“Liar, liar, liar!” Ryan chanted now, his voice taking on a mocking lilt that pushed Melanie’s rage past the boundaries Anton had set. Before she could even think, her arm rose up then arced downward, her hand slashing across Ryan’s face so hard it stung her own hand.
With a howl of rage, Ryan threw himself at her, his nails gouging into her skin before his fingers grabbed her hair and began tearing at it. Melanie screamed as bits of hair tore loose from her scalp, but a second later her own fingers found his, and with far more strength than she’d felt in years, she began peeling his fingers loose from her hair. “How dare you,” she hissed. Her hand closing on his wrist, she dragged Ryan upstairs and down the hall, shoved him through the door to his room, pulled it shut, and locked it. “You’ll come out when you’ve learned some manners, young man!” she said through the thick mahogany door. “Your stepfather was right!” Not waiting for a response, she went back downstairs, then into the powder room next to the library. Turning on the lights, she stared at herself in the mirror.
Her cheeks — the bone structure looking more perfect than ever under the young supple skin that had been her share of Rebecca Mayhew — showed deep scratches where Ryan’s nails had sunk into them. For a moment she felt a flash of panic, but then reminded herself that this was fresh, young skin that would quickly heal. It would be decades before her face once more began to show the ravages of time. But when she shifted her attention to her hair — the wonderful, thick hair she hadn’t had in twenty years — her eyes glistened with tears. The boy had torn at it, and now her scalp was bleeding. But I’m young again, she reminded herself. It will heal. It will all heal. And when the boy was ripe — as ripe as his sister — all the men would regain their youth, too, not just Anton.
But next time, she would choose the children herself. She’d known these two were a mistake — she’d told Lavinia and Alicia as much when they’d first arrived. They, and their mother.
That had been the real mistake — using children with a mother. How long did Anton think they could get away with that? Last time, when he’d been so happy to find twin boys so close to being ripe that neither he nor any of the other men had been able to resist the promise of a feast, it might have been worth the risk. But this time it had been a mistake. Even though Caroline was locked away, Melanie was certain the police would be back, and though Anton could probably handle it, every decade it was getting harder and harder. But as she gazed in the mirror, Melanie knew that no matter how hard it became to find the children, it was worth it.
Even with the scratches in her skin and the bits of hair missing from her bleeding scalp, she looked better today than she had in decades.
Perhaps even centuries…
Ryan listened to the lock click into place, then looked at the clock on the table next to his bed. Just a little after three-thirty. Tony Fleming had said he wouldn’t be back until five-thirty or maybe six, which meant that Ryan had two hours to explore the maze of secret passages, since he was pretty sure he’d made Melanie Whatever-She-Said-Her-Name-Was mad enough that she wouldn’t come near his room until his stepfather came home.
Which was exactly what he’d planned ever since she’d arrived to watch him while his stepfather went out to do whatever it was he did. He’d known right away that she wasn’t there to stay with him at all — she was there to make sure he didn’t get away. But it hadn’t been hard to sweet talk her into letting him go to the bathroom, and be nice enough that she let him stay out of his room long enough to find what he needed. That had been easy — he’d found a whole stash of batteries in the bottom drawer in the kitchen, and taken enough so that he shouldn’t run out if he was careful.
The second thing he’d decided to take was the ring of keys that his mother had swiped from the store yesterday. That had been a little harder, since his mother’s purse hadn’t been on the table in the front hall where she usually left it. He’d been afraid she might have taken it with her to the hospital, but then he’d decided to try to find it anyway. That had taken almost an hour, and finally he’d had to sneak into the dressing room off the big bedroom and go through most of her drawers before he finally found it. Melanie — or whatever her name really was — had almost caught him that time, but he’d gotten back to his room just as she’d come to the top of the stairs, and by the time she asked him what he was doing, he was sprawled out on his bed reading a book and the keys were hidden between the mattress and the box springs where she’d never find them even if she was looking. He’d swiped a laundry marker, too, so he wouldn’t have to waste time carving marks in the corners to keep from getting lost.
Now, safely locked in the room with her mad enough after the fight that she wouldn’t let him out again, he checked his pockets one last time. The knife, the laundry marker, and the keys were in the front pocket of his jeans, and the pockets of his jacket were stuffed with extra batteries. He was ready.
Half an hour later he’d found his way down through the maze of passages until he was pretty sure he was in the basement of the building. Most of the passages had been pretty narrow, except for a big room that he thought was right behind Tony’s study. There’d been some things in that room that looked like hospital equipment — racks of bottles and tubes and stuff like that — and a bunch of other passages that had led away from it. He’d explored a couple of them and found peepholes along every one of them. He hadn’t been able to see anything through most of the peepholes, but whenever he found one where he could see the room on the other side of the wall, it always looked like a kid’s bedroom.
But except for him and Laurie and Rebecca, there weren’t any kids in the building.
And now Rebecca was gone.
And Laurie—
He’d almost started crying then. No matter what Tony said, he was certain Laurie hadn’t gone to school, and he’d known for sure that Melanie had been lying about her going somewhere after school.
And if they’d done something to Laurie, and his mother didn’t come home—
That was when he’d made himself stop thinking about it, because if he started crying he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to stop, and then somebody might hear him, or he might get lost, or—
He’d decided he’d better not think about that, either, so just to keep himself from thinking about all the bad things that could happen, he’d concentrated on making sure he didn’t make any mistakes at all on marking the path he took. At every intersection he put enough arrows that he couldn’t possibly make a mistake, and he’d even put numbers that would tell him how many floors he was from where he’d started.
Which was why he was now pretty sure he was in the basement, since he’d come down seven levels since he’d started from the ceiling of his bedroom, which was on the sixth floor. But the passages had changed on this level, too. There was only one, and it was wider than the ones upstairs, and the floor was made out of cement, and there weren’t any turns.
And it smelled funny — musty and kind of rotten.
There was a door at the far end, and he was halfway to it when he saw another door in the side wall.
He paused, uncertain which door to try first, and in the end decided on the one he was closest to.
Locked.
He shined the flashlight on it. It was just a big panel of wood, with none of the fancy carved moldings most of the doors in the building had. But under the brass knob was the same kind of keyhole as the door to his room — and every other door he’d seen so far — had.