Page 15 of Consume
We’d made it. We’d made it inside the Byrians’ haunted house.
Chapter Five
Poh started the directionthe guard had gone, her grip on my elbow sharp and painful. Plush, expensive-looking rugs silenced our footsteps. Gray marble pillars bracketed every ornate, heavy-curtained window on our right and climbed to the high ceiling. On our left, oil paintings of individual members of the Byrian family stared out as we passed. Their faces were cold, their black eyes murderous, as if they still plotted death and destruction while locked inside their wooden frames. Not one of them looked like they’d ever had a good day.
Despite the overhead lighting and the sconces hanging between the paintings, the hallway swarmed with shadows. The air tasted...wrong, like a violent electrical snowstorm on Mayvel.
The hallway dead-ended in a large, open room with a fireplace burning along the far wall even though it was summer on Wix. There was no sign of the guard and nowhere he might’ve gone.
I sucked hard on my iron cube and whispered, “Where to?”
Poh led me to the left and stopped in front of the wall. “The blueprints showed the servants’ passageway somewhere around here.” She placed one hand on the wall, searching. Finally, a secret door clicked open, and musty, stale air wafted out. “Smells like this hasn’t been used in a while.”
I pointed inside where a single pair of footprints had disturbed the thick layer of dust on the floor. “I think you might be wrong.”
“Those are much smaller than the guard’s.”
“My thoughts exactly.” I skirted around her and entered the narrow passage first. Pale overhead lights lit the stone walls and branching corridors.
We strode forward, my gaze cast to the ceiling. I fully expected the lights to flicker or go out completely, but there was nothing but bone-rattling cold. My teeth cracked together as I shivered hard.
“Anything yet?” Poh asked from behind me.
“No,” I said. “Tell me what I’ve been saying.”
“I need you focused on right here, right now if we’re going to get out of this.”
“I can multitask, damn it.” I tossed her a glare over my shoulder—and then stopped.
Behind us, inside the door we’d just entered, stood a human shape, a presence, though I couldn’t make out any features.
“We’re not alone,” I whispered.
“Take a right,” Poh hissed as she stepped on my heels. “The guard?”
I did as she said, my ears burning for any sounds other than ours. “I don’t know.”
