You can use it on one of us, though. Or on the house itself, maybe.” Thinking about that, I jerked my chin towards the body. “…On the clues Brick left us. Apparitions are probably safe.”

I looked at Black.

“Don’t you think?” I asked him.

Black nodded, once.

“Yes,” he said.

There was another silence.

I felt this development hit at Jax and Jem in different ways.

---