Ivory Blackmore's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Ivory Blackmore had counted twelve petals on every black rose for one year, and the latest one sat on her kitchen counter inside a locked apartment. She stood barefoot on the tile, septum ring catching the overhead light, and stared at the stem he had laid across her mail. The deadbolt was still thrown. The chain was still hooked. He had been inside while she slept. She pulled the folder from under her mattress, the one nobody else had ever seen, and added a new line in shaking handwriting: he has a key. She needed out. Not tomorrow. Now. She grabbed the framed photo from the shelf, the one of her and her mother on the porch in matching scarves, because it was the only thing in the apartment she refused to leave behind. Her hand was wet. Her grip slipped. The frame hit the floor and the glass broke into a star around her mother's face. Ivory dropped to her knees and pulled the photo free of the broken frame. Her eyes filled. She pressed the picture to her chest and tried to breathe. Something scratched at the front door. Slow. Deliberate. She froze. The scratching came again, lower, closer to the floor. She crawled to the window and lifted the blind a finger's width. Two black cats sat on her welcome mat. One had gold eyes. One had green. No man. No shadow. Just the cats, staring up at the peephole as if they had knocked. On the mat between them lay a rusted silver key, octagonal at the head, orange with corrosion. She opened the door six inches and snatched the key off the mat. The cats wound around her ankles, purring hard enough to feel through her boots. She turned the key over in her palm. It was too old for any lock in this building. The cats walked to the edge of the porch, sat, and looked back at her. When she did not move, the green-eyed one meowed once, sharp, and started down the steps. The gold-eyed one waited. Ivory shoved the photo in her jacket, the folder under her arm, and followed. They led her four blocks through wet streets she had never walked at this hour, past shuttered storefronts, to a tall black Victorian house swallowed in vines. The windows glowed orange from inside, though no car sat at the curb and no name hung on the gate. The cats slipped through the iron bars and waited on the front steps. Ivory tried the silver key in the heavy front door. It turned. The lock gave with a soft, oiled click, as if someone had kept it ready for her. She stepped inside and shut the door behind her. For the first time in a year, she was somewhere he did not know to look.