House of Sand and Secrets (Books of Oreyn #2)(43)

He looks dreadful – panicked and sweaty, and even his cold beauty can’t hold up under his obvious fear. While he’s not spent the night putting out the flames on his own home, he somehow manages to look worse than Jannik and I combined. His flawless mask finally crumbling.

“What’s going on?” Jannik asks as he pushes quickly inside. I follow on his heels.

Isidro closes the door on us and fumbles with the key, locking out the last of the afternoon sun. “Harun.” His voice is thick, raw.

Unwanted pity clouds me before I can shake it off. Whatever is going on, it doesn’t change the fact that Isidro is not someone I like. I breathe deeply, taste citrus in the back of my throat, and my heart hammers faster.

From the first sitting room comes a slurred bellow. “Isidro, who’ve you let in to the house? I told you I didn’t need a physician.”

Jannik and I exchange looks, and Jannik gnaws at his lower lip. He grabs Isidro’s arm and pulls him closer. “What,” he whispers again, “is going on?”

“Scriv,” I say.

Both of them freeze. Isidro swallows. “How–”

“The smell.” The house reeks of it, and it’s growing stronger as I stand here. It pulls at me, vile as it is, taunting me with the memory of what I could be. Why did I even stop – it’s not as if Jannik and I are physically close. I could take it again and it would do him no harm. I would be powerful. Dash is dead, and that day on the Casabi is just another horrible memory in a long string of horrible memories. Stop it, Felicita.

“Harun?” I call out. “Are you well?” Isidro dogs me as I make my way through to the sitting room. Might as well see what he can tell me. “I thought he no longer used-”

“He’s trying for a seven-fold reading,” Isidro interrupts.

No. Only an utter fool-I jerk still as I process this unlikely statement, then dash through to the room. The smell of citrus here is so strong it makes me dizzy, nauseated. Desperate. It shoves all thoughts of the dead out of my mind, fills me up with need instead.

On the tea-table is a beautiful formal scriv-silver – a mirror with markings for readings and equivalent dosage measurements. It’s empty but for a residue of powder so faint it does nothing more than haze the scriv-silver’s surface. “Seven?” I yell at Harun, who is lying on the floor, on his back, his arms stretched out and his knees drawn up. “Are you out of your pathetic little mind?” I think of the family histories I had to memorize as a child, and the names with the small black circle beneath them – dead from overdose.

“Done it before,” he slurs. His eyes are vacant; seeing a room, a time, that is not this one.

The other two have entered and they block the door, watching me as I crouch next to Harun’s prone figure. He’s breathing erratically, his chest jerking. His eyes have rolled up so that all I can see is the whites, and it is so eerily vampire-like it turns my stomach. “Harun?” I press my hand to his neck; feel the pulse thrumming like an insect’s wing.

He’s not answering me now – too far gone into whatever future he’s trying for. Gris-damn Saints and their delusions. He should have stuck with nightmares. A seven-fold reading can kill – no one risks it. Seven lines of scriv, each taken at a minute interval. Not only is it a costly endeavour, there’s also a chance that survivors could suffer mental and physical damage.

“This wasn’t what I meant, you fool,” I whisper to him. I told him to take scriv but I hardly thought that he would. It was a throw-away comment, meant to needle, not to stab. He could die. He will die, unless he is luckier than I have ever imagined. My throat fills with bile. This cannot be happening, not after the horror of last night. I am dressed in my own loss, and now this.

Gently, I shake at Harun’s shoulder, but there’s no response. “Isidro.” I force the name out, still not wanting to deal with his claim on Jannik. “He says he’s done this before?”

The vampire shakes his head. “He never told me anything about it.”

“Secrets all round, then?” I say archly. It’s the only way I can stop myself from collapsing, by resorting to these little farces and social games. “Help me move him.”

Jannik also comes forward, and together we manoeuvre Harun off the floor and onto the longest of the couches. Just as we set him down, Harun gasps, his eyes rolling back into place. He grabs at Isidro, catching his collar.

Isidro goes still, waiting.

We all do.

Harun’s eyes are wide black pits, staring into Isidro’s face.

We need to stay calm around him, I don’t want anything to trigger a fit. “What do you see?” I ask Harun quietly.

When he answers, his voice is soft. He sounds more like he’s mulling over some puzzle than actually answering my question. “A small room,” he says. “A tower room, eight-sided, with narrow windows. It’s empty except for a desk. On the desk is a leather-bound book, like a ledger. Instead of words, the book is filled with keys. A woman in red is dangling a baby – her own, I think – over the ledger, she’s holding it by one ankle and shaking it. With each shake, it spits copper coins over the pages and the room is beginning to fill with money-”

Isidro pulls out of his grasp, shaking. “Is there a way to break him out of it?”

“No. We wait, and we hope.”