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When he opened one of the doors, the light that flooded in blinded her, but as she went over to him, her retina recovery was fast—and as soon as she stepped out, she checked her clothes situation.
Well, what do you know. Everything was front-facing, and properly arranged on her body.
Walking side by side, they went all the way down the hall, and at the end, he stepped ahead and opened their bedroom door for her.
“I’m going to take a shower,” she said. “Care to join—”
She stopped as she caught him making a discreetgrab for the doorjamb to catch his balance. After the last six months, he’d gotten good at hiding any lulls in his energy level, but she knew his tricks well.
“You need to go warm the bed.” She forced a smile. “I won’t be long.”
Daniel nodded and cleared his throat. “I’m good with that. And don’t be long.”
As he wagged an eyebrow, she thought that maybe, this once, she’d misjudged him. Maybe he was okay and she was merely looking to find weakness because it terrified her.
“I’ll just shower,” she repeated for no good reason.
Heading for the bathroom, she was almost inside the marble enclave when she glanced back—and froze where she was. Daniel was inching over to the bed, his face tight with pain—or maybe he was having trouble breathing? And when he got to the edge of the mattress, the way he gingerly turned himself around and slowly lowered his body down made her chest ache.
As he stretched out and put his head on the pillow, his eyes closed and he released a long breath. The cough at the end was like a curse.
She knew she should turn away so he didn’t catch her staring at him with what was undoubtedly a worried expression. Except he didn’t look at her.
He just lay there, breathing.
“Daniel…?”
His lids whipped open. “Wha—what, are you all right? Lydia—”
All of a sudden, he struggled to sit up, his hands paddling at the duvet, his face going pale as he started to pant and try to catch his breath.
Then everything went haywire. The coughing spell came on him in a series of full-body spasms, like he had been holding it in and couldn’t control the reflex any longer.
The blood went everywhere, speckling his gray sweatshirt, the splatter so dark against the fibers it was as if the void back in that library was something he had taken down into his damaged lungs—and had to expel.
“Daniel.”
THIRTY-THREE
LONG AFTER NIGHTclaimed the Adirondack Mountains, Xhex went to a set of double doors that had been handmade and set in their frame in 1874. Behind her, a crackling fire set on maple logs threw out heat not just from its flames, but from the massive lake stone hearth that ran up half the entire wall of the great room. There were lamps throwing out calming light in the corners, including one that had a taxidermied porcupine posed on a stump as a base, and another that was made out of a woven basket. There was also an old desk with a strip of Persian rug as a blotter, and a collection of antique glassware gleaming on shelves that were mounted around a center window of leaded panes.
Not that she could see out of the hand-blown panes. Heavy velvet draping covered every portal to the outdoors.
The Victorian-era Great Camp had been builtby humans hell-bent on escaping the summer heat in New York City—and also because it had beende rigueurfor a certain class to own wilderness getaways. She had heard the stories from Rehv, about how there had been steamboats that came up from the base of the long, thin lake, carrying people and supplies to their recreational locations, and before that, the waterway had been one of the strategic military routes used by the French and the British during the battles for control in the mid-eighteen hundreds.
As she threw her back into the effort of opening things, she braced herself for the cold—and that was a smart move. The air was so dry and frigid that her sinuses burned and she hurried to put on gloves even before she re-closed the heavy painted panels to keep in the heat.
The porch that faced the lake was a good forty or fifty feet long, and in the warmer season, it was furnished with wicker seating areas. Now the expanse was bare of everything: chairs, tables, and even that plastic goose lamp that glowed like a ghost.
There had been good times on this porch, she thought… back when she and John Matthew, and some of the other Brothers, would come up here and hang out with Phury, Cormia, and the Chosen. She’d particularly liked it when Zsadist hadbrought his guitar and sung during the moonlit August nights.
“Voice like an angel,” she murmured.
As she tried to remember her favorite tune, the one that he always closed with… something by Sting? Or was it U2?… those evenings seemed so far away that it was as if they were stories told to her by someone else as opposed to something she had lived.
How had everything come to this? she wondered. Turning in her weapons. Taking herself out of Caldwell for the safety of others.
“Fucking mess.”
