Chapter 10 Cold #2
The world outside the library vanishes. The only things that exist are his breath in my lungs, his hand at my waist, the furious cadence of our mouths colliding. The books tilt and sway behind me; one tumbles to the floor, the dust of a hundred years rising in a single, golden column.
We break apart, panting, foreheads pressed together, the silence between us as loud as the storm had been.
“You’re a monster,” I whisper, but it’s not an accusation. It’s a diagnosis, and I’m as much the patient as he is.
He laughs, a sound raw and victorious, and then he kisses me again, this time slower, more deliberate, as if memorizing the taste of defeat.
When I finally push him off, it takes all my strength. My lip is swelling, and my hair is wild, but I am not afraid. I am feral.
I say, “You don’t own me,” and this time, my voice is steady.
He backs away, just a step, but enough to give the illusion of safety.
He says, “No one ever does. That’s the point.”
I want to tell him he’s wrong, that the house owns us all, but the words stick. Instead, I straighten my clothes, pick up the fallen book, and return it to the shelf.
He watches me, eyes molten and bright.
“You should be careful,” he says. “Lane doesn’t play games.” He smiles, and the cut on his lip beads a single, perfect drop of blood. He wipes it away with the back of his hand, never breaking eye contact.
We stand like that, locked in orbit, until a sound from the hall breaks the spell.
Lane stands at the doorway, a bundle of split wood in his arms, eyes fixed on the scene. The firewood slips from his grasp, thudding to the carpet one log at a time. He does not move to pick it up.
For a heartbeat, none of us speak.
Then Lane turns and leaves, boots heavy on the tile.
The silence is absolute.
Larkin steps back, smoothing his shirt, running a hand through his hair.
He looks smaller now, almost adolescent, and for a moment I see the boy he must have been—unloved, out of place, desperate for any kind of anchor.
He looks . . . guilt-ridden. And he stares at the spot Lane had been standing just a moment before.
He says, “I’m sorry,” but the apology is hollow, a placeholder for whatever real feeling he cannot access.
I say nothing.
He leaves, closing the door behind him.
I sink to the floor, knees drawn up, the taste of blood and brandy lingering on my tongue. The books tower above me, impassive, unchanged.
I sit there, trying to remember how to breathe.
The library, once again, is hollow.
But I am not.
I avoid the library for the rest of the day.
I eat alone in the kitchen, ignoring the careful glances of Mrs. Whitby, who keeps her questions folded tight behind the clean line of her mouth.
The soup is gray and flavorless, but I finish it, grateful for the warmth and for the solitude.
I do not see Larkin, but I hear his footsteps overhead—measured, deliberate, a metronome of frustration pacing the upper floors.
Lane is nowhere, not even in the garden, and I am left with the sense that the whole house is rearranging itself to contain the aftershocks of my stupidity.
By evening, I am so tired I consider sleeping in my clothes but force myself to bathe the day off me. The Blue Room is colder than it has any right to be, the fire Lane set that morning reduced to a sullen bed of embers. I stack the logs, coax the flames, but they refuse to rise.
I undress with numb fingers, the motions automatic.
The dirt beneath my nails will not yield, not even to the nail brush Whitby left in the bathroom.
My knuckles are raw, and there’s a crescent of dried blood where the skin split at the base of my thumb.
I run the water hot, but it never gets warmer than tepid, and I dry off in the cold, shivering.
When I return to the bedroom, the lights are low and the shadows have conspired to erase all memory of day.
The bed is made with a new set of sheets—crisp, white, unblemished.
On the pillow, perfectly centered, is a handkerchief.
It is linen, impossibly fine, with the initials “M.V.” embroidered in blue silk at the corner.
My aunt’s. It smells faintly of iris and old paper.
I stare at it for a long time, unable to touch. The fabric is so white against the blue of the coverlet that it seems lit from within, a small, glowing rebuke.
I wonder why Mrs. Whitby put it there. Probably for practical reasons. A girl messing with two men is bound to cry at some point. But nothing in the house is obvious. I think it may be a message, a warning, or maybe just a memorial for the latest in a long line of failures.
I sit on the edge of the bed, hands in my lap, the handkerchief still untouched. The words Whitby said on my first night return, unbidden—Hemlock breeds its own ghosts. The living often fare worse than the dead.
Through the window, the world is black. The storm has passed, but the air is thick with the threat of more. I see movement on the lawn—a dark shape crossing from the house to the outbuildings, broad shouldered and deliberate in gait. Lane. I wish I could go to him.
I finally pick up the handkerchief. The fabric is cool, smooth, almost wet, and I press it to my cheek.
There is comfort in it, but also accusation.
I remember the way Larkin looked at me, the cut on his lip and the wildness in his eyes.
I remember Lane’s face at the door, the momentary shatter before he rebuilt himself, stronger and less accessible than before.
I remember Whitby, hands folded and mouth pursed, inventorying my soul from across the kitchen table.
I go to the mirror, clutching the linen in one fist. My hair is wild, stray curls at the temples, and there is a red mark on my jaw that was not there before. I touch my lips—bruised, swollen, both from the cold and from the men.
I look at myself, really look, and I don’t recognize the girl in the glass. She looks older, wilder. More dangerous.
I smooth my hair, trace the line of the scar in my brow, and fold the handkerchief in half, then quarters. I place it on the table by the bed, a treaty with the dead.
I get beneath the covers, tuck my feet tight, and try to warm myself while cold crawls over me like a second skin.
In the dark, I think about the people I’ve lost, and the ones I keep losing.
I think about the hunger in this place, and how it is never satisfied.
I think about Lane, and Larkin, and Whitby, and the idea of my aunt pressing that same handkerchief to her lips in a room just like this one, long before I was born.
I fall asleep holding nothing at all, and when I wake, the handkerchief is gone.
The house, I realize, is never done with you. But I still don’t understand what it wants.