Ivory Blackmore's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Ivory stood in the entry hall and listened. The house held still. No footsteps above. No breath behind her. The two cats slipped past her boots and trotted up the staircase like they had done it a thousand times. She locked the front door, threw the deadbolt, and tested it twice. The metal held. She tried every window lock on the ground floor next. Each one turned smooth and bit shut. Whoever had left this house had sealed it tight before walking away. She climbed. Three flights of stairs, dark wood under a thin layer of dust. The cats waited on each landing, then moved again when she caught up. The walls were papered in deep green, almost black in the low light. Brass sconces. Heavy doors. She tried each room as she passed and found the same thing in every one. Locked windows. Working bolts. A house built to keep the world out. At the top of the stairs, the cats stopped at a single door. The gold-eyed one pawed it. The green-eyed one sat and waited. Ivory turned the knob. The room ran the width of the house. A tall black bookshelf covered one wall. A heavy desk sat under a circular window the size of a car tire. The bed was king-sized, made up in black sheets with an emerald throw folded across the foot. The pillows were stacked the way she stacked her own. She set her pack on the desk and pressed her palms flat to the wood. Her hands stopped shaking for the first time in a year. The room felt cut to her measurements, as if someone had described her to a carpenter and walked away. She crossed to the window. The glass was thick and clean. Below her, the front yard ran out to a tall iron fence with spiked tops and a wide wooden gate locked shut by a heavy padlock. From up here she could see the whole street beyond it. Anyone who came for her would have to climb the spikes or break the lock, and she would see them do it. She unzipped her pack and pulled out the binder. A year of black roses pressed flat in plastic sleeves, each one labeled by date. She set it on the desk where she could reach it and slid the silver key into her pocket. The cats jumped onto the bed and curled against each other. Ivory sat down beside them and let her shoulders drop. He did not know this address. He did not know this street. He did not know this room at the top of a sealed house behind a spiked gate. For the first time, she had walls he could not walk through. She lay back on the emerald throw and watched the circle of sky through the window until her eyes closed.