“I should rather be the fly than the spider,” I spat, hurrying away. If I was an insect to him, then my presence must be offensive. And inconsequential. Let me go, I silently pleaded. I’m nothing and no one, so just let me go.
“Back to the hayloft, little fly?” he drawled. And followed. Damn it all, leave me alone! I did not give him the satisfaction of my anger. Instead I kept on, gaining the top step as he called more loudly after me. “How are you enjoying the book? Take a peek at page one hundred and fifty-five. I think you’ll find it most instructive.”
Of course he knew. I couldn’t let that stop me.
His rich voice carried down into the foyer as I ran, the words wrapping around me, tugging as surely as the horrible magic that tempted me to his green door, to the attic. It was as clear as if he were right behind me, though when I turned I saw he was yet at the top of the stairs. “The more you learn of me and this place, the more you will crave answers, and then, naturally, more answers. Disgust and curiosity are easy companions.”
He was wrong. He had to be wrong. I could overcome the temptation of my curiosity; I could overcome whatever I had to in order to flee this place.
“I’m not going to confiscate the book, and I would have told you all you wanted to know and more, but you did not come to see me . . .” The pout in his voice was unmistakable. “It hurts my feelings.”
Whatever man or creature or demon he was, I doubted there was even a beating heart in his chest to wound.
My hand was pressed against the front door when he called out one last time. This time it was not just in my head. “You won’t find what you’re looking for!”
I braced against the door, swiveling to glare up at him where he stood posed like a portrait subject on the staircase landing. He might have been young, or older than his looks betrayed. Whatever his age, there was no mistaking that he was the lord of the manor as he stood with a hand on each banister, chin tilted up, eyes gazing down on me as if I were his lowly subject.
“Then you have no reason to follow and trouble me further,” I said, barely raising my voice.
“It simply pains me to see you wasting your time.” He was right, of course. I knew what would happen if I made it to the end of the drive. More pain. More frustration.
He descended the stairs, coming at last to regard me from the middle of the foyer. I slid down against the door, squeezing my eyes shut.
“What happened to your feet?” I asked, letting out a choked laugh. “Did I simply imagine them strangely the last time we spoke?”
“Not at all.” He lifted one foot and turned it this way and that. I watched, sickened, as the bones rearranged themselves, reverting to how his feet had been before—backward. Backward like a demon’s. My mother had told stories of cursed beings with wrong-facing feet, born that way so as to confuse when their tracks seemed always to lead away when in truth they followed. A shudder ran through me. He seemed to stand more like some satyr of myth than a man now, his calves curving away, his beautiful, shiny shoes made absurd by the disjointed position.
“Better?”
“No,” I breathed, shutting my eyes again.
“It’s a glamour. Simple magicks, really, at least for me. It would be for you, too, I suspect, if you had the willingness to try.”
Now I wanted to look at him even less. I pressed my forehead hard into the worn wood of the door. “You’re a liar.”
“Often, yes, but not right now.”
My hand slipped from the knob but I grabbed it again, holding myself up, torn between running away from this thing that spoke as prettily and confidently as any fine gentleman. But he was no fine gentleman. He was . . . He was . . . “What are you?”
I opened my eyes slowly, but he had not moved. And his feet were normal again. Had he changed them in the face of my obvious disgust? Mr. Morningside brushed his hair back, though the perfect black curls needed no rearranging.
“Do you sincerely wish to know?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered truthfully. “I don’t know.”
“It’s in the book, Louisa, should your curiosity resurface.” He sighed, taking one small step toward me. “Stop cowering that way, it’s upsetting.”
I straightened, but slowly, refusing to shed tears and look even more the pathetic little fly. My hands were still pressed tightly to the door, and I had every intention of going that minute, to at least seek some shelter in the hayloft again, but it was then that Mrs. Haylam and the doctor emerged from the Red Room. I heard their soft conversation and watched them cross the portion of the corridor open to the foyer.
They were going to fetch the widow’s body, and hers would not be the last.
“Rawleigh Brimble doesn’t belong here, you know,” I said, succeeding somehow in keeping the tremor from my voice.
“Who?”
My head flew up at that, and I scoffed. “Rawleigh . . . Lee Brimble. The young man. He’s one of your guests.”
“Oh.” Mr. Morningside shrugged and crossed his arms. “Well, if he’s one of my guests, then he belongs here and he will meet his end here; that is all but woven into the tapestry of fate.”
“He hasn’t done anything wrong! You’ve made a mistake.”
He shook his head and squinted, studying me more carefully. Slowly, laughingly, he said, “I never make mistakes. He’s here for a reason.”
“No, no, he’s a good person. It would be wrong to hurt him.” Of course Lee might have lied to me, but that seemed impossible. I had looked into his face as he told me of his guardian. The whole thing was a misunderstanding. An accident. “He doesn’t belong on your twisted list.”
“Why? Because you like him? Louisa, please, I implore you—be better than this.”
“Than what?” I demanded, feeling bolder.
“A gullible little girl.”
That only emboldened me further. “Do you know how to speak to anyone at all without being a condescending git?”
“Not really, no.” He shrugged again, elegantly, and wandered closer. I recoiled, but he either didn’t notice or pretended not to. A thin, mischievous smile spread across his face, and that, more than his proximity, frightened me. “But I’ll entertain your theory, Louisa, and should you find proof that this Brimble boy is truly an innocent soul, then do bring it to my attention.”
“You’re serious. Do . . . You will listen to me if I can prove he isn’t a killer?”
He nodded once, pressing his lips together.
“But why? I thought . . . I thought you never made mistakes.”
“Because I’m beginning to like you, and because you remind me of someone I knew once. You’re both bold as brass and stubborn to a fault. Not that I should be encouraging these things, but everyone has their weakness.” He stopped a hand’s width from me and pulled something from his cravat. It was a gold pin, shiny and perhaps the size of a shilling, and he offered it to me in his palm. “Or, of course, you could leave.”