Chapter 4: Not That Door

I tried the cellar door at one in the morning, and I was not quiet about it.

I wanted to be caught.

I wanted to see what he would do.

I had learned the house in two days, the way you learn a ward.

The kitchen was at the back, the study and the library opened off the great room, and the sauna path ran out the side door.

One door in the hall by the pantry was narrow and painted the same cream as the wall.

It had a brand-new brass lock above an old iron latch.

Everything else in the lodge had a hundred years of wear on it, and that lock had been put in this year.

On the first day Toby had walked me past it and said, flat as a table, "Not that door."

I had said, "What's behind it?"

He had said, "Stairs."

"To where?"

"Down."

That was all.

He told the truth every time, and he told it so narrowly that it worked as a lie.

I stood at the head of the cellar stairs in my socks and a T-shirt of his I had found in a dresser.

I put my hand on the cold brass lock.

I did not have a pick.

I did have a hairpin from my braid.

I had used one once at sixteen on a locked bathroom at the rink.

I slid the pin in.

I felt the first pin click, and the second.

"Iris," Toby said behind me.

He had made no sound.

He stood at the end of the hall in a gray T-shirt and black sweatpants, barefoot.

I had never seen him without a coat.

His arms were bare, and the scar ran down the left one from elbow to wrist, pale and shiny.

His hair was wet, as if he had come from the shower, or from the lake.

"Go to bed," he said.

"No," I said.

"This isn't a door you want," Toby said.

"That's your opinion," I said.

"It's a fact."

"Then say the fact."

"Not that door," Toby said.

"You say that like it answers me."