Abandon - Meg Cabot [100]
He didn’t try to stop me. He didn’t utter a sound.
I should have suspected something then. But of course, I didn’t. I had hope. Then.
They were still there…the staircases, exactly the way I remembered them. Looking back over my shoulder, I waited for him to say something. Stop. Wait. Let’s talk about this. The Furies. What do you plan on doing about them if you get out?
But he didn’t say a word.
Lifting the hem of my idiotically long skirt, I plunged down the stairs, exactly as I had last time.
The door was locked. Of course.
I should have known he’d have thought of this. He wouldn’t be tricked a second time.
Still, I threw my weight against the door. I kicked and shoved at it.
When it became obvious it wasn’t going to budge, I took the second staircase, the one that curled upward. The door at the top of that one was locked as well.
Even then, I didn’t give up. I was all over the rest of the hallway like a sniffer dog at customs, my hands pressed to the walls for secret passageways.
I found nothing but an elaborate bathroom — complete with a sunken tub and a view over a pretty garden, where the flowers he’d put in my hair grew.
I scrambled out the bathroom window and raced across the garden, then attempted to throw myself over the wall. When I got to the top, I saw…
The lake. The same lake beside which, a year and a half ago, I’d stood and shivered with the rest of the dead.
There were no boats, of course. Except the boats.
And those were picking up passengers only on the other side of the lake, not on the one where I was.
When I returned — defeated, my dress torn and dirty from climbing the garden wall — to the room with the bed, he was sitting exactly where he’d been when I left, reading the exact same book.
“I hope you’re not planning on kicking me,” he said, not even bothering to look up from his book, “as hard as you did those doors.”
“I will,” I said, “if the next words out of your mouth are Pierce, you just need to relax. How long have you been planning this?”
“You know it’s the only way,” he said, turning the page. The fact that he’d ignored my question did not slip past me. “If you want, we can visit the stables later. I’m sure Alastor has gotten over his animosity towards you by now.”
I sat down on the couch beside him. I was starting to understand why, every time I’d seen him over the past year and a half, he’d looked so wild. I felt the same way, as if the castle walls were already starting to close in on me.
“John,” I said, reaching out and laying a hand on his arm. “Am I dead?”
He lowered the book and looked me in the eye. His expression was guarded. “No, Pierce,” he said. “Of course you’re not dead. The whole reason I brought you here was to protect you from the Furies, who are trying kill you. I thought you understood that.”
I was speechless. “Then back on Isla Huesos, I just…disappeared?”
“I suppose so,” he said, after giving it some thought. “I don’t really know. I’ve never rescued a girl I love from the Furies before.” He looked alarmed as he noticed my eyes were filling with tears.
“Don’t cry.”
“How can I not?” I asked him. “You just said you love me.”
“Well, why else did you think all of this was happening?” He set the book aside to wrap his arms around me. “The Furies wouldn’t be trying to kill you if I didn’t love you.”
“I didn’t know,” I said. Tears were trickling down my cheeks, but I did nothing to try to stop them. His shirt was absorbing most of them. “You never said anything about it. Every time I saw you, you just acted so…wild.”
“How was I supposed to act?” he asked. “You kept doing things like throw tea in my face.”
I glared up at him through my tears.
“This isn’t funny,” I said. “Do you know that if I don’t show up at my cousin Alex’s car at two o’clock today, my friend Kayla is supposed to call the police? She’ll do it, too. Who knows what kind of lies my grandmother is going to tell them when they ask? She’ll probably say you killed me and dumped my body in the ocean somewhere. My mother will never get over it.” I began to sob against his chest,