I strain for the memory, but last night’s a drunken smear. Agitation instinctively sends my hand to the leather cigarette case Rashton keeps in his pocket, but there’s only one cigarette left inside. I’m tempted to light it to calm my nerves, but given the circumstances a frayed temper might serve me better, especially if I have to fight my way out of here. The footman tracked me from Dance into the butler, so it’s doubtful I’ll find safe harbour in Rashton.
Caution will be my truest friend now.
Casting around for a weapon, I find a bronze statue of Atlas. I creep forwards with it held above my head, picking my way through walls of armoires and giant webs of interlocking chairs until I arrive at a faded black curtain stretching the length of the room. Cardboard trees are propped against the walls, near clothes racks stuffed with costumes. Among them are six or seven plague doctor outfits, the hats and masks piled in a box on the floor. It appears the family used to put on plays up here.
A floorboard creaks, the curtain twitching. Somebody’s shuffling around back there.
I tense. Raising Atlas above my head, I—
Anna bursts through, her cheeks red.
‘Oh, thank God,’ she says, catching sight of me.
She’s out of breath, dark circles surrounding bloodshot brown eyes. Her blonde hair is loose and tangled, her cap scrunched up in her hand. The artist’s sketchbook chronicling each of my hosts bulges in her apron.
‘You’re Rashton, right? Come on, we only have half an hour to save the others,’ she says, lunging forward to take hold of my hand.
I step back, the statue still raised, but the breathlessness of the introduction has knocked me off balance, as has the lack of guilt in her voice.
‘I’m not going anywhere with you,’ I say, gripping Atlas a little tighter.
Confusion paints her face, followed by a dawning realisation.
‘Is this because of what happened to Dance and the butler?’ she asks. ‘I don’t know anything about that, about anything really. I’ve haven’t been up long. I just know you’re in eight different people and a footman’s killing them, and we need to go and save the ones that are left.’
‘You expect me to trust you?’ I say, stunned. ‘You distracted Dance while the footman murdered him. You were standing in the room when he killed the butler. You’ve been helping him, I’ve seen you!’
She shakes her head.
‘Don’t be an idiot,’ she cries. ‘I haven’t done any of that yet, and even when I do, it won’t be because I’m betraying you. If I wanted you dead, I’d pick off your hosts before they ever woke up. You wouldn’t see me, and I certainly wouldn’t work with a man guaranteed to turn on me once we’d finished.’
‘Then what were you doing there?’ I demand.
‘I don’t know, I haven’t lived that part yet,’ she snaps back. ‘You – another you, I mean – were waiting for me when I woke up. He gave me a book that told me to find Derby in the forest, then come here and save you. That’s my day. That’s everything I know.’
‘It’s not enough,’ I say, bluntly. ‘I haven’t done any of that, so I don’t know if you’re telling the truth.’
Putting the statue down, I walk past her, heading for the black curtain she emerged through.
‘I can’t trust you, Anna,’ I say.
‘Why not?’ she says, catching my trailing hand. ‘I’m trusting you.’
‘That’s not—’
‘Do you remember anything from our previous loops?’
‘Only your name,’ I say, looking down at her fingers intertwined with mine, my resistance already crumbling. I want to believe her so badly.
‘But you don’t remember how any of them ended?’
‘No,’ I say impatiently. ‘Why are you asking me this?’
‘Because I do,’ she says. ‘The reason I know your name is because I remember calling for you in the gatehouse. We’d arranged to meet there. You were late, and I was worried. I was so happy to see you, and then I saw the look on your face.’
Her eyes find mine, the pupils wide and dark and daring. They’re guileless. Surely, she couldn’t have...
Everybody in this house is wearing a mask.
‘You murdered me right where I stood,’ she says, touching my cheek, studying the face I still haven’t seen. ‘When you found me this morning, I was so scared I almost ran away, but you were so broken... so scared. All your lives had crashed down on top of you. You couldn’t tell one from another, you didn’t even know who you were. You pushed this book into my hands and said you were sorry. You kept repeating it. You told me you weren’t that man any more and that we couldn’t get out of this by making the same mistakes all over again. It was the last thing you said.’
Memories are stirring slowly and so far away that I feel like a man reaching across a river to trap a butterfly between his fingers.
She presses the chess piece into my palm, curling my fingers around it.
‘This might help,’ she says. ‘We used these pieces in the last loop to identify ourselves. A bishop for you, Aiden Bishop, and a knight for me. The protector, like now.’
I remember the guilt, the sorrow. I remember the regret. There aren’t images, there isn’t even a memory. It doesn’t matter. I can feel the truth of what she’s saying, as I felt the strength of our friendship the first time we met, and the agony of the grief that brought me to Blackheath. She’s right, I murdered her.
‘Do you remember now?’ she says.
I nod, ashamed and sick to my stomach. I didn’t want to hurt her, I know that. We’d been working together like today, but something changed... I became desperate. I saw my escape slipping away, and I panicked. I promised myself I’d find a way to get her out after I’d left. I couched my betrayal in noble intentions, and I did something awful.
I shudder, waves of revulsion washing over me.
‘I don’t know which loop the memory is from,’ says Anna. ‘But I think I held on to it as a warning to myself. A warning not to trust you again.’
‘I’m sorry, Anna,’ I say. ‘I... I let myself forget what I did. I held on to your name instead. It was a promise to myself, and to you, that I’d do better next time.’
‘And you’re keeping that promise,’ she says soothingly.