The Blanket

Chapter 13

"Don't get comfortable," he said. "This isn't a promotion."

The blue door opened onto a room half the size of the tower but twice as warm. There was a fire already going in it. There was a bed with the covers turned down.

I stopped in the doorway.

"There's a fire," I said.

"So?"

"There's a fire and the bed's turned down and I've been on my knees in your hallways for two days. Who did this?"

He didn't answer.

"Lucifer."

"It's the room next to mine. I keep it ready." He walked past me and checked the window latch, which was closed, and then checked it again. "There's water on the stand. If you need something, you knock on the wall. One knock means water. Two means fire. Three means you're dying and I need to come in."

"And if I just want to talk?"

"Then don't knock."

He got the door on his way out.

Then he stopped with his hand on it and stood there with his back to me and didn't leave.

"What now," I said.

"Your feet are bare."

"So?"

"You walked down two flights of stone stairs barefoot." He turned his head. "Why."

"Because you told me to get dressed and come with you and I didn't have time to find my shoes."

He looked at my feet for a second longer than was normal. Then he pulled his hand off the door and walked back across the room and crouched down in front of the fire and picked up something folded on the floor next to the wood basket.

He came back and held it out.

It was a blanket. Thick gray wool, worn soft at the corners, and it was warm — actually warm, like it had been sitting next to the fire all evening waiting for somebody to need it.

"Take it."

"I don't want your blanket."

"It's not mine."

"Whose is it?"

"Take the blanket, Ella."

I took the blanket.

"Shut up and go to sleep," he said, and left.

The door closed. His footsteps went down the hall and a door shut somewhere to the left of mine, and then the whole castle went quiet.

I stood in the middle of that room holding a warm wool blanket and I wanted to be mad and I couldn't find it.

---

The fire burned down. I didn't sleep.

I lay there under that blanket with my eyes open and every time I closed them I was back in the pit with red up to my ankles and a voice saying I'm sorry in a tone that made my chest hurt.

So I got up.

I walked the room. Twelve steps to the window, twelve steps back. I put my hand on the wall between my room and his and I could feel it — not a sound, just a pressure. A house with somebody awake in it.

I sat back down on the bed.

And then I noticed the drawer.

It was in the little nightstand next to the bed, and it was the only piece of furniture in the room that didn't match. The bed was dark wood. The wardrobe was dark wood. The nightstand was painted pale blue, and it was old, and the paint was chipped around the handle where a lot of hands had pulled it.

I pulled it open.

There was a hairbrush in it.

Not new. Silver-backed, tarnished black at the edges, with long dark hairs caught in the bristles. Next to it was a little book with a clasp on it, and a piece of ribbon, and a single earring with a pearl on it.

I picked up the brush.

The hair in it was dark. Nearly black. Long.

The door opened.

"What are you doing?"

I nearly dropped it. He was standing in the doorway in his shirt and nothing else, and his face had gone from gray to something worse.

"Nothing—"

"Put it down."

"It's a brush—"

"Put it down."

I put it down.

He came across the room. Fast. He picked the brush up off the nightstand and put it back in the drawer and shut the drawer, and then he stood there with his hand flat on the top of it, breathing.

"Whose room is this?" I said.

"Yours."

"Whose was it before it was mine?"

He didn't answer.

"Lucifer."

"It was my mother's." He said it without looking at me. "She died in this room. That's her brush. That's her book. That's the earring she was wearing when they found her, and I don't know why it's in a drawer instead of in the ground, and I don't know who keeps putting it back."

"Somebody keeps putting it back?"

He turned around.

I watched him realize what he'd just said.

"I mean I don't know why it's still here," he said. "I told Doreen to clear this room out four years ago."

"Maybe she didn't."

"Maybe." He rubbed his mouth. "Go to sleep. Tomorrow we find the key cutter. That's the plan. That's the only plan."

He got to the door.

"Lucifer."

"What."

"The fire was already going," I said. "The bed was turned down. The blanket was warm. Somebody had this room ready before you ever heard me scream."

He stood in the doorway with his back to me.

"I know," he said.

"So who was it for?"

"I don't know."

"You do, though." I got up off the bed and pulled the blanket around my shoulders. "You know this castle better than anybody. You know every maid and every guard and every person who's got a key to anything, and you're standing there telling me you don't know who'd have a fire lit in your dead mother's bedroom at midnight."

His shoulders moved. Up. Down.

"There's one thing," he said.

"Say it."

"Four years ago I had a woman in this castle. Not—" He stopped. "A housekeeper. Ran the west wing. Knew every drawer and every key."

"Where is she now?"

"Gone. Fired." He turned around. "I fired her because my mother's things kept turning up in rooms they weren't supposed to be in. The earring. The book. Her gloves, once, on my desk."

"Where'd she go?"

"I don't know." He said it flat. "She left the valley and I never saw her again and I didn't think about her for four years."

"Until now."

"Until you found a hairbrush in a drawer." He looked at me. "Which means she's back. Or she never left."

I sat down on the bed.

The blanket was still warm around my shoulders. It had been warm before I ever touched it.

"And this room," I said. "It's next door to yours."

"It is."

"And the fire was already going."

"It was."

"The bed was turned down."

"Ella."

"So somebody lit a fire in a dead woman's room tonight," I said, "for a girl who was supposed to be sleeping three floors up."

He didn't say anything.

"Lucifer. Who knew I was moving tonight?"

He stood there in the doorway for a long time. Long enough that the fire cracked and settled and I jumped.

"Nobody," he said. "I decided it in the stairwell. Between your door and the bottom step."

"Then how—"

"I don't know." He stepped out into the hall. "One knock for water. Two for fire. Three if you're dying."

"Lucifer."

"Lock the door."

"Somebody's been in this castle longer than tonight," I said. "Somebody's been in it the whole time. Whoever cut that key and whoever lit that fire—"

"I said lock the door."

The door shut.

I sat there with a dead woman's blanket around my shoulders and her brush in the drawer two feet from my hand.

I got up. I went to the wall. I knocked three times.

Nothing.

I knocked three times again.

The wall knocked back twice.

Chapter 13 Ends