Page 20 of Diamond in the Rough (The Diamond Trilogy 1)
He flips me onto my back. I land with a thud that knocks the wind out of my lungs. He looms over me. Even in the shadows I can see that much. His eyes glitter. His white teeth are bared. And those hands, those lethal hands wrap around my throat.
“Your name,” he says, his voice hard as the stone beneath me.
“Holland,” I gasp out. “I’m Holland Frank.”
He collapses to his side, as if all the strength spilled out of him. “Fuck,” he mutters. “Sorry, angel. Sorry. Sorry. I almost killed you.”
I don’t know whether he’s talking about just now or hours ago, but it doesn’t really matter. He’s sorry, and he’s the only human comfort I have right now.
“You should rest,” I manage to say.
“Bossy.” He sounds amused. “Of course I’d have a bossy angel of death.”
“A what?”
“Holland Frank. Why does that name sound familiar?”
I’m still stuck on the words bossy angel of death. “I don’t know.”
“You do know. And you have money, you said. Who are you?”
“I’m a children’s book author. Not that I’d expect you to read my books.” Unless he has children. The thought of this man having children is unnerving. Unsettling. They’re too innocent for the likes of him. “And I’m not an angel of death. Nor am I bossy.”
“An author, huh? What’s a book you wrote?”
“It’s not bossy to suggest that an injured man should rest.”
“Something about a fairy.”
That shocks me into silence. For about a second. “Yes, a tooth fairy.”
“Does it teach them to put their teeth under their pillow?”
Of course he would assume that boring, safe old me would write something mundane. My plain clothes and hair didn’t even factor in. He understood how ordinary I am from talking in the dark. Only my books are not ordinary. “Not exactly.”
“Where, then?” It’s almost like he’s teasing me, if he weren’t on the brink of death. “In their dresser drawer? Should they throw it in the trash?”
“It’s not an instruction manual,” I say, my voice sharper than it needs to be.
My voice is always sharper than it needs to be. I’m full of quills that prick anyone who comes near. Even strangers who are trapped with me. Being kidnapped hasn’t softened me any.
I move away from him, gentle as I shift his head to the stone.
He doesn’t protest when I stand and walk, arms outstretched, zombie-like toward the wall. Cold and damp touches my fingertips.
“What is it, then?” he asks.
The book. “A cautionary tale, maybe.”
I feel carefully from as high as I can reach to the pebble-strewn floor. There won’t magically be a window between them, but I can’t stop myself from searching. Maybe there will be a hidden catch or a weakness in the brick.
Probably not, though I’m not ready to resign myself to my capture so quickly. But the existence of North dims my chances. Even injured, he’s stronger than me. More capable of fighting. If this place held him inside, I have little hope of escape.
Thankfully he doesn’t point that out as I shuffle along the wall.
“About brushing your teeth?” he asks.
I shake my head with a rueful smile. It’s enough to make me wonder if he’s deliberately distracting me. Well, maybe so. He doesn’t want a hysterical woman on his hands. And I’m on that knife’s edge to hysteria. I shouldn’t fight a distraction. “It’s not for very small children. It’s young adult. Teenagers mostly. And my tooth fairy isn’t… normal.”
“What’s your tooth fairy like?”
The stone wall ends, giving way to iron bars. I touch each joining with careful fingers. The stone has crumbled a little over time. The bars don’t move an inch, though. “She lives with her family in a castle made of teeth. They’re all tooth fairies, of course. It’s the rule of their kind to take the discarded teeth and stay hidden from humans.”
“A castle made of teeth, huh? A little macabre. I like it.”
“It’s a gleaming white trimmed in yellow, the plaque scrubbed away each evening.”
“Okay, a lot macabre.”
“Everything is made of teeth. Her bed is made of molars. Her chair, incisors. She watches the human world from her windowsill, which is also made of teeth.”
“Do kids have nightmares about teeth after reading your book?”
“Some of them. But kids are tougher than you think. They already imagine things. They already fear them. Sometimes it helps to see them in black-and-white text. It proves you aren’t alone.”
“Okay, so what happens to this tooth fairy?”
“She’s different because she’s interested in humans. While they’re sleeping, she pokes around their rooms, opening drawers and looking through their books.”
“The way you’re looking over the bars right now?”
I feel along each space, as if the answer might be contained in two square feet of air. “Like this, yes. She wants to learn about them, even though it’s forbidden.”
“I could save you some time and tell you there’s no way out.”
