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Mattie fidgeted, drumming her nails on the table below a row of mailboxes in the foyer of Tillie’s building as Trevor fumbled with the lock on the inner door, the key reluctant to slide all the way in.
“Why do they have to lock both doors, anyway?” she complained. “You get in through the first one, you’re going to be able to unlock the second one too, right?”
“It’s a different key,” he replied. “This place is very secure.”
Mattie rolled her eyes. “I guess the fancy people need their security.”
Scanning the mailboxes, her gaze fell on Tillie’s name and an odd symbol adorning the box. It looked like a stylized eye. She looked over the other boxes and noticed that all of them had symbols, some of them showing the same as Tillie’s, while others looked like a set of lips, and a third set depicted a hand contorted in an odd gesture. The gesture tugged at the edges of her memory. Had she seen it before?
The symbols seemed to be in no particular order.
“Do you have her mailbox key too?” she asked.
“No,” Trevor replied. “It was like pulling teeth to get her to give me these keys. She was totally weird about it, even though she’d had a key to my place for years. I guess she has some secrets, huh?”
Mattie leaned toward the box next to Tillie’s, examining the lip symbol more closely. She glanced at the name on it and froze.
“Trevor,” she said.
“I’m working on it. There!” The key finally clicked into place.
“No,” she said, louder.
“Trevor!” she practically screamed.
“What? What the fuck?”
“Sorry.” Mattie quieted. “Tillie’s next-door neighbor’s name is Scott.”
“Oh, my god. Do you think . . . ?”
“It has to be. It has to be! Get us the fuck in there! Number 205.”
Trevor turned the key and flung open the door. They ran into the building, up the stairs, and past Tillie’s door to Scott’s.
Trevor inhaled deeply, shaking slightly, and rapped on the door.
Mattie grabbed Trevor’s hand, willing the door to open, willing the neighbor to be the right Scott, willing this whole episode to be over. She held her breath and closed her eyes, squeezing Trevor’s hand tight.
He squeezed hers back.
She heard the sound of the door opening, and her eyes flew open to see a short, stocky middle-aged man frowning at them. He ran a light brown hand through his wavy dark hair and fidgeted with something pink in his other hand as he studied her face. A rock? Maybe he was into healing crystals.
Mattie mentally rolled her eyes.
“Hi. Are you Scott?” asked Mattie.
“Another Mathilda.” Scott reached out his empty right hand, as though to touch her, but dropped it before it reached halfway. “A seer as well? No.” He paused, furrowing heavy brows as his eyes darted from Mattie to Trevor and back again. “You’re not mages at all. How peculiar.”
Mattie and Trevor exchanged a worried glance. This guy was weird.
“We’re looking for your neighbor, Tillie.” Trevor gestured to Mattie, dropping her hand. “She looks like a fancier version of her. Have you seen her?”
“I don’t know where she is.” Scott began to shut the door.
Mattie snuck her foot into the doorway before it could close.
Scott’s lips twitched as he regarded her. She glared back, arms crossed.
“You’re very in the here-and-now, hmm? I wonder why she never brought you in. All right, then. Ask your questions.” He opened the door a little wider but didn’t invite them inside.
Mattie leaned slightly to the side, trying to see into his apartment. It opened onto a stark, white living room, furnished only with a white recliner, a white desk with a glass top, and a white folding chair situated in front of the desk. A single white sheet of paper and a pen adorned the desk. There was a door on one wall that looked like it was probably a closet, and a hallway led off to the back. She could also see a small portion of the kitchen through an open doorway, and it looked just as bare and uninviting.
She opened her mouth to ask about Tillie again, but Scott spoke again before she could, addressing Trevor this time. “And you. Where do you live?”
“I live over on The Hill,” Trevor replied, gesturing in the general direction of his neighborhood. “Listen, has Tillie been–”
“Not in space. Where do you live in time?” Scott clarified.
Trevor paused, looking at Mattie. She threw her hands up in a gesture of pure confusion.
“I don’t know what you mean by that,” he responded carefully. “Can you tell us when you last saw Tillie? Have you spoken to her often?”
Scott leaned forward, looking up to stare deeply into Trevor’s face. “You’d be a stitcher, hmm? Always in the past. When did I last see her; how often have we spoken. You don’t know anything about magic at all, either. Strange – I didn’t expect your type to come looking.”
Mattie looked into the living room again, trying to find something that might be a sign that Tillie had been there. She heard a noise from a hallway opposite the kitchen door and craned her head to see. A cat slipped through an ajar door, heading toward the living room.
“Max!” she cried in recognition, shoving Scott aside and rushing into the apartment with Trevor close on her heels.
Scott scooted in front of her, blocking the entrance to the hallway with outstretched arms. “Okay, I think it’s time you two left. Your sister is gone. West, perhaps. That’s where I’d go. You should head in the opposite direction. Get away from here and get away from her.”
Mattie tried to duck under his arm to rush toward Max, but she and Trevor found themselves pushed inexorably toward the door and out into the hall. Before she knew it, the door had slammed behind them.
He’s a fast mover, she thought.
Mattie tried the knob, but he had been just as quick to lock it. She pounded on the door again.
“I don’t think he’s going to let us back in.” Trevor placed a hand on hers to still it. “Let’s go check out Tillie’s place, and then we can come back here later, and maybe he’ll be in a better mood.”
Mattie nodded. “Of course. You’re right. God, our first decent lead, and he’s such a weirdo! What the hell was that guy talking about?”
“Magic, apparently? I don’t know. I think he’s just a whack-job.”
“A whack-job Tillie trusts to watch Max, though?”
They walked back down the corridor to Tillie’s door, which Trevor unlocked with a third key.
“There must be more to it,” said Trevor. “Did you get the idea that he knew exactly what had happened with her?”
“I most certainly did,” Mattie’s voice was grim as she walked into her sister’s elegant living room. She looked around. “Wow. Tillie sure can decorate. I mean, it’s not my style, but it’s definitely chic.”
“That’s why it’s not your style,” Trevor teased.
Mattie stood in the middle of the room and slowly rotated, at a loss for where to start searching. It really was a beautiful space, especially when contrasted with Scott’s identical layout and minimalist style. The walls were painted a warm cream color and hung with abstract paintings – one, in particular, caught Mattie’s eye, done in shades of blue and green, cascading down the canvas in a way that almost evoked a mermaid’s scales.
Her gaze fell upon a dark green leather couch, and she gasped as a flood of memories slammed into her mind. She sat down heavily on a soft armchair of the same mossy shade. Mattie dropped her purse onto the rustic coffee table and folded herself in half, resting her head on her knees as she steadied herself.
Images poured into her mind, of her mother’s last couple of months, her illness-ravaged body, her brain struggling through its chemo-induced fog. Her mom had lived on that couch for so long, refusing to stay in the hospital.
Mattie hadn’t known that Tillie had kept it. She had fled to college shortly after their mother’s death and only come back briefly for their father’s funeral two months later.
Men, she’d been told, often gave up on life after the death of their wives.
Trevor sat on the hardwood floor in front of her and rested his head against hers, not saying anything, just being there. Mattie felt a new wave of energy course through her, and she gently pushed him away by his shoulders.
“Thanks, Trev, but we don’t have time for me to break down right now. Let’s get this search party going. You better take this room. I’ll check Tillie’s bedroom.”
He looked doubtful. “Are you sure? It’s okay if you need to take some time.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I’m good.”
“Okay, if you say so. The bedroom’s down the hall to the right.”
Mattie nodded her thanks and proceeded in the direction of Trevor’s gesture. The door was ajar, so she pushed it wide and walked in. There were no memories here; Tillie had still been living at home – her breath caught again at the thought of home, but she dammed up the memories again – when she was last in St. Louis.
She took in the details in a glance: silver comforter on the queen-sized bed, a set of matching black dresser and nightstand, all with a sleek, designer look to them.
She walked to the closet and idly flipped through the expensive clothing within. Nothing about the way Tillie dressed would have told you she was a sex worker. She was the epitome of elegance – the kind of escort who spends most of her time actually being escorted places and is only occasionally called upon to follow through in the bedroom. Professional arm candy, really.
The closet was filled with evening gowns. Despite their identical nature, Mattie knew she would never be able to pull off any of this stuff like Tillie did. She lacked a certain quality of . . . polish. Tillie was a luminous pearl and Mattie was the grit from which it formed.
She shrugged. Beauty isn’t everything, and grit gets shit done.
Pushing the clothing aside, Mattie examined the shelves behind the dresses, looking for anything unusual. All she found were purses, high-heeled shoes, folded silk scarves. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, so she left the closet and began to rummage through the jewelry box on top of the nightstand.
She picked up a gold chain with an odd pendant hanging from it, a simple hourglass, crowned with a stylized eye, the iris formed from a milky opal. She recognized the eye as the same symbol that adorned the mailbox. The hourglass and eye were encircled by a golden hoop.
It didn’t really seem like Tillie’s style at all. Mattie put it in the pocket of her jeans to show Trevor later and moved on to the drawer.
With a grimace, she pushed aside a bright pink vibrator and pulled out the book beneath it – Limits of the Seer. Hadn’t Scott said something about a seer?
“Hey, Mattie, would you come back in here, please?” she heard Trevor call from the other room. She raced back to find him knocking on the blank wall next to a closed door, a frown on his face.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Scott’s apartment looked like a mirror image of this one, right?” he said.
“Honestly, I don’t remember. I was focused more on Scott, and then on Max coming down the hall.”
“Okay, well, the hallway was in the same spot, right? And the kitchen opposite?” He gestured, and she nodded. Trevor opened the linen closet. “And there was a door, just here, presumably also the linen closet?”
Mattie thought for a second. “Yeah, I think so. Next to the desk.”
“Okay, so if this is Tillie’s linen closet, and it’s the same size as Scott’s, and there wasn’t anything in between their two condos – which there wasn’t – something is off here.”
“Off? What are you talking about?”
“I think there’s a secret room in here!”
“A secret room?” Mattie stared at him.
“A secret room.” Trevor’s eyes glittered with excitement. “We just have to find it!”
“Well, let’s try twisting the sconces and pulling all the books out halfway,” Mattie scoffed. “Oh, wait. There aren’t any sconces, and this isn’t a damn movie!”
She sank down onto a chair next to where Trevor was standing and put her hands on the arms. “Wait a second. I think I feel some kind of lever here!”
“Really?” Trevor knelt beside her.
“Of course not! What is wrong with you? There isn’t a secret room, Trevor! You’re grasping at straws. No one has secret rooms.”
“No one disappears without a trace either. But Tillie did,” he pointed out. “And that Scott guy was talking about magic–”
“Are you serious? You’re starting to believe in magic?”
“No, obviously not. But I am starting to believe that Tillie might believe in magic. And maybe she got mixed up in some kind of secret society that believes in magic. And a secret society that believes in magic would absolutely encourage its members to build secret rooms in their condos!”
“Huh. That is some convoluted logic, but you’re right, actually. A ‘club.’” Mattie remembered the necklace in her pocket. “Hey, I found this in Tillie’s jewelry box. It kind of looks secret-society-ish, doesn’t it? And that top part was on her mailbox.” She handed it to Trevor.
“I just saw this symbol!” Trevor whirled around, closing the linen closet door again and placing the pendant next to an identical design sunk into the center of it. “It’s the same size, too.”
“Wait a second,” Mattie said. “Okay, this is crazy, but– Let me see that again.” She took the necklace from Trevor and pulled the pendant off the chain. Then she fitted the circle into the symbol on the door.
As soon as the metal touched the wood, there was a click and it began to glow.
“Holy fuck!” they exclaimed together, jumping backward. The pendant stayed in the middle of the door. As they watched, dumbfounded, the door began to move to the side, leaving a blank wall where it had been. It stopped about a foot from its original location.
Eyes wide, Mattie reached for the handle.
“No, don’t!” Trevor stopped her. “Don’t open it yet. Let me just– let this sink in first.”
“It has to be some kind of hydraulic system or something,” Mattie suggested. She ran her hand over the wood of the door. It felt normal.
“Then what happened to the opening of the linen closet? That door opened onto a closet, Matts. If the door just . . . slid over, then the opening should have remained. How did it turn into a solid wall?”
“Do I look like an engineer?” retorted Mattie. “But we’re not going to figure it out just standing around. I say we open it.”
Trevor reached out and touched the wall where the door had been. “Let’s think this through. I’ve opened that linen closet before. I opened it just now. We know it was there.” He ran his hands over the wall. “There’s no seam for a pocket door to slide out or anything.”
Mattie rolled her eyes. “Let’s just see what’s behind the door. It could be the linen closet, for all we know, or it could be a secret room that contains the answers to all our questions. We’ll never find out by staring at the wall!”
Trevor threw up his hands. “Fine. Have it your way. I’m just gonna stand back, though. No point in both of us risking . . . whatever it is we’re risking here.” He stepped back to the far wall. “Go ahead.”
Mattie reached forward again and turned the handle, opening the door to a dark room. A hint of stale incense wafted out. She wrinkled her nose. “This is not the linen closet. It’s kind of smelly.”
Trevor stepped forward and peered into the room. “I can’t see anything. Do you think there’s a light?”
Mattie shrugged and reached her arm into the room, feeling around next to the doorframe. She found the switch and light filled the room. “Whoa. This is wild.”
They stepped into the long, narrow room, which was set up like the most luxurious chapel they’d ever seen. “Well, no question about it,” Mattie remarked, wandering about the room. “Tillie decorated this.”
Where an ordinary chapel might have had pews, this chamber had four black leather loveseats facing the altar, which was raised on a white marble dais. The altar itself was made of dark wood with a silver inlay. A few mystical-looking silver items were lined up along one edge. There was also a sphere of some colorless rock, cloudy but translucent. In the center lay an enormous leather-bound book, open.
Mattie walked past the couches and stepped up to the altar.
“Dammit, Mattie, just wait a second!” Trevor’s exasperated voice came from the doorway, where he still stood. “Let’s think this through, could we? The kinds of people who have secret rooms also have booby traps.”
She turned and stared at him. “You think Tillie has booby traps?”
“I wouldn’t have thought Tillie had a secret room either.”
Mattie sobered. “Yeah, you’re right. This is too weird. I guess I shouldn’t jump to any conclusions. Okay, so Tillie’s into, like, Cabala or something? Where do we go from here?”
“We take it step by step. Let’s start with this door. We figure out how it works, and maybe that will lead us somewhere,” Trevor suggested.
Mattie gestured to the altar. “Really? This stuff seems more likely to be rife with clues.”
“Yeah, but the door is a somewhat known entity at this point, right? We know it’s weird, we suspect it’s connected, and we know it’s safe.”
“You don’t think the altar is weird?” Mattie raised an eyebrow.
“Just get back over here.”
“Fine.” She strode back to the door. It looked perfectly ordinary.
She examined a hinge. “What, exactly, are we looking for?”
“I have no idea.”
***
Hours later, Mattie and Trevor descended the staircase, silently sunk in thought. Their search had proved fruitless and frustrating, and they had finally agreed to head back to Trevor’s house. First, they had loaded up a tote bag with books on magic found in the condo.
Mattie figured that researching this cult of Tillie’s might give them a new lead.
Then they had detoured back to Scott’s and knocked on his door. There had been no response, and after a few minutes of pounding and shouting, even Mattie had given up.
They reached the foyer and pushed open the glass door. Suddenly, a man blinked into view out of nowhere. A man who was swinging an arm straight at Mattie’s face.
She ducked, reflexively, and tripped over something invisible by her feet, dropping her bag of books.
Mattie struggled to get back up, but something unseen kept pushing her back down, and it felt like ropes were encircling her arms. She brushed at them frantically, but the ghostly tethers tightened, forcing her hands down to her sides. They tightened more as she struggled.
Trevor tackled the man to the ground, only to find himself flying backward into the wall.
“Mattie!” he yelled. “Look out behind you!”
Another person had materialized out of nowhere, a slim black woman dressed like a movie assassin, in a skintight jumpsuit, her long hair pulled into a tight ponytail.
Mattie, unable to get up, scooted herself across the tile floor and kicked both legs out, rapidly pummeling the woman with her feet. Her assailant jumped backward, cursing and beginning a complex gesture with her hands.
“Who the fuck are you people?” Mattie screamed. “What do you want?”
The woman paused, her hands entwined, and her brow furrowed in confusion. Mattie took the opportunity to kick her legs out from underneath her. The woman folded to the ground with a grunt.
Mattie spun around to find that Trevor had tackled the man to the ground again, this time holding him there. The man was wearing a perplexed look, the match of the expression on his accomplice’s face.
Mattie, suddenly freed of her invisible bindings, reached up to grab the counter under the mailboxes and pulled herself to her feet.
The other woman stared up at her from her vantage point on the ground.
“You’re not Tillie,” the assassin said.
“Oh, shit,” said the other one. “She’s the sister. I thought she was in Portland.”
“We had eyes on her, didn’t we?” agreed the woman with a frown. “Alverez, wasn’t it?”
“What?” Mattie started. Fucking Dr. Alverez was a spy? She knew that guy was sketchy!
“Never send a stitcher to do a speller’s job,” muttered Trevor’s captive.
“Oh, fuck you, you arrogant bastard,” said the woman. “Honestly, they should have sent a seer. Either way, we should have been notified that this one went rogue.”
Mattie and Trevor’s eyes locked. Mattie nodded at Trevor and then stepped on the woman’s gluteal region, pushing her into a prone position, and holding her in place with her foot, as Trevor rolled his captive into a similar pose, pulling himself upright and seating himself on the small of the man’s back.
“We seem to be getting off-topic,” said Mattie. She grabbed her prisoner’s arm and pulled up on it, twisting it at the same time. “What do you know about Tillie? Where is she?” Mattie demanded.
“Ouch! I don’t know! We’ve been looking for her. When we saw you come in earlier, we thought you were her. We waited for you to leave so we could surprise you.”
“Who are you?” Trevor asked.
The man’s lips curved into a small, smug smile and he paused dramatically before answering. “We’re from the Auditors.”
Mattie waited for more information, but none was forthcoming. She pushed against her captive’s arm again. “What Auditors? What are you talking about? You can’t tell me this is about unpaid fucking taxes.”
There was another tension-laden beat. The two assassins exchanged another startled glance and the man released a string of curses under his breath.
Trevor grabbed his prisoner’s shaggy black hair and tugged his head upward. “Explain.”
“You’re not mages, are you?” he said, his voice strained.
“That’s something Alverez could have mentioned too,” muttered Mattie’s hostage. She lifted her voice. “You’re in over your head. You shouldn’t be here. How did you even get into the building?”
“Tillie gave me a key,” replied Trevor.
The two looked at each other again.
“She’s got a lot to answer for. Dabbling outside her scope and now giving non-mages access to magical circles. The woman needs to be brought in before she can do any more harm,” said the man. “In the meantime, we’ll be leaving now.” He nodded to his companion.
“Let this go, Mattie and friend,” she cautioned them. “Next time, we won’t be taken so off-guard. Or you might get caught by someone not bound by our rules. You might just get yourselves killed.”
“That whole not-killing thing is more of a guideline anyway,” agreed the man, with an unpleasant grin.
And then she made a gesture with her free hand and the pair disappeared, causing Trevor to thud to the ground and Mattie to stumble off-balance into the mailboxes, both of them stunned and stupefied.