Page 62 of Holly & Hemlock
“So what now?” I ask, voice thin as moth wings.
He touches my shoulder, not a comfort but a confirmation. “Now you decide: do you want to be the last link, or the first escape?”
The house groans overhead, a sound like a ribcage giving way.
I close the folio and decide that I will not be a chain. I will not be a shackle, forged from someone else’s longing and passed down like an heirloom rot.
Larkin releases his grip on my shoulder with a friction that’s almost reluctant. For a moment, neither of us moves. There is a sound—somewhere overhead, a distant hallway yielding to the hush of approaching night—but it only deepens the pocket of silence around us.
“We should go,” Larkin says. His voice is hoarse, and he seems abruptly aware of our own smallness, here at thebottom of the house where no one is supposed to see us. “If the house is watching, it’s more dangerous down here than anywhere else.”
I laugh, brittle. “And upstairs is so much safer.”
“Fewer secrets, more eyes,” he counters, and gathers the folio, the genealogy, the map overlays into a careful stack.
We make our way up the stairs, and every footstep seems amplified—wood flexing, air thumping in the risers. At the top, I hesitate. I can feel the pressure of the house behind me, as if every square foot is longing for a different outcome than the one I intend to deliver.
18
A Claiming
We don’t speak on the way back up to the main floors. Not because there is nothing to say, but because there is too much, and the language for it is either extinct or too dangerous to utter. At the top of the library’s stairs, we pause—me to catch my breath, Larkin perhaps to listen for any sign of the house’s displeasure. The only sound is the slow, pulse-thick throb of my own blood in my ears, and the faint hush of distant radiators.
We emerge into the main hall as if nothing has changed. But I know it has. The air here feels different, charged, each dust mote a tiny charged particle hovering in anticipation. The tree stands sentinel by the hearth, draped in its scars and splinters of old glass, each light a bloodshot eye. The fire in the grate is low, but it burns with the steadiness of something that intends to last the night.
Lane is already here. He sits in one of the battered club chairs near the fire, boots planted wide on the Turkish rug, hands knotted together in a pose that would be brooding if not for the faint tremor of exhaustion in his shoulders. He looks up when we enter, and for a moment his face is illuminatedby the fire and tree and nothing else. Wolfish, wary, marked by the lines of a hundred sleepless nights.
Larkin detours to the drinks cart. The brandy decanter is half-full, and he pours three tumblers with the precision of an undertaker preparing for a visitation. He brings mine first, then Lane’s, then his own, seating himself on the arm of my chair rather than the empty seat beside.
The three of us sit, and the fire does its best to make a cocoon around us. Larkin raises his glass, the liquid catching the light, and says, “To pattern recognition.” He does not wait for us to echo. He drinks, and so do we.
Lane studies the contents of his glass, then sets it aside. “Did you find what you wanted?” he asks, voice rasped by too many years of arguing with the elements.
Larkin flicks a glance at me, as if considering whether to share the floor. “We found the origin story. Or enough of it to make the rest irrelevant.”
“Wasn’t that the point?” Lane’s hands flex, then release. “To make us all irrelevant.”
“Not you.” Larkin’s tone is flippant, but the undercurrent is jagged. “You’re the best supporting actor the house could dream up.”
Lane doesn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he leans forward, elbows on knees, and fixes Larkin with a look that is pure, uncut challenge. “And you’re the star? I’d have thought you’d prefer a director’s chair.”
Larkin smiles, slow and deliberate. “Maybe I do. But why not do both?”
They are circling each other, teeth bared, but the violence is mostly for show. I watch, aware of the triangulation, the way both of them use me as a fulcrum, a prism for whatever light they can’t admit to wanting.
The silence grows roots. I take a sip of brandy, let the heatflare behind my teeth, and say, “It doesn’t matter who’s in charge. The house wants what it wants. And it wants us.”
Lane looks at me, eyes pale as mercy. “You sound sure.”
“I am,” I say, though I’m not sure of anything except the pressure that builds in my chest with every passing second.
Larkin’s hand finds the curve of my neck, thumb pressing just above the pulse. He tilts my head, as if checking for cracks, then releases me with a gentleness that is almost apologetic. “Maybe it’s time to stop fighting it,” he says.
Lane’s gaze drops to my hands, folded in my lap. “She should just give in?”
Larkin’s smile is all teeth. “Isn’t that what you wanted when you didn’t tell her about the will?”
The room is so warm it borders on fever. I feel the sweat prickling under my dress, the way the velvet clings to every curve, the way my body aches in places that have nothing to do with the cold. The taste of brandy lingers, sharper now, as if the alcohol is burning away the last barriers of doubt.
