Page 64 of Where the Snakes Sleep

Meanwhile, I feel like I’m going to vomit. Every window, every shadowed corner suddenly feels exposed. I wrap my arms around myself.

Camille steps closer, voice gentler. “You are not staying here alone tonight.”

A reflexive protest leaps to my lips. “I can—” Then I stop. I realize I don’t want to. The shame of admitting it flares hotter than my fear. I don’t want to be alone in this cottage tonight. I turn away before he can read the relief stalking across my face. “Fine,” I mutter. “One night.”

13

Ryan

“One night,” I repeat, because apparently if I say it enough times, the universe will be forced to respect the terms and conditions.

Camille regards me with the expression of a man who has already heard the statement, understood it perfectly, and sees absolutely no reason for me to still be talking.

“Yes.”

“I mean it.”

“I gathered.”

“I’m not moving in or anything.”

“I have not asked you to.”

“And I’m sleeping in a guest room.”

That finally earns me the slightest movement of one eyebrow. “That is fine.”

The next half hour passes in the kind of uncomfortable administrative haze that makes everything feel simultaneously more serious and less real. The officers take photographs, ask me to walk through the cottage again and identify anything that seems disturbed, write things down, ask about contractors, previous visitors, whether anyone else has keys, whether I have enemies, which feels like an offensively dramatic question until I realize I genuinely have no idea how to answer it anymore.

A month ago, I would have laughed.

Now I glance at Camille.

He is standing slightly apart from the officers, not quite watching me, not quite not watching me, and I have the sudden irrational thought that I cannot tell, even now, whether his being here is the problem or the solution.

“I don’t think so,” I tell the officer.

Camille says nothing.

That somehow manages to feel like an answer.

By the time they finally leave, afternoon light has begun slanting through the western windows, turning dust suspended in the sitting room into drifting flecks of gold. The cottage looks deceptively normal again once the uniforms disappear through the door, which might be the worst part of all of it. There should be some obvious scar left behind, something dramatic enough to match the violation in my chest, but there isn’t. There is only the light, and the dust, and Camille standing in my sitting room, and the fact that I called him before I called anyone else, and the fact that I am still not sure what that means, and the fact that I’m not sure I want to find out.

Camille remains where he is while I wander into the hall, and although he says nothing, I can feel him watching me with the patient, unnerving focus he usually reserves for his snakes.

“I need clothes,” I say.

“Then pack clothes.”

I roll my eyes. “Wow. Excellent insight, Camille. Thank you so much.”

“You seem distressed. I thought simple instructions might be useful.”

“I’m not distressed.”

“Hm.”

I tighten my jaw. “I’m not.”