The house seems to appreciate all the attention. The exterior is still stained and gloomy, but the vines are greening faintly, supple and alive, and there are fresh bird’s nests in the eaves. The floor still provides an entire symphony of groans and creaks, but I swear it’s no longer in a minor key.
Sometimes I catch myself humming along with it, weirdly content. Mostly it’s just the money, which in my experience will solve all ninety-nine of your problems, but it’s also Starling House itself: the way the walls feel like cupped palms around me, the way the doorknob fits in my hand, the absurd, childish feeling that I belong there.
EIGHT
By the middle of March the sparrows are bathing in the potholes and the daffodils are peeking cautiously through the matted leaves. It’s still cold, but the world smells muddy and awake, and I’m inspired to drag the rugs and couch cushions outside for an airing. I prop them against the biggest, oldest sycamore and beat them with my new broomstick until dust fogs the woods and sweat stings my skin, despite the chill.
I leave the cushions to air out and head back up the steps, kicking aside the leaves and curled-up grubs. It’s only when I reach for the doorknob that I realize it’s locked itself behind me.
I pound on the door a few times, annoyed and embarrassed and wishing very much that I was wearing my hoodie rather than just a bleach-spotted Bible study T-shirt. The wind pokes icy fingers through the holes in the collar. I knock again.
After an amount of time that makes it clear Arthur isn’t coming—either because he can’t hear me or because he’s a prick—I get more than annoyed. God, I hate the cold. It makes me think of the river closing over my head, the stars vanishing, the world ending. I haven’t gone swimming in eleven years.10
Classic PTSD,Mr. Cole called it, as if that helped at all.
I stomp and swear at the house. I try my gate key in the lock, but it won’t turn. I remind the house in a wheedling voice of all the hard work I’ve been doing on its behalf, feeling stupid for talking to a house but not stupid enough to stop. There’s a shiver in my jaw, as if my teeth want to chatter, and the wind has turned my sweat clammy. The door remains serenely shut.
I flex my left hand. The cut is mostly healed now, and it seems a shame to split it back open, so I bite my lower lip until I taste salt and meat. My fingertips come away red.
I’m about to smear my own blood across the lock like some ancient cultist blessing a household when I hear boots on the steps behind me. I drop my broomstick and spin around to find Arthur Starling displaying his particular habit of turning up when I’m doing something especially embarrassing.
He’s wearing a long dark coat of the kind I’ve only seen in spy movies and on the covers of pulpy mystery novels, his hair stuffed messily beneath a high collar, his face flushed with fresh air. He’s looking down at me the way I look at the hellcat when she gets her claws stuck in the screen, as if he can’t understand how he got saddled with such a piteous, hapless creature.
He sighs at me. “Please stop bleeding on my house.”
I suck resentfully at my lip. “Where did you come from?”
“Walking the walls.”
I squint around him at the winter woods, shadowed and empty except for the white bones of sycamores, and remind myself that this boy and his spooky shit are not my problem. “Of course.”
“You’re cold,” he observes. He’s mocking me, standing there all cozy in his rich-kid coat, his shoulders safe and square against the winter light while I shiver in my secondhand T-shirt, remembering what I’d rather forget, and I’m suddenly, thoroughly, absolutely over it.
“No shit.” I use my real voice rather than my cashier’s chirp. His eyes widen gratifyingly. “See, when you get locked outside by a haunted house in the middle of March, and nobody is around to let you back in because they’re busy doing God knows what—”
He moves past me in two long strides, keys clinking in his hand. He unlocks the door with his face half-hidden behind his collar.
I follow him back into the humid dark of the house, wondering if he’s about to fire me and wishing I didn’t have to care, wishing I’d stolen every last spoon in his stupid house.
But he doesn’t say anything. We stand awkwardly in the hall, not looking at one another. The heat makes me colder somehow, the shivers moving from my jaw to my belly, rattling my ribs. He slides out of his jacket and makes an abortive gesture in my direction before folding it stiffly over his arm.
He scowls at the floor and asks petulantly, “Why can’t you wear a coat?”