Nightmarish Sacrifice (Cardew) by Panova Simona

Author:Panova, Simona [Panova, Simona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21:

BLUSHING

Under no ordinary circumstances would I have opened the door if a stranger was ringing at the insane hour of six o’clock in the morning, but the boy named Preston did.

“Can I help you, miss?” he asked – a bit startled but very polite, while I was gaining my first impression of him.

Probably a bit shorter than Cardew and rather lean, Preston was as old as us, but his still childish features were making him look so much younger that someone who didn’t know his real age would have easily agreed to bet that the boy standing in front of me was still a few years away from graduation. And – although personally I would never notice Preston if Cardew was in the same room – he definitely was one who could calmly rely on his handsome face to help him in life.

I was used to first looking in the eyes of a person before drawing any conclusions about him or her, and so I stared insistently as deeply as I could right inside Preston’s eyes. The feeling this brought about was like eagerly drinking pleasantly warm liquefied milk chocolate on a sun-filled joyous afternoon – their light coppery-brownish hazel colour was serene, bashful, and openly cheerful, and his whole radiance was creating in me the association with an alive plush teddy bear – awkward but charmingly naive and cute in a friendly way.

Not to scare him – as an unexpected visit from a pale female ghost-resembling stranger was most probably not on the top of his favourite things to receive first in the morning – I gave him a soft smile, and in the next moment his whole face blushed into rich dark crimson as he embarrassedly looked away.

I had to bite my lips not to giggle as that would abash him even more; his hands instinctively rose to smooth his straight light auburn hair which was pointing in all directions in a real mess, and he readjusted the glasses on his face as though he wanted to look more personable.

“Hi, are you Preston?” I began kindly as though I was speaking to a child, and he glimpsed shyly at me before nodding and turning his head away again; I couldn’t give up the habit of feeling flattered when someone was staring at me with admiration, and his widely opened eyes quickly shifting away from me were so filled with awe that I was about to burst into quiet laughter of pleasure. “I’d like to speak to you –”

“Who is it, Preston?” a middle-aged woman’s voice came to us from the upper floor, and someone’s fast footsteps darted down some stairs; the face of the boy standing in front of me was already so bright scarlet that I got worried about him.

His eyes met mine with a voiceless question and my mind was working at full speed, but yet I couldn’t think up a normal explanation for my strange visit and the plea I would make – it

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