It was perfect. The stars had aligned on this night, it seemed. Perhaps it was a bit inconvenient to have so many people in the mansion, but it was all the better to throw off suspicion. After all, everyone there was a little bit mad. It could be any of them, right?
Yes, this night was perfect.
Now it was just a matter of waiting until the studio was empty. Once everyone had stopped arguing and decided to put down their instruments for the night. Once the equipment was switched off and the room no longer full of angry voices. The soundproofing would work wonders, if Remy even managed to scream. It was doubtful that he would, though. If they could just be quick enough, and strong enough, to pull the cord tight around his neck before he could utter a single scream…
The entire mansion seemed a bit on edge. Everyone was frayed around the edges, but exhausted from a long day. No one would be keeping alert for something like this to happen, even if they weren’t tired or drunk. It was the perfect opportunity.
All that was left was to wait just a little bit longer.
Isaac didn’t really want to share his room with Zac, but he could see the reasoning behind it. They’d conserve candles that way, at least. He was certain that he’d thought to throw a flashlight into his suitcase, but as he dug through it, tossing clothes all about the room, a flashlight was nowhere to be seen. He supposed he must have taken it out at the last minute, figuring there would be no need to come quite that prepared.
He had, obviously, been wrong.
He licked his fingers and snuffed out his candle, leaving only Zac’s burning on the nightstand. At least the room Remy had moved them into had two beds. If Taylor ever turned up, Isaac supposed they would stick him in the floor. He’d like to just stick him with Zac, the notorious bed hog, and see how well he liked that. But there was no reason to be that much of an asshole to him, really. Taylor would be over this fling with Poppy in a few hours and then he’d be back to normal – or whatever passed for normal in Taylor’s world.
Glad to have a bed all to himself, at least, Isaac wiggled out of his clothes and into the heavy pajamas he had had the foresight to bring. The night hadn’t really been that chilly so far, but he imagined it would be before long. He crawled into bed and curled up under the covers, rolling around until he found a comfortable spot to lay.
“Aren’t you going to bed?” Isaac asked, as he rolled over to see Zac sitting up in bed frowning at a book held close to his face. He couldn’t imagine there was any way, not even with the candle positioned so close, that Zac could actually make out any of the words.
“Nope. Not sleepy. Kinda… restless, I guess, with the storm and everything,” Zac replied, squinting and pulling the book closer to his face.
“How the hell can you even see to read that?”
“Can’t. Not really. But it’s this or the guitar. Which would you prefer?”
“Good point,” Isaac replied and rolled over the other way, facing the wall. He hoped sleep would come soon, but nothing gave him the confidence to really believe that it would.
The storm seemed determined not to stop at all. Zac didn’t really mind much since he wasn’t planning on sleeping for quite some time, anyway. He was glad he’d charged up his cell phone – even without signal, which the rain had apparently knocked out, he could keep an eye on the time. Every few minutes, his eyes darted to the phone’s screen to see how much time had passed and each time he was disappointed by how slow it seemed to creep by.
He didn’t want to seem too eager, so even as it neared the hour mark he thought it best to wait just a bit longer. He had long since given up trying to read the book; once he leaned in so close to the candle that he thought he had set the book on fire. Zac figured it was best not to start a fire in a house where he was a guest, so after that he tossed the book aside and just took to starting at the wall, which he could also only barely make out in the darkness.
Finally, when an hour and twenty minutes had passed, he decided it was time.
With a long, deep breath, he stood and tried to gather up all of his courage. Zac wished he knew where Taylor was. Maybe he could have asked him for some advice. Not that he really wanted to behave like Taylor, but at least he had some confidence in himself and actually succeeded at getting the girl more often than not. He set the candlestick on the dresser so that it would illuminate the mirror a bit and combed his fingers through his hair. Finally satisfied that it looked about as good as it was going to, he picked the candle up and used it to guide his way out of the room and down the hallway.
It was a good thing he wasn’t really in a hurry, Zac thought, because the darkness of the house kept him from walking very fast. Knowing him, he’d trip and drop the candle. So he took his steps carefully and slowly, holding the candlestick out in front of his body to light the path as best he could.
In the darkness, it was difficult to even remember where he was going. Once he made it down the stairs, he could hear voices off in the distance and decided to follow that. At first he couldn’t be sure who the voices were at all, but as he grew closer one of them began to sound familiar. The closer and closer he came to the source – it seemed to be the foyer – he realized the voices were quite angry, and one of them was very nearly screaming.
When he rounded the corner, he saw that the male voice was in fact, as he suspected, coming from Rio. The female voice, which he hadn’t recognized, was coming from a short, squat woman in a bright blue raincoat. She looked rather like a drowned rat, if rats were prone to having bad perms, and she was standing on her tiptoes to yell in Rio’s face, waving her flashlight around madly.
“I’ve told him a million times to keep the noise down up here!” the woman yelled.
Rio backed away from her. “Mrs. Cobalt, we’ve not been playing any music at all since the power went out, I can promise you that.”
“I’m not just talking about the damn music!” the woman, evidently named Mrs. Cobalt, screeched. Zac even backed up a bit in fear, not wanting to get near enough to have her anger directed at him. “Someone was making a racket outside just a few minutes ago. There’s no need for people to be out making such noise at this time of night. And in a storm, too!”
“How do you know it wasn’t just the storm, then? I’m sure no one here is dumb enough to wander outside right now,” Rio replied.
Mrs. Cobalt seemed ready to explode at that. Instead of responding, however, she simply grumbled a few times, stared at Rio, and finally turned on her heel and strode back out the door. Once she was gone, Rio slumped back against the door, looking absolutely exhausted. He closed his eyes for a moment, and Zac took that opportunity to step a bit further into the foyer.
“Sorry you had to be witness to that,” Rio said, holding out his own candle to illuminate Zac a bit more. “She’s crazy. Remy warned me about her, but I had no idea how bad it was.”
“Who the hell was that? Crazy neighbor?” Zac asked, stepping closer so that he could actually get a look at the man he was talking to.
As he got closer, Zac realized that Rio’s dark hair was shining with water. Had he been out in the storm? Was he the person that Mrs. Cobalt had seen outside? It was pretty unlikely that he’d tried to take a shower in the middle of the night and with no electricity, so the first option seemed the most likely. Still, it didn’t make sense. Who’d go outside in that kind of storm except a crazy person?
“Adele Cobalt. Completely off her rocker. Lives next door and apparently has made a habit of calling the cops on Remy. She’d like it better if he didn’t live here at all, I think,” Rio replied. “What are you doing up at this hour anyway?”
“I was gong to ask you that, actually,” Zac replied. “I was just going to get a uh, a drink from the kitchen. Couldn’t sleep.”
Rio ran a hand self-consciously through his hair. “Oh, I couldn’t sleep either. Was just uh… just working on something up in the studio and decided to go for a bit of a walk around the house to clear my mind. Then I ran into her.”
Zac nodded, but the explanation didn’t totally make sense. “Well, I’ll just get myself a drink and go back to bed, I suppose.”
“I should head back upstairs, too,” Rio replied. “Sleep well. We’ve got a lot of work to get through tomorrow.”
With that, the other man walked away, leaving Zac a bit puzzled and staring at the front door. When he was certain that no other crazy old ladies were going to come bursting through it, Zac turned and made his way toward the kitchen. He hoped that little detour hadn’t been enough for Gwyn to give up waiting for him.
Still holding his candlestick carefully out in front of him, Zac made his way to the kitchen. It took him a little longer than he would have liked. The candle was getting very low and he had to stop to peel the melting wax off his fingers a few times. Each time he swore out of habit, even though the calluses on his fingers kept it from really hurting all that much.
When he finally made it to the kitchen he slowly swept his candle across the room to light it up. It was empty. No Gwyn. Had she grown tired of waiting for him? He knew he should have come sooner, should have hurried. Maybe she hadn’t come at all. That wouldn’t have surprised him one bit.
Suddenly, a scream echoed through the house. Zac knew the voice, without a doubt.
It was Isaac.
Isaac tossed and turned for what felt like hours but might have only been a few minutes. Something about the storm and the darkness made it nearly impossible for him to sleep. When he rolled over to face Zac’s bed, he thought the bed looked empty but he couldn’t be certain. He fumbled on the nightstand for his candlestick and matches and once lit, it confirmed his suspicions.
The bed was, indeed, empty.
Tossing back the covers, Isaac stood and looked around the room. Zac was nowhere to be found. Were both of his brothers determined to play some stupid game of hide and seek all weekend? He frowned and surveyed the room once more. Definitely empty.
Now that he was awake and standing, he didn’t at all feel like crawling back into the bed and attempting sleep again. Instead, he decided to make his way to the studio and fiddle around with his guitar a bit. He could easily play it in the dark; after this long, it was pretty instinctual. A little candlelight would be more than enough, and hopefully after a few minutes of strumming around he would be tired enough to sleep. With the candlestick in hand, he made his way out of the bedroom and down the hallway to the studio.
The candle really didn’t help light the way very much, though, especially with no windows on that particular section of the hall. He clung to the wall, running his hand along the chair railing to keep himself steady as he held the candle out as far in front of him as he could to light the path. After what seemed like forever, he finally felt the studio door underneath his hands. The smooth texture of it, free of the elaborate designs that covered the rest of the mansion’s doors, were a dead giveaway.
Pushing the door open with one hand, Isaac held his candle out into the dark room with the other. As he closed the door behind him, he realized just how creepy the soundproofing was. He knew it was storming all around him, but he could no longer hear it.
He was surrounded by total, unnatural silence.
He remembered that he had left one of his acoustic guitars propped against a wall in the inner studio. With the candle still held out in front of him, he slowly made his way toward it. The door had been left ajar, which he thought was a little odd. Pushing it open further, he saw why.
Sprawled across the floor, his legs bent at strange angles, was Remy. An empty stand leaned precariously against a wall, the microphone having been pulled from it and wrapped tight around Remy’s neck.
Ike stumbled back to lean against the wall. He was dead. Remy was dead. Even without trying to check his pulse – the thought of touching a dead body terrified him too much to even consider that – Isaac was certain of it.
He barely even realized that the scream piercing the air was his own. It seemed to happen in spite of himself as he stood trembling in fear.
Someone in this house was a killer and Isaac was staring at a dead, murdered body.