Chapter Twenty
Alora didn’t notice a sound aside from her own footsteps on the marble floor until she caught sight of Door Eighteen. From there she heard crying.
They were quiet cries, muffled. The kind where one doesn’t mean for them to escape but they manage somehow.
Alora held all the fresh warnings and instructions close to heart, and she couldn’t afford more mistakes.
But she glanced in all directions and followed the cries anyway.
They led her up a spiral staircase and revealed themselves outside the Room of Fire.
“Lennox?”
“Alora?” Lennox leaned against her closed door, her made-up eyes now trailing black down her cheeks. She swiped at them in a hurry, smudging them further. “Dammit. I didn’t know you’d be here today.”
“I didn’t know either, to be honest. Whatever is the matter?” She hurried forward, gripping the girl’s hands before she could make more fruitless attempts at her cheeks.
“It’s William! They’ve punished him. Punished me! I’m to perform alone until he’s recovered, and I’ve not practiced a solo routine in ages.”
Alora’s heart sank. “How long until he’s recovered?”
“I don’t know. His face is all a mess I’ve heard.”
“Master Merridon had him beaten?”
“No,” said Lennox, and sniffed. “No, he only was to have certain privileges revoked awhile. It’s those blasted—” Her anger spouted and died in the next breath. She glanced hurriedly around. “He was attacked by someone else.”
The so-called captain of the Urchins no doubt.
“Can’t he be seen by a healer?” Alora’s ankle was in perfect condition. Surely that Urchin could fix a swollen eye.
“Master is allowing it to heal naturally. I could be performing alone for a week or more!”
Alora stared into Lennox’s puddled eyes and couldn’t bear it. “I’m afraid this is all because of me. He asked me to enter Door Ten with him and gave me something to drink. I was…not myself. We were discovered there.”
“William took you into Door Ten?”
Lennox’s eyes were large and vivid green with emotion. Alora couldn’t tell if she was hurt or shocked or on the verge of a fit of rage.
“It was a huge mistake. I should have questioned what I was being offered. I’m sorry.”
“And William just— What an ass. Don’t you dare blame yourself at all; he should know better! And to not even explain it all to you first? Why, I—I’d punch him myself if I could get to him!”
“Please don’t! Not on my account.” Alora already had her hands full with one person acting out for transgressions against her.
“I couldn’t even if I wanted to. His room, or rooms, is separate from ours.” She swiped at her nose and then her eyes. “Be honest with me, Alora. How ruined is my face?”
“Fairly ruined.”
“I thought so. Well, I suppose it must be redone. Come along.” Alora’s feet didn’t move, not even as Lennox moved around her and tugged at her hand. She glanced back, brow furrowed. “Oh, I forget you don’t keep the same hours. Are you working?”
“No, not exactly. Though I do need to ask Madam Feebledire a question.”
“Ask her afterward, please. I could use the company. We don’t get much of it; not of the sort I want.”
Alora worried her lip. “Isn’t it against the rules?”
“Um. Yes, probably.”
“I’ve just come from a meeting with Master Merridon. He made it quite clear I was not to break, or even bend, any rules.” At the downfall in Lennox’s face, she couldn’t help adding, “And it seems he has eyes nearly everywhere.”
“He does seem to. Oh, I wish we could be made invisible. Just for a while.”
Alora squeezed her hand. “I wish that too.”
***
“Shh, Alora. You’re not as quiet as you think!”
Alora adjusted where she placed weight on her feet, hoping for less sound as she and Lennox followed the path around Opulence. They’d passed two signs already.
Employees Only.
And the second. No Members Beyond This Point.
The topiaries were gone behind them, replaced by more uniformed shrubbery, trimmed into round, bulbous shapes. Thunder cracked all around, and the lightning was fierce. Alora adjusted the coat, ensuring all of her remained tucked inside.
“Can you see my shoes?”
Lennox squinted back at her. “A little, but it’s like a trick of the light or shadows.
I would never guess there was a whole person attached.
” Alora had imagined a coat which would make her invisible, and it had worked.
She couldn’t hardly believe it. “No more talking now. There are bound to be other performers out and about at this time of day.”
“Even in the storm?”
“Shh!”
Alora obeyed, continuing silently along the mansion’s massive side.
She was thankful for the bouts of thunder and even the whistling wind, though it was somehow kept outside the grounds.
She would have been far more nervous in the utter stillness of the Opulence she was used to.
As it were, she was still very, very nervous.
The silver coat itched where its hood met her forehead and swished about her feet.
She’d not given much thought to craftsmanship over functionality, her haste and doubt in the possibility of its creation affecting the outcome.
But she’d done it. Brought a thing of enchantment into reality.
If she weren’t so frightened over breaking another set of rules, she might have made the time to awe over what she’d managed.
Still, she allowed one prideful thought.
She could create extraordinary things, and clearly, she’d stifled herself with fear for far too long.
The hidden grounds behind Opulence Mansion were dotted with more bulbous hedges and golden, square buildings.
The structures ranged in sizing, and were topped with crimson, slanted roofs.
None, she noticed, possessed window boxes.
In fact, there were no windows in these structures at all, but tacked on framing to create the illusion. Certainly, there were no flowers.
She made to ask Lennox about them but held the question for later.
Right now, a stranger had exited one of the buildings.
Short and curvaceous with black hair braided down to her thighs, she was middle-aged, if Alora had to guess.
She wore a red, latex suit hugging every curve, revealing an expansive amount of flesh across her chest. Her boots met the ends of her hair.
She was beautiful. And intimidating—a whip lay tucked in her hand.
“Lennox,” she said, without stopping.
“Noelnina.”
Alora glanced once more at her shoes just to be sure she wasn’t revealing an ankle. She was not. Noelnina passed them by.
The pebbled path branched now from house to house.
Alora guessed the buildings couldn’t be anything else, as it was made clear early on that most of Opulence’s employees and performers lived on the grounds.
She followed Lennox dutifully, jolting now and then at a particularly loud crack of thunder.
It’d not yet started to rain, which she was thankful for.
She stopped when Lennox did, before a rather small building with only two fake windows and one small hedge.
She said nothing as the other woman reached out and turned the knob, pushing the door in.
When Lennox moved inside and gripped the door’s edge, making a show of looking out over the landscaping, Alora took that as her cue to rush inside.
She flung off her coat as the door closed.
“Welcome to my room!”
And it was. A single room. Alora took in the details with a quick, assessing eye.
The unmade bed. The chaos of a desk. Paintings of flowers and fire.
Two chairs and a small table were covered in outfits she guessed were used for performances, and a mug drained to dregs. She turned to Lennox and smiled.
“It’s very nice.”
“It’s a mess, is what it is.” Lennox sat at the desk and immediately began the process of removing her makeup before the small mirror. “But it’s nicer than some. Bigger than the ground’s employees are given.” She scrubbed aggressively at her cheeks with a cloth.
“And William lives here, too?”
“He has to. Not near me though, so don’t worry.”
“It’s a requirement? What if you wished to live in town and commute?”
“Non-negotiable per the contract. Maybe someday I’ll get to see it. Did you know that I’ve been here nearly three years and I’ve yet to see Enver?” She giggled about it, swiping charcoal onto her lids, but Alora noted something else behind it.
Longing.
A terrible taste filled her mouth as a realization encroached. “Lennox, can you not leave?”
Vivid eyes met her own through the glass, and Alora knew at once. “Non-negotiable.”
“But I’ve seen William in Enver! He was at the print shop.”
“Well, of course he was. William has special privileges, remember? The perks of being Master’s son.
” Lennox frowned through the mirror: A choked sound had emanated from Alora before she could help it.
“You didn’t know?” Alora could only shake her head.
“Well, he is. Though that doesn’t excuse his behavior.
If anything, I think it makes it worse.”
Lennox puckered her lips at the glass. Then she rose with a flourish. Striding to the mess of a table, she flung garments aside until she reached wood. There, she extracted a cigarillo from a now-revealed box and lit it. The scent of cloves filled the room.
Alora noted all of this distantly, as the only thought barraging through her head now was the idea that William and the Urchin were not only brothers but brothers belonging to Master Merridon. He might have told me who his adoptive father was!
“Are you all right?”
Alora released a breath. “I’m quite shocked, to be honest.”
Lennox shrugged, having apparently come to terms with the fact long ago. “I’ll tell you I’m not all right. I can’t believe you have the ability to bring coats into reality. Not to mention invisibility ones!”
Breath stilled in her chest. Alora waited for one of the several reactions she expected, but when they didn’t come, and Lennox continued to look at her with awe, she finally released it. And then she did more than that. “I can bring about more than coats.”
“Can you really?”
“Whatever I’m capable of imagining. Though it doesn’t always turn out as I would hope, especially not with complex things.”
“Ah. Like clocks?”
“No, I think I could bring about a clock fine, though I haven’t tried. I meant living things. More specifically, things with souls.”
Lennox’s eyes grew wide. “People?”
“People. Animals. I…I’ve not told anyone this.”
“Oh, I won’t tell anyone.”
Alora reached out and Lennox obliged, placing the cigarillo between her fingers. Alora dragged in a breath against its end, her mouth filling with sweet smoke. She coughed, a plume rising between them. Lennox grinned.
“I brought a rabbit into the world once, as a girl,” said Alora, eyes streaming.
“But I didn’t pay close enough attention.
He had too large of teeth and these empty white eyes.
When I peered into them, I couldn’t see anything staring back at me.
It was…disconcerting. But I was his mistress, and he followed me everywhere.
Mindless, I realized too late. People talked about it—all through the town I grew up in.
Some said I summoned a demon. Some said I tortured a living creature into what it had become.
They were very cruel, to both of us. Then he bit a girl, and she fell.
” Alora breathed in a second time from the cigarillo, on the off chance the first coughing fit was a fluke. It was not.
When she could speak again, she handed it back to Lennox with a shake of her head. Smoking, it seemed, was not for her. “Anyway, I can’t ever go back there.”
“You can never return, and I can never leave. What a pair we are,” said Lennox. This time there was no false laughter. Lennox stared down at her shoes, her mouth slightly parted and breaths shallow.
Alora thought she’d the better situation herself but didn’t say so. Lennox didn’t need to hear it; likely she already knew. Alora wondered how long her contract extended. Then she asked.
“Twenty years,” Lennox said, smiling sadly when Alora gasped outright. “By then, they’ll find someone younger I would assume.”
“Lennox, I’m—”
But Lennox shook her head. “I went all on my own. I read the contract. I’ve only myself to blame.”
“But you can’t have been much more than a child!”
“Seventeen.” She shrugged. “I didn’t have much. Not much to me besides this ability. And when I was approached to work at Opulence, I thought it was a blessing. In some ways, it is. I’m fed and housed and clothed. Some people could say far less.”
Approached. Alora thought she might be sick. “You’re still trapped. What Merridon is doing is still wrong, even if he feeds you.”
“As I said: I’ve only myself to blame.”
“That’s not—”
All at once, Lennox was done with the conversation. She stuffed the cigarillo into her bodice and gripped Alora’s shoulders after. “I need the Room of Happy Days. Right now. Come with me?”
Alora had broken so many rules, but she could see something worse was near shattering in Lennox. Really, what was one more? She nodded.
“Perfect. Maybe we can sneak a look at what Mister Macaw is working on. It’s the new topiary to represent Door Twenty-five, and I’m dying to know who, if anyone, is going inside it.”