Page 42 of Chain Me
I wondered if Dublin had stalked any of them. Drained their blood or taken their virginity? The thought became less amusing once my eyes settled over one of the last names in the book.
Georgiana Gray.
Tears pricked my eyes before I understood why. Did I miss her? My thoughts were so scattered that I couldn’t tell. Hell, I wouldn’t even know what to say to her.
Perhaps I could only write it down.
Upon rising to my feet, I approached the sideboard Dublin had fished the book from and found a silver pen nestled in a drawer. I ripped a blank page from the journal and filled it with line after line of text. Moisture spilled down my cheeks, obscuring the words, and I didn’t even try to make sense of them. In a twisted way, I felt the same impulse that had driven me to write Dublin.
Desperation?
Folding the page, I returned to the room I’d awoken in and scoured it until I found my shoes and my purse on a chair in the corner. Yulia’s clothing conveniently stocked the wooden wardrobe, and I chose a garment at random. As I dressed, I did my best to squash any guilt.Hewas the one who’d suggested we bargain, after all. I had upheld my end so far.
Proving I wasn’t a prisoner was the least he could do to uphold his.
Regardless, I didn’t call François as I slipped from the suite and crept into an elevator. Even I knew where to draw the line.
Apparently, so did Dublin—no one rushed from the shadows to stop me. The first floor was as deserted as when we entered, but the door wasn’t locked when I tested the handle. Escaping the garage and locked gate was surprisingly easy as well; none of them required a code to exit from. On the main street, I managed to flag down a cab on my own—only to realize as the man dropped me before Gray Manor that I didn’t have any cash.
After shoving a check into his hands, I escaped the vehicle without gauging his reaction. His muttered curse gave me a clue. Still, I tried to banish all guilt as I skirted the manor proper. Waning daylight bathed the grounds in a bluish, eerie twilight, and a screen of mist obscured the mausoleum, thinning the closer I came. A storm must have been brewing.
Once inside, I approached the urn and dropped my missive inside it.
Then…
I lingered, wringing my fingers at the prospect of returning to Dublin’s alone. Was he still with his “appointment?”
Or Kate?
Shrugging the concerns away, I craned my neck to appreciate the subtle detail of the mausoleum’s interior. Delicate reliefs of angels and demons decorated the crown molding, shaping the stone. Within minutes, I found myself inching from room to room, mentally pairing the names I passed with the ones scribbled in Dublin’s ledger.Agatha. Mary. James II and III and IV…
Dublin had tracked them all with an alarming level of detail, birth years and death dates included. On closer reflection, the fact that he had studied my bloodline at all definitely deserved more scrutiny.
Perhaps the journal was his subtle attempt at irony. A reminder solely directed at me—I wasn’t the only Gray to catch his interest. Therefore, I wasn’t important. In the grand scheme of Dublin Helos and his devious intentions, Eleanor Gray was nothing more than a single scribbled anecdote among pages of them.
But this namewasn’t.
I frowned as my fingers traced the unfamiliar series of letters engraved in stone. Not a name at all, it appeared as I strained my eyes to read it, but a phrase.
Memento Mori.
Latin? I couldn’t recall its meaning off the top of my head.Carved within plain sight, it dominated the space placed between my Great-Great-Aunt Maria and Uncle George in a section of the chamber where the light struggled to reach.
A slight roughness in texture differentiated it from the smooth graves nearby. The stone here felt older, more tattered than George’s tomb and he’d been dead for at least two centuries.
Driven by an impulse I couldn’t explain, I felt along the edges of the epitaph, tracing every divot in the worn stone. At the slightest bit of pressure, something shifted in a way it shouldn’t have.
Unease prickled at the back of my mind, warning me away. Secrets, once uncovered, rarely revealed useful information as far as I was concerned. Just more deception. More lies. I tried to move—forsaking the intrigue—but my feet remained stubbornly rooted in place. It was the damn chamber, its mystery feeding a question I couldn’t shake.
What would a Gray deem important enough to hide within the family tomb?
Eventually, the curiosity became too much to resist.
I rolled my sleeves up and tugged again, bracing my feet against the floor. The placard budged another inch. Another. Sweat dripped down my neck as I applied even more pressure, straining the muscles in my shoulders. More. More…
Until, with a thud, the lid of the tomb came away altogether. I jumped back, fearful of the prospect of a coffin lurking beyond. A cloud of dust obscured any contents, triggering a furious coughing fit. Hunched over, with my hand pressed over my nose, I peered through the darkness. The dust cleared gradually, revealing a cavernous space in lieu of some ancient deceased Gray. I pulled back, prepared to write it off as empty, but a glint of silver caught my eye before I could.
Intrigued, I sank into a crouch, squinting to make out the object. Whatever it was had been tucked too far back to observe from my position.
