The Children(63)

Just for a moment, she lay on the bed. Kicked off one shoe, then the other. Wriggled out of her jeans. Fell asleep. And found herself inside the Farmhouse.

Again the hall was longer than it should have been, lined with doors and closing in on a distant rectangle of unresolved space. This time, though, she was unafraid.

She slid forward, fearless, frictionless, through the nearest door and into a room full of fire. Cool painted boxes of it, bright as server banks inside a dark gallery. Conflagration. Swiftly she moved past the lesser canvases, toward the final one. The blazing heart.

She reached for it.

The instant she made contact the fire overflowed its frame. It crawled up her fingers, wound around her hands in a blinding cat’s cradle. Then farther, up her arms, over her shoulders, mantling her in smokeless weight. Making a second cage around her ribs, like a saint’s blazing armor.

Farther. The flames ringed her throat. Tighter. Blackout nipped at her temples, it pressed at her dreamer’s eyes. On the very edge of unconsciousness, Guin woke up gasping.

In her bed, on her belly, head deep in the sheets. Her own hands gripping her throat. She fought her way free in a helium panic, tears gathering in burning reservoirs behind her lashes.

Sun made a neon line around one corner of the blackout curtain. The color of mid-morning, of too late. Fern gave her yesterday off, which had to mean bad things for her schedule today. But when she went for her phone, the texts and missed calls were from Hank.

Guin spat a curse. The last text was on top, running down the screen and out of sight.

I waited at the restaurant last night for an hour. I called you multiple times. I went so far as to walk to the train but I couldn’t handle traveling all the way to Manhattan to confirm you both forgot about me and couldn’t be bothered to pick up your phone. I give you all the space you ask for but I’m not here to be stood up, Guin. I have meetings after school then I’m heading straight to your place, eta 6. Don’t call, I want to talk in person.



She called. Hung up when he didn’t answer, called again. Shame turning her stomach, she mumbled an apology to his voicemail.

The soles of her feet were oddly tender as she stepped into the hall, squinting against daylight. In the kitchen she poured tap water over instant espresso grains and microwaved it to scalding. Stretched out on the couch, she imagined hot coffee moving through her, turning on the lights. But her brain stayed stubbornly dark. Everything she needed to think about loomed in there like unlit scenery flats.

Her life had been going okay a week ago. She’d been doing fine. Promoting her memoir—a “curiously unrevealing peek behind the curtain, which might make fans wish they hadn’t looked,” thanks very much, Kirkus—and going on runs and getting ready, so close to ready, almost ready, to start wedding planning with a wonderful man. Then her brother reached out with a single finger and stopped her life from spinning.

Sometimes Guin imagined who Book Guinevere would have grown up to be, after all her grand adventures. If book six had been written, and she’d been delivered safely onto the opposite shore: life after magic. If she were real. Who might she have become?

Guin could only ever picture her as an archetype. Career woman, one in a quartet of codependent drunks, endlessly discussing bad dates over brunch. Upper-class wife in white gloves, finger pads dusty with Klonopin. Urban eccentric, walking a rabbit on a leash through Washington Square Park.

Except Book Guinevere never had to grow up. Was never forced to become a girl cosplaying a woman, all of childhood’s shining avenues gone dark at her back.

And Guin was being awfully maudlin for ten in the morning. Sternly she pushed these thoughts aside and burned her chest on the last of the espresso, taken in a gritty slug. Then she picked up her phone and scrolled to a number from which—a little over a year ago, right after The Door Museum’s closing—she’d gotten two hang-up calls. When she looked it up, it was cited as the inquiries contact on an old Ennis Sharpe press release. She’d saved it as Candy??

She was right. Candy picked up after two rings, sounding suspicious. “Hello?”

“Candy. It’s Guinevere.”

A stale pause. “Hi.”

“I’ve been thinking.” Guin spoke fast. “About what you said, and in general, and I’m ready to talk. In person. Can we meet? Today?”

“Look. Guinevere.” Candy took an audible breath. “Ennis fired me.”

Guin straightened. “What? When?”

“Couple days ago.” Her voice was stonelike, immovable. “I signed a nondisclosure on the way out. My very generous severance is dependent on it. And paying my rent is dependent on that severance. I don’t see myself landing another job any time soon, do you?”

Guin did not. Candy was tarred by the brush that smeared Ennis, minus the mitigating factors of maleness, genius.

“Shit. I’m—” She couldn’t quite say she was sorry. “Did he say why?”

“I think we both know why.”

Because Candy went to Guin, and he found out? Or because he sensed her absolute devotion had wavered? How narcissistic was Ennis these days?

“Right. But.” Guin faltered and reset. “When you asked the other day how much I remember. I remember plenty. But I’m starting to think there are things I didn’t know. I was a kid, and sometimes I had these—suspicions. That felt, not possible. And I’m having them again. I’m making these connections. I’m not trying to screw you over, I actually do mean that. But, Candy.” She licked her lips. “Please. There’s no one else I can ask.”