Elms's Arc

Chapter 10 of 3

Elms had the deed, but the house knew her now. A guard's step changed on the stair below. She pressed her back to the hall wall and listened. One set of boots became three. They were climbing. She still did not know which room held her maker. The study had given her the deed, not his door. If she ran the wrong way, she would find guards instead of the man she had hunted for six years. She needed a map, and the house was full of the dead. Dead things held memory the way wood did. She slipped past the study and found a narrow servant's hall. A corpse stood frozen there, mouth stretched wide in a silent laugh, eyes dark and hollow. It had died standing and never fell. Elms knew a laugh like that came last, at something a master said. She cut her thumb again and touched its gray hand. The memory came fast. The laughing corpse had carried trays up these stairs for years. It had served a man behind a gold door at the top of the house. Elms saw the door. She saw the man's hand take a cup. She pulled back, breathing hard. Top floor. Gold door. She finally knew. But the boots were close now. She could not reach the stairs without crossing them. A small shape stepped out of a doorway between her and the way up. A zombie girl, no taller than Elms's waist, twin pigtails stiff with grime. She hugged a worn teddy bear against her chest. One eye glowed yellow. She watched Elms with no fear at all. "You read the funny man," the girl said. Her voice was flat and wet. "I read people too. I just watch them." She tilted her head toward the climbing boots. "They think you're in the study. I can make them keep thinking it." Elms did not trust her. But the guards were twenty steps away. "Why would you?" The girl squeezed the bear. "Nobody comes up here. It's boring." She pointed a small finger down the hall. "Scream from the study. They'll run to it. You go up." Elms had no better plan. She slammed her palm against the study hearth and let out a cry that broke in the middle, a girl's cry, the kind the house expected. The boots stopped, then rushed the sound. Three guards thundered past the servant's hall toward the hearth. Elms went the other way. She took the last stairs three at a time. At the top she found it—the gold door, exactly as the dead man remembered. Behind it, her maker. She stopped with her hand flat against the wood. The deed was folded in her coat. The guards would learn the trick soon. She had one quiet moment and a door that would not stay shut. Elms pushed it open.