Page 30 of Lair

At last I return to my suite, wondering if I’m now hearing things as well, if the side effect of my fever is wanting to see Voper everywhere I turn.

My fever breaks the next day. I grow more restless, pacing the cabin as my thoughts return, over and over again, to Voper. I can’t get his smile out of my head, or the way he looked at me when he put his hand to my cheek. His tortured playing lingers in my ears.

What is happening to me? Why am I here? Why am I drawn to him?

But you know, Aurora, don’t you? Pain seeks pain, after all. All it wants is to be understood.

As dusk falls, I slip out into the passageway and approach the antechamber at its end. The red doors of Voper’s master suite loom huge and lurid in the dimness, as if beckoning.

Why? Why is his cabin forbidden? Why does only Mrs. Colding enter?

I place my ear to the doors.

Nothing. Lordly silence within. And then, suddenly, I hear it—a scuffling sound. A labored groan.

Panic jolts through me, the hairs at the back of my neck rising, and I dart away.

As night draws the shadows long in my cabin, I hold them both. In one hand, my phone with its barrage of Cailee’s unanswered texts: You’re not hooking up with him, are you? In the other, Voper’s note and the knowledge of his interest: Perhaps we’ll bump into each other later, wandering the boat at some strange hour.

I lower my phone.

I shower, shave my legs. The Hermès bags are waiting for me in the wardrobe. I lay out the clothes one by one on the bed, my jaw on the floor. I’ve never seen such clothing in my life, let alone touched it. I run my hands down the material, marveling. Dresses glitter and sparkle, beaded with sequins, a parade of glamour. But I don’t go for those. They scream expectation, and I don’t know what to expect tonight. So I choose something simple and elegant. I choose what Voper would wear, if he were a woman—a short black dress. It’s not short enough to make me look like a high-class call girl, but I can’t deny that it makes my waist look tiny and my ass amazing. The sheer tights I choose, however, gets me closer to call girl territory.

A little flush of satisfaction sweeps through me. It’s not often that a runt like me feels powerful, and not merely cute. I choose a pair of black flats to go with the dress, and not harm the Lair’s teak decking. My hair is almost a stranger’s, let down from its yachtie’s ponytail to hang in dark, bold waves around my pale face. I know what will make that fair skin pop. I asked Mrs. Colding to retrieve my makeup bag from my old cabin earlier, and now I take out my trademark tube of lipstick and apply. It’s a vicious, violent red, to match Voper’s doors. Red as poison in a fairy tale. Red as blood.

I can’t wait to see the look on Voper’s face when he sees me. I’m not sure what I want to happen after that.

I know where to go this time. I know he’ll be waiting for me. I head straight for the library, moving through the dark yacht with the certainty of a dreamer. The library door is again ajar, but no music comes from within. I lift my hand and knock.

The door creaks slightly inward, and I peek my head in. Empty. I bite my bottom lip.

This is foolishness.

Wandering the boat at night, hoping for—what? Has he plainly told you what he wants? Do you really know what’s happening here?

I’ve turned to go when I hear it—a low creaking.

A bookshelf has moved. A bookshelf I’d thought flush with the wall has now cracked open like a door, for that is what it is.

A thought comes: Turn back now. Don’t do this.

I put my hand on the bookshelf and part it further. It swings easily on unseen hinges, and without sound. Had it made a sound I might have turned back. But it doesn’t.

There are metal steps, bright with white paint, conducting down behind the wall of bookshelves into darkness.

At the bottom of the stairwell, a corridor. And ahead, light. There is a room back there.

So it was true, then, what Mrs. Colding said. Secret rooms, secret places, hidden away on this boat. And I am going into one now, following a man who attracts me but brims with mystery.

This is what I can fall into.

The light brightens, and soon I emerge into an impossibly large room, its far wall a window set into the hull. It soars up perhaps twelve feet in height, twenty or more across. The waterline dances near its top, and I realize it’s looking out into the deeps—an underwater observation lounge. Before it stands a man in a suit, hands in pockets, his body turned slightly in a bulky twist of muscle. The sight of him makes me pulse in all the sensitive parts of my body.

I’m about to open my mouth and speak when the unmistakable specter of a Great White glides out of the abyssal black toward the observation window, and the words fizzle on my lips. It’s immense, as long as the window itself, all bulky, robust body and fearsome jaws of jagged, serrated teeth. But Voper does not recoil, does not give any indication of fear at all. He lifts his face to it, lifts a hand and touches the glass by its black and lifeless eye. My breath is caught in my throat. There is something not unlike the other, in that pale man and the pale man-eater. And then the moment is gone. The shark glides on, Voper drops his hand.

He speaks.

“You found me.” He has not turned from the glass. He seems to regard his pale reflection.

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