JO'S FINGERTIPS RUB THE FRESH BITE mark on the side of her neck anxiously while she stands on the front steps to Adeline's house.
Last night was surprisingly fun. Though she was two seconds away from wanting to fight him when he told her they were going to hike up the side of a mountain after a day at the gym, once they got to the top, all of the anger she felt simmered down into awe directed at the view and, of course, him.
They stayed up at the cliff for another hour after he fed from her, talking softly amongst themselves and exchanging stories, although he had much more to tell than her.
In return for how he opened up to her about his past, something she never expected him to do, she told him everything too. She shared descriptions of the family she misses, the people she holds dear to her heart, and some of her most vulnerable moments in life. It only seemed fair after he went into such detail about his transition from human to vampire and what happened with Melanie.
Her closed fist bangs on the front door a couple of times before it creaks open.
"Hello?" she calls out into the empty hallway, brows furrowing at the unlocked door.
With how dangerous of a life Adeline's husband led before he died, one would think she'd keep their house under tight security. For all they know, someone like her or Harry could come barging in if they so pleased.
Her steps are hardly audible on the carpet on her way through. She steps inside with one hand braced against the open door and roams her gaze over the front entrance to find nothing but open space waiting for her. Luckily for her, if anything goes wrong, all she has to do is hit Niall's contact on Harry's phone, which he gave her for the day, and he'll come running in to help from where he's perched in a tree across the street.
The only way Harry would let her walk out of the door without running up from behind and yanking her back inside was if Niall camped out outside for however long she stays here. Her last-minute self-defense course was successful, but not enough for him to drop her into the deep end with no additional protection.
"Adeline?" Her voice is loud enough to reach the top of the staircase she passes by, yet there is no response. "It's Jo, you gave me your address to come to see you at the dinner party last week."
The house is alarmingly absent of anyone else, and she remains, frozen, at the bottom of the steps with her hand on the banister while she listens for any sign of Adeline around.
It's as if the home is a ghost town. No family members mill about the property, nor do any friends, and all the noise she hears comes from a siamese cat that darts down the stairs and straight beyond her with a passing meow. Purple walls seal her in on all sides as she stares up at the second level of the house in curiosity.
Without thinking, she starts to ascend the staircase.
Her legs are still sore from the exertion of yesterday, but she's a bit too distracted with finding her new acquaintance to care about something as insignificant as tired, sore limbs. Even though this woman has direct ties to the people who have been trying to murder and feed off of her, Jo can't help but worry if she's okay.
The final few steps on the creaky staircase are harsh on her, but she makes it to the top within seconds, glancing from left to right down a grand hallway with more rooms than she could ever dream of having in her house back in the human realm.
Everything, from the curtains to the delicately sculpted crown molding, is carefully placed, painted, and designed. It's the type of house that a person can take one glance at and understand the enormity of the wealth that the family inhabiting the home has.
Harry's house isn't like that. It's lovely, and he has a fine eye for style and decoration, but it isn't ostentatious like this or the townhouse they visited for the dinner party. His house actually feels like a home—filled with books, worn blankets, and things that are so undeniably him. For how rocky her first impression of it began, it's a place of sanctuary from the rest of the cruel vampire world, and she only notices her fondness for it when she's somewhere else.
She walks down the length of the hallway to the right, all the way down until the end, checking every empty room, but finds nothing. So, she turns on her heels and makes her way down the length of the hallway again before reaching the intersection and exploring every room to the left.
All of the doors, most of which leading to bedrooms, studies, or the rare bathroom, are unlocked and easily accessible for her to peek into for the woman she's here to see—all of them but one.
The approach toward the last door is slower than her approach to the others, as if she anticipates that Adeline will pop out from behind it and surprise her. She almost wishes that would happen once she turns her head to the window directly to her right and sees Adeline in the courtyard. Her hands are coated in dirt, as are the pants she kneels on, while she bends over the flowers in the garden.
Jo feels for the handle and pulls, only to feel a sharp jolt of resistance that can only mean the door is locked.
"What"—she mutters under her breath, tugging on the door with all of her strength—"What the hell?"
If Adeline is tending to the garden and no one else lives with her after the death of her husband, why is the door locked? All of the other rooms were left open for her to inspect, so what makes this one different? Without seeing the other side, she can tell there's a deadbolt locking it in place. These precautions make one thing abundantly clear: whoever it is this room belongs to, which she assumes is the woman she's here to visit, does not want her or anyone else poking their noses inside.
With a few more unsuccessful tugs on the door, she glances back outside into the garden to see Adeline exactly where she was the last time she checked. There's no need for a sun hat considering the constant cloudy sky, so her unbound hair flutters around her shoulders on a gentle breeze as she gardens in peace.
It's a drastically different scene from the one she walked in on in the library at the party last week. Then, she was dressed to the nines in a dress that likely costed him more than her entire wardrobe combined with tears streaming down her mascara-stained face. Now, she smiles softly to herself and pats the dirt around her freshly-planted flower into place with no expressive dress or mascara-stained cheeks in sight.
Jo sighs to herself, glances back hopelessly at the door that is now the only thing occupying her curious mind, and walks back down the stairs until she's back in the hallway she entered in.
The grandiose house resembles a maze in every direction she turns down in pursuit of finding the back door to the garden, but she finds it eventually. After taking a few wrong turns into the downstairs guest bathroom, wine cellar, and sitting room, she stumbles into the kitchen to see the set of open green doors anxiously awaiting her arrival.
"I didn't know you like to garden," she calls out as she steps out onto the gravel pathway that leads through the courtyard.
Adeline's head snaps up from where it was staring down at the earth with a surprised expression that instantaneously shifts into a smile bright enough to warm the coldest vampire's hearts that inhabit this world, except Harry's. He doesn't trust Adeline enough to let her smile warm his heart, but Jo doesn't know if he trusts anyone enough for that. After last night's vulnerable conversations and the bite mark she has to show for it, she'd like to think he trusts her...
The smile is still wide on her face, but her eyes zero in on the newly made mark on Jo's neck without fail.
Just like what happened in the library, she picked up Harry's scent on her once she made it to the kitchen before actually seeing her. It didn't startle her nearly as much this time, but it surprises her to see another bite so soon. From what she and everyone else knows from the outside looking in, Harry never drinks from humans anymore, let alone makes it a continuous habit.
And not only is she baring his scent and bite mark, she's clearly clad in his clothes too. It makes Adeline resist the natural urge to raise her brows at her. Either this is not what it looks like, or the man who famously avoids human beings like the plague is getting cozied up with one quite quickly.
Transactional relationship her ass. His scent is almost overbearing on her.
Hiding her internal judgments of a situation that is none of her business, though she wishes to discover more as soon as possible, Adeline waves her over.
"I love to garden. Come help me out, I was just finishing up. Once we're done, we can go inside for tea."
Jo walks over without an objection and kneels into the dirt beside her, hoping that Harry doesn't hold these purple pants too dearly to his heart. There is only so much she can do to help without an extra set of tools and such on standby, but she knows enough about gardening from a two-week summer camp for gardening that her grandmother once signed her up for as a child.
Vivid memories of little dirt-dusted palms and squeaky voices come barreling back to her as she digs a cylindrical hole in the soil for a flower to be dropped in. It's calming for a moment, peaceful, and she can understand why this is one of the things Adeline does to set herself at ease. Living such a fast-paced life, she needs things to lighten the mood every once in a while, and Jo understands that now more than ever.
She looks over once, twice, and watches her work in her peripheral vision for a few seconds before deciding what she wants to say.
"How've you been?" Jo asks, "I was thinking you must get lonely in such a big house on your own. I could hardly find my way back here."
It feels rude for her to ask, knowing that she's lonely for a reason more consequential than a large, empty house, but this is what she's here to do. Even if it kills her to poke and prod at a grieving woman with precisely laid questions, she isn't here to make friends. All she's here to do is extract the information from her that they wouldn't have been able to get at the dinner party if Harry accosted her.
Adeline's face gutters for a second before she shrugs and says, "I'm fine, just taking it one day at a time. I'm sure you know how it feels to lose someone."
Before she acknowledges the rest of what she said, a small part of her takes victory in correctly guessing that she lives alone. Having no one else but her to run into will make potential snooping much easier.
Missing her family and assuming she'll not get to see them again for an incredibly long time, she does somewhat understand what this woman is going through. Yet, at the same time, she doesn't at all.
What Harry explained to her at the party about blood bonds and the absolute desolation that ensues if one of the people involved dies sounded worse than anything she has ever experienced, including the sudden adjustment she had to make to live in a world that is not her own. If a blood bond is an act of binding your soul with another person, so much so that you begin to feel their emotions secondhand, what would it be like to feel half of your soul die and wither away?
But Adeline doesn't know about how she truly got to this place or about the family she misses with every piece of her heart, so there's nothing she can say to relate to what she's currently feeling.
"I actually don't know...I haven't lost anyone so close to me yet so I can't imagine it."
She keeps her head down and pointed at the flowers they're fussing over instead of meeting her gaze. When Harry's eyes turned red, they weren't nearly as intimidating and piercing as hers are.
With him, it felt like a moment of calm in the aftermath of the first time he drank her blood, and she has desperately wanted him to feel comfortable enough to show them to her again ever since that night. He had more control over himself last night, so all she saw once she moved from between his legs and sat down beside him again were two green eyes. It's not like she was complaining either, since the eye color he once had as a human is beautiful and rare, but it isn't him.
Her body is only now becoming acclimated to the constant cold weather after weeks of shivering, layering up, and stealing all of Harry's nice sweaters and cardigans. She's wearing one of her favorites now, though the small gaps in the knitted yarn allow a gust of wind inside now and then. The sleeves are long enough to cover her hands if she doesn't constantly adjust them, so they're scrunched up around her biceps to avoid dirtying them in the garden while she works.
She has to stop to adjust the sleeve again when Adeline says with a soft grin, "You can just imagine what it'd feel like if you lost Harry, then."
It's obviously bait, so obviously that she doesn't even want to acknowledge it, but she can't help but entertain anything when he is involved with it, even if it's a carefully laid poke and prod of Adeline's own to discover more about the strange dynamic between the new human in town and the three-hundred-year-old vampire that no one in Westbrook can wrap their heads around.
Rather than give her anything of substance, than mention how her chest tightens up at the sight of him or how her thighs press together whenever she thinks about how pinned her against the mat at the gym yesterday, she laughs.
"There's nothing going on between us," she says, "We're just friends."
"Whatever you say."
Deep down, the implications of the things Adeline said about her ultimately platonic relationship with Harry have gotten to her. Someplace inside of her acknowledges these observations for what they are and can't help but wonder if there actually is anything mutual going on between them. Because she knows her own feelings very well, even if she likes to pretend they aren't real, but his feelings are an entirely different situation.
Her attraction to him feels like a shot in the dark, like wanting someone you know will never want you back, and that's why Adeline's insistence on some mutual attraction between them gets into her head. She made a point about how he was looking at her at the party, but, then again, what does she know? She doesn't know Harry, nor does she know the nature of their relationship or how Jo actually came to live in their world, so why should she trust her judgment on a situation she knows nothing about?
Either way, Adeline is more observant than she lets on, so she must be careful in snooping on that locked room. It's hard to resist the urge to glance up at it from below, but she can't give herself away. For all she knows, something useful could be hiding up there for her to find.