Chapter Two #2
“Actually,” says Kenzo, “numerous scientific studies have shown that—”
“—you should bite me?” offers Jaxon.
Sienna finds a selection of pastries and tarts in the fridge. “Speaking of biting,” she says, setting the tray of goodies on the counter before snagging a croissant.
“Oh, yes please,” says Kenzo, laying claim to an apple tart and eating half in one go. He sighs and stands, eyes closed, coffee in one hand and pastry in the other, looking like a saint.
After a long moment, he opens his eyes.
“You want one?” Kenzo holds the plate toward Jaxon, who physically recoils, as if the calories might leap out and attack him.
“No way.” He waves his hand. “No food before noon. I do intermittent fasting.”
“Of course you do,” says Kenzo around a mouthful of tart.
Jaxon begins a series of stretches, declaring he’s off for a run around the island before he starts writing. “Clear the mind, clear the way,” he adds. It has an air of recitation, though if it is a saying, it’s not one Sienna’s ever heard.
He reminds her of Malcolm. Not the fitness-obsessed health nut, but the restlessness, the inability to put butt in chair and do the work, the kind of person who wants to be an Author, capital A, more than they want to sit and write.
Kenzo brews two more cups and hands one to Sienna, sipping his own with a happy sigh.
“How many of those have you had?” demands Jaxon.
“Two.” Kenzo runs a hand lovingly down the side of the machine. “Soon to be three.”
“Nah, man,” says Jaxon, waving a bottle of water in his face, “you’re poisoning the temple!”
“You worship at your altar and let me worship at mine.” Kenzo drains the cup. “Just imagine it’s rock juice.”
Sienna has never heard of rock juice, but Jaxon, who has the water bottle to his lips, promptly chokes. His face does a weird thing, caught somewhere between horror, surprise, and delight. She’s trying to figure out the best word to describe it as Jaxon lowers the bottle.
“Did you just reference The Galactic Trials?”
Kenzo stares at him, as if bemused. “What?”
“Holy shit, have you actually read my books?” Jaxon is now bouncing on his heels like a manic puppy.
But Kenzo only shrugs. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Jaxon looks suddenly uncertain. He glances at Sienna, who shrugs. “Don’t ask me.”
“But like—you heard him say it, right? You heard him say rock juice? As in the most popular beverage on the Tourmaline?”
Sienna crinkles her nose. “Like the stone?”
“No, like the ship!”
Kenzo and Sienna share a blank look, and Jaxon scowls, like a kid who suspects he’s being teased, but can’t prove it.
“Whatever,” he mutters, jogging out of the room.
“Did you really read his book?” she asks Kenzo when they’re alone.
“Who cares?” says Kenzo. “That ego doesn’t need the boost.”
“Oh my god, you did.”
Kenzo gives another lopsided shrug. “Your coffee’s getting cold.”
Sienna lifts the espresso to her lips, no longer burning but pleasantly hot, and for a moment she forgets about Jaxon, and Malcolm, about the scream in the night, about Fletch’s death and the whole competition.
Her world reduces itself to the welcome heat against her palms, the small, perfect pool of darkened water.
She drinks, and feels the floor steady beneath her.
She didn’t realize how badly she needed this.
Not the caffeine, but the ritual, the tiny dose of daily normal amid all this weird.
“Good?” asks Kenzo.
“Good.” Sienna sighs.
“Great,” he says. “Come on. I want to show you something.”
* * *
SHE FOLLOWS HIM OUT OF THE KITCHEN and down the hall, toward the drawing room, where they first gathered. But before they get there, Kenzo turns right, leading Sienna into a room she’s only glimpsed in passing: the library.
Sienna’s never been in a house with its own library before. Is library even the right word? “Shrine” might be more appropriate. The walls are lined with books in different sizes and colors and languages, but they all have the same name on the spine. Arthur Fletch.
There are first editions, special editions, foreign editions—some in languages Sienna can’t even begin to identify; multiple copies of each and every book Fletch published in his thirty-year career, twenty-odd books multiplied into hundreds, thousands, enough to fill each and every shelf.
It’s impressive. Narcissistic. But impressive.
Fletch didn’t start at the top; his star rose with each successive—and successful—series, but the Petrarch books are the ones that made him stratospheric. It gives her hope that the same thing could be possible for her, that it’s okay not to be a big deal (or have a big deal) from the get-go.
Kenzo doesn’t move toward the shelves. Instead, he beelines toward the object in the center of the room.
The model on its marble pedestal. Even from the doorway, she could tell it’s ornate.
Up close, it is extraordinary. The entire mansion, in miniature, from the turrets and peaks to the tiny flecks of gravel in the walk and the stained-glass window on the landing, rendered in tiny colored panes, to the wooden front doors with their brass knockers.
A darkened floor lamp looms, like an unlit sun, over the House That Petrarch Built.
Sienna’s fingers itch to touch the sculpture. She feels like she probably shouldn’t, even though it’s not behind glass, and there’s no one to stop her—and sure enough, as she watches, Kenzo reaches out and pokes at the weathervane mounted to the top, a small dragon that turns on its post.
“It’s amazing,” she breathes.
“Wait till you see this.”
Kenzo pushes a hidden clasp on the outer stones, and the house splits along a seam, hinging open to reveal the insides of the mansion, exactly as they are: the picture frames in the halls, the copper pots in the kitchen, the trophies mounted in the drawing room, the weapons dotting the walls.
The antler bouquet, small, and as sharp as a thistle, on the front table.
The gong on the landing. The library they’re standing in now, down to a miniature of the miniature between them.
Sienna feigns a sigh. “The dollhouse of my dreams.”
“Huh,” says Kenzo.
She looks up. “What?”
“Nothing. It’s just, I didn’t picture you as the dollhouse type.”
She blinks in surprise, not because he’s wrong, but because he’s right. Not that most people would guess, given the time she puts into looking nice. Time she would much rather spend writing. But that’s apparently not enough anymore. Now that you have to market yourself as well as the work.
And it’s such a fucking hypocrisy, that Sienna’s expected to spend hours getting ready for each book event while Malcolm runs a hand through his hair and slaps on some cologne and calls it done.
And somehow that’s fine. No one judges him.
But if her hair’s not perfect, if her dress isn’t flattering, some asshole on the internet is going to comment.
Because god forbid it be about the work.
And half the time, even when she does try, it doesn’t matter.
She’s been to enough conferences with Malcolm, stood at his side while readers and writers alike spoke to him as if she wasn’t even there.
Moderators on panels who directed their questions to him instead of them, maybe because his face is on the back of the book, or maybe because men get to be seen as artists, or geniuses, whether they’re wearing moth-eaten sweaters or designer suits.
What she knows is that only one of them is allowed to age without it impacting their worth, and anyone who says that looks shouldn’t apply to authors has never tried to break out of the midlist.
Where everything matters.
Even when it shouldn’t.
All that to say, Kenzo’s right.
Sienna wasn’t the kind to throw tea parties for her dolls. Instead, she hacked off her Barbies’ hair and made a torture chamber for her Kens, and if her parents had ever given her a proper dollhouse, she would probably have turned it into a crime scene.
And it would have been great.
She sighs, running her fingertips along the roof, tracing the pitches. “So much detail,” she says, marveling at the tiny gray tiles.
“It’s not all for show,” says Kenzo, gesturing to the tiny model library, a perfect double of the one they’re standing in, the books little bigger than grains of rice.
A record player sits just behind an armchair, and Sienna thinks it’s an inconsistency until she looks up and, sure enough, there is one, its cabinet the same dark wood as the shelves.
Kenzo smiles. “Watch this.”
He proceeds to touch a button the size of a pin, and the thumb-size record begins to turn.
“No way,” she breathes.
“Way.” He lifts the tiny arm and sets it down, and a moment later, a soft, tinny song begins to waft from the miniature player.
It’s like a magic trick, but a creepy one, because the music that spills out is an old-fashioned tune made eerie by the fact it’s playing in a whisper, like the soundtrack to a scary movie.
Sienna shivers and reaches to turn the music off.
In the silence, the room around them suddenly feels heavy.
Like the house is holding its breath. On one shelf, a book has been turned round, so a portrait of Fletch stares out from the back cover.
His eyes seem to catch hers, peering out beneath the brim of his signature hat.
It’s black and white, the photograph, but she knows the hat is red.
She’s seen it in interviews, and on website headshots, and on the figure she and Malcolm saw when they arrived.
The one standing on the cliff. The one that could have been—but wasn’t—Arthur Fletch.
“Do you really think he’s alive?” she whispers.
Kenzo frowns. “I honestly don’t know. But bodies are like punctuation marks. Without them . . .” He trails off in a meaningful way.
Sienna shakes her head. “Hard to believe that the most famous author in the world would fake his own death.”
“Is it?” Kenzo gives her a weighted look. “You’ve never dreamed of starting over?”