Darker Than Night by Amelia Wilde

Author:Amelia Wilde [Wilde, Amelia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-11-16T18:30:00+00:00

11

Brigit

In my dream several nights later, Zeus’s office is changed. He’s left the theater largely intact and his desk sits at center stage, slightly angled so that if he sat down to write he would be in deliriously perfect profile to the audience. There are no chairs but I’m trapped in the main aisle anyway. A light comes up over the desk and he ambles in from stage left and sits down. Opens his journal. His hand moves over the page in steady strokes of the pen. Then he lifts his head. “I told you to stay on the second floor.”

I open my mouth to answer, but I’m already there—already in the scene. The woman who emerges from the shadows has my face. She comes to the front of the desk, and unlike me, she’s showing. Her hands rest on her belly as she considers the man at the desk. I’m on tenterhooks, I’m on tiptoe, waiting to see what I’ll say.

But something jolts me out of the dream and back into the bedroom.

To the sound of Zeus breathing evenly beside me in the bed.

I prop myself up on one elbow and watch him for several minutes. He’s really asleep. I put my hand out to shake him, hesitating at the last moment. Get up, I would say. We’re not done talking about this. There has to be something I can say to convince him to go after his people. I just don’t know what it is, and I can’t stand it.

The covers seem like a prison in miniature so I throw them off and pad to the bathroom. The dream I had about his office is already fading. The image of the stage is the only thing that lingers. They gave the suggestion of his office with only three pieces of furniture. The desk. The chair. The bookshelf.

The bookshelf.

My heart climbs hand over hand into my throat, pounding there in a last-ditch attempt to get me to see this obvious, obvious thing I’ve been ignoring.

I pull my robe off the chair on the way out and wrap it tight around my waist. Zeus doesn’t stir as I leave the room. I linger in the living room for a minute to see if he wakes up and follows me out, but he doesn’t.

The office feels cavernous and haunted in the middle of the night. Goose bumps prickle my skin on the fast walk to his desk to switch on the single lamp there. It does nothing to calm my nerves. With the light on, he’ll see me right away if he comes down.

“He’ll see you anyway,” I say out loud. “Stop being a coward.”

It’s only a few steps from the desk to the bookshelf.

Yes.

I was right.

The very top shelf is another row of random books like the ones upstairs.

The rest of the shelf is filled, end to end, with other journals.

Older journals.

If the doctor drew my blood right now she would find it sparkling with anticipation and guilt and hope. There has to be something in one of these books that will tell me what to do.

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