Page 22 of Wed to the Devil

I don’t know much about Dare’s mom or what happened to her, but I get the sense that finding an item that belongs to her means a lot to Dare. I slip my arm through his, leaning my head against his shoulder. For a long second, he is tense and wooden. But when he realizes that I only intend to comfort him and let him be, he seems to relax.

I make a note to ask him about his mother the next time we are alone.

The spell is fragile. It’s shattered easily when Dare’s cell phone begins to vibrate. He puts one hand on top of the crossword magazine, as if he needs to hold it down lest it blow away. The other hand answers the phone, putting it up to his ear.

“Yeah?”

He listens intently, cursing after a moment. “Fuck. All right. We’ll be at the house in ten minutes. We’ll talk about it then.”

He sighs and puts his phone away, then awkwardly pats my hand where it rests on his arm.

“We have to go to the estate. My uncle has some plans that he needs me to look over. Remy is out of town so we should be able to get in and out of the estate relatively quickly.”

I wrinkle my nose and shrug. Dare barely looks at me and seems very distracted by his phone. I pull my hand out from his where it grips his arm and sit up, sad that our moment of understanding is gone. I look out the window, pouting a little as Frick drives us into Harwicke and all the way up the mountain, finally dropping us at the Morgan estate. When Frick pulls the car to a stop, I open my door before anybody can help me out of the vehicle. Dare offers me his arm as we step into the shadow created by the sun against the large stone building. But I choose to ignore it, blithely making my way into the house. Inside, the manor is exactly as magnificent as always. High ceilings, polished floors, the same royal colors and echoing great hallways as before. Dare starts forward, forgetting that I trail behind him until he is halfway down the hallway. He stops suddenly and looks back at me, his eyebrows rising slightly.

“Are you going to come with me?”

I shrug and give him an uninterested look. “I think I will go into the living room and check out the taxidermied animals. I can keep myself occupied.”

His mouth pulls down but he glances at his watch.

“It should only be a few minutes. We just have to go through some documents. Felix needs my signature on some things and then I’ll be done. You will probably only be alone for ten or fifteen minutes.”

Giving him a frigid smile, I turn, bounding off to the living room area. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Dare as he stands still, looking at me with uncertainty. But then he checks his watch again, shakes his head, and starts off toward the back of the house.

I’m about to head into the living room when I stop, looking at the doorway. Something is off about the shape of the wall here. I reach out to the wall immediately to the left of the door frame, feeling that there is a slight edge sticking up. Using my nails, I pry up a few inches and to my surprise, it opens a large small doorway of no more than five feet by three feet.

It is patterned to look just like the rest of the wallpaper. If someone hadn’t left the door ever so slightly ajar, it wouldn’t even be visible. Sucking in a breath, I push the door open a few inches and peer inside. My heart hammers as though I am doing something illicit.

But no one has ever told me not to look in any secret doors I might find, so I guess technically I’m not doing anything I’m not supposed to be. The open door throws a light on the small, dark space. I squint and realize that it is actually a passageway. What it goes to, I have no idea.

Checking behind me to make sure that no one sees, I step into the chilly, dark space. I pull the door closed, leaving it open only an inch. Cold air rushes up to my skin and nips at my wrists and my neck where bare skin meets the heavy wool coat I am wearing. I shiver and move a little further down the passageway.

There are several holes cut out in the wall, tiny viewing portals. I peek into one and have a perfect view of the entire living room. It’s silent and dark just now, the lights not even on. I look directly down and realize that the viewing portal is stealthily hidden just above the wainscoting.

This must be for servants to pass, I realize. I think I remember Dare mentioning that his family has lived here for centuries. I could easily imagine a young man in nineteenth century garb bending low to look through this peephole.

Wandering farther down the tiny hallway, I wonder where the passages go. Are they all over the house? Or do they just run to this room?

Creeping down the corridor on my tiptoes, I tried to be quiet as a mouse. I can hear the sound of someone clearing their throat in a far-off place. The air vent kicks on at the end of the hallway and I can hear the quiet hum. As I poke my head out of the end of the hallway, I look left and right.

I realize that going left would only lead me to the front of the house. So I turn left, cautiously making my way down the secret hallway. It’s ice cold back here, with a constant draft moving around my ankles. I can feel it waxing and waning but I don’t know what the forces may be behind it. I stop once and check the living room one last time before I cross another passageway which forks off to the right.

This hallway is exactly like the one I just came from, but it has one special exception. A door stands ajar, barely more than an inch. But because it’s so dark in the hallway, it looks like a magical glowing portal. I move towards that as stealthily as possible, putting my ear to the wall next to the door and listening intently.

I hear that same man clearing his throat and coughing, the sound farther away this time. But it’s almost definitely not in this room. I move the door open very quietly, noting that there are three paintings on the wall that I move back. The one facing me most directly is a powdered wig wearing descendent or ancestor of Dare’s. He looks like an older, smudged photocopy of Dare. I step closer and examine the tiny gold plaque beside it. The old man is named Jeb Morgan. He wears a simple white shirt and an old-fashioned naval officer’s coat with a number of medals pinned to the lapel on one side.

I look above and below and find that there, too, are portraits of Dare’s ancestors. Mostly men, mostly wearing wigs and their finest suits. All looking off into the distance, gauging the future.

Finally I open the door enough to stick my head in there. The walls are almost filled with portraits, as many as five high and four wide. There are roughly the same shape and size, rectangular portraits of men alone or men on horses.

I know that there are no women on the walls in this room. Probably why this closed off space exists, frankly.

The middle of the floor is cluttered with busts on stands, marble and wood and obsidian portraits of proud male figures. I squint at the one closest to me, a marble statue of someone wearing a toga and looking off into the distance. I’m not sure how this is related to the ancestry of the Morgan family, but somehow I have no doubt that it is one of Dare’s relatives.

Looking around the small space one last time, I pull my head out and start to close the door.

That’s when Dare’s voice reaches out and ensnares me.

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