Page 83 of Petrify

For a moment I blame myself for not paying attention. It’d been seamless, so quick, when the walls had closed around me.

A sound of frustration rips from me. It’s only when I take a step back that I see it: a light switch, unassuming, with a shining brass plate. Switchedoff, when the lights in the hall are a bright yellow.

I imagine it’ll be like in the movies when I flip the switch, a door appearing out of thin air, opening up to a secret chamber behind.

But nothing happens.

Running my fingers over the seam proves fruitless. I push on the wall again and am met with resistance.

But there’s a little click a few feet to my left.

I glance down the hall. I am still alone. Mariane won’t be coming near me anytime soon. No footsteps echo through the foyer, this area completely vacant.

After only a soft push, the walnut panel swings inward, revealing the same dusty passageway as before, the only light streaming through the slats of lath where the plaster has chipped away.

I step into the darkness, and the wall swings shut like a pair of invisible hands are slamming the hidden door.

And then I realize I don’t know how to get out.

I take a steadying breath.

There is only one way forward. I can find his attic room again.

I trail my fingers along the exposed wood, which is soft with age and speckled with plaster dust, tracing my steps, until my fingers swipe through a spider web. I’m panicking at the idea of a spider crawling up my arm, trying to shake the web off.

And then familiar hands slide around my waist.

A cool voice in my ear, warm breath on my neck. “You’re trespassing.”

I don’t stop to think about how my body wants to relax into him. “That would imply I’m not wanted here.”

His smirk is audible. “You know better than to seek me out.”

“Do I?” Turning in his arms, I find his ghost white face only inches away.

His mask is all I can really see clearly in the dark, his black clothing obscuring his form. But I can feel him all the same, the possessive grip at my hips, his stare lingering on my lips.

“No, evidently you don’t. What do you want?”

“You killed Henri’s last tutor.”

I expect him to go silent. To deny it.

“Yes.” So easily admitted.

“Are you going to kill me?”

His fingers come to my chin, tilting my face upward in the dark, so his mask takes up my entire field of vision. “Wouldn’t I have done it already?”

I say nothing.

The amber in his dark eyes seems to glow. Searching me, delving into me, again and again. His thumb brushes my chin gently for a few seconds. I’m sure he can see how even this simple touch lights a fire deep inside of me.

It’s not lost on me that he hasn’t truly answered my question.

I’ll never be free of him. Even if I leave this house, he will always be there in my mind. The memory of him, the memory ofthis?—

“Let’s go,” he says, his voice softer this time. He turns me so I walk in front of him, even as he leads the way forward. I don’t know where we’re going, guided only by his hand on my back; all the passages look the same to me, and I give up trying to memorize the route back.