The Ten Thousand Doors of January(34)

It seemed unlikely that Mr. Locke would give me something so fanciful, no matter how sorry he felt for me. How, then, had it found its way into my treasure box in the Pharaoh Room?

But the mystery of it felt thin and distant beneath the weight of the Thing that still sat on my chest. I began to see how it would always be there, how it would cleave to my flesh like a second skin, secretly poisoning everything I touched.

I felt the damp poke of Bad’s nose as he rooted under my arm, the way he had as a puppy. It was far too hot—the July sun was oozing across the floorboards now, baking against the copper roof—but I wrapped my arms around him and buried my face in his fur. We lay sweat-sticky while the sun rose and Locke House creaked and murmured around us.

I was drifting into a forced, heat-dazed sleep when the door opened.

I smelled coffee and heard familiar, decisive steps across the floor. Some secret tenseness in my chest unwound itself, exhaling relief: She’s still here.

Jane was dressed and alert in a way that said she had been awake for a considerable time and refrained from disturbing me for as long as was decent. She balanced a pair of steaming cups on the bookshelf, dragged a spindly chair to my bedside, and sat with her arms neatly crossed.

“Good morning, January.” There was something almost stern in her voice, businesslike. Perhaps a single day was the acceptable mourning period for a mostly absent father. Perhaps she was just irritated at me for sleeping late and monopolizing our room. “I heard from the kitchen girls the party was, ah, eventful.”

I made a moany, I-don’t-want-to-discuss-it sound.

“Is it true that you got drunk, shouted at Mr. Locke, and stormed out of the smoking room? And then—unless my informants are mistaken—disappeared with the Zappia boy?”

I repeated the moany sound, a bit louder. Jane merely raised her eyebrows. I threw an arm over my face, stared at the orangey afterglow of my eyelids, and grunted: “Yes.”

She laughed, a rolling boom that made Bad jump. “There’s hope for you yet. There are times I think you’re too much of a mouse to make it out in the world, but perhaps I am wrong.” She paused, sobering. “When I first met your father he told me you were a troublesome, feral child; I hope that’s so. You’ll need it.”

I wanted to ask if he’d spoken often of me, and what he’d said, and if he’d ever mentioned that one day he would take me along with him, but the words clotted in my throat. I swallowed. “For what?”

That stern, very-nearly-irritated expression returned to her face. “Things can’t just keep on forever the way they are, January. Things must change.”

Ah. This was it, then. She was going to tell me that she would be leaving soon, returning home to the highlands of British East Africa and abandoning me alone in this little gray room. I tried to squash the scrabbling panic in my chest. “I know. You’re going.” I hoped I sounded cool and adult, hoped she didn’t notice the way the sheets were balled in my fists. “Now that—now that Father is dead.”

“Missing,” she corrected.

“Excuse me?”

“Your father is missing, not dead.”

I shook my head, rising up on one elbow. “Mr. Locke said—”

Jane’s lips curled, and she made a gesture like a woman swatting a gnat. “Locke is not God, January.”

He might as well be. I didn’t answer but knew my face had gone mulish with denial.

Jane sighed at me, but her voice when she spoke again was softer, almost hesitant. “I have reason to believe—your father made certain assurances—well. I haven’t given up on Julian, not yet. Perhaps you shouldn’t, either.”

The black Thing seemed to curl closer around me, an invisible nautilus shell protecting me from her words, hope-laced and cruel. I closed my eyes again and rolled away from her. “I don’t feel like coffee. Thank you.”

A sharp indrawn breath. Had I offended her? Good. Maybe she would just leave without pretending to miss me, without false promises about staying in touch.

But then she hissed, “What’s that?” and I felt her hand fumble in the sheets at my back. A small squarish something slid out from beneath me.

I sat up and saw The Ten Thousand Doors clutched in her hands, her fingertips white where they pressed into the cover. “That’s mine, if you don’t—”

“Where did you get this?” Her voice was perfectly level but oddly urgent.

“It was a gift,” I said defensively. “I think.”

But she wasn’t listening. She was riffling through the book with hands that shook slightly, eyes skittering across the words as if they were some vital message written just for her. I felt a strange, illogical jealousy.

“Does it say anything about the irimu? The leopard-women? Did he find—”

A harsh rap-rap-rap on the door. Bad stood, one white tooth bared.

“Miss Jane? Mr. Locke would like a private word with you, if you please.” It was Mr. Stirling, sounding as usual like a typewriter that had somehow learned to walk and talk.

Jane and I stared at one another. Mr. Locke had never, in her two years at Locke House, spoken a private word to her, nor more than a dozen public ones. He regarded her as a regrettable necessity, like an ugly vase one is obliged to keep because it was a gift from a friend.

I watched Jane’s throat move, swallowing whatever emotion made her palms leave dark, damp patches on the leather-bound book. “I’ll be right there, Mr. Stirling, thank you.”