Page 95 of Winterveil

“I’ll come downstairs and drag you into bed,” Giselle warned.

That provoked a small, unexpected smile from Klaudia. “Fair enough.”

Giselle began her ascent to the mezzanine. Nadiya followed behind, more slowly, but Julian and Crispin remained below. Julian stepped closer to Klaudia and began to speak to her in low tones, and Giselle wished she had stayed close enough to hear. Admittedly she was very keen to know what Julian’s torture had been. That the billionaire golden boy and prodigal son of one of America’s great dynasties could be brought low by Deckard’s tricks alarmed her to no small degree.

Their room was in the same disarray that they had left it. The blankets were thrown off the beds, sheets tangled and strewn across the floor. Out of some numb, inane instinct, Giselle began to tidy up, shaking out the duvets and folding them neatly on the mattresses.

Nadiya merely watched, as still as a statue.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said, after a moment.

“I know,” said Giselle. “I just want to.” There was something calming about it. She had always done the chores back home.

When she finished, she let her arms drop to her sides. Her nerve endings hummed. In the lamplight, Nadiya’s eyes shone like polished obsidian.

“I’m not sure if Deckard is already listening,” Nadiya said. “But maybe better safe than sorry. . . .”

She glanced toward the record player, cached in the corner and covered by a thick layer of dust. If Deckard wanted them to use it, he could have placed it front and center, Giselle thought bitterly. As it was, she had assumed it was just a piece of set dressing.

But now she approached it, opened the case, and flipped through the records. She was curious to see what music had held up to Deckard’s discerning tastes.

Mostly American classics, it seemed—very patriotic. The covers were faded and bent at the corners. Giselle wondered if records had some particular acoustic quality that better concealed the sounds of illicit conversation, or if Deckard was just too cheap to buy a radio or a set of speakers.

It took her a moment to figure out how to place one of the records on the machine and drop the needle. The dreamlike strains of the Beach Boys’ “All I Wanna Do” filled the room.

When Giselle turned back around, Nadiya was standing closer. Her heart skipped.

“I don’t know how to do this,” Nadiya said quietly. Brokenly.

Giselle was almost too nervous to ask, “Do what?”

Nadiya just let out a soft, tremulous breath. She didn’t speak.

Heart still pattering, Giselle glanced around the room. She caught sight of the silver cross gleaming on Nadiya’s bedside table. A desolating possibility occurred to her.

“Is he your boyfriend?” she blurted out.

Nadiya frowned. “Who?”

“That guy at Valeran. The—the male model. The one you’re always hanging around with.”

“Matteo?” Her brow wrinkled. “No. Definitely not.”

A flush rose to Giselle’s face, half embarrassment and half relief. “Oh,” she said, trying to keep her tone casual. “I just thought—well, you have that cross. . . .”

Comprehension came into Nadiya’s gaze, softening it. “It doesn’t have anything to do with that,” she said. “It’s not the kind of cross you’d see in roadside churches, if you know what I mean.” She paused contemplatively, and then added, “It was my father’s.”

“Oh,” Giselle said again. Her thoughts were racing. “I’m sorry. I—”

There was no silence between their words. The music swirled to fill the space.

“I don’t know how to do this,” Nadiya repeated, in a whisper. “I’m not supposed to do this.”

“I know,” said Giselle. “I’m not supposed to either.” If her silly schoolgirl crush on Bonnie had cost Giselle her family, her freedom, her life as she knew it, what price would she have to pay for this? Danger seemed to hang in the very air.

But she found that she didn’t care. She took a step closer.

So did Nadiya. They were within an arm’s reach of each other now.