“But there’s something you’re not telling me. I can feel it.”
“I am far too fucking old to tell you everything!” he yelled, losing his patience. “But it comes down to this: You either trust me or you do not. You want your father back or you do not. If the answer is yes to both, then the goal remains unchanged. End Ten Club. End me.”
His words were sobering. I knew he was right. Even if my theory was correct, it didn’t change a thing. I still wanted to help him kill these people, and I still needed to get my poor dad back.
King and I deplaned without speaking further, and the same older man who’d driven us a few days before greeted us at the airport. Niko, I thought his name was.
Either way, after we pulled up to the house from hell, Niko opened King’s door. King turned to him and whispered something.
The man smiled and bowed with appreciation. “Thank you. It has been an honor, sir.”
As the car pulled away, I asked, “What was that all about?”
“Tying up a few loose ends, Miss Arnold. That is all.” King headed for the front door. Man on a mission.
“Meaning?” I trailed behind.
“I fired him and his entire family. Can we move on now?”
“But he looked happy…” My voiced faded off. King said the Spiros were bound to him somehow. That was over now.
The realization hit hard. King’s long life was really coming to an end. The irony was that the moment he walked into my life felt like a beginning. A new path. A new world. But for him, it was the end of a long journey.
What was the saying? The end is just another beginning. But in my case, the beginning was just another end. His end.
We turned toward each other, locking eyes on the porch. I mentally reached for him, hoping with all my heart he’d let me in and I’d find a way out—some other solution he’d overlooked.
“No, Miss Arnold,” he said, “what you are hoping for is a way to convince me to stay here. With you.” He took my hand. The warmth of his skin made my heart ache. This was our last day together, and I wasn’t ready to let go.
“But you must.” He gently squeezed my hand. “Have faith, my little Seer. All dark roads eventually lead to light.”
I shook my head at him. Fuck you and your metaphors. I pulled my hand away. “All I’m asking for is a little more time. A month, a week, a day. Just…” I shook my head, “don’t go. Don’t make me kill you. I’m not ready to be alone with all this.” This being a new world I hadn’t come to understand yet.
He inhaled slowly, his broad chest rising beneath the white dress shirt. “I am truly sorry, Jeni, but our journey must end here.” He glanced up at the massive house. “Best you accept it.”
I didn’t know if I could.
“You are stronger than you think,” he said. “If you have doubts, simply remind yourself how an ancient, powerful Minoan king put his faith in you after everything else in this world failed him. Even himself.”
Minoan. I had a degree in history. I happened to love it. Off the top of my head, I knew they were one of the first established cultures of ancient Greece, but they mysteriously disappeared. No one really knew too much about them.
King. You were their king.
He nodded.
My soul ached. The things King knew. The things he’d probably seen. It was all the more reason for him to stay. A living piece of history, filled with three thousand years of knowledge. It explained so much about him—his arrogance and authority, the way he carried himself, like he knew everything. I’d always thought it had to do with his power, but it was so much more than that.
Every fiber of my being now resisted his plan, but if I wanted my dad back, I had to push forward.
I turned toward the two-story Victorian palace with its pristine front yard—neatly trimmed rosebushes and immaculately pruned trees.
“Is any of what I’m looking at real?” Maybe it was all a dream, and I’d wake up in my bed back at my dad’s house. He’d be in the kitchen safe and sound, making pancakes.
“The ward is meant to keep people away and protect the house.”
“So… ‘nothing to see here’ from the front and ‘don’t even think of coming inside’ in the back?”
“Something like that.” He stepped forward, and I grabbed his arm. I wasn’t ready.
“What about the ghosts?”
“You do not need to worry about them. They will do as they are told.”
“Why? Don’t they hate you?” I asked.
“Yes, but they want to be free of this place. And so they shall be if I get my way.” King opened the front door without a key and headed in.
I released a slow breath. The magnitude of what was coming hovered in the air like a toxic cloud. Thousands of paths and dark turns, taken by so many people, were about to conjoin right here in this house.
I followed King inside, noting the foreboding chill in the air. To my surprise, I wasn’t greeted by cobwebs and rodent droppings. The place was clean, untouched by dust.
King appeared and flipped the light switch on the wall. “I turned on the breaker.” The room came to life. Warm recessed lighting bathed the modernist white furniture with clean lines, and the glossy hardwood floors illuminated the space from the ground up.
This was the room from the memory he’d showed me of the day his family died. There were no bodies on the floor, but everything else looked the same.
“Follow me,” he said.
“What happened to the creepy vibe and ice-cold floor?”
“I removed the ward.”
I followed him down the hallway, taking note of the high ceilings and crown moldings. Beautiful. “How long have you owned this house?”
“I lost count.”
I followed him past the kitchen, which connected to the room right off the back patio. It was sparkling clean, and the windowpanes on the French doors were fully intact.
He should bottle that ward. Neat freaks would go nuts for it. And for being as old as it was, the interior didn’t look very dated, including the kitchen. Better than any place I’ve ever lived—stone counters, stainless steel appliances, and beautiful stained glass on the cupboard doors.
“Glad you approve,” he said.
We kept going past several other rooms. He stopped at a narrow door and reached inside, flipping a switch.
A bulb flickered on, dangling on a wire above a stairwell straight out of a horror film.
I leaned forward for a better look but couldn’t see much more than the staircase. The bricks on either side were covered in dry black drippy stuff. Maybe old paint. Fuck. At least I hope that’s old paint.
“You’ll see.” King descended the wooden staircase, his large frame making a thumping sound with each step. It reminded me of an ancient war drum warning of danger.
My shaking knees refused to follow. Something bad was down there. I could sense it.
“They cannot hurt you!” he called out from somewhere down in the basement. “They are long dead.”
“Lovely. Makes it so less horrifying!”
“Death follows you everywhere you go. This is nothing compared to that.”
He had a point, but I wasn’t so sure I agreed about death following me around. I’d lived my entire life and not once felt its presence. Something so powerful and dark wouldn’t go unnoticed.