Satisfied he wasn’t planning to wake up and accuse me of conspiring with imagined figures, I rolled onto my belly, hooked one hand to the underside of the bed, and hoisted myself over the edge toward the ground—lifting the bed skirt to search beneath the mattress. The blood rushed into my skull in this half upside-down position, making my eyes want to pop. But I had to find that apple. The only gold things under the bed, though, were the intricately-weaved letters on the spine of the book Petey showed me last month: Aide-Memoire de l’Auress.
Auress? I sat up again, frowning. I’d heard that word somewhere before. But couldn’t place my finger on it. Not that it mattered right now anyway. The apple was gone, as if it had never been in my hand in the first place. Yet, I could still feel the chill of Eve’s skin.
Maybe it was a dream. Maybe not. But one thing was for sure: that apple held some kind of key to some kind of secret Eve wanted me to know. I’d looked at it many times—spun it around in my fingertips, just as Eve had, but I’d never seen a keyhole there before. What did it all mean?
I threw the covers back, my nightdress unravelling in layers of silk around my feet as I wandered over to the fireplace, briefly glancing back to see if I woke David. He didn’t wake, not even when the door to the secret passage squeaked fiercely, as if it’d not been opened in a hundred years.
Cobwebs broke across my nose and throat as I walked the dark steps downward, placing my toes gently to each one in case it caved under my weight. Normally, in these situations, I’d tell myself not to be scared, that silly things like ghosts and vampires didn’t exist but, for some reason, I just couldn’t take my word for it.
I reached the base and stood for a moment in the dusty darkness, considering turning back and at least getting a lantern. There was no light in that room, and the dawn was still a good hour or so away. But, if I went back upstairs and David caught me sneaking around, I’d have to either justify my mission or come up with some lie. And there had been enough lies between us lately. Enough that neither of my two options was all that appealing. So, I pushed the door open, cringing as the groaning hinges screeched their protest in an echo through the tunnel for all who may be waking in the manor to hear.
“Ara?”
My quick steps halted immediately, and the figure sitting on the edge of Eve’s bed resolved itself into a man, his elbows on his knees, holding something rag-like in his hands. “Jase?”
“Hey, Ara.” He looked up from the floor between his feet, offering a weak smile.
“Hey, what are you doing in here?” I walked over, letting the dense relief swim through my limbs and relax them.
“I like to come here to think.”
“Why here?” I motioned around the dusty space—its ancient fabrics and trinkets making it look like a haunted house. “It’s so eerie.”
“Same reason you came down here, I guess.”
I frowned at him.
“It’s a secret. No one in the world can find you here unless they know about this room.”
“So you wanted total privacy?”
He slowly cast his gaze to the floor again. “Something like that.”
“Then, I guess that means you heard about David's little suicide mission?” I swung around the bedpost and came to rest on the mattress beside Jase, stirring up a dust cloud as I landed.
“Yeah.”
“What do you think? I mean—” I cleared my throat. “How do you feel about it?”
He stood, dumping the thing he was holding on the chair as he passed it. “Like cutting a hole in my gut to drain out all the guilt, all the pain, all the fear.”
“Jase?” I stood too. “I'm so sorry.”
He nodded to himself. “Growing up, we . . . we’d fight. We’d play pranks on each other and, sometimes, we’d do things brothers really shouldn't do—nasty things. But I always loved him, Ara. I've always known he’d be there after to make up with or punch in the arm every day for a year until we got over whatever little feud it was we had at the time. And I was okay with that—it was how we were. But. . .” He sat down in the chair on top of what he’d just thrown there. “I can't even imagine him not being here. I can't comprehend the idea that my brother will be gone . . . for forever.”
I wandered over and squatted before him, resting my hand gently over his. “I won't let this happen, Jase. I swear. I will find some way to stop him.”
“How, Ara?” He stood, brushing past me. “You know what he’s like. I saw the argument you had.”
“You saw that?” I spun on the balls of my toes to watch him.
He tapped his temple.
“Oh.” I got to my feet slowly.
“It’s over,” he said, defeated. “I tried. I’ve tried so many things to—” He stopped on a break in his voice. “But nothing worked. I'm sorry. He’s going to die.”
“I can’t accept that, Jase.”
“It’s too bad,” he said kindly. “He won’t wait for you to accept it, Ara. It is what it is.”
“Why won't he help me help him?” I said, breaking to tears on the last word. “I thought by coming to him, by getting it all out in the open, maybe we could change things, maybe we could work together—do something.”
“I know. And it was the right thing to do, but. . .”
“But, it didn't work. He doesn't care. It’s like he wants to die.”
“Or maybe he’s just already accepted it.”
“Hmpf. Easy for some,” I muttered, wiping my nose.
“No. It’s not. Don’t you see, Ara? It’s not that he doesn't care or that he wants to die, but that it’s taken him so long to accept his fate that he’s worried it’s all gonna come undone with one word of hope, and then he’s going to lose all that again when whatever plan you had fails.”
I swiped a tear from the very tip of my nose. “I get that. I do. I really understand what he's gone through to cope with what he has to do, but I don't care. I just. . .”
“I know.”
“You know what?”
“I know what will happen to you when he’s gone?”
“What do you mean?”
“Ask yourself this,” Jase said, stopping in front of me. “What does it mean to you? What will your life be when he’s no longer in it?”
“Nothing. Empty,” I answered quickly.