Page 37 of A Touch of Dark
“He had to leave early last night,” the security supervisor explains. “Bad Chinese food.”
Unease gnaws at my nerves as I linger in my apartment, sensing the flickering shadows from the corner of my eye. Every noise from the hall has me jumping, and my mind races with possibilities. Simon? Or Damien?
Which monster would I prefer? That’s the true question and I hate that I can’t answer it. My thoughts are too jagged to untangle.
In the hopes of finding some semblance of peace, I shed my rumpled clothing and climb into the shower of the guest bathroom, where everything is pristine and unbroken. God, I hate the woman watching me from the mirror. It’s angled so that I have a clear view of myself, even while underneath the spray. Pale. Thin. Wide-eyed and haunted.
My right shoulder is bruised around the cut, which looks much worse when viewed from a distance. My lower lip is bitten, and even Damien couldn’t clean up the worst of the vomit.
I’m disgusting, more grotesque than one of Sampson’s paintings. All I need is a bed of blood-red roses to complete the aesthetic.
For now, my only accessory is the white towel I wrap around myself as I return to my bedroom and eye my closet critically. Every single item repels me. There’s too much black. Too much tailored perfection. I spot a crumpled mass of wrapping paper and ribbon in the wastebasket near the foot of my bed and stiffen. How long has it been since I’ve worn that shade of purple?
My wardrobe doesn’t contain the color at all. Maybe not since that day, all those years ago when I was dressed from head to toe in the shade. The best clothing Goodwill and Walmart could supply.
I wince. Bitter nostalgia strikes like an invisible fist to my stomach. I inhale raggedly and find something else to focus on. Like Damien. I left his sketch of me in the living room.
Still dripping wet and wearing only my towel, I head toward it. I’ll rip it up this time and toss it into the trash, where it belongs.
Wait.My footsteps falter near the mouth of the hall before I even register my nostrils flaring. A faint, almost floral taint. Cologne? His scent announces his presence without my having to see him there, sitting on my couch, his posture imposingly erect.
“W-what are you doing here?” I mean to sound indignant. Not curious.
“Good evening.” Damien inclines his head without facing me directly, almost as if he’s riveted by the view from my window.
It’s already late in the day. Indigo twilight washes over the horizon as a storm rages on. Thunder rumbles ominously. Lightning flashes. Funny. I didn’t notice either until now.
“You weren’t near your phone.” His low tone perfectly mimics the muffled sounds of the storm.
He’s wearing black again, the hypocrite—a suit tailored to perfection, crowned by a blood-red tie. Rather than the white cane, a real one made of carved wood leans against his knee. The handle of it is silver, shaped into the visage of a roaring lion.
“I wasn’t?” I ask innocently. “I’ve been busy today.”
“You haven’t left this apartment.” He sounds too damn sure of that, as if daring me to make the next leap in logic.
“Oh? And how would you know that?” I clutch my towel so tightly that my knuckles whiten. Things came back to me while I was in the shower. Memories I shied away from exploring in full, each one far too vivid to be from a nightmare. “Because you’ve been following me, haven’t you? You knew what kind of wine I’d gotten. No one knows that—”
“I know everything about you,” he says amid another foreboding strike of lightning. “Like the fact that you haven’t expressed an interest in art a day in your life. That you manipulate lives for a living. That you and your father are one and the same.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
He shifts in my direction and, God…I can feel his gaze piercing through me when it shouldn’t.
“It means, if you want to play this game, I’ll let you. To use your turn of phrase, let’s get this over with.” He lifts something clenched in his fist. A pen? No, it’s too wide. Another flash of lightning illuminates the liquid inside and the long, thin tip encased in a plastic lid. A syringe. “I’ll let you get a taste of what it’s like to be truly helpless.”
As if I don’t already know how that feels. The storm building in intensity around us only compounds that fact. God, I just pray I won’t panic, not around him. “Get out.”
“Sí.As you wish.” He rises to his feet, reaching for his cane. “Burn whatever information of mine Carla gave you. And you can keep the damn painting. I won’t contact you again—”
“How long have you been watching me?” I blurt.
A denial should be his first instinct. Not a rich bark of laughter that resonates through my core, deeper than another roar of thunder. Strange. I should be having flashbacks about now. Vomit-inducing memories. Damien shouldn’t be the one anchor tethering me to the present.
“Do you really want to know?”
“I… Do you stalk all of your potential subjects?” I counter.
“As I told you before, you are not a subject.Theyall concealed something worth learning.”
