The Ten Thousand Doors of January - Alix E. Harrow Page 0,64

again with those cold, cold hands.

A sharp rap at the door. Neither of us made a sound.

Mrs. Reynolds entered anyway, her shoes tapping officiously across the tile. “It’s time for her bath, I’m afraid, sir. Family are asked to return later.”

Barely contained rage curled Havemeyer’s lips away from his teeth. “We’re busy,” he hissed. In Locke House, it would’ve been enough to send nearby staff scurrying for cover.

But this was not Locke House. Mrs. Reynolds’s eyes narrowed, lips pursed. “I’m sorry, sir, but regular schedules are very important for our patients here at Brattleboro. They’re easily agitated and require a sober, predictable life to keep them calm—”

“Fine.” Havemeyer breathed deeply through his nose. He shook out his glove and pulled it over his bare hand. Something about the showy slowness of the gesture made it obscene.

He leaned toward me, hands crossed atop his cane. “We’ll talk more soon, my dear. Are you free tomorrow night? I’d hate to be interrupted again.”

I licked my slowly warming lips, tried to sound braver than I felt. “Don’t—don’t you have to be invited in?”

He laughed. “Oh, my dear, don’t believe everything you read in the story papers. You people are always trying to invent reasons for things. Monsters only come for bad children, for loose women, for impious men. The truth is that the powerful come for the weak, whenever and wherever they like. Always have, always will.”

“Sir.” The nurse stepped toward us.

“Yes, yes.” Havemeyer flapped a hand at her, smiled a hungry smile at me, and left.

I listened to the merry tapping of his cane down the halls.

Halfway through my bath I started to shake and couldn’t stop. The nurses fussed and rubbed warm towels down my arms and legs, but the shaking only intensified and then I was crouched naked on the tile floor, holding my own shoulders to keep them from shattering. They took me back to my room.

Mrs. Reynolds lingered to fasten the cuffs around my goose-fleshed arms. I seized her hand with both of mine before she could finish.

“Could I—do you think I could have my book back? Just for tonight? I’ll be good. P-please.” I wished I’d had to feign that stutter, wished it were all some clever ruse designed to lull them into trusting me before I made my daring escape—but I was precisely as terrified and hopeless as I seemed, and I just wanted to hide from the howling thoughts in my head. Thoughts like: Havemeyer is a monster and The Society is full of monsters and What does that make Mr. Locke? And: Bad is dead.

I didn’t really think she would say yes. The nurses had treated us so far like bulky, poorly behaved furniture that needed regular feeding and grooming. They spoke to us, but in the light, chattering way a farmer’s wife might speak to her chickens. They fed and bathed us, but their hands were rough stones against our flesh.

But Mrs. Reynolds paused and looked down at me. It almost seemed accidental, that looking, as if she’d forgotten for a half second that I was an inmate and saw instead a young girl asking for a book.

Her eyes skittered away from mine like startled mice. She tightened the cuffs until I could feel my pulse thumping in my fingertips and left without looking at me again.

I wept then, unable even to wipe the glistening snot-trail away from my lip, unable to press my face into the pillow or curl my head into my knees. I kept crying anyway, listening to the shuffling sounds of women in the halls until the pillowcase was damp beneath my head and the hallways went silent. The electric lights buzzed and crackled as they clicked off.

It was harder, in the darkness, not to think about Mr. Havemeyer. His white fingers spidering toward me out of the gloom, his blue-tinged flesh glowing in the moonlight.

And then a key scraped and thunked and my door eased open. I spasmed against my restraints, heart seizing, already seeing his black-suited form edge into the room, his cane tap-tapping nearer—

But it wasn’t Havemeyer; it was Mrs. Reynolds. With The Ten Thousand Doors tucked beneath her arm.

She scurried to my bedside, a furtive white smear in the darkness. She tucked the book beneath my sheets and unfastened my cuffs with fumbling fingers. I opened my mouth but she shook her head without looking at me, and left. The lock snicked behind her.

I just held it, at first; rubbed my thumb against the worn