The night they were supposed to run away together, he knew without a shadow of a doubt that his curse would’ve been broken.
Instead, she’d been cursed, and in a place that was supposed to protect mortals and norms from things like that.
Flo approached the hallway, and when she walked down it, she glowed in the darkness, like a golden flame reverberating off the wall. She wasn’t a ghoul, because she didn’t have red eyes or fangs, but she was something that was caught between dead and undead.
He took a deep breath and followed her through the narrow chamber. His skin tingled.
It was hard to walk through here and he couldn’t float at all. It was almost like he was existing outside the boundary of his own curse, but amplified. He followed her down a decline, through a long tunnel, and he knew that they were going underground. It made sense to have a speakeasy under the foundation of the house, or at least a place to funnel the illegal booze during the Prohibition era.
There was a large wall of stone and iron. Flo spun around. “It’s in here. This is where I live. Although, I don’t think I’m actually living.”
“I can’t float through the wall with you,” Sven explained. “The iron.”
“The iron?”
He nodded. “But then again, if this was built as a vault or something, there has to be a way for people to get in. Humans usually can’t dissipate through walls like we can.”
“I don’t know, but I’ve never really looked at this place closely before. It was just an escape and a place I felt safe. For whatever reason, I am tied to this spot.”
Sven approached the wall. It looked as solid as ever. Of course, he never really spent a whole lot of time down here looking for a way in. He explored it briefly, then got out of there.
“There’s a break in the stone,” Flo pointed out.
“So there is.” He found a small crack. In it was a lever and he pulled it. The sound of rusty gears grinding and then dust blooming made him jump back as the stone and iron door slowly slid open, like a barn door.
There was no light in the abandoned room, but Flo illuminated the darkness. It was dusty. There was a small corner where he could see rumpled, tattered blankets and a few books scattered. The floor was dirt, but there were remnants of an old rug that was a rotting away. On the wall were scratches carved as if she were counting the days. It looked like a miserable prison. Flo was wringing her hands and glancing around.
A lump formed in his throat.
I should’ve protected her from this.
“This is where you’ve been?” he asked, finally finding his voice.
“Well, yes. I mean, I have free range of the whole house. I’m not always here, but this place pulls me back. No one ever followed me here, but now I guess I understand why, with the whole iron thing.”
Sven ran his fingers over the scratches she made in the wall. “You were counting days.”
Flo nodded. “I did.”
All he wanted to do was comfort her, but if he pulled her into his arms right now, he thought she’d panic. It tore at his soul seeing how she’d lived in this squalor for so long. “Well, you won’t have to stay here a night longer if you don’t want to.”
Flo looked confused. “What do you mean?”
“I have an apartment at the top of this house. There’s a room that was yours. I didn’t transform it into a guest room. It can be yours again.”
“Mine?” Flo worried her bottom lip. “I don’t remember a room being mine.”
“There were some of your belongings left behind and I saved them, the best I could.”
Because it had been a way to hold on to her.
“What happened to my family? I know they’ve all passed on from old age, but when did this home become abandoned? I remember people here, sort of, and then nothing, but I don’t remember why.”
Sven took a deep breath. “Well, when Prohibition lifted, your father didn’t really make much more illegal money. He had some gambling issues and people in this town stopped trusting him, especially after your disappearance. Your sister Petunia married and moved away. Your brother ran this as a funeral home, but he always had a problem with gambling and paying his taxes—like father, like son. He did go off to war, but never came home. Eventually, the bank foreclosed, but no one wanted a haunted house and it was boarded up. I guess the state was tired of the property just sitting there, and after the Great Revelation, it took some time for Magnus and I to be accepted. When this house went up for sale, about five years ago, we bought it. We’ve been slowly repairing it so that we could open this business.”
“Well, I’m glad you both were able to buy it. I should be sad about my family, I suppose, but is it bad that I’m sadder that youseem so upset about where I’ve been living this last century. Is it bad?”
“No. It’s the state of this place. It’s that I couldn’t save you.”
