Chapter Three: Dinner at the Sinclairs’

The Sinclairs ate at seven sharp, and Eliza had been given the chair nearest the kitchen door.

She noticed it the way she noticed exits. Adrian Sinclair sat at the head of the table with his back to a solid wall and a clear view of the room, which was the best seat in the house and entirely wasted on him. Elena sat at his right in fresh pearls. Across from her, a young man with a rumpled collar and the hopeful face of a golden retriever was already reaching for the bread. The girl from the landing had changed into a pale blue dress with a silk scarf knotted high at the throat.

“Seating chart, since you’re short on memories,” Rex said from the salt cellar, where he had settled like a cat on a warm engine. “Father, Adrian. Mother, Elena. Brother, Victor. The scarf is Lexi, the adopted daughter. Don’t ask me for feelings. I only do furniture.”

Eliza sat. She was the one who got the draft.

Somewhere between the soup and the first real silence, she decided she would have to start answering to the name. Flora had been hers for as long as she could remember. Eliza was borrowed, and it didn’t fit yet, but somebody had to wear it.

“You look dreadful,” Elena said, by way of hello.

“I fell down the stairs.”

“That is no excuse for posture.”

“Mother,” said Victor, through his bread. “She fell down the stairs.”

“Victor. Chew.”

Victor chewed. When his mother turned to speak to the maid, he slid the good butter across the cloth with the corner of his napkin, as if passing contraband. Eliza looked at him. He gave her a small, worried shrug. Her brother, then, and the kind of person who apologized to doors he had walked into. She filed him under harmless and, in smaller letters beneath that, possibly more.

On the sideboard stood an enormous blue-and-white vase under its own little spotlight.

“Free sample,” Rex murmured. “Don’t look at it, I know you’re looking at it. Qing dynasty style. Actually, a factory reproduction, about thirty years old, with a kiln mark painted on by someone who couldn’t spell. Value, one decent lunch.”

Eliza reached for her water and said nothing. Adrian had been gazing at that vase for three minutes the way a man gazes at a lottery ticket.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said, catching her glance. “A private sale. The seller had no idea what he had. Three times the money by spring, mark my words.”

“Mm,” said Eliza.

“Adrian,” Elena said. “The company.”

“The company is fine.” It was not fine. He said it the way people talked about weather they could see coming. “But I need everyone to be useful this month. There’s a dinner on Saturday with the Hargroves. Eliza, you will be presentable.”

“Why does a banker’s dinner need me presentable?”

“Because I’m asking.” He still hadn’t looked up. “Their son will be there.”

Victor stopped chewing. Elena studied her water glass with tremendous interest. Eliza had once sat through a negotiation with men who broke fingers for a living, and none of them had been this obvious.

“I’ll think about it,” she said.

“It wasn’t a question.”

“I know,” Eliza said pleasantly. “I’m thinking.”

“Actually, Papa, I have news too.” Lexi said it with a light, practiced shyness, like someone who had rehearsed in a mirror. “Sebastian Voss’s office called. For Iron Orchid. They’re casting the lead’s younger sister, an action part. They asked for a Sinclair, and I thought, well, someone should go. I told them I’d come in on Thursday.”

Elena brightened as if somebody had finally switched on a lamp. “Voss. The Voss?”

Upstairs, on the desk under a script with Please let me do my own stunts written across the cover, Eliza had seen a cream envelope with a studio letterhead. Eliza Sinclair, typed on the front. It had not been opened.

She laid down her fork.

“Funny,” she said. “I thought they asked for me.”

The table went quiet in a different way. Lexi’s smile didn’t move, but her hand rose to the scarf. “Eliza, sweetheart. You don’t even—”

“Don’t even what?”

“You get nervous,” said Elena, gently, like someone reading out a diagnosis. “You mumble. You’ve been dreadful at every audition since you were sixteen. Lexi has presence.”

“Eliza has posters,” Adrian said, and Victor winced into his napkin.

Eliza could feel the room waiting. The old Eliza would have gone small and quiet here, she could tell from how everyone had settled into their seats, comfortable, like people at a show they had seen before. She smiled instead.

“Of course. Lexi has presence. I’ll be cheering from the back.”

Lexi’s shoulders came down a full inch. Elena nodded, satisfied. Eliza went back to her soup. She had no intention of cheering.

Lexi reached for her wine. The glass tipped, her sleeve slid back, and Eliza saw it: a thin red scratch across the inside of her wrist, and a shorter one near the thumb. The kind of mark a chain leaves when it snaps against skin.

Lexi saw her seeing it. The cuff went down fast.

“Quest log updated,” Rex said softly. “Retrieve the necklace. Suspects: one. Reward, pending. Penalty for failure, also pending, but I’ll make it sound dramatic.”

After dinner, Eliza took the stairs slowly. Her head throbbed and her bruises had opinions, but mostly she wanted to hear who followed her. Someone did, quick and quiet, and caught her at the landing.

“Eliza.” Lexi’s voice had dropped to almost nothing. Her scarf was in her fist, and her eyes kept going to the spot on the carpet where Eliza had lain that afternoon. “Do you remember what happened before you fell?”

“I fell.”

“Before that. Whether anyone was with you. Whether you saw anything.”

Eliza let the pause stretch just long enough to be kind. “Should I?”

Lexi’s breath left her in a rush. When she smiled this time, it was real, wobbly and relieved, and somehow worse. “No. Of course not. That’s good. I mean, I’m glad you’re all right. You scared everyone.” She squeezed Eliza’s arm once, much too hard, and went up the stairs two at a time.

A door closed on the second floor. A lock turned.

“She locked her room,” said Rex, at Eliza’s ear. “That’s either guilt or a very good hiding place.”

“It’s both,” said Eliza.

She put two fingers against the raw line on her neck and looked up at the closed door. Thursday could wait. Tonight she was going to learn how this house kept its locks.