The Demon in the Pastry Shop

52: Snap

 He was gone for hours. Kit and Jude waited for Silus to return to the house. If everyone was supposed to stay inside, shouldn't that include him? Kit hadn't the slightest clue as to what he was doing out there. Setting traps? Doing another perimeter check? She hoped he wasn't planning on fighting Lovell and his companions on his own. Not that she could lend much assistance, but she did weaken Lovell with the chocolate cake, it seemed.

It was late enough that her mothers went to bed and the band went home (carefully, they swore). Jude stayed up only a little longer with Kit, just to rub her back as she watched the door, hopefully for Silus, anxiously for Lovell. Then Jude went to bed too.

After another hour, Kit was nodding off on the living room couch. She heard rustling and tapping at the backdoors and whipped around. She relaxed when she saw Silus. Through the frames of the windows, Kit saw him checking out the outer walls of the house, walking within the light of the porch. Once she saw that he was alright, and would be alright until he came inside in all likelihood, Kit went up to bed too.

She got into her pink, silk pajamas with the white buttons and the collar. She washed her face and crawled into bed.

And she thrashed around sleeplessly for far too long. Eventually, she threw off the blankets and, hopefully, her fear along with them and headed to the stairs. Maybe she could have a cup of hot chocolate and convince herself it would steel her against Lovell's threats.

She padded with barefoot down the stairs into the living room and was confused to see the lights were on. She thought she had turned them off. Then she walked along the carpeted floor and was confused to see Silus sleeping on the couch instead of up in his cot in the office.

He was curled up with his legs bent in a way that looked barely comfortable and his arms tucked around his body. His snakes rested against one of the decorative pillows (Kit always wondered how one slept on a head of snakes and evidently it was to smash them on one side. She was shocked they didn't seem to mind) and his eyes were closed, his brow slightly furrowed with worry that seeped into his doze.

A warm, doughy sympathy rose in Kit's chest looking at him. She wanted to kneel by him and stroke his cheek, brush the worry away from his brow.

She stepped quietly over to the couch, though she needn't try to be quiet at all, and pulled the blanket off the shoulders of the couch. She walked up to Silus and tenderly draped the quilt over his sleeping body.

Before horror came the metal click and the barrel of Silus' gun pointed right at her face on the hot flipside of a second. Kit went dizzy in her whole body, fumbling back and knocking over a coaster from the coffee table as she tried to steady herself with eyes big enough to weigh her whole head down to the floor. She crawled backward away from him.

Silus had sat up on the couch, thrown off the blanket enough to snap out his handgun which must have been hiding under his body and aimed it at whatever touched him in his sleep. He blinked dully out of a lopsided slumber.

Everything in Kit's body trembled. Noticeably. When she looked at her wobbly legs, it looked like there were four of them because of the shaking.

"Kit," Silus breathed, his eyes flaring in the illumination of what he had done. He dropped the gun in his lap like it bit him. "Kit, I'm so sorry," he croaked. His chest heaved. He reached out to her in the air but it was as if there was a glass panel separating the two of them.

Kit stared over at him, tears falling from her eyes. Every time she closed her eyes, bam! She saw his gun at her. Every time she breathed, bam! There was the shot that killed Luca.

"I've been so on edge after Lovell's m-message..." Silus faltered. He was trying desperately to explain himself, she knew that. She knew he didn't mean to point his pistol at her.

She tried to hold onto that. He didn't mean it. It was an accident. A very, very scary accident, but it was just that.

The carpet sucked her down into it, like it wanted to pull her down under the floor. Kit wanted to hide there a little bit too. Her breaths were bladed when she inhaled, scarring her throat. Another hot teardrop stretched down her face as she looked at him.

Silus looked ready to shatter. His words were painted with a full understanding of the crime he committed.

"Kit..." he beseeched hoarsely, "I am so, so sorry."