Page 39 of Irrevocably

A gust of wind makes my curtains flutter and I realise I’ve left my window open, and I’m cold. So, I slip out of bed and close my window, firmly drawing the curtains over the glass. Then I find my pyjama bottoms on the floor and pull them on. The top is toast with all the buttons gone, so I throw a T-shirt on over the top. The fabric rubs against my exquisitely sensitive nipples, and the pleasure/pain makes my breath catch. Maybe a knife won’t be enough for me anymore, not after that. Maybe I’ll need him, too.

I go back to my bed and try to sleep, but I can’t. My brain is too full of what happened, my body wired and jumpy. So, I turn the light back on and sit up, breathing fast, the back of my neck prickling.

It feels as if he’s watching me, as if he’s still here, somewhere. His presence a weight that I can’t get rid of.

I move restlessly out of bed, to the window again, looking out into the darkness. But it’s late and there’s no one on the street. No one in our yard. The feeling lingers, though, and I turn, staring around my room, consumed with the bone-deep certainty that somehow he’s here. Somehow, he’s watching me.

It’s likely my overactive imagination, but I can’t get rid of the feeling, and before I know what I’m doing, I’m examining every inch of my bedroom, looking for God knows what. And that’s when I find it, up in one corner, near a poster of Florence and the Machine. A tiny camera. It’s so small it fits in the palm of my hand.

Someone really has been watching me.

I’m cold with shock, but also there’s a hard certainty inside me. Lucien put this in here, I’m sure of it. It can’t be just because he wanted to watch me, it can’t. He wanted that information about Dad, so maybe he put cameras elsewhere to monitor us. Maybe there are more.

I leap off my bed, fling open the door to my bedroom, and start working the house over systematically, going from room to room, hunting. Pulling pictures from walls, examining the light shades, going over the curtain rails, searching through knick-knacks. There’s a camera in the living room, the front hallway, the stairs and then in the hall upstairs. I don’t find any in the bathrooms – which is a mercy – though there’s probably one in Dad’s bedroom.

After I’ve turned the house upside down to find them, I rip them all out, absolutely fucking furious at the blatant invasion of my privacy, before going back upstairs to the one in my bedroom. Of course, the angle of the camera gives him a prime view of my bed, and my gut clenches.

He’ll have seen me cutting myself and he’s probably now got a recording of us having sex.

I’m about to rip it out in a fury, when a sudden thought occurs to me. If he’s watching now, he’ll have realised that I’ve found all his cameras and taken them out. And no doubt he’ll be expecting me to take this one out, too, but what if I didn’t? What if I left it there? And what if I used it to screw with him the way he’s been screwing with me?

I stare at the camera as the idea coalesces. He’s watched me dress, watched me undress, watched me sleep, watched me do all the things I normally do without knowing he was watching. But now I know. And he knows that I know. Which means he’ll understand that from now on, anything I do in here will only be what I want him to see. It’s a loss of control, a loss of power, for him at least.

But not for me.

I leave it there. He can see me whenever I want him to, but if I don’t want him to see me, he won’t.

Will he be watching now? Now, you’re going to give him what he wanted anyway?

Oh, he’s watching. I can feel it. It’s the prickle along the back of my neck, the pressure in the air. How long has he been doing this? How long has he been silently observing everything I do?

I should be cold, and scared, because this is scary stuff and he’s a scary, scary man, and yeah, there’s fear. But also, weirdly, satisfaction. I stole his knife and now I’ve found his cameras. And yes, I’ll talk to my father, I’ll have that conversation, and not because he wants the information, but because I do. I need to know what’s happening in Blackwater, and how Wolf and my father are involved, and what giving that information to Lucien means.

“Hey,” I say, looking into the camera lens. “If you’re wondering, I’ve got your knife. Oh, and I found all your little spy cameras, too. I took them all out, but I think I’ll leave this one here.” I smile. “Enjoy the show.”

Then I turn off the light and crawl into bed. The sheets smell of sex and Lucien’s dark spice, and I ache in places I didn’t know I could ache in. I’m also positive that I won’t sleep, but I do.

My last thought before I finally fall into unconsciousness is that I’m glad I didn’t shower, because now I get to smell him on my skin.

Chapter Twenty

LUCIEN

I’ve been out hunting all day and I’m just finishing up when Lazarus texts me that Thea has brought us a “present” and it’s in the basement.

When I get home, I push open the basement door and walk down the concrete steps, the sounds of someone’s harsh breathing echoing off the cinderblock walls.

A man is tied to a chair in the middle the floor, and he’s the one making all the noise. Blood is trickling from his mouth, and beneath a fall of lank, dark hair, a bruise is showing on his forehead. He’s in jeans and the cut he’s wearing makes it obvious who he is.

Lazarus looks up from his stance by the chair and nods as I approach.

“Found yourself a Hellhound, I see,” I say, strolling over to him.

“Thea got impatient with her plant,” Lazarus says. “So, she decided to handle it herself. Brought him in so I could give him a little incentive.”

I make a show of glancing around the empty room. “She doesn’t want to help?”

“No.” Lazarus looks down at the man in the chair. “She was more interested in having a bubble bath.”