A Valley of Darkness (A Shade of Vampire #52)(75)

“What?” Lauren and I asked.

“I can’t, uh, make them out in the photo,” she replied, still looking befuddled. “There’s just logs. Odd. I could have sworn I saw dudes there too.”

Lauren’s lips twitched in a wry smile as she took the phone from Angie. “Yup,” she confirmed. “Logs.”

I peered over Lauren’s shoulder to take a look at the photo for myself. A cluster of four logs lay near the edge of a flat field, right near the woods’ border… Definitely no shirtless lumberjacks.

Mrs. Churnley chortled, nudging Angie in the arm with her elbow. “Seems we all react to the heat differently, eh? The only ‘shirtless dude’ I’ve seen around here in the last twenty years, other than Mr. Churnley, is Mr. Doherty, our neighbor on the southern side of the fence, and I wouldn’t say he’s anything to get excited about—unless curly white chest hairs are your thing.” To our alarm, she threw us a salacious wink.

“Now, Nora,” her husband spoke up in a gruff voice, “don’t get the ladies too excited.”

I felt myself turn as red as the tomatoes on the kitchen counter as Mr. and Mrs. Churnley erupted into raucous laughter. Angie, Lauren, and I cleared our throats in an attempt to join in, before inching toward the door.

“We’re just gonna go and rest a bit before lunch if that’s okay,” Angie said with a plastic smile.

“Of course!” Mrs. Churnley replied, and the three of us swiftly took our leave. “It’ll be ready within the hour!”

I let out a breath as we entered the narrow corridor. They were definitely an unusual couple. Apparently they used to live in the city, and worked as bankers before they got so burned out on metropolitan life that they had a midlife crisis and swung the other way—completely the other way. They bought this patch of land decades ago, and judging by the state of the house, they probably hadn’t renovated it since they moved in.

We climbed the rickety staircase that led to the second floor, where the three of us shared a bedroom fitted with three single beds. Although the Churnleys had space for guests, it was quite obvious they weren’t used to having any. There were two other bedrooms on our level—one belonging to the old couple, and another that had fallen into disrepair. Angie suspected the latter had belonged to their only child, a boy who had died at the age of thirteen from a rare form of cancer.

Angie’s grandmother was convinced they were terribly lonely, but would never admit to it, since they’d “rather rot” than go back to living like the rest of the world. So when she learned that Angie, Lauren, and I wanted to do something memorable this summer, she had been quick to think of her old friends, and had contacted them by snail mail.

Lauren was the first to use the en-suite bathroom when we entered our musty-smelling room, while Angie and I flopped back on our creaky beds. The shower started, and we sniggered as Lauren stepped in and sighed to herself, “Ah, luxury.”

It was kind of amazing the things you appreciated when everything got stripped from you. I imagined I’d feel utterly spoiled when I returned home in a month.

Angie blew out softly, staring up at the bare wooden beams strutted across the cobwebbed ceiling. “I could have sworn I saw dudes there,” she mumbled.

I smiled to myself. “It was an illusion, Angie,” I said in a dreamy voice. “A mirage… Where normal people would see an oasis of water in a desert, you would see an oasis of, well…” My tone dropped. “I do kind of worry what that says about you.”

She chucked a pillow at me. “Shut up.”

“Hey,” I said, changing the subject, “why don’t we go visit the creek this afternoon? After lunch, we can gather the herbs quickly, and then have the rest of the day free.”

“Suits me,” she muttered. “We’ll see what Lauren thinks.”

I stood up to stretch out my arms and, yawning, caught sight of myself in the stained mirror near the window. My brown hair was hardly in better condition than Lauren’s or Angie’s, even though I’d braided it and then wrapped it in a tight bun, and the corners of my blue eyes were tinged reddish—they were feeling a little irritated, come to think of it. I wasn’t used to being so close to nature.

The shower stopped abruptly. Lauren emerged from the bathroom a moment later, clutching a towel around her bare body, her shoulder-length hair foaming with shampoo. “So, the water just stopped,” she announced, her toes curling on the wooden floor as water pooled around her feet.

“Ah.” Angie threw her an amused, yet apologetic look. “Maybe—”

Before we could hear her speculation, Mrs. Churnley’s voice boomed up from the bottom of the staircase. “You used too much water at one time, dear—whichever one of you was in the shower just now. I’ll have Mr. Churnley come up and show you how to manually work the pump—”

“Oh, don’t bother, ma’am,” Lauren replied quickly. “I’m sure Mr. Churnley has enough to do.”

She looked back at the two of us with tight lips, and I frowned, assessing our options. “Maybe we should just save our hair washing for the creek and use this bathroom only for quick showering—Angie and I were gonna suggest we go there this afternoon anyway.”

Lauren blinked, taking a moment to process my suggestion. “Hair washing in the creek,” she repeated, almost robotically. “Right. Okay. So, I’ll just… wrap up this sticky slop of hair and wait then. That’s fine. No problem.”