“I’ve been looking for the egg,” she hissed loudly, “while you’ve been sleeping!”
Eric looked suddenly hurt. His expression went immediately from accusatory to wounded.
“I wasn’t sleeping.”
Melody shrugged. “Well you certainly weren’t helping.”
He stepped into her, and she froze.
“Look,” he said. “That’s not what I meant.” His eyes had gone soft now, his voice apologetic. “I was only wondering why you didn’t wake me up. Take me with you, like we discussed.”
“It was early. Almost still dark outside.”
“So?” He reached out to touch her, and Melody found herself almost flinching away. His hand slipped around her waist. Gently he drew her closer. “I wouldn’t have minded.”
“I just want to finish this,” she sighed. “Get out of here already. This place… this place is…”
He patted her placatingly. “I
know.”
“Do you though?” Melody pulled back to look at him. “There’s something nagging at me, Eric. We’ve been here less than twenty-four hours. Less than a day, and it already feels like—”
He nodded as if he understood.
“Like we’ve been here forever?”
14
His words finished her sentence, exactly as she was about to say them. That alone was strange, but Melody also realized she’d seen him do this before. It was just like…
… just like his argument with the Colonel.
“Well did you find anything?” Eric was asking.
“Not yet.”
“Maybe we’ll have more luck after we eat.”
Melody shifted. “Eat?”
“Yes,” said Eric.
“And what exactly are we eating?”
Eric stood up, stiffened his body, and deepened his voice to do his best possible Lurch impression:
“Cakes in the Sun Parlor…”
It turned out the Sun Parlor ran the back length of the entire house. It was a long, beautiful glass room filled with tiny side tables and semi-comfortable chairs.
“These don’t look like cakes,” said Melody, scanning their spread.
“Well that’s because they’re sandwiches,” chuckled Eric.
Breakfast or brunch or whatever they were having consisted of platters of finger foods. Melody saw cold pudding, sausages, boiled eggs, and small ‘cakes’ of cured meat sandwiched between some type of heavily floured bread.
None of it made her very hungry.