I bowed my head and crossed the courtyard. A wind blew, and the door that opened onto the hallway tugged at my hand as though being pulled from the other side. From somewhere above me came a faint wailing noise. A tingling started at the base of my spine and wove itself up my back, through my ribs.
The House doesn’t want me here, I thought. It came to me with crisp clarity, as though it were a perfectly natural thing to think. The House wants me to leave.
But I had no choice. I’d made a deal with Bain and Bridgette. This was my chance at a new life. A new start. And I had to take it.
I climbed the two flights of stairs slowly, feeling with each breath like my chest was constricting. Go! Get out! that voice in my mind screamed. Turn back.
At the top, the corridor was completely still, and the air was cool and heavy and perfumed. Like a tomb, I thought.
I stood there, staring at Aurora’s door, third on the right, both fascinated and repelled. Moving like a sleepwalker, I took one heavy step, than another, until I was standing outside it. I inhaled a deep breath and reached for the knob. There was a low keening as the door began to open. With trembling fingers I reached along the inside wall and flipped on the light.
And laughed out loud with relief.
The room was beautiful. A warm glow spilled over the bed from a star-shaped lantern hanging from the top of a tall birch wood canopy. Everything looked exactly the way it had in the photos Bridgette and Bain had shown me: the modern bed made out of four solid pieces of birch wood brought back by Aurora’s parents from the forest in Bavaria where they’d conceived her; the dozens of pillows piled atop it in shams of white lace or eyelet; the massive white (faux, I hoped) fur rug that stretched over the polished wooden plank floor; the nubby oatmeal floor cushions around a low white lacquer table. It was chic and comfortable and clearly designed by a decorator. There was nothing sinister, nothing scary at all.
Beyond the bedroom I could see a bathroom bigger than I’d seen in many city bus stations, but much cleaner and done in slabs of grey-green marble that would have blown any municipal budget.
I took a step forward and then another. I felt like I was sneaking around, intruding into someone else’s space. Like I could be caught at any moment. This is your room, I told myself. Yours. All three-and-a-half-hours-to-clean of it.
And just like that the strangeness and apprehension vanished, and joy surged through me. It was gorgeous! It was mine! I flopped back into the white cushions on the bed and hugged myself. This bed, this room, this—
I got up and crossed to the closet. Dresses, pants, shirts, jackets all hung there neatly, more clothes than I’d had in years. I ran my fingers over them, turning up labels with names I’d seen in the closets of homes I’d cleaned, and in cast-off copies of Elle. Price tags poked out at me—one of the jackets, four of the shirts, and three of the dresses had never been worn. There were skin-tight minidresses and slouchy jumpers and fake leather pants and a long prairie skirt, a jangle of styles.
Everything that Bain and Bridgette had told me about Aurora made her sound brash and confident like a party girl, always in the middle of a crowd. But the confusion of her closet told a different story. It made me think of loneliness and insecurity. I could picture Aurora standing right where I was standing, flipping through different outfits, trying them on as though if she just found the right look she’d know who she was, or who she wanted to be. Suddenly she wasn’t simply a spoiled girl with too much time and money on her hands, but someone who shopped just to do something, to feel something.
I thought about the coolness of my reception from her “friends” earlier that night at Coralee’s, as though none of them had really known her either. Who were you hiding from? I wished I could ask her. If what Bain and Bridgette said was true, I realized that Aurora’s relationship with Liza had been not only her closest, but in some ways her only real one. Running my fingers over the fringes and leather and silk in her closet, I wished I could go back and give that Aurora a hug, and tell her she didn’t have to be alone, that everything would be okay.
Except, of course, that everything hadn’t been, I reminded myself.
Stop it.
I opened the second closet, and my knees went out from under me. It was lined, floor to ceiling, with shelves. I reached for a pair of black ballet flats with a supple rubber bottom that looked like they’d barely been walked in. I bent my foot behind me to slip one on, a do-it-yourself Cinderella. It fit perfectly.
Some of the shoes were boring and some were ugly—the Crocs went directly in the trash—but there was a pair of silver Prada wedges and a pair of platform Gucci sandals with crisscross straps over the ankle and a pair of motorcycle boots with rivets up the front. And all of them, every pair, was exactly my size.
Oh, Aurora, I thought, how could you have run away from this?
My mind flashed back in time to a rural bus station, linoleum floors, fluorescent lights that hummed, the sweet, fake pine scent of the industrial cleaner the grey overalled janitor was slopping back and forth as he swayed to the music in his ear buds. The clock said eleven thirty, and my mother and I were the only ones there. We’d been travelling by bus for weeks at that point, moving in sprawling loop de loops across the map as though driven by a crazy Spirograph.
I was using the nail of my pinkie finger with its chipped red polish to pick at the old resin on the wood benches while my mother sat next to me, her head slightly turned away, listening to conversations only she could hear.
“Are we running away from home?” I asked, giving voice to the question that had been on my mind for two days, ever since the lady at the Wok On restaurant asked where we were from and my mother lied.
My mother had laughed. I couldn’t see her face, but her laugh I could always conjure—rich, ringing, like bells calling you to a wedding. “No, silly goose. You can’t run away from home. It’s not home if you want to run away from it.” She paused to brush a strand of hair from my face. “You can only run away from a house. Home is something you run toward.”
Home. Looking around the room now, I realized how sterile everything was. Sterile in a way that went beyond its neatness. It was more like a stage set of a room than a place someone had actually lived in over time. There were no photos in frames, no little notes or stupid toy surprises from crackerjack boxes, no rocks with faces in them you’d picked up on a walk, no once-loved-but-now-relegated-to-a-corner games or dolls, no pieces of sea glass or cards from a friend or pencils gnawed at the ends or half-used raspberry-scented erasers. No computer. It looked like the room of someone who had tried to erase their real identity. Or perhaps her identity had been erased after she disappeared.
My energy level flagged suddenly, like a sail when the wind dies. There were a dozen things I should do before going to sleep, but I decided that all but hiding the original note from Bain offering me one hundred thousand dollars could wait for the morning. I slid it between the mattress and box spring, figuring that with me on top of it, it should be safe enough until morning.
I pulled open the top two drawers of the dresser and found a frothing pile of underwear in one and socks neatly rolled into balls in the other. Below those was a big drawer with stacks of T-shirts, and below that sweatpants and shorts. I pulled out a pair of boy shorts and a T-shirt and reached for a pair of socks. A strip of photos came out with them.
It was the kind you get from a photo booth at an arcade or fair, four down, different poses. They all showed a guy with floppy dark hair and a girl, sitting close together to fit into the frame. In the first one they were smiling at the camera, the second one they were forehead to forehead, the third he was cradling her cheek with a very large hand, and in the bottom one they were kissing.
The girl was Aurora, but it could have been me. We really did look exactly alike, and the realization pierced me. She looked happy. No, more than that—blissful.
I couldn’t tell what the guy looked like because his face had been scratched out with a
black ballpoint pen. I could only tell his hair was dark because she’d missed a place on one of them.
I took the strip of pictures to the bed and sank back into the pillows to study them. My finger rubbed over the texture of the pen that had been used to obliterate his face. The cross hatching was deep, done with real feeling, back and forth over and over. I could feel the pain that had gone into it, the anger, the shattering of a dream. On the back of the photo strip the machine had printed a date. One week before Aurora disappeared. The same day as the tennis tournament in the photo on the piano at the guest house. The one Aurora had been cut out of.
She had gone from being in love, to being so angry that I could feel it in her pen marks, during the course of that week. What had happened? Did it have something to do with her disappearance?
And why hadn’t Bridgette and Bain ever mentioned that their cousin had a boyfriend? Why didn’t this guy have his own flashcard? Bridgette wouldn’t have made an oversight that big.
Unless it wasn’t an oversight. Unless it was intentional. I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were up to something, something beyond our imposter scheme, something that I was unwittingly part of. As though it wasn’t necessary, maybe even wasn’t desirable, for me to get Aurora completely right. I didn’t like it. Expendable, I could still hear Bridgette’s voice saying that first day.
Of course, I hadn’t exactly been fully honest with them about my plans either.
And I’d already put mine in motion. I yawned and realized again how tired I was. Everything else could wait until tomorrow. I set the photo strip down on the night table and snuggled under the covers.
I don’t remember turning off the lights. But the only illumination was coming from the moon when I awoke to a faint scratching sound and saw the knob on the door to my room begin to turn slowly by itself.
CHAPTER 14
I came instantly awake, mind racing. I’d turned the lock, hadn’t I? Hadn’t I?
Fear crept up my shoulder blades with prickling fingers. I groped with my unbandaged hand around the surface of the night table next to the bed for anything I could use to defend myself. How had I been so stupid? I knew better than to let down my guard.
I was making a list of all the things I should have done—jammed a chair beneath the knob, got my knife out of my purse before putting it under the mattress, never agreed to have done this in the first place—when the handle stopped moving. The door jiggled, like someone was trying to get in from the other side. My fingers closed on a flashlight on the bottom shelf of the night table. I slid it into my palm.
The handle jiggled again. “Who’s there?” I asked, struggling to keep the quiver out of my voice.
The handle stopped moving for a moment. I was in the middle of taking a breath when fingers began to scratch at the edge of the door once more, as though looking for another way in.
“Who are you?” I demanded, trying to swallow and finding my mouth dry. “What do you want?”
I had to lean forward and strain to hear, but when I did, it was unmistakable. “Aurora,” a voice said. It was part whisper, part wail. The handle began to jiggle again.
I wasn’t going to sit there terrified. I was going to face whoever was out there. In one motion I leaped out of bed, bolted to the door, and flung it open.
And was standing face-to-face with… nothing.
There was no one there. There was no sign that anyone had been there. The wide, dark corridor was silent, still. Empty.
Completely empty.
But the handle on my door had moved, there had been whispering, I’d seen—
The spirits will have their revenge, I heard the medium’s voice.
This was not spirits, I told myself. There are no ghosts. My fingers trembled, and I could feel my heartbeat through my whole body. This had to be someone. I would find them. Probably this was some prank Bain and Bridgette were pulling. Maybe this was part of their plan, to scare me, drive me nuts, make me think—
What?
That didn’t matter, I wouldn’t let them.
Trailing my hand against the wood paneling, I began walking to the end of the corridor opposite the way I’d come up. I went slowly, the beam of the flashlight chiseling into the empty shadows. I paused after each step, listening, but the only sound I could hear was my breathing. Four steps in, a chill wrapped around me, as though I’d passed through a cooler patch of air, and I sniffed the faint smell of jasmine. I stepped forward, and the air was warm. I stepped back, and the chill settled around me. Embraced me.
Every ghost story I’d ever read came back to me, and my skin started to prickle. “Hello,” I whispered. “Is there anyone there?”
Nothing answered.
I knew, rationally, there couldn’t be anyone there. That this was just a place where the air pooled, an architectural peculiarity. There are no ghosts, a voice chanted in my head.
Alongside me, I heard a sound. It was distinct. The sound of footsteps shuffling.
There must be someone else there. Only I was unmistakably alone.
I swung the flashlight around, sending the beam bouncing off the walls. The corridor was empty. But even as I stood there, watching, seeing there was no one, I heard the footsteps again, now slightly in front of me. And beneath them a low, irregular sound. At first I thought it was someone sobbing. But then I realized it was… giggling. A horrible, manic giggling.
The flashlight arced wildly in my trembling hands as I ran back through the cold place in the corridor, back to the open doorway of my room and slammed it shut.
My fingers stumbled over the lock, and it took me three tries to turn it. I stood there thinking, The footsteps sounded like they were next to me. But the corridor was empty, so that is impossible. Thinking it as though it were rational, as though I could somehow see tunnel-like through my fear. Thinking all that as I furiously rubbed my arms to make the goose bumps go away, as my teeth chattered so loudly I couldn’t hear my heartbeat.
There are no ghosts, I repeated to myself again and again. There are no ghosts.
My breathing was just starting to come back to normal when one of the shadows near the bookshelf peeled itself away from the others and, assuming a hazy shape, came looming toward me.
“Hello, Aurora,” it whispered, reaching for me.
CHAPTER 15
In the split second before I screamed, the shadow resolved itself into a figure in black cashmere and laser whitened teeth. Bain.
“What were you doing out there?” he asked.
My terror evaporated, leaving behind a granular mixture of fury and relief. “What the hell were you thinking?” I whispered angrily, punching him in the bicep. “Was that some kind of joke?”
“Ouch,” He stood back, rubbing his arm. “Was what some kind of joke?”
He did a good job sounding innocent, but I wasn’t believing it. “Jiggling the door handle. Pretending to be a ghost. Why didn’t you just knock and say who you were?”
Even in the darkness I could see him frown. “Because the door was open when I got here. What are you talking about?”
I realized the grooves of the flashlight were digging into my hand where my fingers were gripping it. “You weren’t the person trying to open my door? Jiggling the handle?”
“No. I didn’t have to. Like I said, the door was open. What happened?”
“Nothing. Just that. I woke up, and the door handle was turning. Or at least I thought it was. But when I opened the door there wasn’t anyone there.” I willed my fingers to uncurl from the flashlight. “I thought I’d locked the door. Where did you come from? Did you see a person in the hall?”
“I took the back stairs from the kitchen. Had the place to myself.”
I pictured the layout of the house. There were the front stairs I’d come up and another set originally built for servants that connected to the kitchens. I’d forgotten about those, but if Bain had been on them, no one could have gone that way. I said, “I must have dreamed it.”
“I didn’t know she’d hire a medium. That hadn’t been part of my plan.”
He sat in the desk chair and pivoted right, then left, balancing the tip of his index finger on the top of the desk. “Yeah. Tell me about that. Your plan. How did you come up with the idea to show up like that instead of doing it the way we talked about?”
“It seemed more like something your cousin would do.” I shrugged. “Make a big entrance. Plus people are always more likely to believe something that has to be coerced rather than volunteered.”
As I spoke the words I realized I’d said too much, revealed too much of my actual approach. If I’d been talking to Bridgette, it could have been a crucial mistake, reraised questions in her mind I’d worked hard to put to rest, but Bain didn’t seem to recognize it. He nodded toward my bandaged left hand, which was on top of the covers. “You got hurt.”
I held it up. “No one can ask me to play tennis or the piano with this thing,” I said.
He let out a low whistle. “Nice.” He got thoughtful again. “The only thing I don’t get is, why not tell Bridgette and me? We would have gone along with it.”
“This way you won’t have to pretend to be surprised.”
He gave a little bark of laughter. “I think you wanted to show us who had the power.”
“I think you must have me confused with your sister. I’m not nearly that clever.”
He gave me a quick, sharp look. “Sure.” He got busy opening desk drawers, poking around them with one finger. “Just remember that we’re all on the same team here. Working together. Right?”
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