Chapter 4: The Morning Interrogation
The sound of cupboard doors closing, the clink of ceramic, pulled her from the bed. Curiosity was a sharper prod than fear. That, and the sudden, visceral need for caffeine. She padded barefoot across the cold hardwood, through the cavernous living room, and into the kitchen.
It was a study in monochrome severity. Black marble counters, stainless steel appliances, a huge island lit by a single pendent light. Klaus stood with his back to her, shoulders tense, pouring freshly ground coffee into a French press. The scent was rich, earthy. He didn’t turn.
Emily hesitated for a heartbeat at the threshold. Then, driven by a reckless impulse to shatter the solemn silence he carried, she walked to the island and hoisted herself up onto the cold marble counter. It was a deliberate act, a reclaiming of space. The stone was shockingly cold against her bare thighs. She sat, swinging her legs slightly, the hem of the borrowed black shirt riding up.
He stilled. “Get off the counter.”
“Why?” She kept her voice light. “It’s just a surface.”
“It’s my surface. And you’re in my way.” He turned finally, his blue eyes flicking from her face to where her skin met the marble. A muscle in his jaw jumped. “Get down.”
Instead, she leaned back on her hands. “You told me to look. So I’m looking. And I have questions.”
He poured hot water into the press with a slow, controlled stream. “I’m not in the mood for interrogation before sunrise.”
“Too bad. Where’s your family?”
His hand paused. “Irrelevant.”
“It’s not, though. This place… it’s stunning. And it’s empty. A collection, not a home. The paintings are all yours, all that emotion shoved onto canvas. Where are the people? Brothers, sisters? A thousand years and you live alone in a tower?” She was talking too fast, pushing too hard, but the dam had broken. “Marcel called you ‘old man.’ He’s what, a century? You’re something else. Something older. What are you?”
“You’re sitting there, wearing my clothes, asking me what I am?” He gave a short, bitter laugh, plunging the press down. “The irony is almost poetic.”
“You didn’t answer.”
“And I won’t.” He poured a single mug of coffee, black, and took a sip, watching her over the rim. His gaze was assessing, calculating the risk she posed.
“Fine. Where are you from, originally? The accent comes and goes, but it’s there. Northern Europe? Older English?”
“My origins are a dusty book even I’m bored of rereading.” He set the mug down with a sharp click. “I said get off the counter.”
“No.”
The word hung in the air, simple and absolute. The quiet hum of the Sub-Zero refrigerator seemed to grow louder. Klaus’s expression didn’t change, but the air in the room thickened, grew heavy. He moved then, not with supernatural speed, but with a deliberate, predatory calm that was somehow worse.
He crossed the space between them in three slow strides. He stopped, his body crowding into the space between her knees, forcing her to stop swinging her legs. He placed his hands on the marble on either side of her hips, caging her in. He smelled of clean skin and that underlying, dark scent that was just him.
“You have a startling lack of self-preservation for someone who was just a heartbeat away from having her throat torn out an hour ago,” he said, his voice low and even.
“You didn’t do it.”
“A temporary condition.” His eyes dropped to her mouth, then back to her eyes. “Gratitude, or at least pragmatic silence, would be a wiser course.”
“I’m not grateful. I’m curious. And you’re avoiding every question.”
One of his hands left the counter. He grasped her thigh, just above the knee. His palm was warm, his fingers firm. He didn’t hurt her, but the possession in the grip was undeniable. He pulled, sliding her toward him until she was at the very edge of the counter, the cold marble digging into the backs of her thighs, his body now flush against her knees. He leaned in, his face inches from hers. His breath was warm, tinged with coffee.
“You want to know what I am?” he growled, the charming veneer utterly gone, stripped back to raw, ancient menace. “I am the thing that survives. I am the consequence of betrayal that lasts a millennium. I collect beautiful things because people are currency that devalues and disappoints. Marcel didn’t send you here to understand me. He sent you to be a distraction. A pretty, mortal itch he thinks I’ll scratch until I’m raw and off-balance.”
His other hand came up, not to her throat, but to cradle her jaw, his thumb pressing gently against the pulse point there. It was a lover’s gesture, twisted. “And you, with your questions and your eyes that see too much… you are dangerously, foolishly curious for a creature who should be on her knees thanking whatever god she believes in that I find her intriguing instead of irritating.”
Her heart was a wild, trapped bird. But she didn’t look away. Stubbornness was a flame in her chest, burning through the fear. “You’re still avoiding the question. Where is your family?”
The hand on her jaw tightened minutely. A flash of something—pain, rage, profound loneliness—fractured the menace in his eyes for a single, unguarded second. It was there and gone, so fast she almost missed it.
“Scattered,” he whispered, the word rough. “Or buried. Or chained in darkness because of me. Does that satisfy your anthropological study, little bird? The monster is lonely. How tragically predictable.”
He released her jaw and stepped back abruptly, turning away as if the sight of her was suddenly too much. He braced his hands on the opposite counter, head bowed. The silence stretched, taut and fragile.
Emily didn’t move from the edge of the counter. Her skin burned where he’d touched her. The confession, wrenched from him, hung in the air like smoke. It was more revealing than any answer about geography or century.
After a long moment, he spoke to the window, his back still to her. “There’s a compass,” he said, his voice now flat, drained. “In the library. On the desk. It’s Viking, 10th century. It doesn’t point north. It points to the last place I felt… something other than this. My sister gave it to me. She’s been dead for three hundred years.”
He finally turned around. The vulnerability was sealed away, replaced by a weary, icy calm. “You want to look? Look at that. It’s a better answer than I’ve ever given anyone.”
He picked up his coffee mug and walked out of the kitchen, leaving her alone on the cold marble, with the scent of his betrayal and his coffee lingering in the air, and a single, unintended glimpse into the abyss he carried inside.