Brace was delighted by this turn of events. His flesh and blood would be living with him in the Chamber House.
He quickly prepared one of the guest rooms on the second floor by preparing a fire and putting clean sheets on the bed.
Nareli helped and ignored his commands to relax because she was technically, his master's guest.
"I'll draw ye a bath, down the hall," he said while Nareli poked the fire. She put aside the poker and shook her head.
"You are not my servant," she reminded him.
"Ye always have to make it difficult to care for ye," Brace grumbled and Nareli rolled her eyes.
"Dat," she groaned in Romani. "I am not a child, anymore. I can take care of myself."
"Ye dirty mug tells a different story," Brace scolded his daughter's lack of hygiene again that night. She was worse than his master this eve and James brought all kinds of filth home with his clothes.
"The dirt completes my disguise, Dat."
If she were still a child, Brace wouldn't give her sweets for a week for having poor hygiene. But since, she was a grown woman with a strong mind of her own, he instead left the room with a grumble.
The aging door clicked shut behind him and Nareli leaned against the fireplace with a sigh. The warm fire lit the room with an orange glow and she went to light the candlestick beside the bed to add more light to the room.
Her father followed James's orders, word for word. She did have a paint friendly room. The big windows will provide good natural lighting during the day and she had a lot of space to setup a large easel.
The bed was large and spacious with a grey canopy. She sat down to test the spring and laid back to sink into the mattress. The feeling of clouds greeted her spine and she couldn't help but smile at the comfort. At least she will lie well in the beast's lair. A comfortable bed to sleep on was a rare luxury for gypsies.
A vanity table also rested in the corner, a chest of drawers and a wardrobe. She was sleeping in a circle of dusty antique furniture. Dusty antique furniture that belonged to a family that died long ago.
The Chamber House was a museum, a relic dedicated to the Delaney's.
Thoughts of salt and exorcisms suddenly crossed her mind. Old furniture tended to carry the spiritual residue of its previous owners in her experience and spirits didn't usually like new houseguests.
Spirits also loved to mess with gypsies, especially ones that had psychic abilities. They were like beacons to them. Depending on she slept through the night; she might need to arm herself but her gut already nudged her mind to draw a circle of salt before she turned in.
Spirits loved to mess with gypsies, especially ones that had psychic abilities. With that grim fact, Nareli calmed her breathing, closed her eyes and spiritually stretched out her senses.
Unlike her vivid dreams, she couldn't hear, smell or see anything when she consciously switched her sixth sense on. She could only feel.
She barely opened the proverbial door on her senses when an overwhelming feeling of desperation, hunger and desire made her gasp on the bed.
Insaitable lust drummed along her veins and she was shocked at how quickly her body caught onto the strong web of emotions. Her nipples grew tight with arousal and that was when the fiery anger came. A strong but invisible hand wrapped around her delicate throat and squeezed. The emotion started to choke the very air out of her lungs and she clawed away from the bed.
She landed with a loud thump on the floor and gasped for air. The strong hold of those emotions instantly became slightly weaker when she cut physical contact with the bed and but that hand still had a bruising grip on her throat.
The bedroom door opened and Brace poked his head in to tell her the bathtub was full. As soon as he saw her fighting for air, he rushed to his fallen daughter's side with a frightened yell. In the distance, she faintly heard someone else run down some stairs.
"Nareli?! What is it?!"
Brace pulled her up and he noticed Nareli's lips start to turn a dusky blue. She tried to tell him with her frantic amber eyes that she needed to get out of the room and fast, while she continued to gasp for air. Whatever it was that had a grip on her throat, it was strangling her with a murderous rage.
Unsure on what to do, Brace lifted her up and tried to put her back on the bed. Nareli tried to push herself away from the mattress but it was no use. Her hands scratching at her crushed throat were weakening and fast.
James suddenly barreled into the room in nothing but a dirty old grey shirt and he took one calculating look at Nareli before he sprung into action. He quickly shoved Brace aside, lifted Nareli and carried her swiftly out of the bedroom.
The angry and invisible hand around her throat, immediately vanished as soon as James carried her out of the room and she was finally able to breath. She continued to breath deeply and cough against his shoulder while James carried her down the hall and took her downstairs. She faintly heard him bark at Brace to fetch water and tea with honey for her throat.
James carried her to the living room and carefully sat her down in a chair by the fireplace. The fire was still lit and he ran a critical eye over her neck. He narrowed his blue eyes at the angry bruises that marred her olive toned skin. They looked like finger marks.
Brace quickly entered with a tray of water, tea, honey and brandy. He set the tray down beside them and Nareli was surprised when James helped her sip some water because she was still too weak. She sighed as the liquid soothed her burning throat.
"I wouldn't try that again in this house," James made her hold the cup of water.
"I wasn't doing anything," she coughed. James threw her a condensing look and Nareli, gladly returned his piercing stare.
"What did she do, James?" Brace intervened and James broke their stare off to glance at his servant.
"Your daughter is the pot, Brace and she is calling the kettle black."
"I am sitting right here!" Nareli coughed loudly but James chose to ignore her outburst and poured himself a glass of brandy.
"Instruct your daughter to let the dead rest with her gypsy ways. I will only come to her aid once." He outlined with hard blue eyes and a grim look passed over Brace's features.
He simply nodded.
"Det, I need to speak to Mr Delaney alone," Nareli moved to stand but Brace moved to make her stay put in the chair. He didn't like that idea at all but Nareli pushed his concern aside.
"Det!" She shouted and James raised his stern eyebrows at how quickly her mood turned aggressive. Those amber eyes of hers shone with a fire now instead of look bleak.
Brace's shoulder slummed in visible defeat and James wondered why his usual hardheaded and stubborn servant suddenly threw in the towel.
Brace usually displayed more fight than this and he still did but never with a gypsy. Particularly a Badi gypsy like his daughter. She might share his blood but the Badi blood in her veins and how her mother reared her told him another story. Nareli was more gypsy than British and he knew what gypsies were capable of.
"I can't sleep there, Det," Nareli told her father with serious eyes and he didn't question her further on it.
"I'll prepare the other guest room for you, petal pie. It will be the one next to the bathroom."
Nareli quickly held up a hand and dismissed that idea with a brief shake of her head.
"I will sleep here," she said in a firm tone and Brace frowned at that arrangement. His daughter deserved a bed.
"Can you please get me some salt, Det?" Nareli asked and Brace walked off with a grumble.
As soon as they were alone, Nareli forced herself to stand and she kept her gaze on James while she swallowed the rest of her water.
With that one long stare of her fiery amber eyes, she sized up the beast that was Mr James Delaney… standing there in the glow of the fireplace with nothing but a dirty grey shirt that reached his thighs.
James didn't waste time either.
His blue eyes sized up the gypsy in front of him too while he drank the rest of his brandy. Her long dark brown curls fell to her supple hips and those long curls lay in disarray around her fiery amber eyes.
Her face was long and slender like her Romani brethren and she had the full lips. If he didn't know Brace was her father, he never would've been able to pick that parentage. Nareli had her father's strong chin.
It would be a lie if he said he didn't find Brace's bastard daughter attractive. She was wild in her gypsy beauty. She was savage. But most importantly, she was strong and she owned her freedom. She represented things he would have never found alluring if he didn't disappear all of those years ago.
"You are not just a painter," James chose his words carefully. She might be beautiful but this one was a dangerous beauty that could shoot a man dead without batting a tear. He quickly learned that at Helga's brothel.
Nareli chose to let that comment slide… for now. Instead, she reached to pour herself a cup of tea for her sore throat. Her voice still sounded raspy from nearly being strangled to death.
James didn't move an inch and idly watched her take a sip of her tea before putting the cup back down.
He kept his face emotionless when she suddenly moved to stand toe-to-toe to him. She stretched that long neck of hers back because she only reached his sternum and she narrowed her amber eyes.
"No, Mr Delaney. I am not just a painter. I am many things… just like you are many things apart from being the master of this house."
James merely hummed at her attempt to pry into his head.
He strangely felt like he was in a bubble. He could no longer hear the crackling of the fire. It was as if, he was in a room within a room and he only had Nareli for company.
Those amber eyes of hers were suddenly glazed over and he tensed when he finally realised what this gypsy was doing. Nareli was stretching out with her sensors through the house again.
It seemed longer than a few seconds when she taped into the energies of the Chamber House once more but it was long enough for her to get a spiritual roadmap of it before James snapped her out of it again with a physical shake.
The ghosts of the Chamber House wouldn't harm him. They coveted his darkness, which was why she turned her sixth sense one again in his presence.
"It wasn't your mother who attacked me. She likes to stay in her room which you keep bolted shut."
James's grip on her upper arms tightened at her words.
"And your father… likes to roam the attic."
"I know that already, gypsy," James bit out. He didn't like her prying into his business one bit.
"No ghost roams that room you put me in, Mr Delaney. What I felt was a memory… trapped in time."
"You made a terrible mistake tonight, gypsy and that was to reveal your abilities to me," he growled.
"Whose room was it, James?" She demanded and James shot her a murderous glare.
James shoved her away and that was how Nareli knew she struck a nerve but she persisted against her better judgment.
"Was it your room? Or, your poor half-sisters?"
James seized her by the throat in a blink of an eye and Nareli fought against his gripping hold.
"I am only going to tell you once more, gypsy. Let the dead rest or join them," he warned low and that was when Nareli finally met the beast, bleeding out of James's blue eyes.
"I am not going anywhere, Mr Delaney," She bit out strongly despite her fear.
"And not anytime soon, gypsy. We have a new deal now. You, work for me."
"And if I don't?"
"Your father will get a new list of duties and they are not pretty tasks like polish the silver."