“Tonight, rest and recover, save your strength,” I said to Kat when she drew back with a contented sigh.
“And tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow, we finish what we started.” I tucked her hair tenderly behind her ear. “Then we get the fuck out of here and never look back.”
24
KATARINA
If Hallow Hall was spooky at the best of times, with harsh fluorescents, TVs blasting from rec rooms, and radios blaring at nurses’ stations, it was downright eerie in the tomb-like dark.
Candles were dotted along the corridors, but not enough to illuminate the gloom, since there was little to no light coming in through the windows. The snow swirled angrily. Would this sudden snowstorm kill all those brave snowdrops pushing through the frozen ground? Would it kill the buds on the tree outside?
I stared out at the white filling the air like cotton wool, strangely transfixed by it. It was beautiful and dangerous. The most alluring combination.
Without my meaning to, my mind shifted to Massimo.
His words from before were pinned in place in my mind, never far out of sight. Our agreement was just that, a deal I’d struck with a devil. It wasn’t something real.
Right?
“But there are so many firsts to cover... an infinite number, really. First apartment... first trip abroad. First marriage and first honeymoon... first boy, and first girl. First retirement... first funeral.”
My pulse thudded hard at the thought of him. I’d started to look for him in every room. I felt safe knowing he was nearby. Tendrils of feelings had started to stretch out between us, invisible but strong. I’d thought those creeping feelings had only been going in one direction, from me to him.
What if I was wrong? What if he felt it, too?
“Good night!” Tatiana called to me as she walked down the hall with one of the nurses, holding her hand.
I nodded to the nurse. She was one of the good ones. One of the ones who was clueless about the darker side of Hallow Hall. She mostly cared for the very elderly, the patients whom Benedict and Pavol didn’t mess with. Hallow Hall’s function as a nursing home was its only positive contribution to the world, and I was pretty sure it was only used as a cover for its real purpose.
“Good night, I’ll see you in the morning,” I called back to her.
She nodded. “Maybe we’ll get to go outside and make a snow bunny!”
“A snow bunny? Why not a snowman?”
“A man is too big,” Tatiana said wisely, and waved one more time before skipping off.
She nearly ran right into Dr. Blackwood, who was coming the other way. He approached and stood at the window beside me.
“Some storm, isn’t it? The heavens are angry.”
I slid him a sideways look. “So, you believe in all that? I never pegged you for the religious type.”
“I suppose I believe as much as you, or any other bystander. In a lofty, esoteric way.”
I considered those words and shook my head. “My faith isn’t lofty or esoteric. I believe in God. I believe in a wrathful, vengeful God. I believe in hell for sinners. I believe they burn. Do you?”
I turned to look at him.
He chuckled and shook his head. “No. I don’t believe I do, atthe end of the day. I don’t believe in any of it, when you put it like that.”
“Then why work here?”
Blackwood raised an eyebrow at me. “To help people.”
I stared at him for a long time. “I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not.”