The Descent by Alma Katsu Read Free Book Online Page A

servants; Terry and Robin hardly seemed able to handle the job, and in any case the two women didn’t seem inclined toward housekeeping, aside from the kitchen, that is. From what I’d seen the night before, they seemed quite at home there, concocting splendid meals.
    I don’t know how long I’d been lost in the house and was really starting to break into a panic when I finally stumbled on a set of stairs that brought me back to my starting point. I emerged in the entry hall just as Adair was descending the main staircase. Tousle-haired, he was pulling a shirt over his chest, and the sight of his bare skin reminded me of when he used to parade around the mansion in Boston in a state of undress,a silk banyan doing a poor job of hiding his nakedness, looking for all the world like an indolent pasha traipsing from one concubine to the next.
    I must’ve looked a bit wild-eyed after being lost, because on seeing me he said, “You haven’t been exploring on your own, have you, Lanore? You really shouldn’t do that. The house has been renovated so many times and built onto over the years that there’s no longer any rhyme or reason to the layout. It’s easy to lose your way, and I don’t think I’d be exaggerating if I were to say there’s a good chance we’d never find you.”
    If I hadn’t just spent the better part of an hour or so lost in that maze of staircases and long, empty halls, I would’ve thought he was making it up in an effort to keep me from finding something he didn’t want me to see. Now, of course, I knew he was sincere. He led me to a cozy room past the kitchen that appeared to be his study. The far wall had a big window that looked out on a stand of pine trees, the only shady spot on the island. Two walls were dominated by shelves, each shelf full of old, leather-bound books. I glanced over the spines, wondering if these were Adair’s or had belonged to the previous owner of the island. I realized with a blush that, subconsciously, I’d been looking for titles that had something to do with alchemy or magic, signs of his past life, but there were none that I could tell. Nor was there any evidence that he was dabbling in magic again: no bottles of mysterious liquids, no glass jars of seeds or roots, or unidentifiable animal parts as I’d seen in the hidden room in the mansion in Boston all those years ago. The room was reassuringly normal.
    “The two books you left with me,” I said, referring to the ancient tomes filled with his alchemical secrets that he hadgiven to me on the day of my departure, a token of his intent to forego magic. “I brought them with me. They’re up in my room.”
    Adair wrinkled his brow. “I gave them to you. You didn’t need to return them.”
    “I don’t feel right keeping them. Besides, it doesn’t matter where I put them or what I do with them, they look out of place. They’re meant to be with you, I think.” I pulled down a book, flipped the pages until I got to text. I didn’t know the language, but from the way the lines broke, I could tell it was poetry.
    He crouched in front of the hearth to build a fire. “Did you sleep well last night?” he asked over his shoulder.
    “I slept fine.”
    “I am glad to hear that. Most people don’t when they first come here. They complain of bad dreams. The girls did.” He nodded in the direction of the kitchen. “The locals have all kinds of reasons why this is. Some people say the bad dreams are caused by vapors given off by the rocks here, that the island has these hallucinogenic properties because it is made of an unusual combination of minerals. Others say it has to do with the precise longitude and latitude being in some strange magnetic field. Still others say it’s because of its ominous past.”
    “Did you have bad dreams when you arrived?” I asked, even though I couldn’t imagine he’d say that he did. I didn’t think it would be possible for Adair to have nightmares any more than I thought he