Along Came a Spider (7 page)

“Feel free to help yourself to some of Juliet’s clothes,” he said, gesturing absently toward the heavy dresser against the wall. “You’re about the same size she was, so you should be able to find something. You’ve got to be freezing in those wet pajamas.”

Oh, not as much as you might think. . . .

I snuggled into his hold ever so slightly, and to my surprise his arm tightened, curling me into him for a brief hug before he released me. “As soon as you change, I’ll show you to one of the guest rooms. I never liked this room much.”

I glanced up at him, wondering what about this room he disliked, but his expression had gone dark. Asking any questions was clearly not an option.

After watching him leave the room and close the door, I set about finding something warm and dry to put on. I had to shake my head at Nicky’s proclamation that I was pretty much the same size as Juliet. She’d been five foot eight and all legs. And I was . . . well . . . not. I managed to find a pair of yoga pants that had probably been capris on Juliet and so luckily didn’t drag the ground when I pulled them on. Finding a shirt, on the other hand, proved to be more of a challenge. I pulled out several cotton baby-doll shirts that were so tiny I quickly tossed them aside.

“Good lord,” I grumbled, “didn’t this woman have any boobs? Criminy! What grown woman wears an extra small anything?”

I finally found a plain pink T-shirt that had probably been Juliet’s kicking around shirt for those days when she was feeling a little bloaty and didn’t want to wear her clothing as a second skin. It fit me well enough, accentuating my hourglass curves without looking like it’d been painted on.

I took a look at myself in the mirror. The outfit didn’t scream Do me now, Nicky, but at least I wasn’t soaking wet anymore. But, dear God, my hair was a train wreck. I quickly ran my hands through my ringlets a few times, trying to smooth them a little, but it didn’t do a lot of good. I finally huffed and threw my hands up in despair. Oh, well. What the hell did it matter? He’d already seen me at my most disheveled and hadn’t run away screaming in horror.

Nicky was leaning against the wall when I came out of the room, and when he looked up and met my gaze I felt that odd little tug again and gasped. His intense amber eyes took me in at a glance, and an emotion I couldn’t quite place passed across his face.

Great.

Seeing me in Juliet’s clothes had to be stirring up all kinds of emotions he’d been trying to bury down deep these last couple of years. Awesome.

“Feel better?” he asked, his smile strained.

“Just exhausted,” I admitted.

“How’s the arm?”

I glanced down at it, surprised to find it wasn’t throbbing any longer. “Uh . . . fine, actually.” I quickly unwrapped it and rotated my wrist, testing the joint. It was completely healed without even a lingering ache. “Weird. There’s no way it should’ve healed that fast.”

“Of all the crazy shit that’s gone down tonight,” Nicky drawled, “I’d say your wrist healing faster than usual rates pretty low.”

I stifled another yawn. “Point taken.”

He jerked his head toward the end of the hall. “Come on, it looks like you’re ready to drop. Let’s get you all tucked in.”

Was he serious? He was actually going to tuck me in?

I didn’t even bother taking a look around the room Nicky led me to. I was so freaking tired I wouldn’t have cared if the bed was made of nails as long as I had a place to catch a few hours of sleep.

As soon as I climbed in, he pulled the sheet and duvet up over my chest. “There’s a bathroom across the way,” he said. “And I’m down the hall if you need me. Third door on the left.”

I had a million questions I wanted to ask Nicky—not the least of which was what he’d found out about Dracula’s whereabouts and what he planned to do to take him out. But work would have to wait. The only question I could form coherently suddenly seemed much more imperative. “Why didn’t you share a room with Juliet?” I asked around a yawn, sleep deprivation affecting my ability to keep my curiosity in check.

“She needed her own space.” He made a noise that was something between a grunt and a laugh. “Can you imagine? In a house this size?”

“I can’t imagine ever wanting to spend the night away from you,” I muttered, sleep descending quickly.

I closed my eyes and curled onto my side, reaching blindly to pull the duvet up under my chin and finding Nicky’s hand instead. My heart gave a little hitch at the contact and I knew I probably should’ve pulled my hand away, but my eyelids were too heavy to open, my limbs too heavy to move.

To my surprise, Nicky’s fingers curled around mine. I felt him smooth my hair with his free hand, then twist one of my ringlets around his finger, letting the hair slide across his skin as he released the curl. And just as sleep rose to claim me, he pressed a chaste kiss to my temple and whispered, “Only sweet dreams tonight, doll.”

Chapter Six

The dream always started the same. I was sitting on the little stone bench in my parents’ garden, my black patent leather shoes gleaming, my pale blue pinafore pristine and crisp. I was swinging my feet and humming cheerily while eating my breakfast—porridge, not the curds and whey mentioned in my nursery rhyme—when a particularly intricate and beautiful spiderweb nestled among the rosebushes caught my eye. I set aside my bowl and hopped down to go investigate. The dew from the cool spring morning still clung to the gossamer threads, glistening in the sunshine. I was grinning, delighted with my find, as I leaned closer.

I didn’t even see the spider until it was right before my eyes. It was an enormous, fat, furry black spider the size of my fist. I’d heard of these monstrous arachnids, the kind witches in Make Believe used in their potions, but I’d never seen one. My childish curiosity urged me to take a closer look, so I bent forward until my nose nearly touched the web.

And then it happened. My eyes locked with the spider’s—hollow and black, infinitely deep, impossibly dark—and I felt a little tug in the center of my brain, a quick jerk deep inside my head. And then I saw. A barrage of graphic and gory images assaulted my mind, filling it until it overflowed, engulfing me, dragging me down, down, down into the darkness. . . .

I jolted awake, shivering violently, my clothes soaked with sweat. I threw back the covers and lunged from the bed, but my limbs were weak with terror and wouldn’t hold me, and I crumpled to the floor. On my hands and knees, I scurried to the corner of the room and pressed myself into it, my chest heaving with hysterical sobs. I squeezed my eyes shut and put a hand over my mouth, muffling the sound.

Control the fear, Beatrice. . . .

I nodded quickly. Yes. Yes. Control the fear. Had to control the fear. I couldn’t let it take me again. Not like before. I’d never go to that place again.

I took several slow, shaky breaths and muttered aloud the Fibonacci sequence to force my mind away from the remembrance of the horrors I’d experienced that day and focus it on something else. I don’t know how long I sat there, trying to bring my shattered psyche back together, but eventually my pulse slowed to an almost normal rate and my shivering began to subside.

“It’s okay, Trish,” I whispered. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay. You’re fine now.”

And a few moments later, I slid up the wall until I was standing and tested my legs to make sure they would carry me back to the bed, but once I was there, I couldn’t bring myself to climb back in. There was really no point. I knew from experience that there was no possibility of getting any sleep once the dream had come.

As quietly as possible, I slipped from the room, glancing down the hall to where Nicky had said his bedroom was. The door was wide open, the room completely dark. The house was still, but I heard no sounds of sleep coming from his room. Curious, I crept down the hall and peeked in. The bed was still made, obviously not having been slept in. I frowned a little, wondering where he might have gone.

Shivering again now, but this time from the sweat-soaked clothes I wore and not from sheer terror, I made my way back to Juliet’s room and managed to locate a luxurious pink bathrobe hanging on the inside of the closet door. I stripped out of the workout clothes down to my panties, then pulled the bathrobe on, tying it loosely around my waist before making my way downstairs. I had to wander down a few halls and recover from a couple of wrong turns that led me to a laundry room and then what appeared to be a game room before I finally managed to find Nicky’s kitchen.

The kitchen was much easier to navigate. I had no trouble locating a saucepan and the supplies I needed to make some hot
chocolate—the final step in my recovery ritual on the nights the dream came. I was just turning off the burner and setting the pan aside to find a coffee mug when a soft shuffle behind me brought me around with a gasp.

My shoulders sagged with relief when I saw that the noise was not from a ghost intent on terrorizing me or a massive spider whose horrifying memories of murdering her victims were going to send me spiraling once more toward insanity. “There you are!” I said with a chuckle. “Where the hell have you been?”

Sasha padded toward me, her answering meow carrying a hint of admonishment.

“Hey,” I shot back, “I’m not the one who ran off. You should’ve stuck around.” She sat down directly in front of me, her tail twitching back and forth lazily, then gave me an expectant look.

With a sigh, I rummaged through the cupboards until I found a small bowl, then poured a little milk into it. “There you go, you spoiled brat,” I muttered with an affectionate grin, squatting down to set it on the floor in front of her. I scratched her ears for a moment while she lapped at the milk, glad to see that she seemed unaffected by our ordeal at the apartment. I was still grinning when I rose to my feet.

“Can’t sleep?”

This time I started with a ridiculously girlie yelp that sent Sasha racing out of the room again. “Damn it!”

“Sorry,” Nicky said from where he leaned nonchalantly against the frame of the kitchen doorway. “Didn’t mean to scare your cat off again.”

“I didn’t even hear you come in,” I said, still breathless. “How long have you been standing there?”

He shrugged and pushed off the door frame. “I came in when I heard pans clattering around in here.”

My brows came together. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

He shrugged again as he came forward, looking a little unsteady on his feet. It was then I noticed he held the neck of a bottle of Legavulin in his hand. A mostly empty bottle of Legavulin. “Didn’t want to interrupt.” He plunked the bottle down on the counter of the kitchen island. “It’s been a long time since anyone has used this kitchen—kinda nice to see someone here.”

“It doesn’t look like it’s gone unused.” I shook my head a little, frowning in confusion. “The pantry’s fully stocked.”

He lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “Habit. Juliet loved to cook, so I always made sure she had everything she needed. First thing I did when I got back to town.”

“Was she a good cook?” I asked, noting the shadow of sadness that had passed over his face when he mentioned his dead wife.

He laughed that deep rumble that brought goose bumps to my skin. “No—everything she made tasted like shit.” He lifted the bottle and took a long pull of the amber liquid. “But it was her outlet, especially when she was pissed at me. So I felt I owed it to her to eat it.”

“Well,” I said, “I don’t know that I’m much of a cook either, but I’d be willing to share my hot chocolate with you, if you’d like some.”

His mouth lifted at one corner. “Thanks, doll.”

When I set his mug in front of him, he jerked his chin at it. “So, what’s doin’ with you? You’re practically dead on your feet. Why are you awake already?”

“Nightmare,” I said with a tight smile. “How about you? Why are you awake?”

His answering chuckle was filled with bitterness. “Haven’t been to sleep yet. I have a few nightmares of my own.”

I blew over the edge of my mug and took a tentative sip, then said, “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

This managed to produce a true laugh, dissipating the shadow of sadness in his eyes. “Fair enough.” He jerked his head toward the kitchen door. “Come on.”

He led me into a sunken living room where a fire blazed in the massive hearth, filling the room with soothing warmth and casting it in shadow. I curled up in one corner of the leather sofa, adjusting the edges of Juliet’s robe to cover my knees.

Nicky set his hot chocolate on the coffee table, then dropped down in the opposite corner, the bottle of Scotch propped on his knee. His face wore a dark scowl made darker by the shadows cast by the fire. We sat in silence for several long moments, Nicky lost in his own brooding thoughts as I watched him out of the corner of my eye, wondering if he really had wanted to talk or just needed someone else in the room with him.

I’d polished off the last of the hot chocolate and was just rising to my feet, intent on excusing myself to leave Nicky to his thoughts, when he suddenly said, “So, what’s with all the nightmares? They because of what you saw in that spider’s head?”