rumbled, and I realized that it was probably close to what normal people considered dinner time. Having spent the afternoon organizing books for fun, eaten my weight in yogurt, and lost my memory, I wasn’t sure I counted as ‘normal people,’ but I’d seen some chicken and vegetables in the fridge and it occurred to me that it might be nice to cook something for Holden, as a thank you.
It was strange. I had no idea who I was, but I could recognize an early edition Dostoyevsky and I already had the general outlines of a chicken and mushroom dish. None of it made sense, but maybe if I leaned into the things that seemed familiar, other memories would start revealing themselves, dominoes toppling over to show their spots.
Grabbing the notebook and pen, I went in search of Holden. I headed back to the foyer, which seemed to be more or less the center of the house, and went down a hallway I hadn’t explored yet. I saw Frog about halfway down the hall, shredding the edge of a tapestry—an actual tapestry—and meowing loudly, like he was lodging a complaint against the wall.
I bent down stiffly as I got close, holding out my less-sore arm and wondering if I could get Frog to come to me silently, since even making that ‘pss pss pss’ sound seemed like a chore for my throat. Frog looked in my direction, paused for a moment, then lifted his tail high and pranced down the hall away from me.
Jerk.
Curious, though, I followed Frog to the end of the hall. Was it my imagination, or were there sounds coming from that direction? I peered into the doorways that I passed. Most led into what looked like storage rooms, though one displayed a sitting room filled with mustard yellow and green floral couches that looked like they’d endured a lot of Frog’s attentions.
There was a door at the end of the hall, slightly ajar, and Frog darted through it. As I got closer, the sounds resolved into Holden’s voice. Was he talking to someone, on the phone maybe?
I stopped for a moment, not wanting to eavesdrop. But Holden had told me to knock, after all. I couldn’t very well do that from where I was standing, and he’d left the door open. And fine, maybe a little part of me was curious about what a man who owned a house with actual tapestries might be chatting about in his free time.
“Jennifer put her hand on the door. The knob was strangely cool, and the briefest touch turned her veins to ice.”
Holden’s voice was clear now, but I couldn’t figure out what he was doing. Telling a story, it sounded like. But to whom?
“She turned to Alaric, fear making saucers of her eyes, a silent question on her lips. Her brother looked back at her, clearly trying to steady his nerves, and nodded. With a deep breath, Jennifer turned back to the door, and pushed it open.”
Holden paused, and I heard the clack of a keyboard. I bit back a curse. His voice was so familiar, and I swear I’d been on the verge of remembering why, if he’d just kept going. But standing this close now without revealing myself just seemed creepy, so I knocked on the doorframe and peered into the room.
Holden turned from where he was seated in front of a computer with dual monitors. A fancy-looking microphone with a little circular screen in front of it angled towards his mouth. He turned his screens off hastily and looked at me in shock.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
I frowned. He’d told me to come find him, hadn’t he? Before I could clarify, he spoke again.
“You can’t just barge in here.”
Suppressing a groan—it would only hurt my throat, and probably look childish, besides—I wrote in the notebook and held it up for him.
“You said to knock, remember?”
Okay, fine, maybe that was a little childish too. But nobody’s perfect.
“Yeah, knock and then wait, not knock and then open the door anyway,” Holden barked.
“I didn’t open the door. It was already open.”
I refrained from adding ‘dick’ to the end of that, which I thought showed great moral fortitude on my part. I wasn’t the one who’d forgotten to close the door, after all.
Holden opened his mouth to reply, then closed it and looked underneath his desk, where Frog was batting at his computer cords.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “He was whining to get out just a few minutes