“Probably there aren’t any.”
She didn’t bother looking at him, but continued her search with a kind of manic desperation. “Of course there are. Why wouldn’t there be candles? Everyone has candles.”
“Apparently not the everyone who owns this cottage.”
“Don’t be obtuse. There have to be candles, have to be….”
“For God’s sake, Sophie, you’ve searched every drawer and cupboard in this place. Surely it hasn’t escaped your notice that our little abode is in serious disrepair. There’s no food, no bed, a broken fireplace, and what is here is covered in dust. I doubt anyone else has been inside this place in years.”
“Well, we’ll just have to use the fireplace, surely—”
“It’s in shambles. We’d be smoked out. Will you sit down?”
“No! I want—”
“Candles. Yes, I know.” He gave up and watched her open a cupboard she had searched twice already. She reached up and patted the recesses of the shelves, groping blindly with her hand. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes held a wild glint to them. She looked positively furious. Positively beautiful, actually, but he wasn’t in the mood to pay compliments.
“Of the multitude of disasters we are currently facing, you’re in a tizzy over some missing tapers? Good Lord, you have a skewed sense of priorities. Why do you need them so badly?”
She had difficulty answering. The panic that had been nibbling away at her nerves as evening progressed was beginning to take increasingly large bites. The sun was almost down, and in a few moments it would be dark, completely black. And Alex was right, there were no candles, no fireplace. Nothing to hold the night at bay.
There would be no light.
The certain knowledge of that sent an icy coldness prickling along her skin and sinking into her muscles. It squeezed her chest until her heart pumped too hard and her lungs seemed barely to work at all. It crept into her mind, gleefully pushing aside reason and courage.
In a daze, she looked past Alex to the window.
“There’s no moon,” she whispered. “It’s cloudy and there’s no moon out.”
His brow knit in confusion and concern. “Why does that matter?”
“I…”
He walked around a counter to cup her face in his hands. He’d been wrong, he realized. It wasn’t anger that lit her face. It was something else entirely. “Sophie?”
“It’ll be dark. Completely dark.”
“Yes,” he said slowly, carefully. “It’s better that way. We’ll be harder to…” His voice trailed off as she shook her head vehemently.
His thumb traced a gentle path along her jaw. “What is it? What are you afraid of, sweetheart? Is it the dark?”
“I…” For a brief moment, shame was nearly as powerful as the fear. She wished it would overwhelm her entirely. Humiliation would be worlds better than this slowly creeping madness. But with each passing second, the light in the room grew dimmer. And simple fear quickly stepped aside for terror.
“Sophie?”
“Yes,” she admitted in a mortified whisper. “Yes, the dark. I can’t…I can’t…things happen.”
“What? What happens, Sophie?”
“Things…”
Death. Death happened in the dark.
When her eyes filled with tears, Alex scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the window. Questions would do her no good now. Later he would ask them. Later he would find the source of her pain.
And do everything he could to kill it.
“Here now, love. Look at the sunset. It’s dipped below the clouds now. See the way the light passes through the trees? When I was a very little boy, my mother would take me for walks in the evening. When we passed through light like that, she would tell me we were touching the fingers of God. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper, but it was enough.
“Take a good look, Sophie. Hold the picture in your mind. Can you do that?”
Her nod was jerky against his shoulder.
“Good, now close your eyes and—”
“No! I can’t! I have to watch. I have to see.”
“Watch for what, sweet?”
She shook her head, but he had a terrible suspicion he already knew the answer. “All right, I’ll watch. How’s that? I’ll watch over us to night, I promise. Now close your eyes. There’s a girl.”
He sat down against the far wall, settling her in his lap.
“You won’t fall asleep?” Her voice was mumbled against his chest but he heard the fear, and the hope. And it broke his heart.
“No, love, I promise. I won’t fall asleep.”
Good to his word, Alex kept guard throughout the night.