Page 101 of The Lies We Conjure
There’s Auden, apparently fresh from the shower with wet hair and scrubbed skin and eyes too bright for the hour. My heart catches in my chest, my cheeks go hot, and I swear he must be watching them pink in real time because his lips kick up.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
We haven’t talked about how I claimed his hand on our way to the killing grounds. And yet now, his fingers slip into mine. Perhaps there’s something in the past I’m not reading intheirshared, prickly history. Still, this ismypresent. My stomach flips, unsure of what happened between my choice to reach out and now. Unsureof the distance between where we were upon the old ghosts of our “reintroduction” and now.
He’s healed me.
Lied for me.
Weathered a knife attack with me.
Found relics with me.
And now, we’ve built to this. Whomever we were before is not who we are now, navigating this space and time, the cold, dark hour before the dawn of the day when we must complete Ursula’s tasks or accept that forever for us is within these grounds, within these crumbling walls.
Auden winds us down the hall and to the right, down another hall. And maybe it’s the movement, but my brain finally unsticks and jogs up to meet us, words forming on my tongue as I realize he’s taking me deeper into Ursula’s maze of rooms.
“Are you planning to show me a way out of this mess? A secret portal, perhaps? Because, if so, that probably would best be shared with the group.”
He arches a brow toward his soft brown hair, shiny and curling at the ends. “And shared much earlier. But no. What I’m about to share is just for you, Lavinia Blackgate.”
I force myself to smile at the name. “What—”
His hand on the small of my back ends my question. Auden maneuvers us left, and through a door that had been previously closed.
The walls in here are the same muted burgundy of a dried rose petal, cracks running like marble veins beneath the plaster as gas sconces reflect moodily off its dark complexion. Chaise lounges in various gilded configurations run a rough rectangle around the room, a large, handwoven rug at the center, atop the plush carpeting. It smells of ink, flame, and steeped Earl Grey.
And there, in stacks and baskets along the floor, are dozens—hundreds—of paperback mysteries, overflowing like bushels of apples in autumn. I recognize at least a dozen titles from my bookseller life in the stacks at Agatha’s.
“You… were going to share this room with me?” I ask, a little sheepish and very confused.
My thoughts don’t clear as Auden leaves my side to retrieve something from a small table by the door. A jar… of peanut butter? Two silver spoons peek out over the top like bunny ears.
“The peanut butter. I find it to be restorative late at night.” He smirks, but gestures to our surroundings and meets me in the middle of the rug. “Though you’re welcome to share the room too. It’s technically the sewing room, but I’m fairly certain Ursula never actually sewed a day in her life. My best educated guess is she hid away in here with her tea and read paperbacks when no one was looking.”
This woman, who orchestrated the death of Marcos Blackgate out of grief for her children’s choices, who put us in the impossible position we’re in now, who was so very powerful… and yet still human. With stories, a warm mug, and a need to get away from it all.
A knot of anguish balls in my throat.
I accept a spoon, sit on the floor, back to a chaise, and inspect one of the paperbacks on top of the nearest pile—Agatha Christie’sAnd Then There Were None.
I hope that’s not the way our story ends tomorrow—all dead, save the killer.
Auden joins me on the floor, unscrews the cap, rips off the safety seal, and offers me the first glorious spoonful of creamy, perfectly smooth peanut butter.
I blink at him. Falling back into my role of Lavinia, spelled to forget. “Did we—is this something we’ve done before?”
A smile plays at his mouth. It’s a good mouth. Hard to deny no matter who you are. “No, I didn’t learn the beauty of eating peanut butter straight from the jar until boarding school.”
With that, Auden serves himself his own heaping spoonful. We’re quiet for a few minutes. His shoulder nudges mine, the skin warm and more inviting than I’d like to admit for how stressful this night has been. How can this feel so comfortable when the walls are literally crumbling around us?
It occurs to me that the lavender and mint I’m smelling must be the shampoo his grandmother used, yet Auden wears it like his own skin, his fine features, his strong body, and poetic mind.
Mostly to stop thinking about his nearness, I muse, “I don’t know how we’re supposed to sleep. I don’t think I can.”
Auden presses a thumb to his full bottom lip, and I find a frayed thread in the chaise across from us to accept all of my scattered attention so I don’t stare at his mouth. “What is the thing you’re worried most about?”
The uncertainty. What Hector will do. What Marsyas has planned.
