Heroes Are My Weakness(17)

He stormed out the door with nearly as much force as when he’d come in.

Livia had her thumb in her mouth. Jaycie kissed both of her cheeks before setting her aside and pulling herself up with her crutches. “I can’t believe you talked to him like that.”

Annie couldn’t believe it either.


THE TURRET HAD TWO ENTRANCES: one from the outside and another from the second floor of the house. Jaycie’s difficulty managing steps meant Annie was the one who had to do the job.

The turret was built on a higher foundation than the rest of Harp House, so its first floor was on the same level as Harp House’s second floor, and the door at the end of the house’s upstairs hallway opened directly into the turret’s main living area. Nothing seemed to have changed since the days when the twins’ grandmother had stayed here. The angular, beige walls served as a backdrop for overstuffed furnishings from the 1980s, pieces that were worn in places and sun-faded from the row of windows facing the ocean.

A worn Persian rug covered most of the wooden parquet floor, and a beige couch with big rolled arms and fringed pillows sat beneath a pair of amateur landscape oil paintings. A set of big wooden floor candlesticks holding tall, chunky white candles with unlit wicks and dusty tops stood beneath a pendulum clock whose hands had stopped at eleven and four. This was the only part of Harp House that didn’t seem to have regressed two hundred years, but it was just as gloomy.

She made her way into the small galley kitchen where the dumbwaiter occupied the end wall. Instead of a pile of dirty dishes, the crockery that had been sent up from the main kitchen with Theo’s meals was clean and sitting in a blue plastic dish drainer. She pulled a bottle of spray cleaner from under the sink, but she didn’t immediately use it. Jaycie only cooked dinner for him. What did the Lord of the Underworld eat the rest of the time? She set down the bottle and opened the closest cupboards.

No eye of newt or toe of frog. No sautéed eyeballs or French-fried fingernails. Instead she found boxes of shredded wheat, Cheerios, and Wheaties. Nothing overly sweet. Nothing fun. But then again, no preserved human body parts.

This might be her only chance to explore, so she continued her snooping. Some uninteresting canned goods. A six-pack of high-end carbonated mineral water, a large bag of premium coffee beans, and a bottle of good Scotch. A few pieces of fruit sat out on the counter, and as she gazed at them, her Wicked Queen voice cackled in her head. Have an apple, my pretty . . .

She turned away and went to the refrigerator, where she found bloodred tomato juice, a block of hard cheese, oily black olives, and unopened containers of some disgusting paté. She shuddered. Not surprising that he liked organ meats.

The freezer was virtually empty, and the hydrator drawer held only carrots and radishes. She gazed around the kitchen. Where was the junk food? The bags of tortilla chips and tubs of Ben & Jerry’s? Where was the stockpile of potato chips, the stash of peanut butter cups? No salty, crunchy things. No sweet indulgences. In its own way, this kitchen was as creepy as the other one.

She picked up the spray cleaner, then hesitated. Hadn’t she read somewhere that you were supposed to clean from the top down?

Nobody likes a snoop, Crumpet said in her superior voice.

Like you don’t have any faults, Annie retorted.

Vanity isn’t a fault, Crumpet retorted. It’s a calling.

Yes, Annie wanted to snoop, and she was going to do it now. While Theo was safely out of the house, she could see exactly what he kept in his lair.

Her sore calf muscles protested as she climbed the steps to the second floor. If she craned her neck, she could see the closed door that led to the third-floor attic, where he was supposed to be writing his next, sadistic novel. Or maybe chopping up dead bodies.

The bedroom door was open. She peered inside. With the exception of jeans and a sweatshirt tossed across the bottom of the badly made bed, it looked as though an old lady still lived here. Off-white walls, drapes printed with cabbage roses, a raspberry slipper chair with a tufted round ottoman, and a double bed covered in a beige spread. He certainly hadn’t done anything to make himself feel at home.

She went back out into the tiny hallway and hesitated for only a moment before making her way up the remaining six steps to the forbidden third floor. She pushed open the door.

The pentagonal room had an exposed wooden ceiling and five bare, narrow windows with pointed arches. The human touches that were missing everywhere else were visible here. An L-shaped desk jutted out from one wall, its top cluttered with papers, empty CD cases, a couple of notebooks, a desktop computer, and headphones. Across the room, black metal industrial shelving held various electronics including a sound system and a small flat-screen television. Stacks of books sat on the floor beneath some of the windows, and a laptop computer lay next to a slouchy easy chair.

The door squeaked open.

She gave a hiss of alarm and spun around.

Theo came inside, a black knit scarf in his hands.

He tried to kill you once, Leo sneered. He can do it again.

She swallowed. Pulled her eyes away from the small white scar at the corner of his eyebrow, the scar she’d given him.

He came toward her, no longer simply holding the black scarf, but passing it through his hands like a garrote . . . or a gag . . . or maybe a chloroform-soaked rag. How long would he have to hold it over her face before she was unconscious?

“This floor is off-limits,” he said. “But then you know that. Yet here you are.”