How had I been a distraction? I was sitting there in total silence!
“What did Jamison do?” I asked, my heart speeding up as I slid onto the edge of my seat. Jamison was his most dastardly serial killer, and I might have been in love with him on the down low.
Vandal grumbled, scrubbing both hands over his face. “He keeps chatting with the people he’s supposed to kill.”
“Oh.”
His dark gaze focused on me, as though he suddenly remembered I was there. “You want a book to read or something? I can’t turn on the TV—it’s too distracting.”
“Sure, a book would be great.”
He led me upstairs to a spare bedroom that had been set up as a library.
“Pick a few, then go sit with Zero. I’m going to go think in the shower for a while. Don’t leave the fucking house.” He glared at me, but I was guessing it was his book he was mad at right then, not me.
“I know. I signed the agreement, remember?”
He grunted at me and stalked out of the room.
I perused his shelves for a few minutes, interested to find he had all sorts of books rather than just horror.
“Not having the internet for a few months is going to suck,” someone said from behind me, making me jump.
Zero moved up next to me, looking over the same section of bookcase I was checking out.
“Surprising what you can live without if you’re used to it. I didn’t have internet at my apartment or my last job, so it’s normal life for me. It was hard to get used to at first, but the internet can also be a huge waste of time.”
He looked at me as though he couldn’t imagine feeling the same way, but he only shrugged.
“What do you do for fun without the internet?”
“I read. I watch TV. I go for walks and go window shopping. That sort of thing.”
“Sounds very nineteen-fifties.”
“It can be. I even use paper instead of my old laptop—spiral notebooks don’t crash and lose your work.”
“You write?” he asked as if it made me far more interesting.
“I think most readers write, even if they never get serious about it. The written word is a powerful addiction.”
He nodded. “I have a blank notebook if you want it.”
I smiled thankfully at him, and he shifted his gaze away.
“That would be great.”
I followed him meekly back down the stairs, realizing he’d probably come up to keep an eye on me.
“So what did Vandal bribe you with to get you to help with me?” I asked, my tone teasing.
“It sounded like fun. He also mentioned you were pretty.”
I looked over at him as he fished through the laptop bag tucked against his chair. It was hard to tell if he was joking, but when he looked at me, his smile was wolfish. Despite myself, I shivered, wondering what he was thinking. Wondering if he could make me like it.
Yeah, this guy was as kinky as Vandal was. I never knew how I knew…I just knew. Kinkdar seemed to be like gaydar that way.
From the bag, he withdrew a thick spiral notebook. He flipped it open and ripped out a few pages from the front, then handed it to me, along with a pen.
“He said you own some of my books?” he asked.
“Yes. They’re in storage for now.”
“I’m not your favorite.” His eyes, in the bright light from the window, were almost silver and impossible to read—the kind of eyes that might cold-brand me if I got too close.
“Zombie books were never my favorite, but your prose is so good I get sucked in every time.”
His sexy lips quirked, but he didn’t reply.
By the time Vandal came back from his shower it was getting dark, and I was scribbling ideas for a story almost as fast as Zero was typing.
“Will you eat?” Vandal asked his friend.
“Always.”
“How much did you get done today?”
Zero grumbled something.
“Isn’t that five thousand words less than you started with this morning?”
“It’s been a bad day.”
They stared at each other and there was a tension in the air I couldn’t decipher.
“Your little captive writes too. See?”
“She’s not my captive. She’s my…guest.”
“Your guest who can’t leave.”
They stared each other down for a long moment. “It’s not like that.”
Zero chuckled, but it wasn’t a nice sound. It seemed like some sort of inside joke Vandal didn’t think was funny.
“I didn’t know you wrote,” Vandal said, his tone neutral and his expression carefully bland.
“Mostly fanfic—I mentioned that at my apartment, remember? Trust me, this won’t be anything worth publishing. If it really bothers you, I’ll let you read it as I go so you can make sure I’m not copying you.”
“If she’s such a big fan of yours, maybe you could hire her to ghost write for you,” Zero mocked.
“I don’t care if he’s doing it. Neither of us are ever hiring ghostwriters,” he replied decisively, as though he had every right to make decisions for Zero.
“If you kept her locked in your basement with a typewriter no one would ever have to find out,” Zero continued, his tone sardonic.
“How about we leave your obsession with erotic horror out of any discussion involving my guest. The situation is overheating your brain.”
I laughed to myself, loving the playful dynamic between the two of them.
“What type of horror isn’t at least partially erotic?” Zero protested. “The crunch of bone between the teeth, the burst of blood against the tongue…”
“Do forgive Zero for his weird sense of humor. I’d like to say I could force him to be on his best behavior for your stay here, but this is his best behavior. At least he still has pants on.”
I grinned at them, enjoying this, even though I should still have been pissed. It wasn’t like I had anything better to do. This was more fun than sitting at home alone and worrying about money.
Maybe I should have been a bit afraid, being stuck alone in this cottage with two strange men for the foreseeable future, but I wasn’t afraid as much as I was intrigued. I could tell they were close rather than only casual friends, and Zero’s comment about keeping me locked in the basement fit in far too well with the story I’d been outlining. I almost felt like he’d read my mind.
“Would you like help with supper?” I asked, wondering if I should have kept my mouth shut. He’d been a jerk all day. I wasn’t sure why I was being nice to him. To serve him right, I should be a slob and go out of my way to eat all his food and be a general nuisance.
“You can come and hang out if you want. Zero needs to get his ass in gear if he’s going to finish his word count for the day.”
“There’s no way I can reach that number today,” Zero complained.
“Quit whining. Two thousand words isn’t that much.”
“Two thousand words is a hell of a lot if you’ve had writer’s block for three weeks.”
“You know what you have to do.” There seemed to be a silent ‘or else’ tacked onto that statement, and both of us had heard it.
Zero rolled his eyes but waved us out of the room impatiently.