Falling Under Read Online Free

his time inspecting the lawn for flaws.
    The grass and I had a lot in common.
    Though we lived in the Bay Area, the grounds looked distinctly British, just as my father liked it. The lawn surrounding our stark white home was a passion—the only one he’d allowed himself. The hedgerow alone took hours of shaping by his workers. Interspersed like hidden Easter eggs were special English roses he’d had cultivated. They weren’t very hardy and didn’t often make it, but some were still there—you just had to look hard to find them.
    I kept walking. The closer I got to the music, the stranger the surroundings became. They may have been the same plants and shrubs I’d grown up with, but the shadows distorted their shapes and made them ominous. I’d never noticed how many thorns the garden had—or how the vines twisted and held the lattice in a stranglehold.
    I began taking shallower breaths and my heart beat faster and faster.
    No matter how far I went towards the music, I got no closer. It always seemed “just over here” a little more, and I carried on farther and farther until I realized I was in a maze of shrubbery. A labyrinth.
    Only there shouldn’t have been one on the grounds.
    Turn back . But it was too late. I tried, but the path changed as I walked and I had the sensation that I was walking towards the middle of the maze instead of back to my house no matter what I did.
    The haunting strains of an unfamiliar melody filtered through the branches. My trained ear picked the musicians out to be a quartet. The tune captured a gothic mood and was rising to a crescendo when I arrived at a gazebo alight in candles.
    I should be panicking . Yet the pull was so strong that like a moth to flame I carried on.
    Cautiously, I made my way up the steps. The candles were tied to thorny branches, eerie yet beautiful. I rubbed my arms, but the shivers continued. A nightgown was little protection.
    “I’d always hoped you’d come, but I didn’t dare expect you.”
    My breath hitched at the masculine voice. I whirled towards it instead of away, like a smart girl would have done.
    The young man bowed deeply. “Theia.”
    He wore an old-fashioned gray suit, with tails on the jacket and a black cravat pinned with a symbol I didn’t recognize. His dark hair was thick and looked so soft I had to resist the urge to touch it. Looking into his dark eyes was like falling into the stars, making me feel weightless and disoriented.
    “Who are you?” I asked, at odds and embarrassed that he was dressed so formally while I was dressed for bed.
    “I’m so happy you’ve come,” he answered. “Now the celebration can commence.”
    I stole another look at him. He was taller than me and the cut of his jacket could have distorted his figure, but I didn’t think it did. Broad shoulders and a tapered waist, like that of an athlete. His face was perfect … but not. Unearthly, yet beautiful.
    He clapped his hands twice, and the spans of green grass surrounding the gazebo ignited instantly with candelabras and torches, illuminating what appeared to be a party in progress.
    A jeweled pewter goblet was thrust into my hand, and I surveyed the scene in wonder. Tables sheeted in red and black cloths were laden with food and drink. The revelers, costumed in silk and lace, smiled garishly at one another and carried on muted conversations without moving their lips, their faces made up like those of lurid clowns.
    The orchestral quartet drew my gaze as they started a haunting new song similar to the one that had led me to the gazebo. But it wasn’t the song that held my attention. It was their appearance. Much like the man standing next to me, they were dressed formally—black tuxedos and top hats. But where their faces should have been, instead they bore only flesh with no features.
    I gasped in horror. “What is happening?”
    I turned to my host, and his face clouded briefly with what looked like regret. Quickly, he returned his debonair mask