Page 63 of Lair

I throw him a skeptical look and sit, hands in lap, doing my best imitation of Mrs. Colding. His right cheek dimples in a smirk and he seats himself before the piano, lifts his hands. I suddenly realize I’ve never actually seen him play.

His fingers descend into a gentle opening chord, and I hold my breath at the beauty of it. It’s a declaration. No anguishing minor key here, no melancholy. This will be different.

And it is. It begins slowly, with a rolling bass hand and a tentative, probing melody, like a soul searching for light. He has not played this before; this song has never haunted the Lair’s passages and hallways. The music swells, and Adrian bows over the keys, lost in the emotion of it, his fingers pounding the ivories with godlike ravishment. He is like a romantic figure in a storm.

I am happy, the music says. I am tortured with happiness, now that I’ve found you.

I have composed this for you.

Heat gathers behind my eyes, my throat constricts. It is almost too much to bear. The music soars, up and up, into a thunderous climax of stirring tenderness, and my heart swells. I undergo a wave of pins and needles. For something is happening. The revelation is splitting me like lightning, tipping me into a state of disarray, harrowing and blinding and transcendent.

I. Am. In. Love. With. Adrian. Voper.

The tears are spilling out of the corners of my eyes and down my cheeks when his fingers falter in a dissonant jumble of notes.

Adrian stares at his hands, scowling, and tries again, tapping out the melody. But his hands betray him. He lifts them up to find they’re trembling.

His face slackens. He touches his brow.

I stand, a sputtering of words on my lips:

That was beautiful.

Is that how you see me? Is that how you see us?

I need to tell you something—

But before I can get closer he jolts upright, knocking the piano stool over, and I flinch. He touches two fingers to the piano to steady himself, his face raw, and frightened, and frighteningly pale.

“I—I’m sorry. I have to go.”

I lift a hand. “Adrian—”

“I’m sorry,” he says again and fumbles at the hidden staircase door, disappears.

Leaving me to stare after him, wondering what in the hell just happened.

I do not see him all the next day. He is conspicuously absent from mealtimes, and no shadow ever darkens the windows when I sunbathe at the bow. An expedition to the underwater observation lounge reveals a cold, empty space full of wavering light reflections, and no Adrian Voper anywhere.

On the second day I find Mrs. Colding on the sun deck. She lies on a lounge chair, hands crossed on her stomach, staring out to sea. The sight of Mrs. Colding lying down—of not doing anything—is utterly unnerving.

But I step forward. “Where is he?”

She spares me a sidelong look, returns to contemplating the Mediterranean sparkling like ground glass. “You don’t know?”

The defeat in her voice constricts my throat.

“Where... where is he?” I say again, trying to keep the tremble out of the words.

Mrs. Colding turns now to give me her full attention, her pinched and immaculate face radiating scorn. “He’s not taking visitors right now, dear.”

My arms break out in gooseflesh, but I lift my chin. “Where. Is. He?”

Mrs. Colding opens the door to the VIP stateroom and steps aside in chilly invitation.

It’s pitch dark within, giving shape to nothing but a stiflingly hot void, as if it were den to some beast raging with fever. Perhaps it is. “Be careful,” Mrs. Colding intones, and waits until I look at her. “He’s hungry.”

Something cold flows through me, and I waver in place.

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