I used to find it eerie. Now it just felt inconvenient. Like whenever Mr. Prescott or one of his henchmen wasn’t watching you, the house was doing it for them.
Nina didn’t peer back at me again until we were standing in the middle of an empty bedroom. She carefully clicked the door closed and locked it. We both knew it didn’t matter. Whoever we didn’t want getting in had a key anyway.
She shuffled over to the opposite end of the room and slowly started nudging a bookshelf away from the wall. When she flicked her eyes in my direction, I rushed over to help her. By the time we had it far enough to see what was behind it, Nina was lifting a giant tapestry and stepping through a secret door.
She quickly turned around on the threshold, shoved me to the side, and started tugging the bookshelf back into place. Which was a lot easier to do with the metal hooks someone had had the foresight to attach there. She glanced over at me, pushed me forward, and closed the door behind us before pulling a flashlight from her apron and switching it on.
I blinked a few times, my eyes trying to adjust from the total blackness to the bright-yellow hue now lighting up the set of stone stairs in front of us.
Nina tugged on my sleeve, holding onto my shoulder for support, and I slowly made my way down, one slippery step at a time before we found ourselves at the bottom.
“Mr. Prescott has a lot of secrets,” she grumbled, catching her breath and holding on to the closest wall. Nina was only about twenty years older than I was. You wouldn’t know that by looking at her, though. This place had a way of aging you… “But so do we.”
“We?” I repeated. I was half awake and not entirely prepared for whatever secret-society, middle-of-the-night initiation I appeared to be walking myself into—without much of a fight, it seemed.
“Us.” Nina nodded. “And now…you.”
“Why me?”
Nina knew what I was asking her. The question was double-edged.Why me then and why me now?
I should have held some sort of grudge towards the woman for bringing me on, knowing what everyone knew once they got here. I didn’t. I was curious, not angry. Or maybe I was just so angry I was numb.
“Because I knew you wouldn’t leave. Because I knew you would take care of my girls,” she replied simply. Nina only had one daughter, Justine, but she considered all the women who worked hereher girls.
She cursed at a few rocks in her way and then she was walking farther down the long tunnel that appeared to lead to more blackness. Expecting me to follow her, and of course I did.
I peered up at the stone ceiling above us, at the stone walls on each side of us, at the stretch of pitch blackness in front of us. “Where are we?” I asked.
“Under Prescott Estates,” she answered like it was obvious. She was right, but it didn’t make it any less weird.
“Where does it go?”
“Everywhere,” she replied just as cryptically.
We didn’t stop walking until we were climbing up another set of stairs, pushing out of a metal door, and standing in the middle of the woods out back of the estate. I glanced over a shoulder at the large manor behind us, faux candlelight flickering in the windows and the occasional curtain swaying when someone brushed by it.
It was odd to say a house was menacing but Prescott Estates was just that. It seemed to stare at you from a distance, like it knew what happened within its walls and it was cautioning you to stay away or daring you to step closer.
A shiver ran up my spine, and I turned back around. Nina was already headed deeper into the woods. Her steps quick for someone with such little legs.
I caught up to her in two strides. “Where are we going now?” I whispered, afraid my voice would carry in the wind. I tugged my nightgown closer to my chest. If I knew we were taking this excursion outside, I would have grabbed my robe first.
“Over to the old well,” Nina whispered back.
“What’s over by the old well?”
“You’ll see.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CASPER
Just over two weeks, and I was back out in the wild again. Freed from my sterile prison. Smelling the piss and dirt coming off the sidewalk instead of bleach and plastic. Spreading my wings and fluffing my cock feathers as I made my way towards the metal door at the back of the building.
Didn’t take me long to find it. Without Danica’s help, because Miss Mafia Princess told me to fuck off when I called and asked her for directions. Took me even less time to scale the chain-link fence and flip myself into the alleyway that acted as perfect coverage to creep up without security cameras being able to tell the difference between me and the shadows coming off the extended rooftop. Black clothing wasn’t just slimming. It made you virtually invisible at the right angle, while the way I moved made me soundless.
I looked up before scanning the lot from left to right. Couldn’t be sure there even were any cameras out here but couldn’t be not sure either. Truth was, it didn’t really matter. I didn’t care if anyone saw me coming. Cared less if they ran. I’d just have to run faster.
