Chapter VII

After

Later they lay tangled in the dark. Her platinum head rested over his heart. His tattooed fingers moved slowly through her hair, finding pins, setting them on the nightstand like evidence.

Cassian

He did not sleep. Men who are good at leaving learn to keep one eye on the door even after they have chosen a bed. When her breathing went still as porcelain, he rose, pulled on his trousers, and took the key the house had given him.

The locked floor opened for the key. Of course it did. The hotel wanted him to see. Horror is a kind of welcome mat.

The room beyond was a ledger. Not books — people, in a manner of speaking. Guest registers with years and no names, only pulses pressed as brown stains. Behind glass, collars. A woman’s glove. A man’s ferry ticket, the twin of the one in Cassian’s coat. Clocks with their faces turned to the wall, still ticking, as if ashamed of the time they had stolen.

On the last page of the newest book, a space had already been ruled for him. No name yet. A blank as patient as a grave.

He stood there until the cold made his ink ache. Then he went back, because the alternative was to become another stain that had tried to be clever.

Seraphine

She was awake. She had been awake the moment the key turned. She did not pretend otherwise.

“You knew I would stay,” he said.

“I hoped,” Seraphine corrected. “Hope is rarer than knowing. Knowing is what the house does. It knew it could keep you as a quiet. I hoped you would come back from that room still loud.”

He turned his face into her neck. He was shaking, and he let her feel it. Shame was a luxury. He would spend it.

“Then hope again,” he said. “Because I’m not finished staying. And I am not going in that book.”

Her arms tightened. For the first time since he had met her, she felt like someone who could lose.

“Neither of us is,” she whispered. “That is the quarrel I have been having with my own walls. I am tired of winning it alone.”