Starling House(35)

And there are so many bad nights. Seems like the mist rises more often than it used to, and the bastards go down harder than I remember. The floors are sagging and the roof leaks. Don Gravely’s boys are pecking at the property lines again, like crows. You’d think a Gravely would know better, but he’s a hungry one, and some mornings I’m too tired to walk the wards. Your father says I’ve been talking in my sleep.

I don’t know. Maybe whatever’s down there is getting restless. Maybe the House is weaker, without its heir. Maybe I’m just getting old.

What I know is that sooner or later—probably sooner—Starling House will need a new Warden.

This is your birthright, Arthur. That’s what I told you the night you ran away, isn’t



I reread the letter five or six times in quick succession. Different phrases seem to rise off the page each time, swelling in my vision: mist rises; Gravely’s boys; whatever’s down there; birthright. Then I just sit, staring at the blocky red numbers of the motel clock, thinking.

I think: He can’t leave. It sounds like he tried, but he’s bound to that house in some way I don’t understand. Trapped in this town, just like me, making the best of the messes our mothers left us.

I think, jealously: But at least he has a home. A claim, an inheritance, a place he belongs. I’ve never belonged anywhere, and—no matter what I dream or pretend, no matter how dear and familiar it becomes to me—Starling House will never belong to me. I’m just the cleaning lady.

I think: How desperate must a person be, to be jealous of a cursed house?

But then I touch the page, a letter from a mother who cared enough to say goodbye, and think: Maybe it’s not the house I’m jealous of.

My phone buzzes on the bedside table. It’s a text from a number I don’t recognize, with a faraway area code that makes my guts twist: Enjoyed our chat. We’ll be in touch soon.

I go very still, then. The entire scene in Baine’s car had acquired a wavering, bad-trip quality, extremely unlikely to my sober mind. But I remember what she wanted from me, and I remember the way she pulled Jasper’s name like an ace out of her sleeve.

I raise my phone and take a single, slightly shaky picture of the letter.

It’s exactly the sort of thing she’s looking for. It’s proof that there’s something bad and strange going on in that house, something anomalous. I can almost see the letter being dissected fiber by fiber in some distant lab, distilled into a set of data points.

The hellcat saunters through the open door without looking at me, as if she hadn’t been shamelessly begging at the window. She settles on a fold of Arthur’s coat and begins kneading the fine wool, growling a little in case I try to touch her.

Without thinking about it, without deciding to, I delete the picture. I fold the letter back into my pocket and withdraw Arthur’s number instead.

I am aware, on some level, that six A.M. texts are well outside the boundaries of the housekeeper-and-homeowner relationship, but I picture his face upon being woken even earlier than usual—the offended red of his eyes and the black weight of his brows—and can’t help myself.

do you have canned tuna

Three little dots appear and disappear several times in response, followed by: Yes. He doesn’t ask who it is, either because he has some spooky sixth sense or because—the thought feels sharp and fragile, like it ought to be swaddled in Bubble Wrap—he hasn’t given this number to anyone else.

I don’t write back.

Twenty minutes later the truck is parked in his driveway, ticking softly to itself, and I’m knocking on the front door of Starling House. The air has a sweet, green smell this morning, like running sap, and the birds are flitting bright between the trees. The vines on the house are covered in corkscrews of new growth, waving gently at me.

Arthur greets me with his customary glare, his features twisted and sour. I could almost imagine I hallucinated the previous day, the sight of him folded uncomfortably on the bathroom floor, looking up at me with his face young and uncertain, his hands scarred and huge around that ridiculous plastic cup. I’d almost forgotten he was ugly.

But it’s too late for second thoughts, so I pretend I don’t have any. “Morning! I brought you something.” I open my coat and the hellcat explodes out of it like one of those aliens that pops out of people’s chests. She hits the floorboards, spitting, and vanishes down the hall to flatten herself under a curio cabinet. She watches us yellowly, making a sound like an old-fashioned police siren.

Arthur stares down his own hallway for several long seconds, then looks back at me. “What.” He says it with a period at the end. He tries again. “What—why—”

“Well.” I give him a modest shrug. “I owed you. You did give me a truck.”

“I did not give you a truck.”

“Seems ungenerous. I gave you a cat.”

The corner of his mouth twitches upward before he bends it back into a frown, and I think the pint of blood it cost me to get her in the truck cab was probably worth it. He crouches a little to look under his sideboard. The police siren sound goes up an octave. “Is it a cat? Are you sure?” He straightens. “Look, Miss Opal—”

“Just Opal.”

That flash in his eyes, there and gone. “I am not interested in adopting any kind of animal, Miss Opal. I do not want any—”