I think she’s too appalled for words.
Thankfully, Mr. Denis Tulane steps into the entryway with his trademark bow. “Good evening, Miss Selah. Master Jude has retired to his room.”
I don’t wait for an invitation.
Urgency has overpowered decorum.
This is Jude’s house anyway, when it comes down to it. So what can Isabel do but move aside with a derisive huff as I let myself in and hurry up the staircase on the left.
His bedroom door is ajar.
I knock softly and poke my head inside.
A fire crackles in the hearth.
“Jude?” I call.
No answer.
I step over the threshold.
His bathroom light is on, the door wide open.
I say his name again.
Still no answer.
So, I take a few more steps and spot him standing in front of his bathroom mirror with his hands splayed atop his vanity. He has AirPods in his ears and he’s dressed in a pair of sweatpants.
Justsweatpants.
I swallow, my attention traveling up his bare back, from the clean taper of his waist to the broad expanse of his shoulders and every perfect line in between. Then my attention shifts to the mirror, and alarm shoots through my extremities. I squeeze my eyes shut, positive it’s a trick, a traumatic flash of memory. But when I look again, it’s still there—that mark.
Spidery tendrils scorched into the skin over his heart. Just like they were when he was dead.
Our eyes meet in the mirror.
He turns around, a blush rising high in his cheeks as he covers the mark with one hand and takes out his AirPods with the other.
We stare at one another for a moment—the room tilting.
“What is that?” I finally ask.
“Nothing,” he says.
Perhaps it is this—such a blatant lie—that gets me moving again. I march into the bathroom and pull his hand away. The sight of it this close up knocks the wind right out of me.
“Selah,” he says.
I shake my head, brushing my fingers over the blackened tendrils—the same ones that appeared on Halloween night after Jude destroyed Seraphina and he died. I look up at him with mybreath in my throat. “How long have these been here?”
“A few days.”
“A few days?” The vague nature of his response has my mind spinning out of control.
“You don’t have to worry,” he says. “I’m taking care of it.”
“How are you taking care of it?”
