85

“ W hat’s the plan?” I asked, coming up behind them, hunched over a map on the table at the main entrance to the Manor.

“We’ve got an hour to get ready for whatever the hell might be trapped down there.” Wes shrugged.

“It could be anything. As far as we know that door has been closed since Agatha died,” Clay explained, rolling up his shirt sleeves and fixing the buttons before tucking them into his pants. “It could be nothing.”

“We have nothing else,” Wes said.

“It’s worth looking at,” I added, and Clay looked back at me with a tight nod.

“Let’s get moving then. I want to be ready.” Clay collected himself.

Wes and I grabbed what we could from the collection we had inside the parlor, piled in like an armory: guns, rock salt bullets, iron, and more. He looked like he wanted to say something but every time he opened his mouth, nothing came out.

“What?” I finally said, throwing a duffle bag to the floor staring at him. I set my gun on the mantel and stripped from my flimsy shirt, tossing it across the room to replace it with one that didn’t smell so much like Florence.

The knowledge that she was upstairs alone was distracting enough .

“Are you sure you’re ready?” He asked me.

“If this is about the vampire nest, I already apologized. I was off my game that day and I’ll never let it slip again.” I pulled my arms through the long sleeved top and let it settle where my jeans hung on my hips.

“It’s not about the nest, Koen. And that wasn’t your fault. ” Wes stepped forward. “It’s about you.”

“I don’t need a dad talk right now. I’m not a kid anymore, Wes.” I brushed him off. “And fighting got us into trouble last time. If you wanna yell at me, do it later.”

“Stop, I’m not trying to fight with you!” he exclaimed exasperatedly as I scooped my gun from the mantle. “I need to make sure that your head is in the right place before we do this. I can’t lose you, Koen.”

“You aren’t going to.” I looked back at him. “You’re so worried that I’m going to end up like Wyatt, but I’ve never been him.” I stepped back.

“Lately, the lines are blurred.” The hurt was evident on Wes’s face, the fear gripping most of his rational thinking.

“No, they aren’t,” I argued. “What's blurred is your memory of Wyatt. Up until your parents died, all they talked about was how reckless and stupid he was, but you never did. You always looked up to him because he wasn’t like that! Your dad was a cold bastard, mean and tough. He didn’t understand love.” I shook my head.

“Wyatt was brave and he loved you so much. It’s not the fear of me being reckless and stupid that has you all wound up; it's the fear that maybe you loved me a little too hard and that you gave me the ability to love the way Wyatt did.”

“A heart too big for my chest,” I said to him, echoing what Florence had said earlier. “But it’s not unprotected the way Wyatt’s had been. From everything I know about him Wyatt didn’t understand love. He was just looking for human connection, for someone to love him back the way your parents didn’t.”

Wes didn’t move. He just watched and listened as I took another step closer.

“But I had that growing up. I’ve always had you, and I have Clay,” I argued. “I understand the risks of loving and losing because you did your job and taught me them. I know love because I had you, and I had Clay,” I repeated so he understood.

He swallowed, his hand wrapping tightly around the bag strap on his shoulder.

“Don’t strip what I know, what you’ve taught from me, just because you’re scared,” I said.

“I’m not scared,” he bit.

“You are. You’re just too prideful to admit it.” I scoffed. “You’re scared to lose me, you’re scared to lose Clay, and you’re fucking terrified to lose Florence.”

“I’m not a punching bag, Koen,” he huffed.

The conversation made him uncomfortable and his shoulders rolled beneath his tartan shirt as his grip adjusted on his gun.

“I’m not throwing punches.” A tight, hollow laugh left my throat. “I’m just telling you the truth. You don’t want to believe it but she’s gotten under your skin just like ours. It’s alright to want. It’s alright to love .”

I had struck a nerve. I could see how his heavy brow line pinched together when I spoke about her but he’d never admit it, even though he didn’t hide it well. He may love her differently, in his confused way, but the love was there.

“Don’t be ashamed to take what you need,” I said. “You’ve spent your whole life taking care of us, Wes.” I shrugged. “Let Florence be what you need.”

“There’s too much risk in that,” Wes said.

“Risk?” I laughed, “What are you risking?”

“Our family,” he answered.

I stepped forward again, smiling because I finally got through to him. “I think you and I both know she is family now.”

He stared at me for a long moment, jaw ticking as he realized that Florence was worth whatever risk he was willing to take for us. He was willing to take it for her now as well.

“For our family,” I said, tapping the barrel of my gun against his with a goofy grin.

“Just, please, be careful,” he said tightly.

Clay was waiting for us in the hall when we returned, his eyes passing over us warily as we approached. “Everything alright?” He asked, pulling off his glasses and stuffing them in his pocket.

I would let Wes answer that question for himself, but for the first time in a while, I truly was alright. I had gotten out all the things that had been bottled up inside me that needed to be said. He was still on edge. I couldn’t control how he felt or what he did but I had done my best to comfort his concerns.

“Yeah, we’re fine,” he choked out through tight lips as he brushed past me .

“Convincing,” Clay grunted and stepped out of his way, scooping his gun from the table and shoving it in his pants before following. “Right,” he called out when Wes went to the left.

Wes stopped, turning to look at us following him, and arched a brow. “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” Clay said.

So Wes went right. Down the hall a few meters was a door we’d all seen a handful of times, but never all together and never like that. It was different from the rest. It looked older than old, it seemed ancient. Wes pushed on it, but it remained solid and made a sturdy sound.

“You could have tried the doorknob,” I laughed, when he grunted from the impact.

“I hate this fucking place,” Wes growled and moved out of the way.

I wrapped my fingers around the knob, rusty against my palm, and pushed with my shoulder to budge the old door open. It popped, and the smell that erupted was nasty enough for us all to back away, coughing with our arms over our noses and mouths.

“Wow.” Clay blinked and scrunched his nose, no doubt trying to clear the sour smell from it. “Whatever is down there should have decomposed years ago.”

“Well, it hasn’t,” Wes clipped. “Stay put. We're going to need gloves.”

Clay nodded. “Oh, and flashlights,” he called after Wes, but he was already out of earshot. “Wait for us,” he warned me, and he ran off.

“I have one…” I flicked my eyebrows up in annoyance. “Time to shake out of this rust, Koen. No more being afraid to screw up.” I hyped myself up. Waiting for a moment as they disappeared around the corner before hauling my shirt up over my nose and slipping through the crack in the door frame.

I pulled my flashlight from my back pocket and it flickered on with my touch. Using my hunting knife, I wedged the blade between the door and floor into the wooden stairs to hold it open as best I could. The stairs down were steep but there was only one set and it was a straight shot to the bottom.

Taking them one at a time, I raised my gun and held it against my flashlight as I went. The smell worsened as I trudged downward and the darkness seemed to grow thicker with my descent. I swept the light from left to right, checking my surroundings as I stepped off the final stair.

The cellar wasn’t small. It looked like it went back for yards in every direction. Long tunnels engulfed in pitch-black shadows that made me uncomfortable staring at them for too long.

“If anything is coming to get me, it’ll be from that.” I scowled, flicking the flashlight around some more. Long rows of rickety wooden shelving housed dusty jars filled with moldy food and rusted tin cans, dented and kicked around on the shelves like someone had been down here looking through them. “Rats.” I shrugged, ignoring the clear fact that Orchid Manor had no rats. Anything to feel better about the current situation. “It was probably just rats.”

The entire cellar was dirt and brick, looking nothing like the pristine gothic upper floors of the Manor. It was strange that the house had let this rot in the way it had but Clay would have answers. Or, at the very least, it would give him more questions.

“What the hell is taking them so long?” I mumbled. Turning back to the stairs, my foot slipped through something wet. I sighed and turned my flashlight to my feet. Mud coated the white of my shoe, but also… “Is that blood?” I whispered and knelt to look at the pool of liquid before shining my flashlight around the ground.

There was something… breathing, not five feet from where I stood, and it made my stomach flip as I moved toward what looked like a massive mound of earth and flesh—arms, vines, legs, soil, hair, and flowers. There was more than one body collapsed and rotting. I gagged as my eyes started to water from the smell and stepped closer. “What the hell…”

The Manor swelled, air blowing through the cellar and whipping up the stairs. The sound pierced my ears as it howled through the tiny channel to the top. The wind died without warning, sucking all the sound from the cellar as the door at the top of the stairs slammed violently shut.