What I hadn’t expected was that it was also . . . strange.
The living room—like the pictures of the kitchen and the spare bedroom Frederick had sent me—seemed frozen in time, but not in a way I could put into words and not frozen in any specific period I could name. Most of the furniture and the fixtures on the walls looked expensive, but they were thrown together in such a multi-style, multi-era jumble it made my head ache.
Dozens of shiny brass wall sconces created the sort of dim and atmospheric lighting I’d only ever seen in old movies and haunted houses. And the room wasn’t just darkly lit. It was also just . . . dark. The walls were painted a dark chocolate brown that I vaguely remembered from art history classes had been fashionable in the Victorian era. A pair of tall, dark wooden bookshelves that must have weighed a thousand pounds each stood like silent sentinels on either end of the room. Atop each of them sat an ornate brass, malachite candelabra that would have seemed right at home in a sixteenth-century European cathedral. They clashed in style and in every other imaginable way with the two very modern-looking black leather sofas facing each other in the center of the room and the austere, glass-topped coffee table in the living room’s center. The latter had a stack of what looked like Regency romance novels piled high at one end, further adding to the incongruity of the scene.
Besides the pale green of the candelabras, the only other color to be found in the living room was in the large, garish, floral Oriental rug covering most of the floor; the bright red, glowing eyes of a deeply creepy stuffed wolf’s head hanging over the mantel; and the deep-red velvet drapes hanging on either side of the floor-to-ceiling windows.
I shivered, and not just because the room was freezing.
In short, the living room was confirmation of something I’d known for years: people with money often had terrible taste.
“So. You like dark rooms, huh?” I asked. It was maybe the most ridiculously obvious thing I could possibly have said—but was also the least offensive thing I could think of. I stared at the carpet as I waited for him to reply, trying to decide if the flowers I stood on were supposed to be peonies.
A long pause. “I . . . prefer dimly lit places, yes.”
“I bet you get a lot of light in here during the day, though.” I pointed to the windows lining the room’s eastern wall. “You must get a fabulous view of the lake.”
He shrugged. “Probably.”
I looked at him, surprised. “You don’t know?”
“Given our proximity to the lake and the size of these windows, I can infer that one can see the lake quite well from here should one wish to do so.” He fidgeted with a large golden ring on his pinky finger; it had a blood-red stone as big as my thumbnail in its center. “I keep the curtains drawn, however, while the sun is up.”
Before I could ask why he’d waste a view like that by never looking at it, he added, “Should you decide to move in, you may open the curtains whenever you wish to see the lake.”
I was just about to tell him that that was exactly what I would do if I moved in when my phone vibrated from inside the front pocket of my jeans.
“Um,” I said awkwardly, fishing it out. “Hold on a second.”
Crap. It was Sam.
In the shock of realizing that Frederick was hot, I’d forgotten to let him know I wasn’t being murdered.
Cassie? You okay?
I’m trying not to freak out.
Please text me right away so I don’t start worrying that you’ve been chopped up and put into freezer bags.
I’m fine
Just got caught up in the apartment tour
Sorry
Everything’s fine
Frederick’s not a murderer, then?
If so he hasn’t tried killing me yet
But no I don’t think he’s a murderer
I think he might just be REALLY weird
I’ll text you when I leave
I sent Sam a pink heart emoji as a peace offering in case he was mad.
“Sorry about that,” I said awkwardly, stuffing my phone back into my jeans pocket. “My friend drove me over. He just wanted to check in and make sure everything was okay.”
Frederick smiled at that—a crooked, lopsided sort of smile that made me forget that he was too weird and snobby to find attractive.
“That is smart of your friend,” he said, nodding appreciatively. “You and I hadn’t been properly introduced yet when we agreed to meet. Now, Miss Greenberg—shall we begin the tour?”
But hearing from Sam reminded me that while I did want to get a good look at this place, there was something important I needed answered first.