Page 33 of Changeling
“It’s what the inscriptions above the doors mean,” Jim explained as the truth dawned on them, though he was blushing a bit and keeping his eyes averted considering the particular scene before them. “You—meaning whoever enters the room—a year ago, or two years ago, or three, and so on. It also explains why nothing happened to us in the other rooms. We weren’t all together one or two years ago. The rooms got confused. That’s why the cops didn’t find anything either. No one went anywhere alone. Only the one guy who went to the third floor.”
Sasha stepped back out of the room and it returned to benign white.
“Do you think there’s a room in this house wewouldn’tfind you having sex?” Nathan asked as the incubus rejoined them.
“Depends on how far back they go,” Sasha smirked.
“So what do we know?” Jim asked.
“Well, it doesn’t only work on humans," Sasha said. "And whatever spell or power is controlling the house, it must create generalized time slips that zero in on an individual’s memories depending on which room that person is in.”
“Observationaltime slips,” Nathan added, “not interactive. The other me and Jim couldn't see or hear us.”
“The rooms aren’t exact to the time, either, only the day, since we saw both morning and nighttime,” said Jim.
“And even after triggering one of the rooms, all of us are fine," said Sasha. "So if these rooms aren’t what’s making people lose their minds then what is? We should keep going.”
“But shouldn’t we keep checking these rooms separately?” Nathan suggested. “I mean, if we go into every room together, we’re just gonna hit plain white rooms for the next three hours. You said there used to be private tours of this place, right? So we gotta assume that while it probably played normal to the general public, something supernatural was being done to the private groups. But if it was only once in a while that people were found like those squatters, some people got out of this place just fine. There has to be a way to do the tour right or wrong, I’m thinking. We do it right, we should still be able to figure out what the wrong way is and find the dark fae at the source.”
“Maybe, but we’ll be doing the tour wrong right away if we don’t go through all of the rooms,” Sasha said. “We should backtrack. I'll go into the first room first, watch a while, and then move on to the second. Then Jim, you go. Then Nathan. Thatway we all hit every room. We just have to be careful when we get to the 3rdfloor.”
Most of the rooms went by without much ceremony or issue for Nathan. Sometimes it would be simple and uneventful, maybe just him and Jim playing cards and bullshitting, just brothersbeingand talking about nothing, as if their lives were practically normal. A couple of times they were hiding, or in mid-run trying to escape from Gabriel. Nathan was wounded by some of it, but now that Gabriel was gone, it didn't bother him as much as it might have.
He was on his way to room #8 when he caught sight of Sasha rushing out of #9. Nathan hurried over, and the incubus gripped his arms tightly upon seeing him, as if he needed something,someoneto hold onto. There was a very familiar grief painting Sasha’s features.
“Hey…you okay?” Nathan asked, wishing Sasha wasn’t holding his arms quite so tightly.
“I…I’m okay. I’m okay,” Sasha said. He smiled big and obviously forced. “Not my best…year.”
Nathan looked up past Sasha to read the door’s inscription. Room #9, he reminded himself, and then played that over in his head. Nine years ago Sasha would have been sixteen. At that realization, Nathan felt something harden in his gut. That would have been about the time Sasha ran away from home. Right around the time…he killed that girl.
Sasha had confided something special and horrible in Nathan that day in the hospital when he told him about the first girl he had ever fed from, whom he had also inadvertently killed. The grief of that moment was fresh and renewed on Sasha's face as Nathan looked at him.
“You guys all right?” intruded Jim’s voice.
Nathan turned and saw that Jim was only just now leaving room #8.
Sasha’s hands left Nathan’s arms, which Nathan took as a sign that Sasha was not in a sharing mood right now. Not about this.
“Sure, we're fine, just touching base,” Nathan offered on Sasha’s behalf. “You?”
There was a moment where Jim’s eyes flashed with something that definitely proved the wool wasn’t being pulled overanything, but he knew better than to press about bad memories. “Not really. But we should hurry up. It’s still pretty early, but we’ve only gone through half of the rooms down here and there are still two floors to go.”
“You're right,” Sasha agreed eagerly. "Let's pick up the pace."
Nathan turned a ready smile on Sasha, who returned it, steeled himself for a moment, and then moved on to room #10. Nathan couldn’t help being curious about what Sasha’s next scene would be. Sasha would be fifteen, still living amongst his own kind, and still very close to all of his old friends.
Nathan's feet had clearly grown minds of their own because they did not carry him into his room but stealthily over to Sasha’s instead.
Chapter 14
Nathancouldn’tgoinsidethe room Sasha had entered or the scene would be disrupted, so he merely peeked around the corner of the door and peered inside at what appeared to be a normal teenage boy's bedroom. It was very invading, he knew that, especially since he could probably just ask for a quick look without risking Sasha’s wrath. Still, Nathan found himself spying rather than being open, watching a moment out of Sasha’s life, ten years ago to the day.
“Just you wait, I’ll do it,” came a boy’s voice from inside the room. It wasn’t Sasha’s.
Nathan could see red hair sticking out from behind the bed as if Sasha was sitting on the floor on the other side, leaning back against the mattress. The shock of white hair on the boy sitting in the middle of the floor made it painstakingly clear whothatwas. A boy on top of the bed was the one the voice must have come from. Nathan didn’t know him.
This other boy looked almost too normal to be an incubus. His skin was tanned unlike Sasha’s could ever be, or how Lindsey looked either. He had short but shaggy brown hair and brown eyes. If not for the slight shimmer of gold in those eyes, Nathan might have mistaken this third boy for human.
