The Shells Of Chanticleer (18 page)

Once we kissed there was no going back for me and reality set in quick. This was not our real life; this was Chanticleer. Zooey’s words from my first day in the library came back to haunt me, warning me not to fall in love, saying that it never ended well. Sebastian had been in Chanticleer for a while and immediately my mind jumped ahead to the day that I would lose him.

I whispered, worriedly, “You are not going to tip back home anytime soon, are you?”

Sebastian shook his head and tightened his arm around me possessively. “Nope. I’m a very slow reader.”

“Good,” I sighed. I instantly decided to develop the same problem. I ran my hand through his lovely golden hair. Even in the moonlight, it seemed to reflect every color of the sun. I lifted a handful of it into the air, up and away from his head like Poppy’s had been.

“The floating hair isn’t your best look, anyway,” I teased.

“There’s no chance of that,” he said, as I set his hair back down, winding my fingers in it, wondering how any one person could look so perfect. When people referred to freaks of nature, it was usually negative. But I thought it was even more freakish to see all the pieces fall into place so perfectly in one human being.

“I was always only kidding about being just friends; you must know that.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I was hoping.”

“You know, I don’t want you to think that I do this all the time. I do not. But living here has taught me not to be afraid to follow my heart or go after what I want. And I can’t fight my feelings for you. I don’t want to pretend anymore. I’ve wanted to be here with you, just like this, from right away.”

“Me too,” I admitted. “I feel like I’ve known you before.”

“Well, I can’t remember what I used to feel like before I knew you. All I know now is that I adore you,” he said, taking my hand in his, locking our fingers together.

“So you and I,” he said, cementing our intent. “You can trust me, you know. I want you to. I won’t hurt you. I won’t give us away and let them split us up.”

“I know,” I said. And I did. I trusted Sebastian in the same way I instinctively trusted Bing and most everyone I met there.
Except for Crispin Sinclair,
I reminded myself. But Sebastian could never make me fear for my safety like that Sinclair creature did. I wouldn’t lock Sebastian out of my room. Speaking of, I wondered aloud, “Are we going to get in trouble? Shouldn’t we go back soon? It’s so late.”

“No,” he said. “I’m not in a hurry. Who knows how long we have to be together? We don’t know how many chances we’ll have like this. And anyway, we won’t get caught. Haven’t you noticed that they never check to see where anyone is late at night? It’s insane.”

“Unless they want to turn you into a shell that night,” I replied without thinking. “Then they know where you are.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing.” Oops. I needed to keep my secret safe but it was kind of a drag sometimes. I had a feeling I was going to end up telling Sebastian, sooner or later.

“Whatever,” he shrugged. “Let’s take advantage of that and stay together here. It’s warm out; we’ll be fine.”

And he reclined back and I nestled comfortably next to him, stretching my legs out and then curling up in a ball. He was right, no one seemed to keep tabs on where we went. We stopped talking, and he took care to make sure that every part of me was covered with the blanket.

“You don’t sleep in your shoes, do you?”

I kicked off my flats. “Won’t we get in trouble?”

“Who cares?” Then he added, “We can always say that we’re just friends. Shhh, no more worrying.” He put his fingers on my mouth to keep me quiet.

I turned my face to peek at him, but his eyes were closed so I curled back up and the words came springing into my mind: ‘Best day ever.’

He woke me when the pink was just streaking upward into the sky and we hurried back through the woods and deserted streets to our rooms, both doubly pleased at the night we had carved out for ourselves. I was safely in my room long before I heard the clatter of the breakfast trays being laid at our doors at 8, right on schedule.

Not that I could eat much that morning. I was over the moon, completely distracted, convinced that the 700-page book on women’s issues was about to be thrown at me.

But it didn’t happen. That surprised me, particularly because I spent a lot of time drooling over Sebastian, sneaking away with him to the forest or miles away from everyone down the circuit. I figured that whatever was going on between us wasn’t hurting me. I was handling it better than Violet did. It just wasn’t an issue for me.

With my thoughts firmly fixated on Sebastian, I ceased my incessant fretting about the shells and Crispin Sinclair. At night I forgot to be alert for noises, I slept like the dead, and through the night. Sleeping tight, I commended myself. Most nights I didn’t even bother to jam the chair up against my door.

In public, Sebastian didn’t hold my hand or ever really give away how close we were. He was very proper. Neither of us had fallen for someone before.

“Someday I’ll tell you why,” he told me.

I didn’t care. I was content. It was our secret. I didn’t question his approach. He had been in Chanticleer a while, and knew more about circumventing attention than I did. And we got away with it. It was all good.

Meanwhile, the powers that be in Chanticleer continued to work on me in other ways. Soon I was called in to Miss Clarice’s office for coursework, only this time I was asked to dress up. In my closet hung a pink chiffon dress, sheer and flowing, lined with opaque pink silk. It clasped around the back of my neck with a pearl button, leaving my shoulders bare, then cinched at my waist and fell to just above my knee. It was very dressy and sophisticated and not really me. With it was a pair of silver sandals. I put it all on as instructed and went to check in with Miss Clarice.

She didn’t have much to say and that was fine with me. I drifted off, daydreaming about meeting Sebastian for dinner.

“We are just waiting for Bing to arrive in the car,” she noted.

A car?
This is different,
I thought.

“What did you think of Poppy’s shell, Macy?”

I told her that seeing it made me feel sick to my stomach. She talked about Poppy in a wistful tone. The phone rang. “Bing is here,” she said. “Let’s go.”

She walked me down the steps to the driveway where Bing was sitting inside a black sedan. Miss Clarice opened the front door and motioned me in. She waved to Bing and shut the door behind me. I sank into the leather seats as Bing adjusted the air conditioning vents, pointing them in my direction.

“Why a car, Bing?” I asked, sensing a formality not typical between us. “Where am I going?”

Bing looked straight ahead at the road, focused on his driving.

“It’s too far to walk,” he said. “Other than that, I better not say anything else. Sometimes I talk too much. You look nice today. I like you in that dress.”

“Thanks. It’s not really me.”

“Why not? What is you, anyway?”

“Oh never mind,” I dismissed him. I wasn’t in the mood for being philosophical.

We drove for a few minutes until the town was behind us and the road was quiet, free of passerbys. I saw the Caution! sign we had passed on our way to the shell museum. Was he taking me there? Ever since our visit I dreaded being drugged and dragged back there but my fear was for the nighttime. I always assumed I was safe during the day.

“We’re not going to the shell museum, are we?”

“No,” he assured me but I knew we were in the vicinity. I saw the turnoff to the utility road and the restricted area, but we turned right beforehand, through an imposing set of iron gates left open for us, onto a wide graveled road. The car snaked down a magnificent
allee
lined with chestnut trees before stopping in the forecourt of an impressive estate.

Eight elegant arched windows were evenly spaced across its smooth limestone façade. Obedient lengths of evenly clipped privet hedge lined the path to the door. Flanking its broad steps were giant urns, stems of lush exotic foliage shooting skyward, and tropical flora spilling over the sides.

“What is this?” I asked.

Bing wouldn’t answer.

“My instructions are to wait for you here in the car,” he said. “So now you go in.”

“By myself?”

“Unfortunately,” Bing answered.

Disappointed, I opened the car door and got out. I walked slowly across the white gravel and up to the entrance. My knock sounded small and I waited for the door to open, uncertain. The place was very pretty. It felt European and aristocratic and I thought that whoever lived there was extremely lucky. A butler, dressed in a grey suit, answered the door and invited me in. I could see why I had to dress up.

He said only, “We’ve been expecting you.” A small white fox made a run for the open front door. “Minsie, no!” he exclaimed. He grabbed it by its green leather collar and slammed the door shut. “Pets,” he said, and then made a disdainful snorting noise.

I had seen that animal before.
Where?

The old butler led me into a grand sunlit room off of the front hall, furnished with ornate antiques: dark Greek statues, spot-lit paintings, fringed window treatments. Overstuffed green velvet sofas were grouped in separate conversational settings throughout. I saw a low table pulled up to one sofa, set for tea. There were tarts and small sandwiches, toast and honey and chocolates already laid out. I could smell the warm caramel sugar. Then in a horrifying flash I remembered where I had seen that little pet fox before.

“Wait here. Mr. Sinclair will be right with you,” the butler said, motioning me toward the center of the fancy room. He then backed out swiftly, closing the door securely behind him.

A wave of nausea hit me. No wonder Bing had been uncharacteristically quiet on the ride over. He knew that I would have jumped out of the moving car to keep from being left alone in a room with Sinclair.

My instinct for self-preservation kicked in. I knew that I didn’t have to be in the shell museum, per se, or in the tank room exactly, to be in danger. I knew how vulnerable I was in that remote house, tarted-up in my party dress, my shoulders exposed and my legs bare. Sinclair would be there any second. He would close the door behind him, he would instruct that we be left alone; privacy would be ensured. He was old, but not feeble, stronger than me. Anything could happen.

I glanced at the high-backed sofas artfully arranged around me. He could easily pin me down on the velvet, muffle my screams with his palm, or smother me with one of the matching throw pillows. No one would hear. He could hurt me.

I panicked. I could do a lot of things better since coming to Chanticleer, but coming face to face with Crispin Sinclair was not going to be one of them. I had no intention of testing my bravery, not with the way Sinclair looked at me. I had never considered not completing coursework before—the price we paid for failing was too high to me—but I forgot my fear of the shells right then.

I immediately knew what I needed to do. I eyed the doorway. It was framed with elaborate millwork. Two sculpted stone cherubs rested their baby faces on chubby fists on either side of an ornamental pediment, their eyes pointed in my direction. Were they watching me? Were there cameras inside?

I stared at the doorknob. There was a lock. Had the butler locked me in? Even though Sebastian had tried to assure me that Crispin was harmless, he couldn’t understand my anxiety. He wasn’t a girl. Every time Sinclair’s eyes fell on me, I knew he saw me with my hair floating to the side, the gong tolling, a crowd gathered in the town square waiting for me. Seconds away from being locked in alone with him, I imagined other horrors.

I had to get out. I ran to the front windows. I could see Bing sitting in the driver’s seat, tapping his fingers against the door. Thank goodness he was still there.

I looked around for an escape route that wasn’t through the front. It would be just my luck to run into Sinclair as I tried to escape.
“Leaving so soon? I wouldn’t hear of it,”
he’d say, parroting the Wicked Old Witch of the West intercepting Dorothy. I couldn’t risk that. At the back of the room I saw French doors that led out. I ran and pulled them open but it was not a way out, merely a long sunlit gallery with more floor to ceiling arched windows. There were paintings on the wall and more statues, but no place to hide and no way out. I had to go out one of the windows in the room I was in. I prayed that they would open.

Through those windows I glimpsed an adjacent side patio with outdoor chairs and iron tables.
There has to be a way to get there from here, only how?
I pulled at the handles on the terrace windows but they were old and useless, painted shut. Finally, I came upon a set of tall windows with doorknobs, but the knobs wouldn’t budge. I pulled at them in desperation anyway, hoping against hope that they would give way. Panicking, I ran my fingers around the knob, searching for a latch, anything that would release it. There it was, a small switch at the side. I pushed at it, it popped out, and the doorknob turned under my trembling hand. Lucky for me.

I didn’t stop to think about the consequences. I tore out the door and across the stone patio, down the sloping front lawn to the car, my fancy sandals slipping out from under me on the thick lawn, but I didn’t fall. I grabbed the sedan’s door handle and flung it open, jumped into the car and pounded on Bing’s leg, pulling the car door shut simultaneously.

“Drive!” I commanded. “Hurry!”

Bing looked at me in sleepy amazement. He must have been starting to doze off.

“What’s going on?” he asked, bewildered, rubbing his eyes.

“It’s okay, I’m done,” I lied. “Just go, go fast.”

“What? So soon?”

“Don’t talk, just go, please,” I said, glancing over my shoulder, terrified to see the front doors opening before I could get away.

“As you wish.” Bing hit the gas pedal with abandon. The car tore down the gravel driveway like a hot rod. I could just imagine Crispin Sinclair walking into the empty room, the open patio door telling him everything.