Novels by Silver penz

ARIAI told Sienna that K. R. was a friend from the house I used to live in, a man who gave me a bracelet on the day I graduated, and she nodded gravely, and said, "A friend with a motto," and let it go.She let it go for six whole weeks, which I think was a record for her.Six weeks was long enough to learn how the studio breathed; Owen arrived first and left last and talked to his drawings as if they were nervous horses, Ms. Harlow rationed biscuits by the minute, and the baker downstairs rang his bell twice on a Tuesday, when a man in a long coat stood outside the green door for eleven minutes, looked up at our window, and went away without coming in. Sienna announced that the kettle was broken in a very loud voice, and I spent a quarter of an hour in the supply cupboard with Gordon the rubber plant, drawing a lobby on the back of a toner box.Six weeks was also long enough to have a first pay packet, which I put in a new bank account that had nothing to do with anyone, and long en

ARIAI told Owen the truth, or the part of it that belonged to him.I said my mother had borrowed money from people who didn't forgive, that my name had been put on the paper without my hand, that a man called Hale believed I could be frightened into paying; I said nothing about a masked ball, a locked door, or a voice that had said not angry. Owen listened with both elbows on his desk and my drawing of the window flat between them, and he didn't interrupt once."Is it true that you never signed?" he asked at last."I was sitting an exam when it was signed, I have the seat card.""Then it's a forgery, and a crime, and it isn't yours." He said it plainly, as if reading a measurement off a ruler. "Do you still want the job?""More than I can say.""Then I have three rules, and I'd like you to agree to all of them before you walk out of that door.""Go on.""One, if that man comes here again, you don't speak to him, you don't look at him, you tell me, and I'll do the speaking." He raised

ARIA"Fennel Street Studio," Tilly read from her phone on Thursday morning, holding it over my cereal like a flag. "Junior drafter wanted, bring portfolio, ask for Owen Mercer, no experience necessary if you can draw a door that looks like a door.""That's a very low bar.""It's the first low bar I've seen in London, go over it.""What if they ask for references?""Then give them Professor Calder, she adores you, she'll tell them you can hold a pencil and a grudge." She pushed my bag across the table. "Wear the gray dress, it makes you look like a person with a plan.""I have three dresses.""The gray one has a plan."Fennel Street was a short, crooked road behind a market, with a bakery on the ground floor of number nine and a green door beside it, with a brass plate that said Studio, and a staircase behind it that smelled of warm bread and pencil shavings. I climbed with my portfolio against my chest, and at the top a young woman looked up from a drawing board and said, without any

ARIABy Wednesday I had learned three things about living on a sofa: the spring named Gerald could find a kidney in the dark, Dev's cello sounded better after midnight than before it, and a person with no job wakes up very early, with a feeling in her stomach like a dropped plate."List," said Tilly, buttering toast at seven in the morning with the ferocity of a general. "Say it out loud, it makes it real.""Find work.""Good.""Stay hidden.""Good.""Find out who wrote my name.""Excellent, and number four?""There isn't a number four.""Number four is eat the toast." She pushed the plate at me. "I have an internship that pays in exposure, I'm leaving, and if you answer the door to anyone with good manners and a nice coat, I want it on record that I told you not to.""Noted.""Also take Dev's umbrella, it's the black one with the bent spoke, and no one will steal it."I took the umbrella and my portfolio, a sad, soft folder of my best drawings, and spent the day walking across London

ARIA"You look like you've been dragged through a hedge backward," Tilly said, and then she saw my face and pulled me inside by both wrists. "Don't tell me yet, kettle first."Her flat in Hackney was the top floor of a narrow house with a staircase that leaned to the left, and it smelled of toast and old paint and somebody's patchouli. Three bicycles hung in the hall like sleeping bats. A cello case stood in the corner of the living room, and a long boy in a dressing gown was lying on the sofa under a newspaper."That's Dev," Tilly said. "Dev, this is Aria, she's staying, say hello.""Hello," said the newspaper."He plays at night, we've learned to live with it.""I heard that.""You were meant to." She steered me past him into the kitchen and sat me on a stool, and put a mug of tea in my hands before I could say that I didn't want one. "Right, go."I told her, and I didn't tell her everything. I told her about the blue letter and the man with the smile, about my mother and the money,

ARIAThrough the gap in the wardrobe door I could see a slice of the dressing room, the lamp, the mirror, my mother's back, and then Kellan in the doorway, with one hand holding the frame as if the house might tilt again.He wore yesterday's white shirt, open at the neck and creased as though he had slept in a fist, and his black hair stood up in the wrong places. His face was gray under the skin, and his steel eyes were red at the rims, but they moved around the room with the same cold care they always had."Kellan, you shouldn't be out of bed," my mother said, and she stepped sideways to fill the doorway, small and upright in her gray silk. "Your father will be furious.""I heard a voice, Monica, it sounded like Aria's.""You're feverish, darling.""Perhaps." He didn't move. "Where is she?""She left at dawn for her train, I told your father.""Her suitcase is outside her door.""Then she'll be fetching it.""With her photograph lying on top?" He tipped his head, slowly, toward the