Page 82 of Vanish Into Light

It had always been a warm, cozy, welcoming room, full of food smells and, often, the crackle of a fire over in the brick-framed grate. Now, the cool beam of her light passed over layers of dirt, and grime, graffiti, sagging cabinet doors and the evidence that someone had slept rough here, for a while, a grungy sleeping bag and pyramid of empty water bottles wedged into the corner. The ash in the fireplace looked like old paper – and the leg of a chair. The table where they’d shared their meals, and where Kay had performed at-home surgery on Beck that night, was long gone. Firewood, she supposed.

Beck stood in the place where it had been, rotating side-to-side, surveying what had once been his kitchen. The heart of the home. His gaze didn’t stay within the beam of the flashlight; he could see perfectly in the dark with those cat eyes, she had long since figured.

Remember when…she started to say, but the words got jammed up in her throat.

Of course he remembered. What good would talking about it do?

He said, “I want to go upstairs.”

They did, him leading the way, hands empty – save for his claws. Weaponless, save for his wings, and tail tip, and fangs. The dread that gathered heavy and cold in Rose’s stomach had nothing to do with the possibility of ambush.

The stairs protested as they ascended them; she felt a few soft boards underfoot, and hastened past them, seeking out more solid footing. It was the damp. The constant rain, the broken windows, the lack of daily, human care and climate control: the damp could eat away anything, if given enough time.

They reached the second floor, and Rose hesitated a moment, flashlight down at her side. She didn’t want to look.

Beck said, “She’s not here,” and Rose’s breath left her lungs in a long, shaky gust.

She stepped up beside him, and passed the beam of her light down the hall. She’d half-expected a skeleton, or, worse, some wrinkled, preserved, coiled-up thing that looked nothing like the living Kay. But the hall was empty, even the old carpet runner rolled up and gone. She searched for a bloodstain on the floorboards, but they were too dirty to tell.

“I imagine the military did some clean-up, here,” Beck said, tonelessly. “Lance was a part of the sting that captured us. They would have wanted to go through my things and see what else I knew. What else I was hiding.”

She’d never thought ofthat, for some reason. She glanced over, but Beck’s expression was utterly blank, his pupils wide in the dark, vast discs against the glowing rings of his irises.

He stepped forward, and Rose followed suit.

Her own room was nearest, but in the last months, she hadn’t used it, all of her things migrating into the master suite at the end of the hall, which was where they headed now.

He hesitated a moment at the door, which stood ajar, the door scarred from something heavy and metal: kids messing around and damaging things for the fun of it. The old brass knob, ornate and boasting a hole for an old-fashioned key – had tarnished. He gripped it in one clawed hand, tendons flexing in his wrist, before he finally pushed the door in and entered.

Rose wasn’t sure what she expected – but it wasn’t this.

The beam of her flashlight touched moth-eaten, dust-coated green velvet with mildewed fringe. “Oh,” she said, before she could catch herself. The bed was still in place. Still wore its velvet hangings and canopy. The trunk at its foot stood open, its linens spilled out across the floor, but the presence of the bed itself, the flood of memories that came with the sight of it, drew her further into the room, until she stood beside the tall four-poster.

Dust lay inches-thick on the sheets. Sheets that had once been white, and were still rumpled. She remembered a hand closing on her arm, and another over her mouth. The sharp prick of a needle. Panic flaring just before dark closed over her.Beck, I have to get to…

The night Lance had taken them.

It had been years, but no one had disturbed the place where they’d slept together in almost six years. No one save the mice, and the elements.

“How?” she murmured. “How did no one take any of this?”

When Beck didn’t respond, she turned – and found him standing in front of the gilt-framed portraits on the wall opposite. Portraits of his brother, and of him.

Rose moved to stand beside him, booted footfalls ringing against the floor.

In the glare of the flashlight, it was easy to see the way humidity had damaged the paint, the canvas, the frame. Flecks of mold and spider droppings peppered the painted faces. But Beck’s inscrutable smirk looked out at her from the canvas, unmistakably him.

To her surprise, Beck reached up to touch his own portrait, pads of his finger skimming over the brushstrokes that had captured the line of his jaw so well. “What is it they always say? That the devil is beautiful?” His forefinger followed the hollow of his own cheek, the straight blade of his nose. “If he came to you ugly and stinking, you’d never fall for his ruse, would you? There’s no temptation in ugly things.”

“Beck.”

His hand fell to his side. “I suppose I should have guessed. It’s funny: it was supposed to be a second chance, but look where I ended up: a junkie, a gangster, a killer.” He half-turned, smile sharp and joyless over his shoulder. “I guess nature always has a way of shining through, doesn’t it?”

“Beck,” she said, firmly, “there’s no one alive who hasn’t done something wrong. That’s kind of the whole point of earth.”

His smile softened a fraction, into something truer. “Not for me, probably, sweetheart.”

“You aren’t evil.”

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