Page 64 of Housesitter

“Huh. Well, it was worth a try,” he said. Then he shrugged and set the contract down on the table. He slapped his hands together. “How about a beer? To celebrate.”

He didn’t wait for anyone to reply before he headed to the fridge. The flooring groaned under his expensive loafers, lino cracking, like he was a lot heavier than he looked. Easy pulled open the fridge door and pulled out three bottles, flicking the lids off with thick, black talons.

“To setting things back where they belong,” he said and then winked at Shepherd. “And new friends.”

Uh-huh.

Shepherd took a drink of beer as he looked down at the contract. The letters were written in blood, probably with a fountain pen carved from a human finger. The rib held a point better and did the same job, but people always went with a finger.

“So what next?” he asked. “How do you get Kel off the hook?”

Easy took a drink of beer. His nails scraped against the bottle as he shifted his grip, a sharp, metallic sound, as he set it down.

“Don’t bother,” he said as he reached out to pull the contract away from Shepherd. “It’s written in Latin. A very obscure dialect.”

He folded it again and tucked it into his jacket. Shepherd clenched his jaw to hold back a protest. It felt like a bad idea to let Easy take the contract when they’d just found it, but it was what Kel wanted. So Shepherd wanted him to have it.

Whatever that meant for them afterward. Shepherd was…he wasn’t made for ‘normal’.

“You didn’t answer his question,” Kel pointed out, dragging his gaze away from Easy’s hands. He looked a bit tight around the mouth, but he had a firm hold on ‘together’ otherwise. “What’s the next step?”

The lights drowned out whatever Easy said in answer to that. It was a kaleidoscope of whistles and blue and pealing red. Shepherd reached for the table. His hand passed through it. He watched that happen with surprise. Then the floor came up and smacked him in the face. In the background, he could hear voices being batted back and forth. One of them was raised, alarmed, and the bottle clattered on the floor and rolled in front of him. Pale yellow liquid spilled over the floor, soaking into the grout.

He could smell it. The hops and the yeast. There was something else too.

Oh.

That was the next step.

That made sense.

The world switched off.

There was something cold and wet under Shepherd’s ass.

He thought about that.

It was not the first time he’d woken up like that. Usually, though, he felt better about it. Not the breathless, top-of-a-roller-coaster dread he could feel waiting in the wings.

All that, plus his nose was itchy.

Shepherd went to scratch it and felt rope scrape against his wrists. OK. That was new. He wasn’t opposed to the idea in theory, but his control issues could never. You could be tied up like a lamb to the slaughter once and…

Oh.

Shepherd ran his tongue across the back of his teeth as the events of the afternoon came running back. He tasted hops and a faint, underlying…OK, that might just be his breath.

Fuck.

He tried to panic. A bit of chemical assistance would probably help at this point, but his nervous system had always sucked in emergencies. It just tapped out and left his brain to deal with it unpumped.

Yet ask him to try and navigate getting a credit card, and he could spit adrenaline like a cobra.

Shepherd let his brain mutter along in the background as he squinted one eye open and took a quick look around. A bare bulb swung overhead, yellowish light disturbing the aggrieved shadows that clung to the walls. The taste of bleach and bicarb was chalky strong in the air as Shepherd swallowed.

He was in the cellar of the Murder House.

“…you need to think about this,” Kel said. His voice was low and rough as a cat’s tongue. The last time that Shepherd had heard his voice like that, he’d run, but only after he’d folded like a paper doll. It was still hot. Even if he slurred a bit as he went on. “There are other options.”