Page 45 of The Perfect Guests
“How are you feeling?” I asked her. “Do you feel sick? Do you feel okay?”
Nina glanced over my shoulder toward the door, and I heard light footsteps come in behind me.
“Ah, Beth,” Leonora said. “Back already?” She hesitated, glancing at Nina and back to me. “Is something wrong?”
I shook my head stiffly.
Leonora smiled. “Well, not to worry. You can eat with us, then, after all.” She gestured to the oven. “Would you like me to warm you up a mince pie?”
I shook my head and circled around her, stumbling backward toward the door. “Thanks, no, I’m—did Jonas’s mum ring, while I was out?”
Markus’s voice behind me made me jump. “Stephanie? Yeah, she did, but it wasn’t about you. Why, did you and Jonas have an argument or something?”
All three of them watched me with frowns on their faces.
“No, I—” I raised a trembling hand to my cheek. “Actually, I’m just very tired. I’m going to go and have a...” I made a vague gesture.
“Nap?” Leonora suggested, after a moment of silence. “Don’t you want any lunch?”
“No. Thanks.” I escaped from the room, and none of themfollowed me, but even after I’d shut myself in my bedroom, my skin still prickled from their bemused stares, and I pressed my fingers to my burning cheeks.What must they think of me?
I forced myself to take several deep breaths.
Concentrate on the facts.Nina’s grandfatheriscoming back to Raven Hall tomorrow, for a third visit. Stephanie Blakedidring a little while ago, almost certainly to warn Leonora and Markus about the visit. In which case, Leonorawillask me to pretend to be Nina again. Of course she will. She has no choice.
I am the powerful one in this situation,I tried to insist to myself. But it didn’t feel like it. I sank onto my bed and waited for Leonora to knock.
But when the knock eventually came, I knew straightaway it wasn’t Leonora’s. Nina slipped into my room, and she hovered by my bed, her face painfully, distressingly pale.
“I don’t feel very well,” she whispered. “What’s going on? You’ve got to tell me.”
All those months of worrying, yet I had no idea how I could possibly articulate what my fear was. In the end, I patted the bed and waited for her to sit down beside me, and my heart wouldn’t stop drumming.
“First of all,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper, “I don’t have any answers. And you’re not going to like what I’m going to say. So you can change your mind right now, if you want to, and walk away. I wouldn’t blame you.”
“You’re scaring me, Beth.”
“I’m scared myself. That’s the trouble.”
She thought for a moment. “Okay. You have to tell me. Just say it.”
“You know I don’t want to hurt you?”
She nodded. “Just say it, whatever it is.”
“How many times have you felt sick like this, since I started living here?”
She barely paused. “This is the third time.”
“And what happened the first and second time—who came to visit?”
Her voice was quiet. “My grandfather.”
I swallowed hard and nodded. “Well, Jonas just told me your grandfather’s flying back for a third visit. He’s on his way right now. I’d guess he’s likely to turn up here tomorrow afternoon, if what Jonas says is true.”
“That’s what Stephanie was ringing Mum about?”
I jerked my shoulders stiffly. “That’s what I’m guessing. Jonas said she would.”
