Michelle West - House War 03 - House Name by Michelle West

Author:Michelle West
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2011-01-04T08:00:00+00:00

Jay slept badly.

Teller wouldn’t have known, but anxiety over his desertion of the desk from which Barston ruled, combined with the kitchen meeting, had destroyed even the faint hope of sleep. It did not, unfortunately, alleviate exhaustion. He had eaten—they had all eaten—a sparse meal that Ellerson himself prepared in the kitchen after Jay had left, and the food now sat like cold rocks in the pit of his stomach. He wore the sleeping gown he’d been given and, over it, a heavier wrap; he lay with his head dead center in the depths of a huge pillow, staring at the ceiling in the darkness.

Because he was awake, he heard Jay’s scream, and he was out of bed almost before he was aware that he was moving. He managed to catch himself before he threw the door open, and it opened silently into the muted lights of the hall. A moment later, another door opened; he saw Finch peering around the crack of darkness that led from her room.

They didn’t speak; instead, they waited.

When they heard Jay again, they nodded and began to move; only when they reached her closed door did they hesitate.

“Ellerson’s there,” Finch said quietly.

Teller nodded.

Neither of them retreated. Jay was still screaming, and they couldn’t force themselves to go back to their rooms. Teller grimaced and then opened the door. Its hinges, like the hinges of all the doors in this huge suite of overfurnished rooms, were well oiled; the movement was almost silent.

But the doors were thick; the voice that reached out for them from the lamplit room was much, much louder than the voice that had drawn them from their separate darknesses.

Ellerson was beside the bed, lamp in hand; he turned as they entered. If they expected anger or disapproval—and they did—he offered neither. Instead, his eyes lined with dark circles, he nodded curtly and stepped aside, the lamplight swaying against the wall and the curtains as if it were drunk.

Jay was sitting up, and her eyes were wide and vacant; they were also bloodshot. Her knees were bunched together against her chest, and her hands were full of bedclothing; they were also shaking.

Dream? Finch signed.

Teller signed back, Not sure. But he approached the bed as Finch slipped away. “Jay.”

She stared ahead, seeing darkness and whatever it contained. She spoke, but the words were so garbled that they made no sense. Teller could speak both street Torra and Weston, and the words weren’t in either language. It troubled him more than he wanted to admit because he knew Jay didn’t speak any other languages, either. Not when she was awake.

“Jay,” he said again, keeping his voice even. She answered him the fourth time he tried, and after each attempt, he spent minutes in patient silence. It was hard.

Harder, in some ways, than the letters that were crowding Barston’s desk—and Gabriel’s as well. There he had Barston to guide—and correct—him. Any mistake he made was bound to be caught. Here? Just Jay, her words bleeding, at last, into silence.

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