Chapter 15

*Author's Blurb:  changed the cover (again.  I have a indicisive problem).  Not sure which one I like better, please let me know in the comments?  Old cover is in the side bar ------------->

Also, feedback?  Are you guys liking it so far?  You thoughts may decide whether I just keep writing and posting as I go along, or put this on hold for a while to go back and edit.  Thanks for reading!*

In a game of poker, your face was almost as important as your hand—poker stiff they called it.

You never let your opponent see you fear, your excitement, surprise—nothing.

You needed to look blank.  Or, Miriam thought almost smugly, empty.

It was a good thing that Eliot already seemed to think that she was at least one of those things, because it made it a lot easier to look him dead into those fiery eyes and pretend that she wasn’t afraid.

That her knees weren't knocking together because her legs shook.

That her heart wasn’t pounding like mad in her chest.

That she didn't feel as though any minute she might do something utterly clichéd and feminine like…faint.

Pushing all that aside, she tried to gauge his reaction to her question.

Did he know the boy with pale skin and jet black hair who seemed like morbid Calvin Klein model?

If he did, his face gave nothing away.

Those eyes were unreadable, as they glanced her over once before moving to stare sharply at the door as if he were thinking hard about something.  Something irritating.

His gaze was utterly dead.

To hell with her dumb attempts at bravery—she was willing to admit that Eliot had mastered the poker face.

He was quiet for so long that Miriam began to nervously shift her weight from one foot to the other, unconsciously glancing at her fallen baseball bat which had rolled right before his feet.

Then, suddenly his features shifted and that stern mouth twisted into a frown.  “You saw him?”  He said finally.  “Someone in your house, I mean?”

“Y-yes.”  Miriam staggered back until her waist smacked off the ledge of her desk.

It unnerved her—the look on his face.  Almost as if he knew damn well just who she was talking about and who she’d seen.  But, she was willing to write it off as a trick of the light.

What truly had her pulse beating however, was the thought of the strange prowler who had the nerve to stride up behind her in her own house.  Demand something to drink, even though it had to be at least ten o’clock at night.

Not only that, but then he had…sniffed her.

She didn’t like to think about that part.

She had tried to reason it, instead.

Maybe he just had allergies?

The house was a field of dust after all and even she found herself sniffing and sneezing in the most random places.

Maybe the guy, with skin so pale it looked like pure, solid ivory, just had a cold?

Yeah, all of those things sounded very good and fine in theory—but whenever she thought hard about it, only one thing remained clear.

The dude had sniffed her.

Those pale nostrils had flared with her scent as he had leaned closer.  Close enough for her to reach out and touch a lock of that dark hair, if she had wanted.

He had sniffed her, and then…

“What happened?”  She heard Eliot demand from far away, almost as if he’d been following the sordid little scenario in her mind.  “What did he do?  Did he—”

Miriam shook her head as she tried to put the whole strange scenario into words.  “He just…”

For once, Eliot sounded sufficiently worried, she couldn’t help thinking.  Worried and angry, like a dog owner realizing that a beast he’d let off the leash for only a second had gone and done something naughty.

She wondered if the dark haired boy was dangerous.

He had certainly looked dangerous standing in the middle of her dark and lonely kitchen like a spectral shadow—who just so happened to be gloriously hot.

Though, to be fair, the boy was more like Eliot—too undeniably handsome to be called just handsome.

It seemed as out of place as trying to call a fierce lion or a sleek tiger just pretty.

Nope, lethal seemed like a much better word.  Deadly beautiful…

A part of her almost wished that she had some dark, spine-tingling story to tell.  After all, wasn’t that what usually happened in horror films when the young girl was left alone?

She became the prey of some beast or a vampire or something like that?

But nope, after he had obviously sniffed her, the dark haired boy had shrugged—almost grimaced—and turned away.

No explanation.

No apology.

No drink.

He just left.  And, though it was positively stupid to even think so, Miriam couldn’t help but feel like someone being stood up by a blind date.  From afar they were attracted, but up close they took one look and reached some unspoken conclusion; never mind.

She could picture that boy thinking along those lines.  Wanting to scare her or…whatever, from far away, but up close shrugging and shaking that darkly lovely head.

Not worth it.  Never mind.

Whoops!

Though, to protect her fragile pride, she had decided to just write off the strange change of heart as him realizing how utterly creepy he was being.  Or maybe, he’d just gotten the wrong house?

Yeah…

She tried to tell herself that—over and over since last night—but the petty explanations didn’t stick and she couldn’t erase the shivering, spine-tingling feeling that she had just escaped something way worse than she could ever imagine.

Maybe…she should have made good on her threat to call the police?

The look Eliot was giving her was no better.  Those brown eyes were actually wide with an emotion that could have been fear or worry, or maybe just indigestion.

It freaked her out, the thought of him afraid.

He didn’t seem like the guy to overreact to just anything.

“And then,” he prompted in a carefully controlled voice.

Miriam sighed, shaking her head as if she didn’t even believe it herself.  “He just…left.”

“He left?”

Eliot looked about as skeptical as if she’d said, ‘the sky has just fallen in my living room.’

Or.

‘I’m the Queen of England.’

Or, maybe something a little more drastic and unbelievable such as, ‘the laws of physics have just reserved; I can walk on the ceiling, and up is down and everything you thought made sense was all just a silly little lie.’

He looked that damn shocked.  As if what she had said couldn’t possibly make sense in an orderly, natural world.

As if she needed her head examined and he was willing to pull his sleeves up and dig through her brain himself.  Or, more confusingly he looked worried—as if he was afraid that she had really hurt her head and gotten a concussion, or any other cranial injury to explain the strange response.

Hell, if she wasn’t mistaken, those amber eyes began to eye her forehead carefully as if searching for any little mark that could betray massive brain damage.

It was kind of insulting, really.

So, she said it again.

“He broke into my house.  Sniffed me—ya know, right before he scared the hell out of me.  And then, he just left.”

She couldn’t help the bitchy, impatient tone to her voice.

A part of her almost wanted to screech, ‘believe me, damn it!’

But…now that she thought about it, if anyone should have believed her, it was Eliot.  Considering how he had just done basically the same thing and barged into her room, as if he had a right to care that she had apparently been late for school.

Right.  He and the weird, psycho drink-boy were probably part of the same creepy club.

Miriam almost couldn’t fight the urge to sigh like a world-weary adult, thinking fondly of the ‘good old days’ when people knocked on doors and didn’t stalk hapless neighbors.

What was the world coming to?

“You know him?”  She found herself asking, irritated at the thought of it.  “Birds of a feather, I guess—”

Those red eyes cut to her.  She fell silent—her voice trailed off even as the words she’d meant to say latterly died and faded away right there on the tip of her brain.

The look in that gaze was enigmatic.

Electrifying.

Spine-tingling…if you wanted to be dramatic.

Most of all, it was just plain relieved.  He still looked confused, as if he had no idea how in the hell he should have felt relieved—but he seemed relieved all the same.

“I’ll kill him,” she thought she heard him mutter in undertone.  But, at the same moment, her radio lost signal and she was willing to write off the sound as just a trick of static.

“Is he your foster brother, too?”  She wondered.  His silence proved more than anything that he did know the guy—what name had he called him?

Sage?

Besides, she was beginning to see an odd family resemble in the chilly air those two seemed to project.  Not to mention the icy, pale skin that all three—Lizzie, Eliot and Sage—seemed to possess.

As if they’d spent years somewhere cold and dark and hadn’t seen the sun in…forever.

“Y-yes,” Eliot began in a dark murmur.  “A…cousin.”

“A cousin.”  Miriam accepted it with a nod of her head, even though something—a tiny whisper at the back of her mind—told her that these two were not cousins, at least in the normal sense of the word.  But something else tied them together.

“And,” she added softly, feeling brave, “I take it that the two of you just like to prowl around my neighborhood for kicks?”

Eliot visibly flinched.  Those amber eyes cut to her again, though the look in them was softer this time.  Almost…apologetic.

Then, something cold and blank fell over it like an invisible screen being drawn closed over his emotions.

“We live here,” he said, as casually as if that had been a fact for years.  Though, until yesterday, Miriam was pretty sure that she and her father were the only two residents in the entire block of houses.

“Y-y-you live here?”

Without answering, Eliot politely inclined his head to her bedroom window where, through a misty layer of falling snow, the big black house loomed like something forbidding against the white backdrop.

Miriam was pretty sure that her eyes bulged from their sockets.

She couldn’t help it.

“You mean you’re the ones who—”

“Moved in?”  Eliot supplied simply.

Miriam couldn’t help the way her gaze caught on the mocking tilt to his mouth, erasing the worry and making him seem almost…playful.

For about an instant.

With a shrug, he strode across her room as boldly as if he owned it, to peer out of the window.

“It’s not, ideal really,” he said, almost to himself.

Not ideal…as if it was just an unwanted sweater and not a house.   Miriam couldn’t help thinking that he sounded the same way a billionaire heiress might, sniffing at her multi-million dollar penthouse as, ‘you know, just some plain old thing.’

Because, despite the creepy outward appearance, the house was—for all intents and purposes—a proverbial mansion.  Even from the slight distance across the grove, it completely dwarfed hers; a monstrous shadow in comparison to a little dot of white.

She couldn’t help wondering just what kind of luxury Eliot was used to, for him to gaze at the black house with mild interest and remark that it was just ‘not ideal.’

A part of her seemed to know the answer; castles and manors and extravagance she could never dream of.

Tilting her head, she peered a little closer, observing the way the light bounced off his odd skin in almost the same way it did against the snow.  The red hair was as vibrant as a flame in the soft daylight.

He almost looked like a perfect, ivory statue…minus one glaring flaw.

“Oh my god!”  She rushed across the room before she could help it, and reached for his hand.  “D-do you have allergies?”

That was the only explanation she could think of to explain the vibrant, scarlet rash quickly spreading all over the pale skin of the wrist he rested against the window sill.

“Do you need epinephrine?  Should I call 911?”

Her fingers hovered hesitantly over that blotchy rash—which looked so painfully raw.  She was afraid to touch him, and her hand danced uselessly in the air over his skin.  But even as Eliot turned away from the window to face her, the alarming red vanished.

His skin was once more an icy, smooth white—as if it’d never changed color in the first place.

“I…I thought I saw…”  She trailed off, feeling like an idiot for overreacting to what seemed to have been just a trick of the light.

Though, Eliot didn’t seem to feel that way, she couldn’t help thinking as she glanced up.  Those amber eyes were down on his white wrist in a way that could only be described as…puzzled.

Confused.

Slowly, they trailed up to her face and she went still, feeling as if all the air had suddenly gone out of the room.

As if she were weightless.

As if something great and wonderful was hidden away in that dark gaze—if only she could find it.

Then…he blinked.

That pale face twisted into a frown and his gaze moved to the empty doorway.

“Someone’s coming,” he said.

Sure enough, a moment later the crash of falling boxes echoed throughout the hall.