Page 44 of Scarred By Sin

He slowly crouched and scooped up the phone, not taking his gaze off Gwenyth. He couldn’t seem to bring his heart rate down. How was it that none of the others found this woman terrifying?

“Zoey,” Bit managed to say after putting the phone back against his ear. “Um, I’ll call you back.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Yep. Everything’s great. Hunky-dory.”

He ended the call before she could ask a follow-up question and slid the phone into his back pocket. He gradually closed the refrigerator door, and the seal made a soft sucking sound as it shut, loud enough in the quiet kitchen to make him flinch. Gwenyth was still standing in the same spot. She hadn’t moved an inch, and the kitchen was suddenly considerably smaller than it had been thirty seconds ago.

Bit cleared his throat.

Brook had managed to have entire conversations with Gwenyth on the staircase and in her bedroom. Sylvie had observed her from the dining room without incident. Even Theo had been in the same foyer with Gwenyth during the Dale confrontation. If the rest of the team could interact with this woman without breaking a sweat, then so could he.

He did his best to smile.

“I didn’t see you there.”

Gwenyth said nothing.

Bit gestured toward the second pizza box on the counter, the one with three remaining slices of cheese that no one had claimed. The lid was still open, the grease stains on the cardboard catching the overhead light.

“Feel free to have some. There’s plenty.”

Again, nothing but silence.

He’d take Zoey’s type of silence any day.

His palms suddenly became damp, and he wiped them on his shirt. The kitchen clock ticked from the wall across the room, each second landing heavier than it had any right to. The refrigerator hummed behind him with the low, persistent drone of an appliance that had been running since before he was born. And somewhere behind him, down the hall and in the dining room, Brook said something to Theo that Bit couldn’t make out, and he found himself wishing very badly that she would say it louder.

Then Gwenyth tilted her head.

The movement was sudden, the kind of sharp, birdlike motion that preceded absolutely nothing good in Bit’s experience. He startled and took a full step backward, his hip catching the edge of the counter hard enough to rattle the dish rack in the sink.

“I, uh, really need to get back to work,” Bit muttered, reaching for his plate. His fingers closed around the rim, and he took a step toward the hallway that led to the dining room.

“Do you have my medication?”

Bit stopped. Gwenyth’s voice was flat and carried the same detached quality he’d heard the first time she’d spoken to him, when she’d inquired the same question in the foyer days ago.

“No, ma’am. I don’t.”

“Owen usually gives it to you.”

“I haven’t met Owen. I mean, I don’t know him personally.”

Gwenyth’s brow creased, and for the first time since she’d materialized in the doorway, her expression changed. The blankness gave way to something closer to confusion.

“I need my medication,” Gwenyth said with persistence. “Otherwise…”

She didn’t finish the sentence.

The implication hung in the air between them, trailing off into a silence that Bit’s imagination was more than happy to fill. Otherwise, what?

Otherwise, she’d have some type of episode?

Otherwise, she’d wander the hallways at night?

Otherwise, the woman standing four feet away from him in a gray cardigan would do something that the medication was supposed to prevent?