Lovely Darkness (Creeping Beautiful)

“Now what?” I ask.

Nate nods his head towards a hallway. “The bedroom is back here.” Then he starts walking and I follow.

Indie and Wendy come along behind me as we weave our way through the living room, then a hallway, then finally a bedroom. Or one might call it a bunk room. Because there are several built-in bunk beds.

Nate flips on the light so we can see it better. I raise an eyebrow at him. “Lights? Is that a good idea?”

He shrugs. “Why not? We came all this way, might as well see it properly.”

It’s a very nice room. Very high-end rustic. The kind of room you see in magazines. And even though there’s a layer of dust in here too, it looks less like an abandoned room and more like a forgotten one.

When I’m done taking in the room, I realize two things. One, Nathan is looking at me with expectation. Like he’s waiting on something. And two, Indie and Wendy are not in this room with us.

“Wendy?” I call.

“Never mind Wendy,” Nate says. “She and Indie are exploring other places.”

“What?”

“I’m here to tell you that my debt to you has been cancelled.”

“You made me drive three and a half hours to tell me that?”

“No.” Nathan actually snickers. “No one brought you here. Regardless of what you think, Nicholas Tate, the world does not revolve around you.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? Wendy!” I call again. “Answer me!”

“She’s not gonna answer you. Indie took her outside.”

“What?”

“Are you even listening to me?”

“Nathan,” I say, trying to force myself to be calm. “What the fuck is going on?”

“It’s not about you. Get it through your thick head, Nick. This is about Wendy. This is about Indie. This is their secret, not ours. And I don’t know what kind of mindfucking you’ve done on Wendy to make her submissive to you the way she is, but it’s not gonna work here. She and Indie have a destiny—”

I reach for him. Have his throat in my hands a split second before he reacts.

And then we are fighting.

Fists, knees, elbows.

His martial arts skills are very good. I knew this. I’ve sent him out on many jobs and he never ended up dead. But I didn’t quite understand just how good until he gets me in a headlock and shoves my face into the floor.

I grab his ankle, pull him off balance, and then he has to let go.

We both spring up, breathing hard, circling each other. “What the fuck are you doing?” I say.

“Keeping you occupied.” And this asshole has the nerve to smile at me.

“Who the fuck are you? What’s going on here?”

Nathan relaxes a little. Lowers his fists and drops his shoulders. Still smiling. “You really don’t listen, do you? It’s like no one else exists but you.”

“Answer my question. You and Indie set this up? You’re the ones pulling the strings? You what, just strung me along for all these years?”

His laugh is like a bark. “That’s funny coming from you.”

“Answer me.”

“How many times do I have to say it, Nick? This isn’t about you. It’s about them.”

I leave the room. Weaving my way through the house, calling Wendy’s name.

But everything is dark and silent.

Indie took her and they are both gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - INDIE

Carter’s voice is still in my head.

But he’s not real. None of those words are real. They are all my words.

Nate and I have talked about this. He knows. After Maggie shot Donovan I knew things were seriously fucked up with me. And I also knew that I would never get to be her mother if I didn’t face my demons.

So Nate and I set out to find the truth. And the voices in my head were one of the first things I confessed to. We were on my swing, just lying together in the late-afternoon heat when all my lies and secrets started spillin’ out of my mouth.

I think Nathan turned into someone else that day. He saw me. The real me. And he didn’t get up and walk away. He didn’t even sigh, or anything. He gently pushed a piece of hair away from my eyes and he said, “I left you. Two times. And both times you needed me. So this time, Indie Anna Accorsi, I will be sticking around.”

Usually when Carter or Donovan appear inside my head, I tell Nathan about it. Sometimes, if he’s there in the moment with me, I even recite the words out loud for him.

He records it. He records everything just like Donovan used to when I was little. He told me, “I’m recording everything because if I had just done this in the first place we’d have it all on record.”

He was talking about the times I came home from the jobs and he had to take my hand and lead me into the meadow. All the times he had to weave a new life for me. Even as I was spillin’ secrets about killing people, or people trying to kill me, or how it felt to be the snake girl in the Garden of Eden.