When the Shadows Fall by Elise Noble
CHAPTER 34 - SKY
AFTER THE DRAMA of Friday morning, the rest of the day was somewhat of an anticlimax. Rune talked me through my classes, and I felt a pang of sorrow when she signed off in the evening. I’d miss her voice when she left. She cracked jokes and told me stories from her own lessons. Ryder was quieter, and Sofia was a lunatic.
I spent the evening with Asher again, although I did go to his apartment via Mrs. Austen’s desk with one of the chocolate bugs. Vanessa seemed almost disappointed when I told her I was fine doing the spy stuff, as she called it, on my own.
Things were a lot more relaxed between Asher and me that night. No difficult conversations, just popcorn, ice cream, and a reasonably good movie. I got a kiss on the forehead, and I was back in my bed by one a.m., which meant I got six hours’ sleep before the shit hit the fan again the next morning. And for once, it wasn’t my fault.
I trooped downstairs a few minutes after seven with Vanessa in tow, only to find a group of girls clustered around a sofa in the living room. Not the Britneys, thank goodness—they’d been keeping a low profile since the shart incident—but one of them was crying.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Hillary’s crush is in the hospital,” a brunette explained. “She’s devastated.”
“Was there an accident?” I hadn’t heard an ambulance, but Asher had turned the volume on the TV up loud to cover the sound of our conversation. Linton Hall had thin walls. He’d already faced questions about our laughter the other night, and he’d had to pretend he was watching a stand-up show.
“No!” a redhead said. “It was totally deliberate.”
“What was deliberate?”
“Celebgossip.com says a masked man broke into his mansion in Malibu and cut off his you-know-what. Then made him eat it!”
“What? Whose house?”
“Brock Keaton’s, of course. Hillary’s been in love with him forever.”
A chill ran through me. Actually, it was more of an iceberg, and it ploughed into my stomach.
“Somebody broke into Brock Keaton’s house and cut off his…”
“His penis,” the brunette whispered. “Why would anyone do such a thing?”
I had a fairly good idea. If I’d had to write a list of who I thought might have done it, that list would’ve had precisely one name on it. Personal time, my ass. I didn’t know whether to kiss his feet or yell at him.
Instead, I traipsed back up the hill to Asher’s shed and dialled. This time, Rafael picked up.
“Good vacation?” I asked.
“It was…satisfying.”
“Let me guess—you went to LA?”
“I don’t think we need to go into the details.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? And how did you even know it was him?”
“Tell you what?”
“You’re an asshole, you know that?”
“Yes.”
“I sent you twenty messages, and you didn’t reply to any of them.”
“Black said everything was under control.”
“That’s not the point.”
Rafael’s voice softened. Just a tiny bit, but it was there. “I’ll call next time.”
Next time? Good grief. But a little of the fight went out of me. Rafael had cut my rapist’s fetid dick off, and if Hillary and her friends were to be believed, he’d also made Brock eat the sorry remains. That motherfucker wouldn’t be able to hurt another girl the way he’d hurt me.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “For everything.”
“How’s the job going?”
“Nate hid the latest batch of bugs in a box of chocolates and my roommate tried to eat them, but apart from that…”
A rare laugh from Rafael. “I’ll see you when you get back.”
“See ya.”
Aaaaand he was gone.
As I walked back down the hill, I tried to sort through the muddle of thoughts in my head. Asher. Rafael. The case. Vanessa. How was Lenny? I missed life at Riverley and its brutal simplicity.
Everything was jumbled.
Which was perhaps why I almost missed him. Almost, but not quite. The waiter from the Grove walked towards me pushing a wheelbarrow, this time dressed in the black cargo pants and maroon polo shirt worn by all the groundsmen. I still had my phone in my hand, and I managed to snap a photo of him.
“You’re not meant to be out here alone,” he said as we passed. Thankfully, there was no spark of recognition in his eyes.
“Sorry. I was with my friend, but she got ahead.”
“Stay together next time.”
I felt like punching the air. All the pieces were finally falling into place.