No.
I might be young and untried and penniless and everything else, but—I clutched the pen in my hand until my knuckles were white crests—I was not powerless. And now I knew no Door was ever truly closed.
I looked sideways at Samuel’s silhouette in the graying almost-dawn. “Yes,” I answered him. “Of course we’ll stay.”
I’ve always been a good liar.
I wrote three letters before leaving.
Dear Mr. Locke,
I want you to know I’m not dead. I almost didn’t write this letter at all, but then I pictured you worried and irritable, pacing your office or yelling at Mr. Stirling or smoking too many cigars, and figured I owed you this much.
I want you to know, too, that I don’t hate you. I think perhaps I should: you knew my father’s true history but kept it from me; you’re part of an archaeological society that’s actually some kind of malevolent cult, you fired Jane, let them hurt Sindbad, shipped me off to Brattleboro—but I don’t. Quite.
I don’t hate you, but I don’t particularly trust you, either—were you really trying to protect me? From creatures like Havemeyer and Ilvane? If so, you should know your protection was woefully inadequate—so forgive me for not telling you precisely where I’m going next.
I wish I could come back to Locke House, to that little gray room on the third floor, but I can’t. Instead, I’m following my father. I’m going home.
I’m sorry I couldn’t be your good girl any longer. But not very.
Love,
J
Jane,
Just in case: I’m officially willing you my entire book collection. Consider this letter a binding legal contract. Maybe one day you can show up at an estate sale and show it to the auctioneer and walk away with the first edition of The Jungle Book or the entire run of Pluck and Luck.
It’s funny—all that time I spent longing for a chance to escape, to fling myself into the endless horizon without worrying about keeping my skirts pressed or using the right fork or making Mr. Locke proud—and now… Now I think I might trade it for another rainy afternoon rereading romance novels with you, curled in the towers of Locke House like stowaways in some vast, land-bound ship.
But looking back, I realize both of us were secretly waiting. Holding ourselves in careful, painful suspension, like women standing at the station with our luggage neatly packed, looking expectantly down the tracks.
But my father never came back for me, or for you, and now it’s time to stop waiting. Leave the luggage at the station and run.
Jane: you are released from the promises you made to him. I am my own keeper now.
I might wish you’d move to Chicago and find a comfortable job as a bank security guard, or go back to Kenya and meet a nice young lady who helps you forget about the leopard-women and their wild hunts—but I know you won’t. I know you’ll keep looking for your ivory Door. Your home.
And—though the word of a Scholar might not be worth much to you anymore—I want you to know:
So will I.
Love,
J
S—
I wish we had more
I have always lo
It’s so typical of me to leave the most difficult letter for last, as if it would magically become easier. I don’t have much space so I’ll be brief:
My answer is yes. For always.
Except that there are monsters pursuing me, haunting my footsteps, breathing down my collar. And I will not, cannot place you in their path. I’m strong enough to face my monsters alone—you showed me that, just a few hours ago. (It turns out that only in loving you am I brave enough to leave you. There’s some terrible irony there, don’t you think?)
So go home, Samuel. Go home and be whole and safe and alive, and forget all this dangerous madness about Doors and vampires and secret societies. Pretend it’s all just the plot of a particularly outlandish paperback, something we can laugh about on the lakeshore.
And look after Bad, won’t you? I don’t seem to have taken very good care of him so far, and I think he’d be safer with you.
J
P.S. Actually Bad is coming with me. I don’t deserve him, but that’s just how it is with dogs, isn’t it?
I slunk into the kitchens and stole a sack of oats, four apples, and a few salted hunks of prairie rat for Bad. I stuffed it all into a pillowcase with my silver coin-knife and my father’s book and slipped back into the streets of Arcadia, now glowing pink in the rising dawn. I had nearly reached the feather curtain when a graveled voice stopped me.
“Headed out so soon?”
Bad and I froze like a pair of deer caught in the headlights of Mr. Locke’s Model 10. “Ah. Morning, Miss Neptune.”
Molly looked like she hadn’t slept either—the lines in her face were deep-carved cobwebs and her hair was a black-and- silver tangle—but she’d recovered her stovepipe hat and beaded collar. She squinted at me with flint-chip eyes. “You won’t last three days out on the plains, girl. I’d stay, if I were you.”
She thought I was slinking away into the hills, running away from my guilt. I felt my shoulders straightening and a smile curving my lips. “Thank you, but there are things I need to attend to back home. Back through the Door.”
Watching the realization settle over her face was like watching a woman age in reverse. Her spine unbent and her eyes went round with hope. “No,” she breathed.
“We opened it last night,” I told her softly. “We didn’t want to wake everyone, so we—well, Samuel—was going to tell you in the morning.”
Molly closed her eyes, then buried her face in her hands, shoulders heaving. I turned to leave. “Wait.” Her voice was tear-thick and shaky, unlike her usual growl. “I don’t know who or what is chasing you, and I don’t know how it followed you here, but be careful. Sol”—I heard her swallow, choking back grief—“Solomon’s feather, the one he wore in his hair—it’s gone.”
A chill prickled my spine as I imagined the golden feather clutched in Ilvane’s hand, the horror of being hunted by something you couldn’t see. I made myself nod calmly. “I’m sorry for the loss of the feather. Thank you for warning me.” I adjusted the pillowcase on my shoulder, not looking at her. “Don’t tell Samuel, please. I wouldn’t want him to… worry.”
Molly Neptune ducked her head. “Good luck, January Scholar.”
I left her sitting in the warming sunlight, looking up at her city like a mother surveying her sleeping children.
The Door seemed somehow smaller by day, dark and narrow and terribly lonely. It brushed softly against the grass as I pulled it shut behind me and stepped into the void between the worlds.
When you travel with money, you follow a smooth, well-worn path through the world. Wood-paneled train cars lead to shiny black cabs, which lead to hotel rooms with velvet curtains, each step effortlessly following the last. When I’d traveled with Jane and Samuel the path had grown narrow and twisting, frequently terrifying.
Now I was alone, and the only path was the one I left behind me.
Bad and I stood for a moment in the charred skeleton of the lighthouse, looking through the mist to the pocked and rugged coast. I felt like an explorer at the precipice of some new, wild world, armed only with ink and hope; I felt like my mother.