Ruby had been walking for six hours in heels she couldn't afford to replace. Her ex, Tom, had her bank cards frozen by noon. Her ID was in a wallet on his kitchen counter, three states behind her. Every motel sign she passed asked for one or the other, and her name on a register would light up like a flare the second Tom paid someone to look. She tried the first place anyway. The clerk asked for a license. Ruby smiled the smile that used to work in bars. The clerk asked again. Ruby left before the woman could pick up the phone. The second place wanted cash up front. Ruby counted eleven dollars in her clutch. She counted it twice, as if the number might change. It didn't. By dusk she was off the main road, following a dirt track because it went away from streetlights. The track ended at a fence, and past the fence stood the strangest house she had ever seen. Mushrooms the size of oaks held up a dark manor between their caps. Purple and red domes stacked on stone. A pool glowed at the base. A rail track curled through the upper caps like something from a park. A gate hung open. No cameras she could spot. No cars. The windows on the lower cap were dark. Ruby slipped through and crossed the wet grass. She knocked once at a low door set into a stem. Nothing answered. She tried the handle. It turned. Inside smelled like cedar and old rain. A narrow hall opened into a round room. Dust lay thick on a long table. Whoever owned the place hadn't been home in weeks, maybe months. She climbed a curving stair inside the stem and found a bedroom under a red cap. The bed was made. A robe hung on the door. In a closet, behind hanging coats, she saw a dark metal box the size of a microwave, mounted to the wall. A blue ring glowed around a fingerprint pad. A vault. Locked to someone else's hand. Ruby stared at it a long moment. Whatever was inside was not hers. But the roof was. For tonight. She went back down and bolted the door she'd come through. She checked every window on the lower floor and drew the curtains. She ate a can of pears from a cupboard and drank water from the tap. Then she sat on the stairs with her heels off and listened to the house. No sirens. No boots. No Tom. She had a place to sleep and no name attached to it. She also had a locked vault upstairs that belonged to a stranger who might come back, and no plan for what she would say if they did. Ruby climbed the stairs and lay down in someone else's bed.