Page 44 of A Dance With Devils
My feet back away, confusion taking over and making me feel sick with concern. “No. Well, yes actually, you just did.”
“No, I said you shouldn’t.” He lets go of the frame and walks past me, his hands scooping up the paper from the floor and gently lying it back on the table again. “Shouldn’t and can’t are two different things. Orders deserve punishment if the rules are broken. You didn’t know – ergo, no punishment.”
Punishment?
He takes a few moments looking around the room, nodding at certain things, and then stares at the old phone I lifted up.
“I was trying to call home,” mumbles out of me.
“Why?”
“My brothers. I wanted to know …”
I frown and stare at his quiet form, feeling completely at odds with myself about talking and more concerned about the sadness sweeping the room. It’s not just me, it’s him too. All quiet. All sad. It’s as weird to me as he is given the current situation of me being whisked away without consent to this fucking place.
My shoulders straighten, attempting to solidify my own being rather than letting this random feeling of despair creep into my bones anymore. It was years ago for me. Whatever those bandages on his wrist are, is none of my concern.
“Malachi?”
“Mmm.”
“Why am I here?”
“Hunt, chase, play,” he murmurs. “Dances with devils.”
It’s like he’s barely here, nothing but murmured words and him moving around to look at things, touch things occasionally. My arms wrap around me, part of me not knowing what to do or say. Leave. I was leaving. Maybe that’s for the best still. I’m sure he’ll find me again when he wants to. He seems quite good at just popping up in my line of sight every now and then. And I can’t think of another way of getting away from here without him so I’ll just hide. Forget.
I turn to inch out of the room quietly, perhaps giving him some privacy for whatever he’s going through.
“I could feel you,” he says.
I stop and look over my shoulder, part desperate to understand exactly what he means. I can feel him in me, too. As if something is between us – like a thread tangled and stretched. It’s consuming, annoying, and very nearly overwhelming, regardless of the sense I’m trying for.
He drops into the chair I was in, crossing his legs and reaching for the binoculars. “Do you remember it, little Alice? Still feel it in you now?” My arms cling around me, shoulders bumping into the huge wall of books behind me and sending some of them crashing to the floor. “You were extraordinary. Exquisite.”
My mouth opens to reply, hoping he can explain more about what I’m feeling and why I’m feeling it. And then I remember none of this is real and I’m not letting any of this freaky ass shit become something that is physical either. It isn’t. I’ve done my years of self-torture, done my time of grieving for something I can no longer mend. None of this place is relevant to me, or real, as proved by the pills I was forced to take to endure whatever I did.
And this mood he’s in is weird anyway, as if the place isn’t weird enough. He’s sullen. Quiet and morose. No spark. No quirked brows or smiles. Barely any of the dominance I first met. It’s sad. He is. As is this peculiar aura that’s now suspended around us. And that, for some reason, is making me feel it, too. I don’t like it on him. And I don’t like it in me either. Not anymore. I did sad once. I lingered in it rather than trying to find my way out. I’m not that little Alice Contreras anymore. I’m stronger, wiser, and a damn sight more resilient than I was back then.
“You should go before it’s too late, Alice,” he says, looking at me. “Go before we both learn to fly.” I should. He’s right.
Unfortunately, my guts are telling me not to.
Because maybe this time I can help.
Chapter 18
Malachi
Leaning back into the chair, I stare into the fog outside rather than deal with her. I don’t know why she should go, but she should. I had every intention of dragging her somewhere more useful than this and finishing our bargain when I woke up, because of the argument with Gray. Every intention of getting lost with her in my own way without the pills to mask the experience, but then I found her in here and something changed. Memories came back as I watched her with his things. Words and thoughts - his words. They broke the air around me, changed what was becoming insidious and sinister again.
And now I’m left hanging in the usual partial misery that haunts these rooms.
“I’ll go then,” she says.
She should have already gone.
Especially considering this mood I’m now in because of Gray’s interference.
