Iniquity (The Premonition, #5)(64)
“I have it here.” He pulls it from beneath his black shirt. It’s a good thing that his shirt has a detachable panel in the back made for angel wings because without it, he’d be a shirtless popsicle by now.
I waste no more time. “This is a portal. I have no idea where it goes.” I rise up on my tiptoes to put the headphones on him.
Reed stays my hand. “You go first. I’ll follow right after you.”
“Okay.” I shift direction and place the earphones on my ears. Using my thumb, I flip on the music. My body contorts and I’m extracted from the cold world around me and thrust into darkness.
I know where I am the moment I spill out of a record player portal onto the exquisite parquet floor. It’s Xavier’s home in Grosse Pointe. I’ve been here thousands of times. I know my way around it—can navigate every inch of its five stories. It’s almost like being home.
The well-used record player spins on a turntable in the loft room at the top of the massive house. Xavier and I used to sit for hours here after school, listening to music on it. I never once suspected that it was anything other than a benign way to play music. He never once told me what else it could do. Nor did I ever question why he always let it spin, even when the music wasn’t playing. I thought it had been funny, the way he’d set up a little purple-haired troll in the center of it, letting it travel around in circles. He’d ended up giving me that troll. It was in my room for a long time until the Gancanagh took it. A familiar feeling of angst nearly overwhelms me for a moment.
My hands are still freezing. I rub them together and watch for Reed to come through the portal. He is way more elegant than me when he arrives. He lands on his feet. He turns around, removing the needle from the record player, stopping it from spinning. He closes the lid, locking the portal from our side. I get to my feet. “No one can follow us here, can they?” I ask.
“No—at least not through this portal,” Reed replies. He turns and faces me, catching me as I throw myself into his arms. My knees weaken as my lips yield to his. His hand touches my hair. “Are you alright?”
“Yes. You?”
“I’m fine.”
“What happened with Atwater?”
“We fell to the bottom of the cavern. He gave me the boatswain, told me not to tell the Seraphim that I had it or they would attempt to kill me like they had him. He said there’s a reason they aren’t being told the plan—I would know what it is soon. He said he’d find us later. He wished me ‘Godspeed’. Then, he disappeared into a portal of his own. I narrowly avoided Xavier and found you.”
“It would be nice if any of this made sense.” I turn away from him, looking around me. The room is exactly the same as I remember it. High ceilings, soft overstuffed chairs, and an inlaid wood floor with a map of the constellations set into it. A few fat couches lounge in front of shelf upon shelf of the most exquisite books I’ve ever read. Xavier has a larger, more formal library on the first floor. This smaller one on the fifth floor, however, has always been my favorite. I would often choose a book, and then walk out onto the rooftop patio and read it in the sunshine, or under the moon by twinkle lights and lit wall sconces.
Nothing has changed. Xavier must have had some kind of service maintaining his residence; automatically paying the bills or something, because he was gone for months and it is still immaculate. “Do you want me to tell you the notes for the boatswain?” I ask Reed.
He nods, lifting the chain and boatswain from his neck. It catches the light and glimmers. I shiver, unable to shake the dread it elicits in me. I have no desire to be transported to the past—I’m afraid of what I’ll see and feel there. I don’t want to remember another moment with Emil. I also don’t want a gateway to Sheol to open up and drag me into it. The boatswain is bad news. I wouldn’t mind destroying it right now by squeezing it into a small paperweight.
“We can’t destroy it yet, love,” Reed says, as if reading my mind.
“It’s a really satisfying fantasy, though.”
“Yes, it is. I’ve indulged in it several times myself already.”
I hum the tune for him. He listens intently, and then flawlessly hums it back to me.
“That’s it,” I say breathlessly. I walk to the dormer window. My fingertips skim over the cool metal of Xavier’s telescope mounted on a tripod. The brass shines as if it were polished just yesterday. I lean over, draw my eye near the eyepiece, and close the other one. Before anything comes into focus, I already know what I’ll see. It’s a view of the water—Lake St. Clair in all its frozen splendor. Freighters with red and black hulls crash through the ice on their way to and from the Detroit River.
I straighten and glance over at Reed. He’s staring at a picture of Xavier and me. Xavier is kissing me under the mistletoe at Cole’s girlfriend, Kirsten’s, Winter Wonderland party. Reed lifts the framed photo and turns it over face down on the table. “Where are we?”
“Grosse Pointe. It’s next to Detroit. I lived a few miles that way,” I use my thumb to gesture over my shoulder. It’s like night and day, huh?” I ask. “The haves and the have nots, so close to one another and yet worlds away.”
“You went to the wealthier school?” Reed asks. “One in Grosse Pointe?”