Page 95 of Savage Blooms
Nicola kept her hand on top of Eileen’s as Eileen pumped her fingers in and out of Nicola, slowly at first and then faster as Nicola guided her touch. She was so swept up in the moment, in Eileen’s fingers inside her and Eileen’s perfectly bitable collarbones and petal-pink nipples right where Nicola could reach them with her mouth, that she didn’t even hear the drums. Not right away.
At first, she thought it was simply her heartbeat hammering away in her ears, or some auditory trick brought on by distant thunder. But then that droning, unmistakable rhythm grew louder and louder, filtering into the house as though from far away.
“What is that?” Nicola asked, breaking the kiss. She couldn’t say exactly why she was scared, but a deep ancestral memory stirred inside her, of fighting or freezing or fleeing.
Eileen withdrew her fingers and gripped Nicola’s thigh, almost hard enough to bruise. She held her tight and she listened, more intent and more serious than Nicola even thought Eileen was capable of being.
There were definitely drums. And they were getting closer.
“Eileen?” Nicola whispered.
“Shut the windows and draw the curtains,” she saidquickly, climbing off Nicola. There was an absolutely stricken expression on her face. In that moment, she looked like the most miserable girl in the world. “And stay as quiet as you can.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Eileen
Eileen could still taste Nicola’s strawberry lip oil as she frantically locked the windows and drew the shades, her heart pounding in her chest. It was a jarring thing, the taste of summer and girlish sweetness on her mouth while fear-soaked bile rose up in her throat.
The drums were closer now, along with the sound of those discordant bells that she heard in her dreams. Only this time, there was no waking up from the nightmare.
This had only ever happened once to her parents, she had been told, on a midwinter’s night when the moon was full. Eileen had been an infant, and she had blessedly slept through the racket. Her parents said the faeries had them surrounded for hours, rattling the roof with the sounds of merriment without ever becoming visiblethrough the windows. The assault had only ceased with the rising of the sun, just as James was threatening to walk right into the yard with his rifle and end it for good, whatever that meant.
Eileen wanted to be brave. She wanted to scoop Nicola up like a dashing hero out of one of Finley’s adventure books and lock her away in her room for safekeeping. But Eileen was rooted to the spot with fear, dread crawling down her spine as the sound of high-pitched laughter filtered in through the roof, through the windows. Even up through the floorboards.
Eileen didn’t care if this was a trick of the fae, or a trick of this old house, or a trick of her mind. She knew in the deepest pit of her stomach that they were surrounded, entirely at the mercy of whatever creatures had come to call on them.
This is it, Eileen thought.They’ve finally come to get me.
She scurried out into the hall long enough to lock the front door, as though that would do anything to help, then retreated back into the library, feeling feverish and more ill than she had in a long time.
She had thought perhaps that she would be the one to break, in the end. That she would surrender to the whispers in her dreams and march out in her nightclothes into the woods, to be so disoriented by old magic that she walked in circles until she starved, or maybe make it all the way into the cave just to hurl herself inside, right into the hungry mouth of her family’s oldest enemy. But shehad held out, all this time, and now the faeries had grown impatient. Now, they had come to her.
She didn’t know whether to be proud of herself or not.
The music was deafening now, discordant chiming joined by screeching strings that rang through the library. The roof creaked, and dust and plaster drifted down onto Nicola’s shoulders and dusted her hair. There was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, but Nicola didn’t know that. Nicola just looked confused and frightened, so Eileen did the only thing she could think to do. She pulled Nicola down with her onto the floor, where they curled up between the couch and the bookshelves to wait it out, or wait for death.
“What’s happening?” Nicola whispered, touching Eileen’s face with searching hands.
“I don’t know,” Eileen muttered. “I think—”
There was a deafening bang on the front door. Eileen nearly jumped out of her skin, nauseous with terror. God, she wanted to throw up.
All her planning, all her lies and schemes and careful patience, were all going to come to nothing. She was going to die, and Nicola was going to die with her, and Finley would find their bodies clutched together just like this. Maybe Adam would take up the Kirkfoyle mantle and care for whatever was left of the house, or maybe, the story would finally end here, a legacy engulfed in decay.
There was another bang, louder this time. Nicola gasped, burying her face in Eileen’s shoulder.
Eileen ignored the cold sweat of terror breaking out all over her body, and she fixed her eyes on the library door.
Bang!
Bang!
The knocking grew until it sounded like someone was assailing the door with a battering ram. The floorboards shook with every strike.
Eileen slowly rose to her feet, her fingertips shaking.
“No,” she said, as though flat-out refusal could somehow save them both from the inevitable.
