Craven Manor(34)

Daniel walked without having a direction. The streets were empty except for the occasional delivery van and a bakery’s employee putting out a sign advertising early breakfast. Daniel stared at the sign then stepped into the café to buy breakfast with one of the twenty-dollar notes he’d tucked into his jacket pocket. He didn’t feel hungry, but he knew the dizziness and headache would get worse without food. As he ate, he thought.

Kyle’s apartment is only twenty minutes away from here. I still have the key. I could stay there for a few days while he’s in hospital and put some distance between myself and Craven Manor.

Daniel frowned as he chewed on a piece of toast. The thought was tempting, but would Kyle be angry? Technically, Daniel had paid Kyle for that month of rent. And he’d saved his life. Kyle couldn’t object to Daniel staying there while he was in hospital, could he?

It would give him somewhere to go other than the manor. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go back there too quickly. Bran may have been provoked—Kyle was trespassing, stealing, and trying to open the one door Bran clearly wanted to keep shut—but Daniel was still alarmed by how quickly he’d turned to violence.

For that matter, Daniel wasn’t sure if he was welcome back. He’d officially broken two of the three rules: don’t stray outside after midnight and no strangers on the property. And Kyle had come very close to breaking the third rule: opening the tower door. For all I know, Bran could throw me out of a window, too, if I try to go back to that place.

That made his decision for him. Daniel paid for the breakfast, left the warmth of the bakery, and set up a brisk pace as he worked his way back to their apartment.

Scarce hints of sunrise lightened the horizon as he pushed on the apartment block’s squeaky main door. The linoleum on the narrow stairs complained as he climbed them. His feet were still unsteady despite the food, and Daniel had to use the rail to keep his balance. It was sticky with years of grime, and loose bolts made it wobbly. He was back in the home for desperate people.

Why did Kyle have to come to Craven Manor? Daniel turned the stairwell’s corner and continued climbing. Snores drifted through a door to his left. Someone else had apparently fallen asleep with the TV left on, and a laugh track played over indiscernible voices. It was a good job. I enjoyed it. I felt like I was making a difference, even in a small way.

The bronze 16 marking Kyle’s apartment glinted in the flickering light. Daniel fished his key out of his jacket and pressed it into the lock. The door was always stiff, so when the key didn’t immediately turn, Daniel fell to his usual routine of jiggling and twisting the metal. It took him a minute to realise the key wasn’t just stuck. It didn’t fit. Rather than the usual stained metal Daniel had become so used to, the lock was a shiny new silver. He withdrew the key and swallowed.

Kyle changed the locks on me.

Daniel tried to squash the feelings of hurt. Maybe the change hadn’t been intended to keep him out. Fletch, the friend from the fast-food shop, had only stayed a day before moving on; maybe Kyle changed the locks to keep him out.

But deep down, he knew that wasn’t true. Kyle didn’t have a third copy of the key, so Fletch would have had to wait for Kyle to open the door, just like Daniel had during his first weeks at the apartment, until Kyle got around to making a duplicate. The locks had been switched to stop Daniel from re-entering the home.

When did it happen? Yesterday, the day after I told him about my job and showed him the coin? Or earlier, after I originally left?

Daniel turned and rested his back against the door. He ran a hand over his mouth. No matter the motive or the timing, it left him with nowhere to live.

Nowhere except Craven Manor.

He swore under his breath. He was left with no choice except to return, and he couldn’t give Bran time to cool off, either. There would be no chance to send him letters of apology or to wait for an invitation back… not unless he spent a few days homeless, and that wasn’t an option.

He wasn’t going back onto the streets. Because if he did, he was scared he would never leave them again.





Chapter Fifteen





Daniel came to a stop outside Craven Manor’s gates. He was breathless from the weight of the two canvas bags he carried, and grateful the day wasn’t too warm. Even without a jacket, he was sweaty and overheated.

He felt as though he’d lived half a lifetime in the previous twenty-four hours. Discovering the skull, the bizarre dinner, then Kyle’s attempted theft and hospitalisation all swirled into a confusing array of images and emotions in his weary mind.

It took a lot of coordination to squirm through the gates. The bags were heavy and unwieldy. The rusted metal caught on his jeans, and he stumbled then corrected himself. Craven Manor’s peaked roof was visible over the treetops, and the silhouette of a large crow was perched on its highest tiles.

Part of him expected to be confronted, maybe even chased away, as he wove through the overgrown gardens. Seeing the grounds cloaked in their usual sedentary calm was more than a little disorienting. It gave Daniel the impression that Craven Manor was trapped in a bubble, wholly concerned with only its own affairs and indifferent to the rest of the world.

He brushed away a curtain of grey vines and stepped into the small patch of clear ground around the mansion’s entrance. The crows waited for him. He didn’t think it was his imagination that they looked ruffled and offended as they huddled together. I’m not the only one missing sleep.