SOLD TO THE DEVIL
I heard movement from behind the door, a chair, footsteps adjusting, and I moved before I had consciously decided to, stepping quickly and quietly past the door and down the corridor and not stopping until I had turned the corner.
I went to the library. I sat in my chair. I held the book I had been reading the previous morning and looked at the page without seeing any of it.
There was a room I had noticed on my second day in the house. A small study directly adjacent to the library, separated from it by a narrow internal door that I had tested once and found unlocked. It was an older room than the rest of the house, less curated, more lived-in, the kind of space that accumulates things over