Chapter 154

#Chapter 154 – A Quick Call I sit straight up in bed, my jaw going slack, staring at the closet where the phone rings again.

Victor turns his head towards me. “What is that?” He asks, blinking sleepily.

“Nothing,” I say hurriedly, pulling my feet out of the blankets and rushing to put them on the floor. “Go back to sleep.”

Victor sits up in the bed, laughing. “Is that a phone? In your closet?”

I don’t answer and instead dash to the door, reaching for the handle, grabbing it, twisting –

I pull, but the door won’t open.

What?

I pull again, hard, jiggling it, but the door won’t budge.

What the hell? Is it locked?

I hear Victor’s laughter die off as he takes in my frenzy. There’s a pause, and then I hear him speak.

“Evelyn? What’s going on?”

Ring Ring.

The phone keeps buzzing.

I pull on the door with all of my might, doing my very best to hide my panic, but knowing that I’m failing at it. If I can just get to the phone, unplug it – I can come up with something –

But why was it plugged in anyway? I unplugged it weeks ago – why on earth –

Suddenly, then, Victor is there next to me. “Evelyn?” he asks, his voice low with worry.

I look up at him, my eyes wide.

“What’s going on?” he repeats, frowning at me.

“N-nothing,” I say, working to paste a smile on my face. I drop my hands from the closet and tuck them behind my back, all innocence.

He doesn’t fall for it. s**t, s**t.

Victor turns his attention to the door and reaches for the handle.

Ring Ring.

“No!” I say, throwing my back against the door.

His frown deepens. “What’s in the closet, Evelyn?” he asks. “Do you have a phone in there?”

“It’s just a prank,” I murmur, my eyes darting around the room for something, anything – “the twins-”

“Step away from the door, Evelyn,” he says, his eyes narrowing.

“Victor,” I say, returning my eyes to his face, pleading on my own. “Please, just let it ring out –“

Ring Ring. It doesn’t stop.

“What’s in there that you don’t want me to see, Evelyn?” he asks, putting a firm hand on my shoulder and giving me a nudge. It’s a request, really, not a shove. But a firm one.

I press my back harder against my door.

“Please, Victor,” I say, “if you love me, just let this go –“

“Move, Evelyn,” he growls. When I press my eyes shut, unwilling to budge, I feel him slip his hands behind my shoulders and my knees, lifting me off the floor.

“No, Victor!” I say, struggling against him as he carries me over to the bed and deposits me there, not ungently. As soon as he puts me down I scramble back up, heading back for the closet door –

Ring Ring.

But he’s already there.

Victor reaches out his hand, grasping the handle, putting all of his Alpha strength behind it as he yanks it forward, breaking the flimsy lock. I grab at him, at the cloth of his shirt, yelling, pleading as he walks into the closet and heads towards the back.

Towards the little rotary phone sitting in a cleared space on the floor – what the hell – I know that I buried it under a pile of clothes and shoes –

Ring Ring.

Victor kneels down and lifts the receiver to his ear. “Hello?”

Victor frowns when he hears the voice on the other side of the line. It’s familiar, but also…not.

“Hello, Victor,” the voice purrs. It’s mechanical, robotic, and he recognizes the technology instantly as that which was used when he would speak with his therapist, back when they were still talking.

“Who is this?” Victor asks, turning his face up to frown at Evelyn. He wonders, passively, if it actually is his therapist – but why would she call him here, at Evelyn’s house, after so many months?

Evelyn rushes forward then, scrambling for the phone, reaching for it, trying to grab it from his hand.

“Stop it,” he says to her, pushing her firmly away from him. Evelyn falls back on her butt, her face drained, ghostly white. Her lip trembles as she watches him. She makes another dive for him, but he blocks her with his hand so that she falls back again.

“I was so sorry to hear about your little tragedy tonight,” the voice says, its tones mocking. Victor goes very still, still looking at Evelyn, wondering at the strangeness both of the call and her actions. What the hell was going on?

“What do you mean?” Victor asks, wanting the voice to keep talking, not wanting to give anything away.

“Just that it got a little hot at your house tonight,” the voice replies. “So hot that you lost everything. But I can’t say that you didn’t deserve it. You’re a life destroyer, after all.”

Victor goes cold, suddenly, realizing that the person on the other line is likely the one who lit the fire.

“Who is this,” he growls, growing angry. “What is this number?”

Evelyn makes another lunge, then, this time for the phone chord where it’s plugged into the wall. Victor blocks her again, giving her an angry look. What the hell was she playing at?

The voice laughs, the tones hard and staticky. “Don’t you recognize the voice of your therapist?” Victor analyzes the voice as he process the question – it’s a woman, certainly. But he knows it’s a trick.

“This isn’t my therapist,” he says quickly, glancing down at the phone. “I can tell by the rhythms of your voice, they’re not the same.”

Evelyn merely watches him now, realizing that her fight is futile. There’s no way he’s going to let her end the call until he gets his answers.

The voice on the phone laughs again. “That’s not true. If you recognized her voice so well, you’d have put two and two together by now.”

Victor frowns at the phone again, his brain racing to connect the dots, to solve the mystery of this phone, of why Evelyn didn’t want him on it, of what the hell this voice on the other end was saying, of how it’s related to the fire –

“After all,” the voice continues. “Maybe you should ask Evelyn what she knows about those months of therapy, about all the good advice you got that played right into her hands. After all, she is a therapist.”

Victor’s eyes dart to Evelyn then, sitting pale on the closet floor next to him, hugging her knees and biting her lip. Guilt is written in every line of her face, in her wide, tear-filled eyes.

“Evelyn,” he says, both to her and to the voice on the phone.

“That’s right, baby,” the voice says, ringing again with laughter. “She’s a therapist, but perhaps she’s also the therapist.”

The phone slips from his hand then, falling to the floor as his mouth falls open. He just stares at her.

The tears start to slip down her cheeks.

“Victor,” Evelyn whispers, slowly starting to shake her head. “I never meant…“

He slumps back against the wall, hitting his head hard as he stares at her.

Evelyn – all of those months talking to his therapist, trusting her, believing her –

He can hear the metallic laugh still ringing from the phone’s headset.

Evelyn moves forward towards him, reaching out a hand. “Please, Victor,” she whispers, “let me explain –“

Victor swats at her hand with a roar, rushing to his feet. He stands in the closet, then, turning his head up to the ceiling and letting out a barbaric howl, venting his rage at all that he has lost tonight –

His home, his trust in this woman he loved –

Then, unable to contain himself, he rips forward, striding from the closet and out of the room.

Evelyn scrambles forward to pick up the phone. “I will kill you for this,” she hisses down the line.

Then, without waiting for an answer, she slams the receiver down, rips the wire out of the wall, and leaps to her feet, running out of the closet and after the man she loves.