Page 79 of Cursed Shadows 5

His swift pace only stops when he reaches the door with the false gold plate nailed onto it:NO.9

Eamon steps closer. “Is it unlocked?”

“I don’t know.”

“Haven’t you been here already, looking for her?”

“I didn’t use the door,” Dare says with a glance over his shoulder. “I scaled the front, came in through the window.”

Eamon’s huff is tired. “You and windows,” he mutters under his breath, then reaches for the cold metal doorhandle. His grip is firm before he tries it, once, twice—then releases it with a curt sigh. “Locked, then.”

Dare takes two steps back.

Eamon leans aside, his spine pressing into the railing.

It comes quick and effective.

In a flurry, Dare is a smear of black and gold, and he boots the door so hard that it flies off the hinges and into the dwelling.

A shuddering crash rattles the landing.

Eamon makes a grim face. “If that poorly human didn’t know we were here, he does now.”

Dare looks over his shoulder, brow arched. “He?”

“I guessed.”

“A female is more likely to take to her bed in death.”

Eamon shoots him a quizzical look.

“Females adore their beds,” Dare says with a shrug. “I always imagined it was something to do with nesting.”

Dare turns his back on Eamon and peers into the darkness of the doorless dwelling.

“My mother always feigns headaches in the middle of the phase,” he murmurs, soft, “just so she can cosy up in her bed a while. Not to sleep, not to read… just tobe.”

Eamon’s quizzical frown remains, and it’s fixed on the back of Dare’s head, the faint waves of his dark hair. “Unless we find Bee in her bed, none of that is relevant right now…”

Dare tuts, soft, then steps through the threshold. “You spend too much time with Nari. Her moodiness is rubbing off on you.”

Eamon fights the urge to roll his eyes as he follows Dare into the dark home—and it is ahome.

Despite the decrepit face of the building, the concrete coldness of the stairwell, the old doors and the stink of abandoned rubbish, Bee has made her place a home.

The entrance opens into the lounge with an attached kitchen, small, but cosy. Eamon sweeps his gaze all over, then lands it on the wooden door on the right wall, beside the record player and vinyl collection; the door is all the way open, revealing the basics of an ordinary bathroom. White tiles, white tub, white toilet.

If Eamon was candid about his preferences in the human realm, it would be that. The plumbing. Toilets, tubs that drain into pipes. Even the basin, though this one is smeared with beige toned face-paint, spilled bags of cosmetics, and soap residue.

He turns his cheek to the obviously unoccupied bathroom.

Across the room, the windows overlook the street they came in from, draped by thick curtains, and the black rods are weaved bya type of devil’s vine, the sort from the human realm that doesn’t poison the air, doesn’t gleam.

The two sets of doors are what hook Eamon’s gaze.

Dare moves for the one on the left, so Eamon heads for the one on the right.

Between the doors is a scuffed wood dining table, circular and littered with parchments and grey devices that Eamon understands to be folded, flatcom-poo-turs. A type of device he has not familiarised himself with.

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