Page 12 of Star-Crossed
Wait a sec.
She froze, lifting the pillow from one ear. The sounds were less conjugal and more…concerning.
Lyra sprang to a sitting position, yanking off her sleep mask as the light bulb in her brain finally clicked on.
Gemma and Gabe were out camping in the woods with Gemma’s best friend, Cady, and her new husband, Roman Fawkes. They’d said something about this being one of the last nice weekends before autumn storms hit.
Glancing out the window, Lyra realized they might get blown away overnight should the bluster build to a good sea gale.
Shit.
So, who was in their bedroom? Had they already thrown in the camping towel and snuck back home without waking her?
Creaky as this building was, the likelihood would hinge somewhere between barely possible, and no fucking chance.
Still. She should check.
She snatched up her phone and clicked on the flashlight, padding across the creaky floorboards of the attic apartment. The place smelled of old wood, a hint of Gemma’s vanilla incense, and the vague mustiness of more than a century of sea storms.
Clad in silk sleep shorts and a loose tank, heart pounding in her ears, Lyra felt like the curious idiot in every gothic or slasher film whoshouldn’tbe inching toward the strange noises in the night.
But absent Gabe, who always seemed to have a baseball bat or the errant machete at hand in case of intruder, it was her responsibility to hold down the fort.
The fort being a hallway full of framed needlework with sayings likeI don’t always whoomp, but when I do, there it is! andI’m not hoarding if all my shit is cute.
Sighing, Lyra aimed her phone’s flashlight down into the dim hallway toward her sister’s room. No sign of sentient life, but the noises were louder here, emanating from behind the closed door of the main bedroom.
“Guys?” she croaked. She cleared the sleepy cobwebs from her throat before trying again. “Hey, Gemma? Gabe? Are you home?”
Lyra crept down the hall and pressed her ear to their door. Now the soundsreallymade no sense. Frowning, she pulled the door open.
The room was full of stuff but empty of humans. Moonlight filtering through the window created more shadows than shapes.
The noises were louder still, but finally they made sense.
The sudden gusts of wind tossed branches of the ash tree, molting gold leaves against Gabe and Gemma’s windowpane in semi-rhythmic patterns.
A ghostly sound of distress turned the blood to ice in her veins. Shivering, Lyra crossed the charmingly cluttered room to open the window before the sound drove her mad.
Two eerie glowing eyes reflected the light from her phone. “Larry?”
The dark creature yowled as the branch he clung to was tossed about like a willow reed. Claws scrabbled against the bark as Larry struggled to pull himself higher. His round belly swayed, almost causing the poor thing to lose his grip completely and plummet three stories to the uneven earth.
Lyra snapped on the room’s light and threw the window wide open. “Larry, you fat bastard, you get in here right now,” she ordered as though she wasn’t currently warding off an imminent heart attack.
Larry looked over in a way that convinced her that he’d flip her the bird with both claws if he didn’t need them to save him from plummeting to his death.
So yeah, they sort of handled demanding commands in the same way.
The damn cat was going to be the death of her.
Or that tree was going to be the death of him, which… Gah, she just couldn’t allow that. She wasn’t, like, a cat person per se, but she also wasn’t a monster.
Usually.
Okay. No big whoop. Shemightbe able to get him if she could hinge her hips out the window and grab the scruff of his neck.
“Here, kitty kitty,” she crooned. Clicking her tongue, she soothed him with syrupy words for long enough to relinquish her dignity in the hopes he’d saunter across the limb and leap into her arms…
