The Key (Sanguinem Emere) Read Online Free PDF Page B

except socialise and occasionally arrange functions, so in all practicality, he should be in his own home. If this is his home. Which it may not be. Dammit.
    I forgot to ask Cecily this morning with all the throwing up and burying my face in satin sheets.
    I sigh and try to get myself a bit more together. If he is here, there is absolutely nothing I can do about my appearance. I have never been the sort of girl to carry my make-up with me in my handbag – which could be anywhere, since I haven’t seen it this morning – and my hair will do what it will regardless. Although I could tie it up, I suppose, but that would make my face seem rounder.
    I tug nervously at my collar, trying to expose more shoulder to detract from my neck and face. Who am I kidding? If I walk out of here and into Dimitri he’ll see right through my attempt to hide my inadequacies. He’s just that infuriatingly perceptive. Almost as though he knows me too well.
    Well, I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand in here all afternoon and pull at my clothing like some cheap, nerve-wracked school-girl. I rake my fingers through my thick, black hair and gingerly open the bathroom door, headed to the bed to locate my handbag.
    After a terse fifteen minutes I find it quite obviously squirreled away in the cabinet beside the bed. Some reporter I am; can’t even locate my own handbag in the most natural place for it to have found itself. I up-end the contents onto the bed and locate my perfume from which I spray a moderate portion onto my neck and wrists. If I can’t look like I stepped out of the pages of Glamour, I will at least smell like it. 
    After one last scrutinising glance at my less than perfect self in the bathroom mirror, I step out of the room like a confident woman that belongs in this house. Well, that is what I keep telling myself as I walk out into a tapestried hallway. Beautiful, and done in the same odd combination style as the bedroom; the rest of the house appears to be made of wealth and history as I walk past paintings and sketches framed along the walls, which I feel fairly certain that if I took the time to, I could name. Many of the paintings are landscapes in nature with a reflection of flora in the sketches as well. My eyes are drawn to yet more potted prisons, like the ones in the bedroom, jailing droopy, green leaves, with pinpoints of starry colour amongst them in the form of great, unidentifiable flowers. I can’t possibly name them, not being much of a plant person. But Dimitri clearly is. The dark-wood floor is draped in a bushel of thick, woollen rugs and carpets; weaved of shimmering colours in deep, rich hues. They overlap one another and tassels entwine here and there like the house’s owner has one too many expensive carpets lying about and chooses to have them all on display at once.
    Gracing the edges of the hallway are small tiffany lamps which, for a split second, remind me of Delilah’s party and I clutch at the wall to avoid falling in my vertigo.
    The house is dark. No windows along this stretch and none in the bedroom either. Up ahead there is a landing and I head steadfastly in that direction, trying to find my way to light, Cecily, and Dimitri.
    The end of the hallway, however, seems, if possible, darker and emptier (but for the continued scent of nature) than the rooms I passed by on what felt like my perilous journey. However, it is just as opulently furnished and it stands at the precipice to a flight of stairs which I walk gingerly down, concerned for missing my footing in the dark.
    The sound of voices reverberates around the stairwell and a light seems to be shining timidly from somewhere down and to my left. I follow it like a source of sustenance as I recognise the higher, sweeter voice as well as the slightly more heady, whisky-esque tones of the other woman.
    The darkness unfolds into a fluorescent-lit kitchen. Wide, open spaces perfect for those women that love to cook, the ones that only ever