Paris’ house was in the
exact opposite direction of Ariadne’s, but it was a few minutes closer. One look at it was enough to tell Ariadne
that the architect had been on a mission to create a home with the exact
minimum required space for a family of three to live in without being driven to
strangle each other.
The front of the house had enough space on the first
floor for a door and a thin window. The
second floor had one circular window below the inverted-V of the roof.
Ariadne pulled the SUV into the driveway and clicked off
the lights. She leaned back against her
seat and let out a slow breath. The
adrenaline was finally starting to seep out of her system. She ran her hands through her hair
quickly. What the hell was
happening? How had her evening gotten so
completely out of control?
“Uh, Ariadne?” Paris asked from the passenger’s seat. “Do you think we could get inside?”
“Uh, Ariadne?” Paris asked from the passenger’s seat. “Do you think we could get inside?”
“Yeah, right, sorry,” Ariadne said, pulling the key from
the ignition and climbing out of the car.
Paris held his left arm close to her chest as they
approached his front door and fished in his pocket for the keys. He finally got them out and dropped them on
the ground, cursing under his breath as he did.
“I got them,” Ariadne said, putting a hand on his
uninjured arm as she leaned down to pick up the keys. “I’m sorry I got you shot.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Paris assured her.
“Still, I owe you.
You got dragged into all of this.”
“Don’t apologize.
Can you imagine a series of events where I didn’t rush to help you? The bastard was hitting you.”
Ariadne nodded silently.
She hadn’t dared to look at her face in the mirror, to see the red welt
on her face from Janus’ slaps. She could
only hope that she’d bruised his handsome face when she’d punched him.
“What can we do to stop the bleeding?” Ariadne asked as
they stepped inside.
A quick scan of the first floor of Paris’ house showed
that it was only two rooms. The living
room and kitchen were not separated by a wall and there appeared to be no
dining room. Instead, a small counter-island
sat in the middle of the kitchen, which was distinguished by the white tiles,
with a fridge and stove while the living room, distinguished by a maroon
coloured carpet, had only a couch and TV.
The TV was barely a meter away from the couch and, Ariadne noticed,
unplugged at the moment. There were
various other odds and ends scattered around the room, including a clock on the
wall, but overall the rooms were sparse.
The only other room was a bathroom to the right of the kitchen, the door
slightly ajar. Ariadne assumed the two
doors to her right were closets. There
was also a spiral staircase that went up to the second to the left of the
kitchen.
“We need to keep pressure on it with something. A sweater like this won’t do forever,” Paris
explained. “There should be something
you could use in there, some rags or something.
There should be some cleaning solution in there too. If you could wash them first, we can use
them.”
“What are you going to do?” Ariadne asked as Paris walked
over to the couch.
“I’m going to sew myself up,” Paris explained, pulling a
sewing kit from around the corner of the couch.
“I don’t think my mom will mind me borrowing her supplies in this case.”
Ariadne nodded and walked towards the bathroom. There was a smell in the air as she walked. It smelled of sawdust but it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Instead, it felt comforting.
Ariadne nodded and walked towards the bathroom. There was a smell in the air as she walked. It smelled of sawdust but it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Instead, it felt comforting.
When she stepped into the bathroom she turned on the
light and made the mistake of looking into the mirror.
Her cheek was scarlet from where Janus had slapped
her. That was the first thing she
noticed. By comparison, her messed up
hair, which had chunks of leaves torn from the cornstalks in it, and sweaty
face and neck were barely noticeable.
She sank against the sink just below the mirror and
lowered her face. She took in a few slow
breaths and tried not to think about it too hard. If she thought about it the emotions would
come and Paris was bleeding.
She opened the cupboard beneath the sink. Sure enough, there was a bucket full of used
rags and face towels with a bottle of cleaner next to it.
She pulled out the bucket and grabbed a hand full of
rags. She’d already put the stopper into
the sink and it was starting to fill up with water. She tossed the rags into the sink and dumped
some cleaning solution in.
As she was scrubbing them she felt her pocket
vibrate. She realized it was her phone
and quickly dried her hands with a towel off the rack by the sink.
The screen of her phone told her she’d received a text
from her mother. She opened it and read:
Where are you?
Ariadne quickly
explained to her mother that she’d gone back to Paris’ house after the event at
school and would be home later. She
didn’t think that a text would be the best way to tell her mother that she’d
been shot at by Janus and that he’d hit her.
She’d certainly see the mark on her face when she got home.
As an afterthought, Ariadne told her mother not to worry,
that she was fine. As she pocketed her
phone she thought back to their conversation at the dinner table earlier. Would her mother believe her when she
explained what Janus had said and done?
Or would she think that Ariadne was just trying to cause trouble?
Deciding that this wasn’t the time to be thinking about
that, Ariadne continued to clean off the rags.
“You almost done in there?” Paris called from the living
room a moment later.
“Almost,” Ariadne called back. She unceremoniously dumped the bucket of rags
she hadn’t used onto the floor and rung out the ones she had cleaned one by
one. She then tossed them into the
bucket and carried the lot of them out into the living room.
Ariadne hadn’t expected Paris to be shirtless.
He was sitting on the couch, his shirt off, exposing his
broad shoulders coiled with muscle. She
hesitated for a moment approaching him, her eyes moving to his left arm, which
was held tightly to his side as he worked.
He was holding a line of thread between his teeth and cutting the thread
with scissors at that moment.
“How are you going to get the back part?” Ariadne asked,
eyeing the small but bloody entry wound on the back of Paris’ arm. His arm down to his elbow was coated with
drying rivers of blood, some of it matted by the sweater he’d tied around it,
but it was still bleeding slightly.
“You’ll have to do it,” Paris said, turning to her.
“What?”
“I can’t reach it Ariadne. I trust you.”
Ariadne set the bucket of rags down on the floor and sat
beside Paris as he turned so his back was towards her.
“Okay,” she said, taking the needle and thread from Paris
other hand when he offered it. “It might
not be a very good job.”
“It’ll be better than nothing,” Paris replied.
Ariadne nodded and got to work. She’d used a needle and thread before to hem
her own jeans and clothes, since her mother refused to do it, but she
discovered that doing it to a person was very different. She ended up drawing more blood in the
process of sewing up Paris wound and found herself grimacing as she made the
final suture.
She took the scissors when he offered them, having been
silent the whole time she was working, and she cut the thread.
“We should clean up your arm before we make our makeshift
bandages,” Ariadne said.
“I’ll sew some of them together,” Paris said as Ariadne
stood and returned to the bathroom. She
ran another cloth underneath the tap quickly and returned to Paris.
While he worked, she scrubbed down his arm, wiping away
the red marks on his arms.
“I can’t believe he shot at us,” Ariadne finally said.
“Janus is clearly used to getting what he wants,” Paris
said.
“Where were you earlier?” Ariadne asked.
Paris turned to her, having just finished his make-shift
bandage, and Ariadne saw the hurt on his face.
“No! Oh God, I’m
sorry, I didn’t mean…I just meant why weren’t you there earlier? I was expecting you at the maze before Janus
ever showed up.”
“My parents had something they wanted to give me. For my birthday,” Paris explained, reaching
across his chest with his right hand to take one of Ariadne’s in it. “I am so sorry I wasn’t there earlier.”
“It’s not your fault,” Ariadne said, not pulling her hand
away. “I was trying to be nice to
him. I won’t make that mistake again.”
“We have to be very careful now, Ariadne,” Paris said,
holding her gaze intently. “We have no
idea what he’ll do next. You should stay
here for the night.”
“I should go home.”
“He knows where you live Ariadne, I’m sure of it,” Paris
said. “Your home is the first place he’s
going to go looking for you.”
“Then I need to get home now, he might hurt my mother!”
Ariadne realized, springing to her feet.
“He doesn’t want to kill you, Ariadne, he just wants to
find you,” Paris said, getting up as well and placing his hands on her
shoulders. “He doesn’t know where I live
and you’re safe here for tonight. He
won’t do anything to your mother. He
might have shot at us but he was aiming for me.”
“How do you know he won’t hurt my mother?” Ariadne
asked. “He might have been aiming for
you but he could have hit me.”
Paris nodded. “You’re right. He’s reckless. The fact that he brought a gun with a suppressor shows that he didn’t expect you to be very compliant with what he wanted.”
Paris nodded. “You’re right. He’s reckless. The fact that he brought a gun with a suppressor shows that he didn’t expect you to be very compliant with what he wanted.”
“He just wanted me to put on a ring,” Ariadne
explained. “What the hell was that
about?”
“I have no idea,” Paris said, turning towards the closets
by the door as he spoke. “But I don’t
think we need to figure it out right now.
You can stay the night here and tomorrow morning we can figure out what
we’re going to do next. I’ll go grab a
sleeping bag, you can sleep in my room upstairs.”
“Paris, I’m not going to steal your room from you.”
“You are, and you’re going to like it while you do,”
Paris said, glancing over his shoulder and grinning as he approached the
closet. “I am, after all, a gentleman.”
“Gentleman
my ass,” Ariadne replied. But, because
Paris always had that effect, she found herself smiling back at him as she said
it.
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