by Kat Ellis
I’m reaching for the doorknob when I spot a black-and-white photograph on the desk, highlighted in the strip of sunlight from the window. It’s a small picture, no bigger than my palm, and shows two teenage girls sitting on a tombstone. I think one of them is Cora for a moment, but that can’t be right because the other girl is definitely Lorelei.
“Well, hello again.”
I whirl around. Ranger Crane leans in the doorway.
“I’m waiting for Carter—”
She silences me with a wave of her hand. “Of course you are, sweetheart. Never even crossed my mind that you were in here stealing our junk.” Her smile is loose and not entirely friendly. “Though, now that I think about it, your mother had a habit of taking what didn’t belong to her. Maybe this little apple didn’t fall too far from the tree.”
I can hardly be offended by her insinuation—I’ve stolen lots of things in the last few months. I have no idea if my mother used to steal, but I like the idea that this is something we share, a similarity between us that goes beyond our skin and our blood. But then Ranger Crane ruins it.
“I’m just teasing. Lorelei never took what didn’t belong to her, unless you count guys with wandering eyes. I guess I should put a leash on Carter now that you’re here.”
She laughs, but I don’t like it.
“That’s a good shot of us, isn’t it?” Ranger Crane juts her chin toward the desk. She is the girl sitting with Lorelei, but her hair was much darker then.
“Were you two friends?” I ask, though I don’t really need to. Like Nolan says, the camera only shows the truth—and Lorelei looks so happy.
She sighs. “We were close. ’Til I started dating Theo, that is. Carter and Cora’s father. That man was forever taking photographs. But this one . . .” She steps closer, uncomfortably close, and taps a fingernail against the glass covering the picture. “When I saw it, I knew it was time for me and Lorelei to stop palling around, if you catch my drift.” There’s a wistfulness to her smile that hints at regret. It’s gone in a moment, turned sharp and bitter. “Theo still kept a copy of the damn thing in here, though.”
A photograph made her decide to stop being my mother’s friend? I don’t immediately get what bothered her about the picture. Lorelei has her arm around Ranger Crane’s shoulders, squeezing her tight and laughing. Ranger Crane is smiling too. But I can see it now, I think: the way the shot is angled so Ranger Crane is sidelined, with Lorelei front and center. Ranger Crane might be in it, but Lorelei is the star. I guess Theo was one of those “guys with wandering eyes.”
“She’d hate that you’re here now,” Ranger Crane says, looming over me. The desk is at my back, so there’s nowhere for me to go without shoving her out of my way.
“Why? Wouldn’t my mother want me to visit her hometown?” But even as I say this, I think she’s right. Before I came to Harrow Lake I had no idea how much of Lorelei would be on display here. She’s everywhere. Lorelei is stitched into its fabric. And although I’ve been breathing in stories of her like air, Lorelei didn’t want me in her life. The reminder stings, but it’s what I need. Why should I care what Lorelei wants me to do?
Ranger Crane puts one hand on my shoulder, her thumb resting lightly against my throat. To an outsider it might look intimate. I brush her off, but Ranger Crane just smiles and backs up enough that I’m not choking on alcohol fumes.
“Lorelei hated this place,” she says. “Swore she’d never come back after she took up with your father. And she never did, except for just after her old man died, and that was . . . well. She didn’t leave a lot of happy memories in that house, that’s for sure. You know, some people think this place changes people who stay too long, and not in a good way. Like there’s something in the water here that feeds the badness deep down inside a person and makes it grow stronger. Sometimes . . . I think there’s something to that.”
A shiver runs the length of my spine, like a claw.
“I thought your father was going to be good for her. Give her everything she wanted and keep her the heck away from Harrow Lake. But I guess those months he spent here were enough to turn him. In the end he was just a different kind of bad.”
“Don’t talk about Nolan that way. You don’t know him.” My voice sounds steely and strong, but I don’t feel it.
“You should leave before it gets you, too.” Ranger Crane leans in, and the whiskey smell hits me full force when she whispers, “Maybe it’s already too late.”
The sound of footsteps cuts her off, and as she turns I quickly slide the small picture frame into my skirt pocket. Ranger Crane leaves the room without looking back, and Carter appears in the doorway a moment later. It’s unsettling how the ghost-pressure of Ranger Crane’s thumb against my windpipe only eases when I see him.
“Everything okay?” Carter asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m ready to go now.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Grandmother is in the hallway when I step through the door, the phone pressed to her ear and a distinct sourness puckering her lips. Perhaps that’s what sends a surge of hope bursting through me. I run to her and practically snatch the phone.
“Nolan?” The line crackles in response. “Nolan? Are you there?”
He knows.
There’s no logic behind the thought, just an awful certainty that Nolan somehow knows what I’ve been doing in Harrow Lake. Saw me running around town dressed in clothes from Lorelei’s closet. Visiting the film locations in the wrong outfits, in the wrong order. Going into strangers’ bedrooms. Stealing photographs of my mother.
“Lola?” It isn’t Nolan. It’s Larry. The last sliver of hope fades away like wet cotton candy. Still, I’m relieved to hear a voice that’s as familiar as my own.
“Is Nolan okay? Is he home yet?”
Larry clears his throat. “Nolan is . . .” My world stops turning while he searches for the right words. “He’s not doing as well as expected. The doctors say he’ll be fine, it’ll just take longer, that’s all. He’s getting transferred to a private facility to recuperate before he goes home.”
“God, Larry! I thought you were trying to tell me Nolan was dead.”
Pick your words before dialing next time, asshole.
Larry goes quiet, probably counting to ten. “He’ll be at the facility for a while. I think it’s a good idea for you to stay where you are until then.”
“Stay here? But you said it would only be three days! Where’s Nolan? I want to speak to him.” My knuckles whiten where I grip the edge of the table the phone sits on.
“You’d only upset him if you spoke with him now. Lola, it’s just a little while longer . . .”
“Larry, you always do this—always want to keep me out of the way! I need to come home.” There’s silence on the other end, and I can imagine him covering the mouthpiece while he curses at me. “Let me talk to Nolan. I haven’t been able to reach him at all since I got here.”
“Soon,” he says, then rolls on before I can say a word. “The police have arrested the man who attacked him. Some street junkie, apparently. They think he came in through a back entrance looking to rob the place.”
“Just some homeless guy?” The words taste wrong.
I may only have thought in abstract terms about who actually broke in and assaulted Nolan—it’s hard to put a face to something like that—but a random stranger? How would he even get into the Ivory? And why was nothing stolen? Do the police even know what they’re doing?
“Nolan ID’d him yesterday. This should all be wrapped up shortly, and then you can come back. It shouldn’t take more than a few weeks.”
“Weeks?” My heart stutters to a stop. When I speak, my voice is barely a whisper. “Doesn’t Nolan want me back?”
“Of course he does,” Larry snaps. “Do you seriously think he’d let you go? Look, Lola, I have a call coming in on the other line. Tal
k to you soon, okay?”
Larry hangs up without waiting for my reply. I just stand with the phone gripped tight in my hand, mouth hanging open. I should be relieved to hear they’ve caught the person who hurt Nolan, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. The only thing that will at this point is getting on a plane back to New York and seeing Nolan for myself.
“Lola, is everything okay?” Grandmother says. I have the feeling she’s repeating herself, that I didn’t hear her the first time. I shake my head.
I can’t stay here. Everything in this town feels skewed, even me.
Not that Nolan cares.
“Lola, you’re welcome to stay here for as long as you like, and I’m sure your father will be just—” Grandmother starts, but I’m not listening. I race upstairs, with no thought beyond finding my damn suitcase and leaving this place.
There are two bedrooms besides mine, plus the bathroom, and my bag isn’t in any of them. I feel wild, rifling through Grandmother’s house. I don’t give a shit that she’s listening to me rush back and forth above her head.
Every room is the same: faded, dusty, lifeless. They practically scream at me: There’s nothing here! This isn’t a house for people to live in, only exist and wait. What is my grandmother waiting for?
I sink down onto the floor of Lorelei’s room just as Grandmother appears in the doorway. She stands there in her black dress with her hands clasped in front of her. Why does she always dress like she’s going to a funeral?
“Are you done tearing my house apart?” She sounds so patronizing I could scream. “Honestly, getting upset isn’t going to change anything. Go wash your face and I’ll make us some tea.”
“Where the hell is my bag?”
“This again?” She throws up her hands like I’m some annoying kid nagging her for ice cream.
I just want to go home. Why can’t she see that? I don’t care about Lorelei, or whatever monsters exist in Harrow Lake. I want to go back to the apartment and wear my own clothes and be surrounded by my own stuff and breathe in the smell of Nolan’s cigars and feel like the world is solid enough to hold my weight. I got so caught up chasing after the idea of Lorelei, and now it feels like I’m being punished for it.
“Come downstairs when you’re done sulking,” my grandmother says.
I let my head fall back against the wall as her clipped footsteps disappear back downstairs.
Pull yourself together, Lola.
I raise my head, hold my shoulders back, and try to summon Cersei Lannister, or Ellen Ripley, or the Queen of bloody Hearts. But I can’t muster any of them.
I’m no Queen of Hearts. I’m Alice, thrown into a world I don’t understand, chasing a rabbit I was never supposed to follow.
* * *
• • •
The bell above the door jangles in alarm when I stride into the museum the next morning, but Mr. Bryn remains glued to his book. I have no time for his pettiness.
“Did Carter come through here?” I ask loudly. As long as I’m stuck in Harrow Lake, I might as well find out what I can about my mother. Figure out exactly who and where I came from. It feels like the Optimal thing to do—for me. And Carter said he would help me.
Mr. Bryn eyes me suspiciously. “What do you want with him?”
“I’m going to corrupt him with my big-city ways.” I smile, all forty-three muscles in my face contracting to expose my teeth.
Mr. Bryn jerks his head toward one of the many archways leading off into the mazelike building. “Record room,” he says, then returns to his book.
I take the same narrow corridor as the first time I visited, before I found Cora in the room with the Mister Jitters puppet.
“Hello?” I call, the sound deadened by the bodies of books surrounding me. I tread stealthily between the shelves, careful not to wake them. Then Carter’s head appears between two bookcases, startling a laugh out of me.
“Lola?” he says. “What are you doing here?” He steps back to allow me to enter the windowless room. A light flickers overhead.
“I decided to take you up on your offer if it still stands,” I say. “To help me research Lorelei?” I am Breezy Lola now. Breezy Lola does whatever the hell she wants, even if Nolan would hate it. Because as it turns out, he doesn’t care.
“Ah, right!” Something inside me unknots as he smiles. “I’ve actually made a start, just in case . . . it’s not much yet, but then I wasn’t sure if there was something specific about her you wanted to know,” he says.
I stay relaxed, even though my pulse is thrumming. “Anything. Anything that’ll tell me who Lorelei really is.” And why she left me.
I blink, see the pale face under the water. A tooth working its way out of my flesh.
She caught a monster’s eye . . .
“You start that end, and I’ll take this one,” Carter says, already getting to work.
There are alphabetized filing cabinets along one wall, so I start there. On a whim, I check for an entry on Mister Jitters, but there’s nothing about him. There are several entries for McCabe, though. I pull out a slim folder with Lorelei’s name on it. There are only a few newspaper clippings in it, announcing her landing the role in Nightjar.
I move on to a stack of boxes near the corner, and behind them—hidden until I step around the stack—is a corkboard covered in sketches. I recognize the style immediately; they’re just like the ones in Carter’s room, except these aren’t of Ferris wheels. These are landscapes showing torrents of murky water with bodies floating in them, and another of the hillside, with sections caved inward in great black sinkholes just like the one I fell into. These sketches must be of the landslide, and all the people who died.
There’s one I know immediately as the church from Nightjar where Little Bird is sacrificed, with its collapsed walls and gravestones littered around like torn fingernails. There are dozens of others showing a blanched white face with a garish, gaping grin.
Mister Jitters.
Carter appears next to me, holding a sheaf of papers. “I never realized quite how much this room looks like a serial killer’s lair.”
I gesture to the wall, my hand trembling. “You drew all these?”
“Yeah. I did those”—he gestures to the floating bodies—“because Mr. Bryn thought it would be good to put up a feature about the landslide, and there are no photographs that we’ve been able to find, so . . .”
“And these?” I stare at the renderings of Mister Jitters. The monster stares back.
“Oh, yeah.” I glance at Carter and he shrugs awkwardly. “I used the puppet in the museum as a model. Just for drawing practice.”
That rings false, but I let it slide. “What about this one, with the face under the water?” The sketch I saw on my first visit to the museum sits discarded on a nearby stack of old newspapers. The image takes me back to the sinkhole, to not knowing which way was up or down. To that white speck looming toward me in the dark, and the feel of teeth against my skin. Under my skin.
“I didn’t draw that,” Carter says. He peers at the sketch, then holds it up to the light and points at a scribble in the bottom corner: a date and two initials. TL. My brain automatically begins listing what those two letters could stand for:
Too Late.
Tricked Lola.
Took Lorelei.
“Those are my dad’s initials,” Carter says. “Theo Lahey. Dad mostly took photographs, but he sketched a little as well. He drew this a couple of weeks before he died.” Carter pins the sketch onto the corkboard. “Wait here while I get one more box—I think I put it up on the mezzanine.”
Carter’s footsteps echo away through the building. This room is so stuffy, the air stagnant. I don’t see how Carter can bear to work in here.
I wander back over to Carter’s sketches, despite a desperate urge to run away. Mister Jitters leers at me, gnashing th
ose awful teeth. He seems angry at being trapped inside a paper prison. If I turned out the lights, would he crawl out of the sketches, a dozen versions of him crouching, insectile, filling the room?
Swallowing to ease my suddenly dry mouth, I reach for the sketch by Carter’s father. The face in the water doesn’t look like Mister Jitters—at least not any version of him I’ve seen before. In fact, it looks more like a woman’s face. Strands of hair drift around her, but I get the sense that she isn’t actually moving. She’s peaceful.
I fold the sketch into my skirt pocket. The thought of Carter realizing I’ve taken it sends an old, familiar thrill through me: the prospect of being seen, not just for what I am in relation to Nolan, to Lorelei, to Hollywood and money and fame. Because I am none of those things. And I think I would like it if Carter saw me.
I look up at the sound of approaching footsteps. “Hey, did you find . . .”
There’s nobody there.
“Carter?”
Silence. But I’m sure I just heard someone outside the door. Slowly, I walk over and peer out into the murky corridor. It’s empty. But when I turn the other way I see a dart of movement, as though someone just ducked around the corner.
“Hey!”
I hurry to the end of the row of shelves, sure I’ll catch the girl who has been shadowing me ever since I arrived in Harrow Lake. But there’s no one. Just another narrow corridor.
I spot an open door carved into the full bookcases lining it. A flickering, cold light shines from inside, and there’s a faint thrumming sound, like an old plane propeller heard from far away. I walk into a tiny movie theater. In the wavering light of the overhead projector, I make out four rows of stiff seats facing the screen. They are all empty.
“Carter?”
There’s no answer. I’m about to leave the theater when I recognize the movie showing on the screen. It’s Nightjar, with some grainy effect that makes it look like it was shot on an old film reel. The movie has been cut into short clips and spliced back together into a montage. Nolan would be pissed. It’s running backward, with no sound beyond the rattle of the projector. Who set this up? Why?
