Chapter 5: Dinner with the Devil
The Steele family dining table was a battlefield masquerading as furniture.
Raven sat stiffly, her spine a rod of pure anxiety. The chandelier above dripped weak, crystal light onto the polished mahogany, doing little to dispel the room’s permanent twilight. Portraits of stern ancestors watched from the walls, their eyes seeming to follow the slow journey of her mother’s silver gravy boat.
Her father, Richard, cut his roast beef with precise, surgical strokes. “So, Kai. Renewable energy. That’s a volatile sector.”
Kai occupied the head of the table like a king usurping a lesser throne. The antique chair creaked under his weight. He didn’t bother with the pretense of small bites. “Volatility implies uncertainty,” he said, his voice a low rumble that absorbed the room’s silence. “I deal in certainties.”
Her mother, Evelyn, fluttered. “It’s just so unusual for Raven to bring a… friend.” The word hung in the air, insufficient. “On such short notice. We were expecting her alone.”
“Plans change,” Kai said, his green eyes flicking to Raven. A current passed between them—a memory of a locked train compartment, of his body standing guard while she slept fitfully against the window. She looked down at her plate. The meat was tinged pink. It made her stomach turn.
“Raven’s always been impulsive,” her father said, not looking up. “Ever since she was a girl. Gets an idea and just… runs with it. Usually away from something.”
The critique, delivered so blandly, stung. She felt Kai’s attention sharpen, a predator sensing a wound.
“What was she running from?” Kai asked, setting his fork down. The clink was final.
The question surprised her father into meeting his gaze. “Pardon?”
“You said she runs. From things. What things?”
An awkward silence fell, filled only by the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall. Evelyn gave a tight laugh. “Oh, childish things. Bad dreams, that sort of nonsense. She was a sensitive child.”
Kai didn’t smile. He leaned back, the chair groaning again. “What kind of dreams?”
Raven’s blood went cold. “Kai, please.”
He ignored her, his focus absolute on Evelyn. “Mrs. Steele.”
Evelyn dabbed her lips with a linen napkin. “It’s silly, really. For years, she’d wake up screaming. Something about the garden. And… white roses. She’d go on and on about white roses.” She offered a conciliatory smile to Raven. “You outgrew it, sweetheart. Just an overactive imagination.”
The air left Raven’s lungs. The dining room seemed to tilt. White roses. The words were a key, turning a lock she’d sealed decades ago.
Kai’s voice cut through the gathering static in her mind. “Why white roses?”
“We never knew!” Evelyn said, her smile straining. “We have red roses. The pastor’s family, next door, they had the white ones. Beautiful climbers all over their trellis. Maybe she saw them from her window and got confused in a nightmare.”
Next door. The pastor’s family.
A memory, sharp and smelling of damp earth and bleach, stabbed behind her eyes. A dark space. The scent of flowers, cloying and sweet. A voice, whispering. The flash was so violent she gripped the edge of the table, her knuckles bone-white.
Kai saw it. He saw everything. His gaze swept from her panic to her parents’ oblivious, embarrassed faces. A low, almost inaudible growl vibrated in his chest. Not human.
“Confused,” he repeated, the word dripping with contempt. “You had a child screaming herself awake for years, and you settled on ‘confused.’”
Richard Steele’s face hardened. “Now see here. That’s family matter. We handled it. Prayer, structure. She stopped.”
“She buried it,” Kai corrected, his tone flat and deadly. “There’s a difference.”
The front doorbell chimed, a cheerful two-tone melody that shattered the tension into a thousand brittle pieces.
“Oh, that’ll be Jeremy!” Evelyn said, leaping up with transparent relief. “He said he might stop by. He’s the pastor’s son, you know. Such a nice boy. A dentist now.”
Raven felt the world slow to a thick, syrupy crawl. The footsteps in the hall. The murmur of voices. The dining room door pushed open.
Jeremy stood there, holding a vase. In it were a dozen pristine, perfect white roses.
He had the same gentle smile, the same kind eyes behind wire-framed glasses. He was taller, filled out. But he was the same. He was exactly the same.
“Evelyn, Richard,” he said warmly. Then his eyes landed on Raven. “Wow. Raven. You look… grown up.” His gaze shifted to Kai, and his smile faltered for a microsecond, a flicker of animal recognition before his pleasant mask resettled. “And you must be the friend.”
Kai didn’t stand. He looked from the roses to Jeremy’s face to Raven’s frozen, pale horror. Every instinct in him screamed. The pieces snapped together with a terrifying, silent click.
The dark space in her memory had a source. The white roses had a bearer. The sweet, cloying smell had a name.
He slowly rose to his feet, the motion so fluid and powerful it drew every eye. The room seemed to shrink around him. He looked only at Raven, his voice a command that brooked no argument, a leash thrown to her in freefall.
“Raven. Upstairs. Now.”
She moved without thought, obeying the primal safety in that tone, pushing back from the table. Her mother sputtered. Her father began, “Now wait just a minute!”
But Kai was already turning his body, subtly placing himself between Raven and the man in the doorway holding the flowers. He didn’t touch Jeremy. He didn’t have to.
The look in Kai’s eyes was no longer human at all. It was a promise of territory, of violence, of ancient reckoning.
“Jeremy, was it?” Kai said, the words soft, civil, and dripping with menace. “Let’s you and I have a talk about your roses.”
Raven fled, the taste of old copper and dead flowers filling her mouth, the sound of her own childhood screaming finally unlocking in her ears.