by Suki Fleet
Holding the blankets close around his shoulders, Nicky somehow forced his limbs to obey him and shuffled over to the desk. The solicitor’s letters and Lance’s note were gone—in fact every single scrap of paper had gone. He wondered again how she’d not woken him. The only things left on his desk were the heavy cut crystal glass he’d found a few weeks ago in a dusty cabinet in one of the front rooms, and his near-empty clear plastic water jug, the sides of which were still smeared with blood from when he’d dipped his splintered hand in it. His mouth was terribly dry. He stared at the glass. Something was bothering him, but he couldn’t work out what it was. He glanced at his watch—half twelve. He’d slept for four or five hours. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept that long.
“Remember who has the gun, Nicky.”
The numb feeling he’d woken with was dropping away fast. Nicky kept his eyes on the desk, unwilling to give her the satisfaction of knowing how scared he was.
With shaking hands, he opened one of the desk drawers and rifled through its useless papery contents as purposefully as he could. Receipt after receipt, after receipt. Stupid paper fuckery that looked exactly like what it was. Fuck fuck fuck. He needed to think. Think think think.
He found himself glancing again at the crystal glass. It was still half full—he’d filled it before he’d put his hand in the jug to wash it. When he’d poured a glass to drink he’d thought the water had tasted funny. Nicky had assumed his taste buds were still processing the dirty pond water and had thought nothing of it.
But it wasn’t the pond water…. He’d been drugged.
The realisation hit him like a low punch in the stomach. That was why he’d woken feeling numb and weird, his head fuzzy—Fox Mask must have put something in his water while he was out on his pointless mission diving into that pool. Some sort of sedative, something to knock him out and make him sleep. He glanced up, saw her pink lips stretch into a smile, as though she knew exactly what direction his thoughts had taken him.
Fuck you, he thought, picking up the jug.
Fox Mask’s smile vanished instantly.
Praying he was right about her needing him alive, Nicky gulped the water down. This move was either a stroke of genius or fatally stupid as he had no idea what drug she’d put in there, or how much of it his body could take. Well, whatever it was, from the expression on her face, Fox Mask hadn’t been expecting this turn of events.
She ran towards him, gun swinging, and smacked the jug out of his hand, sending it flying across the desk. But she was too late. Nicky had nearly swallowed all the funny-tasting, bloodied water. He’d drunk so much so fast he thought he might throw it all back up, which would not be good. Instead he closed his eyes, made his body limp and pretended to collapse. His hope was on Fox Mask not knowing exactly how fast-acting the drug she’d given him was. He landed awkwardly on the floorboard, hurting his arm, but he remained motionless, and didn’t flinch even when she repeatedly slapped his face. He heard her get up, stamp across the room and throw something that sounded a lot like a book, but he didn’t dare open his eyes not even a tiny bit. The soles of her falling-apart trainers squeaked across the floor as she paced.
A minute after that, Nicky felt himself fading out of consciousness for real.
Ride on a white horse
Every so often Cai glanced over at the house and sighed. It was three pm. Well, if Nicky wasn’t going to come out and tell him to leave, he was just going to come back tomorrow and carry on clearing the garden.
That would show Nicky….
Wait. What exactly would that show Nicky? That Cai desperately needed this job? That he was willing to put up with Nicky’s frosty attitude and all kinds of weirdness?
Cai knew he should probably stop thinking about Nicky so much. But if he focussed on this afternoon’s achievements, a mixture of excitement and horror churned in his stomach.
Against his better judgement—nearly the exact opposite of his better judgement in fact—Cai had built a bonfire at the edge of the lawn. He’d talked himself into it. Told himself that getting rid of all the trees and branches in his little van would take more trips to the tip than he could manage, even if he hired a big van—if it was even possible to hire a big van with his prison record.
He told himself that building huge bonfires were how most people got rid of garden waste.
Much of the afternoon had been spent ignoring the small voice that whispered things like for you fucking up looks like building a big bonfire in someone’s garden, or what’s the difference between a warehouse and a pile of sticks? Nothing, everything you touch burns to ash in the end or what do you think would happen if your probation officer saw you doing this? while he dragged unwieldy branches through the sea of long grass and made fat damp bundles out of the wet twigs and leaves.
When he used the hedge trimmer to cut the tree trunks into more manageable sizes to carry or roll, he found the noise was great at drowning out the horrible whispers. He’d used up two full bottles of petrol.
Nicky could light the bonfire when Cai had gone, or maybe Cai could light the bonfire and then go, or he could light it and watch for a while…. What harm could that do? Soph. He should pick up Soph. He didn’t have any matches or a lighter anyway. Maybe Nicky did.
Walk away, Cai. Walk away.
Without daring to give his little bonfire another glance, Cai headed slowly back across the lawn. He rubbed his hands up and down his arms, trying to keep warm. As the sky darkened, the air temperature plummeted. In the shadow of the big house it was even chillier. Maybe the house had been beautiful to someone once. Someone with a love of grey and grandeur. Someone living with a little too much bleakness inside them.
Cai hadn’t intended to end up by the back door, peering inside the house—in fact he was pretty sure he’d meant to walk through the trees back to his van. It was just that the back door was open again. Someone needed to fix that really—it looked like an open invitation to any opportunist snooping around. And right now I am that opportunist, Cai thought wryly as he tried to tug the door shut. As soon as he let it go the latch gave way and it swung open again. The lock was useless. There were some bolts at the bottom of the door, but they needed to be done up from the inside.
Sighing heavily, Cai checked his boots for mud, then stepped inside the house. He was going to have to find Nicky. He couldn’t go home knowing he’d left Nicky in an unsecure house, especially not after he’d seen Nicky being followed this morning.
“Hello?” he called. The quiet of the house swallowed his voice. He called out again.
Silence.
With careful steps, he crossed the kitchen floor lake and headed into the gloomy corridor Nicky had emerged from earlier, half expecting Nicky to appear out of the shadows and say “Boo!” just to fuck with him. Not that he thought Nicky was much of a joker—the opposite really—Nicky just seemed a little… strange.
Hyper alert, Cai tiptoed down the corridor. He wasn’t even sure why he was tiptoeing other than it seemed like he should. Now that he was deep inside the house, calling out again felt wrong somehow. But he didn’t want to be sneaking around. With a sigh, he stopped tiptoeing. This wasn’t a game, and he wasn’t breaking and entering—all he wanted was to find Nicky and get him to lock up properly.
The first door he came to led down another short dark corridor to a minty-smelling bathroom. There was a large rust-stained iron bath at its centre, with a toilet and a small clean sink tucked away behind a partition. One lonely toothbrush and a well-used bar of soap lay on the narrow window ledge behind the bath, and several damp items of clothing were draped neatly on bits of string that criss-crossed the room above Cai’s head. Everything looked cleanly scrubbed.
Living without any sense of luxury definitely wasn’t the lifestyle he imagined any Lord of the Manor to have. Then again, he’d heard about the eccentricities of the rich. Living as though you were penniless was probably one of them. Though to someone who was penniless, living like this when it wasn’t nec
essary hurt in all the worst ways—who would want to have to struggle? So many people had no way out, no choice. Unless maybe Nicky gave everything he had away? Few people were that generous, though.
Cai turned around and headed back to the main corridor. Distantly a door banged shut. A floorboard creaked. Was that a footstep? Nicky? What if it wasn’t Nicky? What if it was whoever had been following Nicky? Cai squashed the impulse to hug his chest and instead stood taller. He wasn’t going to cower. And he wasn’t scared of the dark. It was just that this place was almost as creepy as that damn little wood he’d traipsed through this morning. Being here was making him feel paranoid.
He tried to visualise the house and what windows might correspond to what rooms. There was a door a little further along that he figured might lead to the study cum library with the little window that Nicky left his notes on. Cai hoped he was right. He could do with a little familiarity right now. Feeling like the disposable extra in the horror movie—the one who gets the knife in their back in the first scene—wasn’t his thing.
When he reached the door, he presumed it was going to be locked. He thought about knocking, not expecting the cold porcelain doorknob to turn and the door to swing open so easily. One glance and he could see this was indeed the dusty, cluttered room he’d peered into through the window.
Unlike the rest of the house, this room felt lived in—it smelled different, a little minty like the bathroom perhaps, mixed with the musty scent of things locked away and long forgotten.
There was no sign of Nicky the note leaver. Cai glanced at the mismatched armchairs, pushed together like a little fortress, at the pile of thick-looking blankets stacked on one of the seats. Drape those blankets over the chairs and you’d have had the sort of blanket fort Cai had dreamed of as a kid. He’d loved those sort of games—ones where he could be anything he wanted, anyone, like a knight defending a castle from an attacking dragon, or a dragon attacking a castle of an evil king. Sometimes he’d found a willing playmate in the kids’ home, but most of the kids got rehomed pretty fast. Few kids had been stuck in the home as long as Cai. And the ones who were generally didn’t want to play games with him. Apart from Jacob. And that hadn’t turned out well.
Cai looked around. Even though the room was cluttered with books and chairs it seemed to be an organised sort of chaos. It reminded Cai of his little flat. Perhaps he and Nicky weren’t so different after all.
Letting the door swing to behind him, Cai wandered further inside. Too curious to worry about Nicky’s reaction if he found Cai poking around. A broken jug lay on the floor near the massive old desk, and a small wet patch darkened the floorboards around it.
As he looked closer he thought the side of it looked tinged with red. Blood? Cai shivered as a bad feeling stole into his bones.
One step further and his heart careened painfully against his ribs—there was a still, pale hand on the floor sticking out from behind the desk. Without thinking he vaulted over the chairs and shoved the desk aside, pulse racing.
Nicky was lying on his side on the floorboards, naked, one arm stretched out as though he was reaching for something. His still-plaited hair lay wrapped around his shoulder, though wisps of it had fallen in front of his face, the thin strands blood red against the paleness of his skin.
“Fuck,” Cai gasped as he dropped to his knees and leaned down, his cheek near Nicky’s mouth, checking Nicky was still breathing, still alive.
Warm breath tickled his ear, and Cai closed his eyes, gulping in a lungful of air. Thank fuck. For a second there he really hadn’t been sure.
He sat up and cast his gaze over Nicky’s body, checking for injuries and trying not to let his gaze linger. But his eyes were drawn to Nicky’s chest, the way his too visible ribs expanded beneath his milk-pale skin as he inhaled, and shivers trembled through his body. An army of goosebumps covered his arms, his calves, his thighs… and his hair was red everywhere—it wasn’t dyed. Cai looked away. A grey fluffy blanket lay bunched up on the floor behind the desk. Cai grabbed it and carefully draped it over Nicky’s prone form.
“Nicky?” he said, gently.
No response.
Tentatively, Cai touched Nicky’s hand. His skin was cool.
The movement caused Nicky to pull his hand away and the faintest of frown lines appeared on his forehead. But it didn’t wake him.
Cai glanced around the room again, looking for a radiator or an electric heater of some sort. There was nothing… except a chimney breast in the middle of the far wall. If there was a chimney breast it meant there was likely a fireplace, albeit one currently hidden behind the stacks of books lining the wall. The thought filled him with the same mixture of excitement and dread as the bonfires he’d built outside. Did he trust himself? Could he?
The adrenaline rushing around his body was making him feel twitchy.
He patted his pocket, checking for his phone. Soph would be waiting at the bus stop for him. Hopefully she would be waiting with Loz. He sent her a text saying he was staying a little later at work, hoping she’d ask Loz to take the bus with her home and keep her company. He had a feeling he could be here a while.
Before he got to work clearing the books away from the chimney breast, Cai lifted the blanket again to reassure himself there were no obvious bruises or injuries marring Nicky’s skin, and that apart from a red tinge on the cloth wrapped around Nicky’s left hand, there was no blood.
Nicky’s breathing was deep and regular, and he had responded when Cai had touched him. These were all good signs. The only thing Cai could do was hope Nicky woke up soon, because if he didn’t wake and Cai could find no way to wake him, it meant he wasn’t just sleeping heavily, he was unconscious, and if he was unconscious Cai was going to call an ambulance.
Electric Kitty
Warm. That was Nicky’s first thought. But not just cosy warm beneath a blanket like he normally was, no, this was a different warm—the very air around him was warm, crackling quietly. He could smell the sappy green scent of smoke but it didn’t alarm him. There was light too, all dancing and flickering on his eyelids.
Slowly he opened his eyes. A glowy fire filled the hearth in front of him. More than a dozen thick logs were stacked neatly next to the chimney breast, and in front of them and all around him were piles and piles of books.
For a second Nicky didn’t know quite where he was; then he noticed the familiar titles of the books. Fox Mask must have done it, he thought abstractly, though he wasn’t entirely sure exactly who Fox Mask was, or why the thought of her gave him a prickle of unease.
Nicky hated being disorientated, and this cloudiness fogging his thoughts was somehow familiar. It bothered him that he couldn’t quite remember how he’d ended up lying on the floor.
He moved his head to look around and a wave of sickness washed through him. He was going to throw up, and, great, the clumsy, if heroic, gardener was in his room, sitting on the chair farthest away from the fire and staring at the flames as though he’d been hypnotized by them.
Nicky could barely lift his head but it didn’t matter—all he had in his stomach seemed to be a mouthful of bile which he spat, as quietly as he could, on the floorboards next to him. He shifted away, disgusted with himself.
“You’re awake!” Cai jumped out of his seat as though he’d been prodded with a cattle rod and bounded over.
“Fuck off,” Nicky ground out through gritted teeth before his stomach heaved and he threw up again, this time all over the blanket. His throat burned. He felt miserable. For the first time in ages he wanted to cry, but, obviously, he wasn’t going to let himself. He slumped back down on the floorboards and pulled the now icky blanket close. Cai had thankfully backed off back to his chair and was blinking his big cowlike eyes at his phone screen, and casting pathetically furtive looks in Nicky’s direction when he thought Nicky wasn’t looking.
Nicky knew he was being horrible, but he felt like crap and he needed Cai to leave.
Even the smaller details
of the past few hours made no sense—like why was there now a fire burning in a fireplace he hadn’t even noticed before? And why was Cai even in here? The sky was spilled ink outside, and Cai should have gone home hours ago. Nicky couldn’t even remember going to sleep. He turned over and stared at the flames instead.
“Here.” Cai crouched in front of him, offering a threadbare tartan shawl he must have picked up off Nicky’s chair.
Trying not to make a big show about it, Nicky carefully swapped the blanket with the shawl. If he flashed his arse, at least Cai had the good grace to be looking at the floor.
“I could go get you some more clothes if you like…?” Cai said.
Nicky glared at him, too tired for sparring or any sort of snarky comeback. His throat hurt. “Water.”
“Okay.” With a small smile, Cai got to his feet. He picked the crystal glass off Nicky’s desk and disappeared out of the room. He returned a few minutes later with the water.
“You’ve been out for over four hours. Do you normally sleep like you’ve been knocked unconscious?” Cai asked, crouching down and holding out the glass.
“Do you?” Nicky glowered and was rewarded with another fucking smile. Please, please don’t let Cai be one of those annoying damn people it’s impossible to offend, he begged. It was much easier to deal with people who got angry and left him alone. They were predictable. Cai wasn’t.
Feeling as though his head might explode if he moved it too quickly, Nicky pushed himself upright, and even though his arm felt as though it’d been filled with wet cement, he determinedly took the glass and brought it slowly and carefully to his lips.
It must have been the movement that triggered it. One moment he was holding the glass, the next it had slipped from his fingers as the memory slammed into him—Fox Mask, the gun, drinking the drugged water and pretending to pass out. Then really passing out.
The crystal smashed as it hit the floorboards, spraying water and tiny fragments of glass everywhere, but Nicky barely heard it over the pounding of his heart. Gripping his blanket tight, he twisted around, searching the darkness of the room for… for what? Despite stealing into his room and drugging him, Fox Mask hadn’t really struck him as the type to be prowling unseen in the shadows. She’d been too upfront and demanding. She wasn’t patient, or biding her time. If she was still in this room and her gun really hadn’t been from Lance’s study, he suspected Cai would have been laid out permanently by now.
