Chapter 38

• What else can I do? I’m technically a prisoner here with nowhere else to go. I’m on my feet, with persistent pain in my ass bossing me around, in a house full of people who hate me. I only have him on my side to depend on, and only because the Fates forced it. I have nowhere else, and if I’m being honest with myself, everything is too messy, my gifts too new, and my mental state a little too on the fragile side to be thinking about going anywhere alone. So, I nod reluctantly.
• “Come on then. Stay close to me.” Colton turns and leads the way, sensing I don’t want or need him touching me, and I do as he says. Staying right behind him, clutching my sheet and waiting while he grabs one, wrapping it on like a toga, and heading towards the door. If Carmen saw us now, naked with ripped bedsheets to cover our modesty, she would only assume the worst, and I can’t imagine that going down well at all. I shudder at the possibility she might see us.
• Within seconds we’re in the hall moving along the wide passage in semi-darkness due to all the boarded-up windows and lack of lighting, and he leads onwards, following some turns and a flight of stairs until we get to the floor below. They put me on the top floor at the far end of the house, away from everyone, and now we seem to be on the third floor in a brighter hallway with doors all bearing names and keypads on each.