“Thank you.” She smiles then yawns. “I think I’ll go to sleep now. You don’t think I can still sleep on this couch, can you? Because I don’t think I can sleep on that bed. Who knows how many bed bugs are permanently residing there?”
I force a grin. None. I would know. But I leave it all the same. If she feels safer here, out in the open, I won’t argue the matter. “No worries.”
She climbs on the couch, pulling the quilt on top of her. “Good night.”
“Good night.”
I leave the room, heading to the kitchen. After a few minutes, I hear Clarissa’s soft breathing from the next room. She’s already asleep.
I pull out a chair and sit down in the darkness, waiting for the storm to die down. When it does, I check to make sure she’s still asleep, then leave the cabin, securing both the back door and the front and then all the windows from the outside.
I’ve turned the cabin into a cage, I know, just as surely as I know she won’t like it. But I can’t let her leave, not without knowing what she is first. Something tells me it’s important, and not just for her or me. And my instinct is never wrong.
Standing outside the living room, I look in through the window and see her brown hair peeking from under the quilt on the couch. I exhale, letting the tinge of remorse that has crept up my spine evaporate.
I have to know.
I can’t be sorry about that.
Chapter Three
~ Clarissa
SEBASTIAN’S GONE.
I know it the moment I wake up, even before I search the house, though I do so anyway just to make sure.
“Sebastian?”
As expected, I get no answer, the silence throughout the house is deafening. Even outside, no breeze blows. No snowflake parachutes to the ground. The storm is gone as if it had never come at all.
I walk to the window, smiling as I glimpse a patch of blue sky.
Good. Now, I can leave. Maybe Sebastian has just gone to get some food for breakfast or more wood for the fire and when he comes back, he’ll take me to...
I pause, my
hand on the knob of the front door. The brass piece rattles but doesn’t turn, the door stays glued in place.
No way.
I give the knob another try. More frantic this time.
Alright, maybe the door just got jammed during the storm. Or it’s warped from not being used often. A lot of people don’t use their front doors. I head to the kitchen, trying the back door. I know this one opens, I’d seen him come through it last night.
No go.
I frown not liking the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. One locked door is an accident. Two? A crime.
I try a window, lifting the frame. It, too, won’t budge and after a few more futile attempts, I find out why. It’s nailed. On the outside.
This is definitely a crime. And I know exactly who the culprit is. I’m no longer scared, I’m furious.
“Why, that primitive, flea-ridden psycho!”
I grab a chair, hurling it at the door. Then I grab another chair to sit on, burying my face in my hands though I don’t cry. I’m too angry for tears.
I can’t believe Sebastian left me, even though he told me he wouldn’t with a straight face. Worse, he locked me up like a pet in a cage.