Free The House That Death Built by Michaelbrent Collings

at last, she turned away
from the darkness. Not back to her book – any pretense of studying was gone for
good. Instead she turned to the dressing table that sat in one corner of a –
    ( huge, enormous, nearly-empty )
    – room. She was dressed for bed,
wearing the boxers and tank top that were her favorite sleepwear. She'd brushed
her teeth –
    ( like a good little girl! )
    – scrubbed her face. She might as
well complete the nighttime ritual while she waited….
    For the night to truly begin.
    She sat in front of the dressing
table. A discrete light sat atop the mirror – not the tacky brightness you saw
in movies about movies, where starlets sat in front of a globe-lit mirror and
made impossibly pretty faces even more impossibly pretty, but a light perfectly
designed to throw maximum light against your face without turning it into a series
of crags and flaws.
    She wondered, not for the first
time, what it had set Mom and Dad back to buy it. Whatever it had been, it was
too much. There were better things to spend their money on.
    Not much she could do about that.
What was past was past. Only the future could be changed, molded, perfected.
    She took the brush that sat on
the table top, began to pass it over and through her hair. Sweep, sweep, sweep.
She could feel the strands separating, flowing back together, softening.
    Sweep, sweep, swee –
    Scratch .
    She spun again. Looked at the
window. The darkness.
    "Is there someone out
there?" she called. Then chided herself for being silly.
    She turned back to her task.
Sweep, sweep, swee –
    And saw the shadow in the mirror
an instant before she felt a hand on her shoulder. A scream tried to break
free, but it was muffled, then silenced, by the other hand that clapped over
her mouth and nose.
    She was sitting on a stool, and
the man behind her spun her around. She looked into green eyes.
    The hand came away from her
mouth.
    She punched the intruder. Hard.
    "You… you… bastard !"
    She meant the words, but TJ just
laughed them off. Still rough around the edges, but the laugh softened him.
Just barely, just enough to make him look –
    ( innocent )
    – younger. Unaware of the life he
would lead, and happy because of that fact.
    He laughed again.
    "You shouldn't be
here," she said, her voice something between a hiss and a whisper. She
tried to put some level of irritation in her voice, but failed. She was glad he
was here, tonight.
    Anniversaries should be special. Certainly
for her parents – and with TJ's arrival this anniversary became special for
her, too.
    TJ leaned in and kissed her ear.
A gentle nip that sent shudders through her frame. "I shouldn't be
here?" he whispered. "And yet you called me." He paused, but
didn't move from his spot near her, so close she could feel every breath
against her neck. "And you turned off the alarm for me."
    "How do you know that?"
It was all she could think to say – the first and only words that sprung to
mind. She could barely think at all, he was so close.
    TJ drew back. Cupped a hand to
his ear. Frowned. "You hear that?"
    She listened. Half-expecting to
hear more noises coming from outside.
    "I don't hear
anything."
    TJ's frown was swallowed by a
wide grin. "Exactly."
    Susan crossed her arms in another
attempt to be angry. She failed, so settled for a mock-anger that she knew he
would see through.
    "How do you know I turned it
off for you ? The gardener is pretty hot."
    TJ shook his head solemnly.
"An affair with the gardener? You're not that cliché."
    He leaned in for a kiss, this one
full on her lips, but she held him back. "Seriously," she said,
forcing herself to say the words that were expected of her, "you should
go. My dad will be pissed if he finds you here."
    TJ kissed her hard enough she
felt it in the soles of her feet. "Let him be pissed."
    He kept kissing her, long kisses
interrupted by smaller ones like periods at the ends of unspoken sentences.
"I'm… not… kidding," Susan said between the kisses. "You