She looked away from him and focused on Dave. Then she asked her first question, blurted it actually. It wasn’t even the most important question she had, but it was the one that bothered her.
“What’s wrong with that character I rolled?” she asked.
She was looking at Spider, not at Dave. Spider’s cheeks grew red. He raised his gaze to hers. He seemed almost angry.
“You’re a thief,” Spider said. “Thieves have no business behind the counter of a store.”
Her own face heated.
“I’m not a thief,” she said, looking at Dave. “I’ve never stolen anything.”
From here, anyway. She had stolen things before—a thousand dollars from her father when she ran away from home the last time, a night in an empty motel room, and an occasional candy bar when her money was long gone and she was about to pass out from hunger.
But she thought of herself as fundamentally honest. She’d never stolen from an employer, and in her own opinion, she’d only stolen when she was completely, absolutely, and utterly desperate.
“You’re the first thief we’ve hired,” Dave said, “although some of the regulars are thieves. Don’t worry about this. Your ability makes sense.”
To him maybe. She was about to say so when he explained.
“Your family history alone means you will always roll a higher dexterity than anyone else in the room.”
“What?” Jen asked.
Dave smiled. “Your father is a securities broker, right?”
She nodded.
“With a gift for making money off the books.”
Jen blushed. She thought no one knew that.
“Your mother,” Dave was saying, “has always stowed away little trinkets she takes from her favorite stores, sort of her revenge on having the kind of life she had always thought she didn’t want.”
Jen’s mouth opened. She hadn’t told a soul when she’d discovered her mother’s cache. Not even her mother.
“Your grandmother,” Dave said, “survived the war with some cunning of her own, but it was your grandfather who shows the most skill. He was one of the most famous pilots of World War II. He had an ability, or so they say, to get into any area that was thought impossible to penetrate. That’s how he got the nickname Wings.”
And flying into an area no one else could penetrate was what killed him. They didn’t find his body until after the war.
“But it’s your great-grandfather who gives you the most power here,” Dave said. “He was that rare creature, a gentleman thief, the Robin Hood of Lake Geneva, a man beloved by everyone poor and hated by anyone with money.”
This was making Jen very uncomfortable. “So you did your research on me. Good for you. I thought you just hired me out of the blue.”
“The store chose you.” Dave shrugged. “We wanted to know why.”
She was beginning to dislike all the mystical talk about the store.
“All of that history has nothing to do with me,” she said. Not with who she was. Those people hadn’t influenced her at all. “I’ve lived alone since I was eighteen.”
“Not entirely true,” Dave said, “but true enough for now. We’re talking lineage here, not experience. You come from a long line of successful thieves.”
Jen felt the heat grow in her cheeks. She supposed she should defend her family, but how could she? Dave had spoken the truth. No one in her family was honest.
That was why she had left in the first place.
“That’s why you hired her, isn’t it?” Spider asked. “You knew about the connection to Roshaye.”
Dave looked at Spider as if he’d forgotten Spider was part of the conversation. “We hired her long before we knew who she was.”
The “we” caught Jen’s attention. That was another of her questions. She wanted to ask it, but Dave was still taking to Spider.
“After researching her,” Dave was saying, “the dexterity comes as no surprise. It should always be high, no matter how many characters she rolls. But the intelligence—I hadn’t expected such a high magical ability. And the charisma should worry you, Spider.”
Spider’s cheeks were so red that they had to hurt. “Does it worry you?”
Dave shook his head. “I’m used to working with someone who has that level of charisma. You’re not.”
“Okay,” Jen said, trying to stop this part of the conversation. “We’ve dealt with the made-up game character. Now, I have some other questions—”
“Oh,” Spider said, “it’s not made-up. It’s you. That’s the magic of the store.”
“It’s not me,” Jen said, “and I’m sorry to tell you that the store doesn’t have any magic. Someone probably left the door unlocked that night. The store didn’t find me. I was walking down the street and saw your sign.”
“Which wasn’t up until you looked in the window,” Dave said.
“So you put it there,” Jen said. “Big whoop.”
“None of us placed the sign in the window,” Dave said. “We never do.”
She sighed. “I know you guys like to pretend that the store is magic. But it’s just a place. And that ‘character’ is just a piece of paper with random numbers on it.”
“Do you really believe that?” Dave asked.
“Of course,” she said. “Any sensible person would.”
“Sensible.” Spider shook his head.
“I don’t want to seem ungrateful,” she said, shaking the envelope with her bonus inside. “But I don’t understand this place—”
“That’s clear,” Spider muttered.
“Who are you, Dave?” she asked, ignoring Spider. “Are you the owner?”
“I’m the caretaker,” Dave said.
“The manager,” she said.
“We have managers. Spider for the daytime and Rafe for evenings.”
“I haven’t met Rafe,” she said.
“Not yet,” Dave said. “You might never meet him.”
“So who do you caretake the store for?” Jen asked.
Dave looked at Spider. “I thought you told her the history.”
Spider shrugged. “What I could.”
“This town is special,” Dave said. “You realize that, right?”
She was about to deny it, when she realized he was right. How many small Midwestern towns could boast a history of gangsters, Playboy Bunnies, great wealth, and a large artistic community? She could think of no other.
“Sometimes, the specialness comes to a place because of the people,” Dave said. “Sometimes the people come to a place because it is already special.”
“Okay,” she said. “The lake brought people here. So?”
“So,” Dave said, pausing for dramatic effect. “The store does the same thing.”
She clenched a fist, feeling more exasperated than she probably had a right to. He wasn’t going to give her a straight answer, at least not in front of Spider.
“Who were the men I met the night you hired me?” Jen asked, deciding to try a different tack.
“The original gamers,” Dave said.
“Original to what?”
“To the store’s game,” Dave said. “They existed before the store did.”
She almost said, Well, duh, but restrained herself.
She wasn’t going to get a straight answer, even though Dave had promised them.
Or had he?
All he had promised was that she could ask the questions she’d been storing up.
“So,” she said to Dave, “are you going to let a so-called thief remain behind your counter?”
“I’m going to let an actual thief work the store,” Dave said. “And I hope you participate in the game soon. You’re going to be one of our best characters ever.”
As if she didn’t really exist. As if she wasn’t a person, just a figment of his imagination.
Which was probably more than she’d been in years. People had always noticed her, but they hadn’t really cared about her.
He seem
ed to genuinely care, and that was new.
“Thanks,” she said. She stuffed the envelope in her back pocket. Then she looked at Spider. “You going to mind that I’m here?”
“Probably,” he said dryly. “But I’ve never been one to shirk a challenge.”
A challenge. That was what her father had called her when she turned thirteen and began to fight with him about everything.
She didn’t like being a challenge.
But she wasn’t going to give Spider that kind of power over her.
She smiled at him, thanked Dave, and asked if she could leave.
“As long as you come back tomorrow,” Dave said.
“I will,” she said. But she wasn’t sure how long she’d stay.
That feeling of comfort had left her—and that was a bad sign.
The bonus wasn’t enough money to get an apartment. In fact, she wouldn’t have enough even if she used the bonus and all of her first paycheck. She needed both for food and gas money. However, she did find out that she had enough money to pay for a room at one of the by-the-week motels at the edge of town.
On her first day off after the character rolling incident, she put on her grungiest clothes and drove the van to Rosehay. This time, she didn’t stop on the lane, but drove to the neighbor’s property. She parked in an alcove near their driveway, but still on the public street, and snuck onto their well manicured lot.
From there, she used the satellite map to find the path that she had found nearly a week before.
She slipped onto that path with no trouble at all.
Spring had really arrived since the last time she’d come, and everything was blooming. The lake was close enough that she could smell its muddy freshness. The scents of tulips and narcissus mingled with the smell of green, tickling her nose as she moved. Something snagged her hair, and she jumped. She reached back, half expecting a bird to be tangled in the strands. Instead, she found a twig.
She untangled herself and moved on, following the twisting path past large trees and long-established (and long overgrown) hedges.
Finally she ended up on a clearing with dead grass that had probably been as tall as her knees before the winter snows knocked it flat. The buildings stretched before her—a dozen of them, all in various stages of decay.
This place smelled of rot and wet wood. All of the buildings looked abandoned, and Rosehay itself seemed foreboding, the ghost house at the end of a particularly frightening block. In the proper light, the house could decorate the cover of a horror novel: Don’t go in the basement!
She shuddered and then laughed at herself. Her flights of fancy had increased since she began her job at the store. She would have to curb that imagination if she wanted to explore this place.
The outbuildings didn’t interest her nearly as much as the main house did. Even in its decay, it was much more impressive than the photographs she’d seen in the library.
The sheer size of the house made her father’s Bel Air mansion in California seem like a cottage. The wings of this house, which had clearly had been added on, were as big as her parents’ summer home on Vancouver Island.
She wondered how someone could live here then, just as quickly, she wondered how someone could abandon this place.
She stopped at the edge of the path, where the lawn began sloping to the small beach, and stared. The view from here was spectacular. She could see the lake shining bluely in the morning light and the trees on the other side of the Narrows.
Sail boats dotted the water.The water had a bit of chop this morning, but it still looked refreshing—especially to someone as hot and sticky as she was.
The walk had taken more out of her than she expected.
Still, she had work to do. What she wanted to find was a place to sleep. Her plan was simple: she would rebuild that building first, all by herself.
By the time someone local decided to report her to her father, she would have already invested time and energy into improving this place. When she got that angry phone call, she would tell him that she had already started fixing the neglect she’d found and he had no right to tell her to leave the property.
The only thing she hoped was that they wouldn’t come here, wouldn’t try to find her. If they did that, she might actually leave.
She turned her attention to the house. The front had that strange tower which rose above her, the rounded sides dotted with holes in the siding. The regular part of the building—all three stories of it—had floor-to-ceiling windows which had miraculously remained unbroken in all the time the house stood empty.
As she moved closer, the glass caught her reflection.
She moved closer, fascinated. Her own image seemed like it came from inside the house. The house matched her movement for movement, almost as if it were mocking her.
The house had attitude.
She had to admire that, since she had attitude as well.
As she approached the windows, she noted a small break between them. It marked a door—also made of glass—that opened onto the lawn.
That door seemed foreboding to her. She didn’t want to enter the house with her back to the lake.
Instead, she moved toward the house’s west side, the side facing the path. She stopped in front of it, noticing the lack of windows here. Had someone not wanted to look at the neighbor’s house? Or did someone have an aversion to sunsets?
Or maybe the designer had deliberately chosen to leave windows off this side of the house to focus on the windows up front.
A shudder ran through her. Suddenly, the warm spring day seemed cool. She looked up. There were storm clouds over the lake.
Thunderheads. The nasty bluish purple kind. The kind that could whip into a funnel cloud before she could even run to shelter.
She didn’t want to be outside when that storm hit.
She sighed, glancing one last time at the house. Despite its decaying, horrific appearance, it appealed to her. If she went inside, she might be safe from the storm.
Or she might get drenched. The roof hadn’t looked very sound when she had seen it from a distance. She had a hunch it probably looked worse up close.
She had time. She didn’t need to explore the entire property on this day. Besides, she needed to do laundry and get some groceries for her brand-new single room. She needed to tend to the details of her life.
Moving into this old house was still a dream.
But it had become even more of one. It seemed possible now.
She couldn’t tell Spider about her adventure—she no longer trusted him, not after that whole “we can’t have a thief behind the counter” thing. But she did find herself mentioning the storm to one of the customers three days later, the woman who had commented on her game character, a woman named Teresa.
When Jen had first met her about a week before, she had assumed that Teresa was coming to buy presents for her grandchildren. But then Teresa sat down in front of one of the computers, typed in her name and password, and produced an avatar that looked a lot like Jane Fonda in Barbarella.
That avatar destroyed two ogres and an entire hillside as Jen watched. Teresa obviously knew more about gaming than almost everyone else in the shop.
She also knew a lot about Lake Geneva. She volunteered at the historical society one day per week, and she was the one who brought up Rosehay.
“I hear your van was near the gangster’s house,” she said.
Jen started. She’d been trying to inventory the dice, which seemed like a thankless task. She was beginning to think the dice were like rabbits—multiplying when she wasn’t looking.
“I know you find it romantic up there,” Teresa said, “but it’s the most dangerous place in Lake Geneva. You shouldn’t go to the house, no matter how much it appeals to you.”
“It’s my family’s property,” Jen said. “Nathan Roshaye was my great-grandfather.”
Teresa nodded. “I suspected as much. You look like your mother.”
Without the figure,
Jen thought. But she didn’t add it. Too many people had throughout her life.
“You knew my mother?” Jen asked.
Teresa smiled. “I worked at the Playboy Club, too. I know that’s hard to believe.”
What could Jen say? No, that’s not hard to believe, when indeed it was? Or yes, you’re right. I would never have guessed you worked there, which, while true, bordered on cruel.
“Your mother wanted to marry a rich man and get away from your great-grandfather. I gather she did both of those things.”
Jen nodded.
“And they didn’t make her happy, did they?” Teresa asked.
“I don’t think my mother can be happy,” Jen said.
Teresa nodded. “She made you unhappy. That’s why you’re here.”
I ran away from home because of her. Because of him. Because it was hell on earth. A beautiful hell, but hell nonetheless.
But Jen remained quiet. She liked Teresa, but Teresa didn’t need to hear Jen’s life story.
“And you want to fix Rosehay, right? You want to make it your own,” Teresa said.
Jen jutted out her chin. She suddenly had the same feeling she used to have with her father, when he guessed her motivation and then proceeded to make fun of her.
She braced herself.
But Teresa didn’t make fun of her. Teresa took her hand and held it lightly.
“It’s dangerous up there,” Teresa said. “People have died. That’s why it’s overgrown.”
Jen didn’t pull away, but she wanted to.
“We’ve lost half a dozen teenagers since Nathan died, all of them going up to get the treasure some wag said he buried on the property.”
“Some wag?” Jen asked.
“There are treasure houses in Lake Geneva,” Teresa said. “Because of the wealth that comes here. Whether or not the stories are true, people believe them. They want some kind of get-rich-quick scheme to work.”
“Breaking into Rosehay is a get-rich-quick-scheme?” Jen asked.
“For some,” Teresa said.
“Not for me,” Jen said.
Teresa studied her, as if she were trying to see inside of her.
“That’s right,” she said after a moment. “Not for you. You’re just looking for a place to belong.”
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