Page 46 of Where the Snakes Sleep

I have begun to suspect I was wrong.

Perhaps the driver really had been lost. Perhaps a tourist took the wrong turn and discovered too late that the road narrowed into nowhere.

Perhaps twenty-three years of searching for threats connected to Henri Voclain have trained me to find intention in coincidence.

I dislike that possibility.

Still, after fourteen quiet days, the tension has begun to loosen. Not disappear—I am not foolish.

But loosen.

Ryan remains oblivious to all of it.

He walks into the village alone, curses at his collapsing house, leaves his windows open when the evening air becomes too warm, and continues behaving as though the greatest threat to his continued existence is an elderly shopkeeper charging him five euros too much for screws.

Perhaps, for once, he is right.

Perhaps nothing is coming.

The thought should bring relief.

Instead, I find myself wondering what Ryan is doing. This is irritating. It has been nearly forty-eight hours since I last had him.

Not that I count.

I merely happen to know that he left my bed shortly after midnight on Thursday, kissed me at the bottom of the stairs without being prompted—a development I have chosen not to analyze—and has not appeared since.

Forty-seven hours, approximately.

An entirely ordinary observation requiring no particular investment on my part.

The knock comes while I am mid-snake hook in the air, preparing to extract venom from my blue insularis, Estelle.

I close my eyes.

Of course.

For nearly two days, Ryan has apparently possessed the patience of a monk, and now he chooses the exact moment I am working.

The knock sounds again. Three brisk taps, then a pause, then two more.

“Estelle,” I murmur, watching her vivid blue body draped along the branch beneath the laboratory lighting, “I must apologize. My neighbor has developed appalling timing.”

Her reddish eyes follow the small movement of the hook with considerably more patience than the man currently harassing my door.

I return her temporarily to the secured section of her habitat rather than leave anything unfinished, close the enclosure, and strip off my gloves before heading toward the front entrance.

Ryan knocks for a third time just as I open the door, his fist stopping mere inches from my face.

“Oh.”

“Bonsoir.”

He lowers his hand and smiles. Not the wary, uncertain expression he wore the first few times he appeared here, but something more comfortable, familiar.

He expects me to let him in.

I find that I like that far too much.