“We’ll know in a few minutes,” he answered, and I shivered at the grim note in his voice.
There was no car in front of his house. A sudden spurt of worry hit me. “Magda and Raymond! They were here, too!”
Alec frowned for a moment.
“You remember Magda, don’t you? She was with me on the tour in Iceland.”
“Ah, yes. Spanish, black eyes, large . . .” He gestured toward his chest.
“No bigger than mine, thank you,” I said, crossing my arms. “She and her boyfriend, Raymond, were helping us.”
“They are mortals, and of no concern to the reapers,” he said, surprising me by driving past his house and turning into the drive of a neighboring house. “They were probably sent on their way.”
“I hope so. I don’t think I could stand having any more innocent people’s blood, metaphorical or otherwise, on my hands. What are we doing here?”
He stopped the car and got out, gesturing for me to follow. “There is a back way into my house, via the attic.”
There was a narrow, mostly invisible break in the hedge that served as a fence around his property, and between him and his neighbors. I squeezed through the break, spitting out bits of yew leaves that poked into my mouth, following silently as Alec sneaked through the garden, past a small, dark guesthouse.
“Wait here,” he whispered, pushing me against a tree trunk while he crept up to one of the windows of the guesthouse. He returned a moment later, gesturing again for me to follow. We slipped past an empty pool, the water rippling gently in the evening breeze, lit from below to make the pool a glowing teal beacon that had nothing on the clarity that was Kristoff’s eyes.
“Can you climb?” Alec asked in a hushed voice as he stopped next to a large split-trunked tree.
I looked upward to where the tree’s branches lay against the roof of the house. Normally, I wouldn’t consider such a thing, but Kristoff’s life was at stake. “I’ll manage,” I told him.
By the time I struggled from the leafy and branch-riddled embrace of the tree and through a window into a dark, close attic, I had come to the conclusion that climbing a tree in any apparel was hazardous, but doing so in a gauzy sundress meant to entice one particular man into a frenzy was definitely not a smart idea. More than once Alec had been forced to climb down to detach me from some particularly troublesome branch, ultimately being forced to rip the material free.
“Note to self: Next time pack tree-climbing clothes, preferably something in the non-tear nylon family,” I said as I got up from where I’d landed on the attic floor. Through the thin light streaming in from the outside house lights, I could see that the front of my dress was smudged with dirt, little leaves and twigs clinging to bits of torn fabric, long, wrinkled tears leaving the bodice more a memory than an actual garment. A faint breeze on my backside told me that the skirt was likely to be in the same condition.
“I would say you look charming, but I doubt if you would appreciate my approval of your underwear,” Alec said, his eyes on the exposed portion of my bra. “This way. I feel their presence in my house, so we must go very cautiously.” He started to edge his way around the boxes and discarded furniture that littered his attic, pausing a moment at the door to mutter, “That is odd. I feel . . . Hmm.”
“Feel what?” I whispered as he silently opened a trapdoor in the floor, sticking his head out to examine the hallway below before he got to his feet. There was a foldout set of narrow steps that must have been very well oiled, for he lowered them without a sound.
“Feel the presence of people I had not expected. Unfortunately, I can’t tell how near they are. Come. We must be silent now.”
I followed him as quietly as possible as he crept slowly down the hallway. The upper floor was dark, but lights shone up from below. I picked off twigs and leaves and a couple of bugs as we headed to the main stairs. Alec held up a hand to stop me. I stayed against the wall as he slid along it to the stairs, peeking over the edge to the floor below.
He stood up suddenly and, with an inexplicable smile at me, ran down to the floor below. I stood stunned for a moment, then followed.
I made it to the bottom of the stairs before I realized what it was that had Alec so amused. Four men and two women were arranged in various poses of bondage on the huge living room floor. The women had been propped up more or less upright, their hands bound behind them, their feet tied, with duct tape across their mouths. Two men were prone on the floor, blood around them indicating that they had been injured, although they, too, had been bound. The other two leaned drunkenly against each other, their eyes spitting fury as I slowly entered the bizarre scene.