“I’ll be,” he said, and followed it with a whistle, which seemed appropriate. He squinted at the windows but couldn’t see much within. So feeling strange, he approached his front door and knocked. He didn’t know how to feel when no one answered. Had he expected someone to answer?
“Surely someone has been keeping it up . . .” Perhaps they had vacated the premises after the place was bequeathed to him, but Mr. Allen had said there had been no recent tenants. Squatters, perhaps? Very handy squatters?
There was a key in the lawyerly envelope in his bag, but when Merritt tried the handle, the door opened with only the slightest creak of its hinges. It was early afternoon, so sun shined through the windows, which were only lightly pocked with trails of rain. The moderate reception hall looked every bit as fine and put together as the exterior. At the end was a set of intact stairs and a door. Leaving the front door open, Merritt stepped in, marveling. He’d intended to open that second door, but his attention was diverted by the rooms stemming off either side of the reception hall—a dining room on the right, with a table already set for a party of eight, and a living room on the left, fully furnished in burgundy and forest green.
Merritt gaped. He had considered that his grandmother’s will was set to dump an unwanted parcel on him, leaving it to him to let it rot or try to sell it, but this house already looked . . . amazing. More than he could afford, unless he managed to pull an Alexandre Dumas and make bank off his publisher.
“Thank you, Anita,” he murmured, reaching out and touching the wall. There was a portrait there of a British woman, though nothing else to denote who she might have been. She seemed to look at him, wondering about the transition of ownership just as much as he did.
He turned to the living room, stepping reverently. Everything was in order, like it’d been prepared for him, though a heavy coat of dust lined every available surface, and the furniture had some wear. But no sign of rodents, or even a fly. He ran his hand over the back of a settee before peering through the next doorway, which led to a sunroom. The plants there were either dead or overgrown, as though whoever had been caring for this house lacked a green thumb. But Merritt owned a sunroom. The thought put a weird pressure in his chest he didn’t quite understand.
Turning back, he was a quarter of the way through the living room when something caught his eye. Turning toward the window, his gaze fell upon a burgundy armchair, upholstered in velvet, maple leaves carved into the armrest and legs.
And it was melting.
Merritt squinted. Rubbed his eyes. Inched closer.
It was . . . most definitely melting. Like a candle under too hot a flame. The seat dripped onto the carpet, though the carpet didn’t absorb or repel it. The drips simply ceased to be. Meanwhile, the wood glistened with perspiration and wobbled, ready to break under the lightest touch.
“Good Lord,” Merritt mumbled, stepping away. He caught himself on the settee, and his hand pushed through its soupy exterior.
Yelping, he wrenched back, toppling onto the carpet, quick to get his legs under him again. Drips of settee clung to his fingers, then puffed away as though they never were. Once the walls began warping, Merritt sprinted back into the hall, his breath coming fast, his previously gooped hand to his chest.
“What on earth?” he asked, spinning about.
The portrait’s eyes followed him.
Something thumped up the stairs.
Swallowing, Merritt bolted for the front door.
It swung shut and locked just before he reached it.
Chapter 2
September 6, 1846, Boston, Massachusetts
Hulda Larkin sat in the smaller foyer in the back of the Bright Bay Hotel, which was specifically sectioned off for the Boston Institute for the Keeping of Enchanted Rooms, or BIKER for short. The bench was backless, but pushed up against a wall to compensate for it, and had a false rosebush off to one side and a real potted fern off to the other. She was going through her latest purchase—a receipt book full of seafood recipes—inserting tabs on the most sensible meals. She had just returned to Boston yesterday after a six-week assignment in Canada, overseeing the preservation of a well-warded longhouse off the shore of Lake Ontario. She’d been called down to the office only an hour prior.
She didn’t have to wait long. Miss Steverus, the young receptionist, bounced in as Hulda placed the third tab, announcing, “Ms. Haigh will see you now.”
Closing her book and stowing it away, Hulda stood and shook out the ruching on her skirt before offering a polite nod and heading into the office. It was a fairly large room with expansive windows backlighting a heavy desk and the petite, elegant woman who sat behind it. One wall was covered in shelves like a library, while the other was completely bare.