Chapter 3: Fourteen Rules

"Rule one," Mrs. Calloway says. "The study is not entered unless Mr. Mercer opens the door himself."

She doesn't slow down. Celine adjusts her suitcase and lengthens her stride.

"Rule two. No photographs. Not of the house, not of the grounds, not of each other. Your phone stays in your pocket past the east door."

"What if I need to—"

"You won't."

"Rule three. Breakfast is at seven-fifteen. Whether Mr. Mercer comes down or not."

"Does he come down?"

"Not always. Set it anyway." Mrs. Calloway takes a left. "Rule four. You do not ask him about his day."

"Ever?"

"If he wants you to know about it, he'll say so."

"Has anyone ever asked?"

"One person. Briefly."

Celine waits. Mrs. Calloway doesn't elaborate.

"Rules five through nine are in your folder. Read them tonight. Rule ten." She stops walking for the first time. "Nothing you see or hear in this house leaves it. Not to friends. Not to your mother."

"I don't tell my mother anything."

"Good."

Celine isn't sure that was a compliment. She's fairly sure it was a note.

"This is the kitchen," Mrs. Calloway says. "Rules eleven and twelve are about the kitchen. You'll understand when you've been in it an hour."

Celine steps through the door and stops.

The sink is in the far corner. The stove is by the window. The refrigerator is on the opposite wall from both, and the knives are in a drawer next to the back door, which is about as far from any food as a drawer can get without leaving the building. There is one very large island in the middle and nothing on it.

"Who designed this?"

"Nobody asks."

"Has it always been like this?"

"Twelve years."

"Nobody's moved the fridge in twelve years?"

"Rule eleven."

"Which is?"

"Nobody asks."

Celine looks at the room again. She can already see how it should work: the kettle by the cups, the cups by the sink. She puts her suitcase down, picks up the kettle, and moves it eighteen inches to the left.

"Rule thirteen," Mrs. Calloway says.

"I haven't said anything."

"You moved the kettle."

"It was eighteen inches."

"Ask me before you move anything."

"Okay. Can I move the kettle?"

Mrs. Calloway looks at the kettle. Looks at Celine. Something in her face shifts, and Celine can't tell if it's approval or just calculation.

"Leave it there," she says.

"Thank you."

"Rule fourteen."

"There are fourteen?"

"The fourteenth isn't mine to give. Mr. Mercer will tell you himself." A pause. "If he decides to."

"What if he doesn't decide to?"

"Then you'll find out the other way."

She leaves. Celine stands in the kitchen holding a kettle and doesn't ask what the other way is.

At two o'clock she's wiping a counter that doesn't need it when the door opens behind her.

"The coffee machine in here is broken."

Celine turns. Lucan Mercer stands in the doorway holding an empty cup. Same rolled cuffs. Same face from the interview, only now it has a name on it, and she's trying very hard not to let that show.

"It isn't broken," she says. "It's unplugged."

"Why?"

"It was unplugged when I got here."

He looks at the machine. Then at her. "Then why didn't you plug it in?"

"Rule thirteen."

"Which one is that?"

"Ask Mrs. Calloway before you move anything."

"Plugging in isn't moving."

"Is that a ruling?"

"It's a technicality."

"I'll take it."

She plugs it in. The machine hums. He stays in the doorway, which isn't something she's prepared for. He's looking past her, at the counter. At her mug.

"That's not ours."

"It's mine."

He reads it. She watches him read it. Blue ceramic, white lettering: WORLD'S OKAYEST SISTER.

"Who gave you that?"

"My brother." She hears herself keep talking. "Theo. He's twenty. He buys me things. Mostly socks. Once a mug." She picks it up, turns it so the lettering faces the wall. "Don't ask about the mug."

"I wasn't going to."

"Good."

"I was going to ask about the socks."

"They have cartoon avocados on them."

"Okay."

"I don't want to talk about the avocados either."

Something moves at the corner of his mouth. It's the same thing as in the interview, the smile before the decision. He puts his cup down on the counter, takes it back up, and says, "Coffee's in ten minutes?"

"Eight."

"I'll take eight."

He leaves. She stands there with the avocado socks in her head and the knowledge that she has just told her employer her brother's name, age, and gift habits on day one.

Rule ten, she thinks. Not to friends. Not to your mother. Nobody mentioned what happens when you say it to the person it applies to.

At five she's on the stepladder in the pantry, reaching for something on a shelf that was apparently designed by someone who hated tall people and short people equally.

The ladder gives a small, specific wobble.

"Get down."

She doesn't look. "I've got it."

"I know you do. Get down anyway."

His voice is quiet, which she's noticing is how he gets louder. She steps off the third rung, then the second, and when her foot meets the floor the room tilts about four degrees to the left. She puts a hand flat against the shelf. She waits for it to pass.

It passes.

"Head rush," she says, before he asks.

"Did you eat today?"

"I had toast."

"When?"

"This morning."

"That's not what I asked."

"It's what I answered."

He looks at the ladder. Puts a hand on its frame and presses down, and the left leg shifts with a small sick click.

"Cracked," he says. "Third rung gave out on Mrs. Calloway in March."

"Is she okay?"

"She's fine. She's also never forgiven it." He lifts the ladder with one hand like it weighs nothing and sets it by the door. "Use the other one. In the mudroom."

"Understood."

"And eat something."

"Is that rule fifteen?"

"It's a suggestion."

"It sounded like a rule."

"My suggestions usually do."

He leaves. She stays exactly where she is until the floor agrees with her again.

At eight she's walking the east corridor, trying to learn the layout. Mrs. Calloway's folder has a floor plan, but the floor plan is two pages long and the house is, apparently, eleven pages long.

She takes a left where there should have been a right.

The corridor is narrower here. The carpet runs out. There's a door on her left, not the study, a different one that nobody mentioned, and it's open about two inches.

She shouldn't look. She looks.

A room. Covered furniture, white sheets over shapes that might be a sofa, a piano, a lamp. Nothing else. A window with drawn curtains. Nothing interesting. Nothing that explains why her stomach has gone quiet.

She's about to turn around when she hears it behind her.

"That room is closed."

Lucan stands at the end of the corridor. He hasn't moved toward her. His voice is low and flat and completely steady, in a way that has nothing to do with calm.

"I took a wrong turn," she says. "I was trying to learn the layout. I didn't touch anything."

He looks at her for a long moment. Long enough that she counts it. Four seconds. Five.

"Mrs. Calloway will give you a map of the estate tomorrow."

"I have the floor plan in my folder—"

"A map," he says. "Use it."

He turns and leaves.

She stands there. The door is still open two inches. She does not close it, because nobody told her she could, and she does not look back inside, because she suspects looking is the thing that would be remembered.

Her left hand has gone cold again. She puts it in her pocket.

It wasn't what he said. It was the pause before it. A man like that doesn't pause. Whatever's behind that door isn't a storage room. It's something he's decided to keep exactly where it is.

She walks back the way she came and doesn't make another wrong turn.

At ten she's alone in the kitchen with a plate of toast she's eating standing up, because she told a man she would and she apparently takes that seriously.

The door opens. Mrs. Calloway.

She stands there longer than she needs to. Her hands are folded, and Celine has already learned that when Mrs. Calloway folds her hands she's preparing to say something she'd rather not.

"Miss Calloway."

"Yes?"

"Mr. Mercer would like to speak with you in the morning." A pause. "Before breakfast."

She says it carefully. The way someone says something when they're trying to deliver news without delivering it.

"Did he say what about?"

"He did not."

"Is it—" Celine puts the toast down. "Is it about the corridor?"

Mrs. Calloway looks at her for a long second.

"Seven o'clock," she says. "His study."

She leaves.

Celine stands in a kitchen that makes no sense, in a house with fourteen rules, one of which she hasn't been told. She has been here twelve hours.

She has no idea whether she still has a job.