These thoughts are idle, distant things, because I already know what I’m going to do. I’ve known since the second Baine said my brother’s name in the back of her car, weeks ago. Everything since then has been playing pretend, dreaming about an old house and a grand mystery and a boy with secrets and scars. People like me should know better than to dream.
Sometime before midnight I pull away from the curb and make a wide U-turn in the empty street. I drive back to Starling House with Arthur’s keys pressing against my hip like cold fingers.
During the day the House could be mistaken for a mere building; at night, it never could. It has the obscure topography of a dream or a body, with endless, sinuous hallways and stairs that climb at unnatural angles. The walls heave in and out, a vast rib cage, and Arthur suspects if he were to press his ear to the plaster he would hear the subtle beating of a heart somewhere beneath all the oak and pine and plaster.
Most nights Arthur finds it soothing—it’s nice to imagine that he doesn’t stand alone against the Beasts, even if his only ally is a foolish old house with ambitions of sentience—but tonight the House is restless. Every nail turns fretfully in its hole and the roof tiles clack like chattering teeth. A drainpipe bangs against the wall in the anxious rhythm of a woman drumming her nails on the table. Arthur soothes it as best he can, renewing wards and double-checking charms, but the weather is mild and the doors are locked. He lies awake for a long time, listening, and falls asleep only when Baast curls on his chest.
When he wakes, Baast is standing over him with her back arched and her tail rigid. Arthur’s skin is prickling, as if a chill draft has blown through, and he is suddenly aware that the front gates have been opened. So has the front door. He looks out his round window long enough to see the ghostly creep of fog along the ground, and then he’s running barefoot down the steps with the sword aching in his bandaged hand.
There is nothing on the third floor, or the second. There’s a tugging sensation in the back of his skull, like the trembling of a spider’s web, that leads him to the kitchen, but it’s empty except for the faint phosphorescence of the microwave clock.
Something clicks, like the shutter of a camera. It comes from the pantry.
He opens the door and light glances off rusted cans and old jars, their contents gray and glutinous. The rug has been rolled back, and beneath it there is a perfect square of darkness in the floor.
The trapdoor is open.
Arthur has seen it open only once before, when he was eleven. His mother had waited until high noon on the summer solstice before she knelt on the floor and unlocked it. Then she took his hand and led him down, down into the dark.
He remembers the steps, slick and endless. He remembers trailing a hand along the walls and finding them wet, weeping cold water. He remembers crying, and his mother noticing, but not stopping.
He doesn’t understand how the door was opened again—he keeps the keys safe in his room, and these aren’t the sort of locks that can be picked—but his thoughts have become very slow, very simple. He is the Warden of Starling House, and the locks have failed.
Arthur goes down beneath Starling House for the second time in his life, his heart beating evenly, his tattoos burning into his skin.
The walls are smooth limestone, untouched by picks or chisels; it’s like the world split open and someone built stairs in the gap. It should be completely black, but the mist has its own ghostly fox-fire glow.
The sound comes again, that unnatural click. Arthur braces his sword before him and walks faster.
The stairs don’t lead to a room or a chamber; they simply end, running straight into the great slab of the first door. He sees the chains still stretched taut across the surface, and the lock still shut, but there’s a shape standing before it, pale in the mist-light.
Arthur does not hesitate. He lunges down the last few stairs and swings. It’s an ugly swing, a woodcutter’s downward chop, but it would have been enough to sunder a fresh-hatched nightmare. Except he slips on the damp stone, or the stone slides out from under his foot, and the sword goes wide. It skrees off the limestone in a spray of white sparks.
His body slams into the shape and he flinches, expecting rending teeth and gouging claws, the scuttling, scrabbling attack of a creature with too many joints and limbs—
It doesn’t come. Instead, a voice says, fervently, “Christ on a bicycle.”
Arthur doesn’t move. He doesn’t breathe. He is reasonably sure that his heart does not beat. “Opal?”
The pale shape lifts its head and he sees a pointed chin, a freckled pair of cheeks, gray irises rimmed with white. “Opal. God—are you alright? Did I—” His hand spasms and the sword clatters to the ground. He runs his fingers frantically up the bare skin of her arms, over her shoulders, dreading the tacky heat of blood.