The Key (Sanguinem Emere) (4 page)

“Oh God, I’m sorry,” Her voice is quiet, like she’s afraid my hearing is over sensitised. It is, and even the graze of her hand against the comforter makes my head twinge unbearably as a painful throbbing joins the myriad of symptoms I have suddenly acquired.

“Was it the tea?” She mumbles nervously.

“No, Cess, I guess the tea just set off whatever it is.”

“Oh,” She smiles again, “You’ll feel better soon, just rest.”

“You seem awfully sure of that,” I groan into the pillow as I turn my face into it, trying to blot out the light and dampen the heat radiating from my skin.

“I am. I’ll let you get some sleep. We have a ton to catch up on.”

She lays a gentle kiss on my hand and I find myself wanting to risk more illness and scurry away from her, my mind going unbidden to terrible places. Places where she is laying gentle kisses on my boyfriend.

The creak of my door makes me lift my thrumming head from the cushion, stealthily stuffing the notes in my hand underneath it as I turn to watch Doctor Shane traipse smoothly inside. His eyes are watching me, even as he maintains the appearance of disinterest, glancing about my room. He pauses at a charcoal sketch of Dimitri and sighs in an affected manner that makes my lips curl back from my teeth.

“Eva, I’ve been thinking.”

Gosh, what a shocker.

“And perhaps you and I got off to a bad start.”

I nod empathetically, not really caring where he’s going with this, as long as he doesn’t take away any more of my work. Acknowledging my obstinacy, Shane runs his hand over one of the books Alex brought me and picks it up.

“Bluebeard,” He mutters the name as he replaces it and casts another weary eye over to me, watching him with barely restrained malice. I pride myself on knowing some of the thoughts that are occurring to him as he takes a gander at one or two of my other books. All eclectic. An obvious theme runs through them all. I’m sure he’s noted it. But he doesn’t get it.

He just thinks I’m nuts.

SUNDAY 16 November 2008… 15:13

I awaken again to the sound of my phone buzzing somewhere and, dazedly, I reach out for the vibration, clasping the coolness of it and pressing all the buttons at once in my sleep-riddled state.

“Eva,” I mutter into the phone.

“Eva? Are you alright? You sound like you’re sleeping.”

Alexander.

“Well, not anymore. What’s up?” My mouth tastes vile and I lazily get up to brush my teeth. For a second, as my eyes adjust to the darkened room, I fail to recall where I am, but then the memories of this morning return with a vengeance and I nearly reach up to clutch at my head as the shadow of illness riddles my brain. Strangely, though, nothing seems to have lingered.

“I got this mad call from Cess at eight this morning. Now I just have to ask, has she lost her mind, or have you?”

I dig around in the cabinet by my feet to find something to brush my teeth with, “Uh, I guess it depends which way you look at it. If you are referring to when I said I will never speak to that little, backstabbing bitch ever again, then I suppose you may say I have lost my mind,” A groan of disapproval sounds through the phone, “Look, I couldn’t help it, okay? She did that thing that she does so well. She puppy-dog eyed me and I felt so bad for being angry that I let her think we’re on speaking terms. And now, well, I reckon now I can’t back out of it.”

“That is not really what’s worrying me. Between you and me, I always thought Cecily may be a bit too air-headed to find anything wrong with what she did, so holding it against her may be pointless. However, there is the matter of a Dimitri Kron,” My face flushes at the name.

“What about him?”

“Well, from what I have heard from Cecily since you chose to engage in a cold war with her, is that she has been seeing a lot of this guy,” My shoulders sag slightly as my suspicions become founded, “And now I hear from her of all people that you’re seeing him too. And I just have to ask, are you doing this deliberately? Some kind of weird female revenge thing that we mere men could never understand?”

“What? How can you even ask me that?” I cradle the phone in the crook of my neck as I flex my fingers in annoyance, “I’m angry with her, okay? I’m furious. So much so that when I saw her, aside from the guilt I struggled with the intense need to rip her ears off and stuff them up her nose. But this Dimitri thing? I don’t even know what the hell is going on. He’s a really nice guy. He’s compassionate and understanding and I thought that things were going really well. But then I woke up in his house-”

“You’re in his house?”

“And Cecily was here.”

“Cecily’s in his house?”

“Relax, will you? It’s not what you think,” A sly smile reaches my lips where my over-protective brother can’t see, “Or maybe it is, I can’t really remember too well. I think I had too much to drink. For all I know, he brought me here because he didn’t want to leave me in my drunken state alone and Cecily came over to collect me.”

I verify the lie to myself, knowing it’s not true. I am here for the same reason Cecily is, there is purpose to my awakening in this house. Some sense of will floods through me as a generous contentment settles in my heart at the prospect.

“Yes, yes, my journalistic ingénue. Always look at the facts as you see them and make no unwarranted assumptions,” Alexander mutters infuriatingly.

“Well that’s great in theory Alex, but mostly we tend to make assumptions anyway. And besides, if you really believe what Cecily has been saying about dating Dimitri then you shouldn’t really be surprised at her presence in his house.”

“I suppose,” my brother grumbles bad-naturedly, “But listen, isn’t this guy married?”

“Nah, that’s just a stupid rumour. I assume you’re talking about Saskia Hunter?”

“Yeah…”

I smile at the dreamy tone of his voice. Unconventionally pretty, Saskia Verona was seen to be a consort of Dimitri Kron for quite a while. Eventually some idiot bottom-feeding paper decided to run a falsified story about them getting married and the notion stuck around for a while. Even though Dimitri’s lawyers crushed the guys responsible for it.

Alex switches his tone back to pure business as he hears my hesitation. “Just be careful with this guy, okay?”

“Yes, fine. I’ll give you a call tonight?”

“Sure.”

The call cuts out without a goodbye, a sure sign that he is somewhere between preoccupied and angry. But I don’t have the patience right now to argue a case in which I feel close to breaking point, myself.

Surprised, I pull a new, still-packaged toothbrush and toothpaste from the cabinet beneath the basin.

Oh, he’s good.

Well at least I can get the sour, bitter taste of illness from my mouth.

Teeth brushed and head not throbbing like a death toll, I look at myself in the mirror and I feel a twinge of dislike, which I squash as I try to make myself look less as though I’ve just woken up from a hangover-induced nap. My hair is unruly, as usual, but at least I can remove the make-up smudges from beneath my eyes and rinse my face with cold water and soap. I may not look spectacular, but at least I feel a bit less like the walking dead.

The thought occurs to me that Dimitri might actually be here and I feel a nervous tick that has me hurry over to the bathroom door neurotically and lock it. To my knowledge he doesn’t do anything except socialise and occasionally arrange functions, so in all practicality, he should be in his own home. If this is his home. Which it may not be. Dammit.

I forgot to ask Cecily this morning with all the throwing up and burying my face in satin sheets.

I sigh and try to get myself a bit more together. If he is here, there is absolutely nothing I can do about my appearance. I have never been the sort of girl to carry my make-up with me in my handbag – which could be anywhere, since I haven’t seen it this morning – and my hair will do what it will regardless. Although I could tie it up, I suppose, but that would make my face seem rounder.

I tug nervously at my collar, trying to expose more shoulder to detract from my neck and face. Who am I kidding? If I walk out of here and into Dimitri he’ll see right through my attempt to hide my inadequacies. He’s just that infuriatingly perceptive. Almost as though he knows me too well.

Well, I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand in here all afternoon and pull at my clothing like some cheap, nerve-wracked school-girl. I rake my fingers through my thick, black hair and gingerly open the bathroom door, headed to the bed to locate my handbag.

After a terse fifteen minutes I find it quite obviously squirreled away in the cabinet beside the bed. Some reporter I am; can’t even locate my own handbag in the most natural place for it to have found itself. I up-end the contents onto the bed and locate my perfume from which I spray a moderate portion onto my neck and wrists. If I can’t look like I stepped out of the pages of Glamour, I will at least smell like it. 

After one last scrutinising glance at my less than perfect self in the bathroom mirror, I step out of the room like a confident woman that belongs in this house. Well, that is what I keep telling myself as I walk out into a tapestried hallway. Beautiful, and done in the same odd combination style as the bedroom; the rest of the house appears to be made of wealth and history as I walk past paintings and sketches framed along the walls, which I feel fairly certain that if I took the time to, I could name. Many of the paintings are landscapes in nature with a reflection of flora in the sketches as well. My eyes are drawn to yet more potted prisons, like the ones in the bedroom, jailing droopy, green leaves, with pinpoints of starry colour amongst them in the form of great, unidentifiable flowers. I can’t possibly name them, not being much of a plant person. But Dimitri clearly is. The dark-wood floor is draped in a bushel of thick, woollen rugs and carpets; weaved of shimmering colours in deep, rich hues. They overlap one another and tassels entwine here and there like the house’s owner has one too many expensive carpets lying about and chooses to have them all on display at once.

Gracing the edges of the hallway are small tiffany lamps which, for a split second, remind me of Delilah’s party and I clutch at the wall to avoid falling in my vertigo.

The house is dark. No windows along this stretch and none in the bedroom either. Up ahead there is a landing and I head steadfastly in that direction, trying to find my way to light, Cecily, and Dimitri.

The end of the hallway, however, seems, if possible, darker and emptier (but for the continued scent of nature) than the rooms I passed by on what felt like my perilous journey. However, it is just as opulently furnished and it stands at the precipice to a flight of stairs which I walk gingerly down, concerned for missing my footing in the dark.

The sound of voices reverberates around the stairwell and a light seems to be shining timidly from somewhere down and to my left. I follow it like a source of sustenance as I recognise the higher, sweeter voice as well as the slightly more heady, whisky-esque tones of the other woman.

The darkness unfolds into a fluorescent-lit kitchen. Wide, open spaces perfect for those women that love to cook, the ones that only ever decide on a new home once they have scanned every inch of the kitchen to ensure optimum cooking efficiency. Sitting around the counter in the middle of the kitchen, around a bouquet of red roses in another pretty, crystal vase, idly picking at a bunch of grapes, is Cecily and, to my inordinate surprise and near to hyper-ventilating distress, Delilah.

The words “what are you doing here,” near rise to my lips, but I swallow them in the radiance of Cecily’s smile upon my arrival to the kitchen and Delilah’s mischievous little grin. Whatever the situation, she’s always one for the disarming glance.

“You seem surprised, Ducky,” She trills and I feel annoyance at her I-have-a-secret-isn’t-this-fun tone for the first time since the two of us met years ago.

“Well, yes,” I try to come across as nonchalant and bored, but all I can manage is mild accusation, and with an angry flush, I hear the force behind my own words, “One does tend to feel that way upon finding one’s best friend and one’s sister in the house of a notorious playboy that-”

“That one has just had carnal relations with?” Delilah finishes slyly.

Cecily’s expression freezes upon her perfect smile, as though trying desperately behind those eyes (and failing) to think of some sort of diffusion to the tension she has finally cottoned-on to.

“Yes, D. That. I do recall you practically pushing me on to him. Everything but begging me to fuck him. Even though you would appear – from where I am currently positioned – to be doing exactly the same thing. You and Cecily.” The words come out of my mouth in a vicious drawl. But the look of Cecily’s perfectly happy façade crumbling like a tragedy mask makes the shame bubble acidic in my chest as bile rises in me again, but I swallow it down.