Page 24 of Nanny for the Wolf Daddy

“Oh, I’m sorry. Where are my manners?”

The twang in her voice was starting to sound a little comical, but Archie didn’t seem to notice. At least, he didn’t remark about it.

“We are here.”

Kelli felt the van come to a halt and heard Archie climb out of the front seat. The side door slid open, and two hands came to her wrists to guide her out.

“Follow me, missy,” he said.

When she emerged, the air was crisp, and the warmth from the sun was inviting. Something about that sensation made Kelli sad.

“Can I have my phone back?” she asked.

“Not now,” Archie said. “I have to keep contact with the outside world to a minimum because of my operation. You understand?”

His tone was beginning to sound less like a question and more like an instruction. Kelli nodded anyway, shrugging her shoulders like a woman who had never seen a skyscraper.

“I only wanted to check on Jed, you know, he worries about me,” Kelli said.

“You will have your time with Jed,” Archie said absent-mindedly. “For now, you follow me. I trust you.”

He took her wrist and led her down a path with a slight incline. He told her a few times about a step or two, and she nearly went ass over tea kettle after having reached her foot too far forward.

“Careful, missy.”

Kelli was beginning to feel frightened and frustrated at the same time. She felt like Nox hadn’t assessed the situation with Archie to know just how bent his mind was. She felt assumptions had been made that could be costly in the long term.

But she continued on with him until, finally, she felt stable ground, and he ripped the blindfold from her face.

“This is home for now,” he muttered.

Kelli was in a room with very little furniture and curtainless windows that left sunlight pooling on the hardwood floor below. It looked like a home that was being shown to potential buyers, which, for whatever reason, made Kelli breathe a little easier.

“Oh,” she said, looking around. “This is beautiful.”

Archie chuckled, a sound that seemed like he may have been choking on something.

“This is just the entryway,” he said. “Just you wait.”

That foreboding feeling entered Kelli’s belly, and she once again began sweating from every pore.

He continued to pull her along by her wrist and led her to a set of ancient-looking stairs that led up into a space over a garage. Kelli wanted to be sick as he guided her up, bringing her to a door that looked like something out of a horror movie.

“You are going to have to wait until tomorrow morning to see what I do,” Archie said. “So it’s best that you stay here in my guest room.”

The guest room wasn’t a guest room at all, but a creepy, secretive, bleak blankness where people maybe stored the least adored items. The smell in the room was musty, a lot like the dampness of the van, unloved and abandoned.

A small cot sat in the blackest corner, along with a table that looked metallic. Kelli thought it had a resemblance to a surgical table and swallowed.

“Will I be able to get something to eat soon?” she requested.

Archie sighed, then hooked his fingers into his belt loops.

“I will get you something soon,” he said. “Then again in the morning. But for now, I need you to go in here, please.”

She turned to the room like it was the open mouth of a beast. She had read Dante’s Inferno once and studied a lecture about it, thinking of the phrasemouth of hell, rather than theentrance to hell.

She worried it would swallow her whole.

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