I looked around the enormous entry hall that was bigger than our whole loft in Venice. Millicent’s voice shook me out of my awe. “Take Saira to the east wing.”
A small, dark-haired, hobbit-sized woman seemed to materialize from nowhere as Millicent dismissed me. “Dinner is at seven. I assume you brought a dress?” It was a completely rhetorical question since she swept out of the room without waiting for an answer. Which was “no,” but I didn’t think she was in the mood to hear it just then.
The Hobbit was already at the end of the hall, lugging my bag with her. I had to run to catch up. “East wing, she says. Hrmph. West wing is for family.” The Hobbit’s voice sounded like it needed oil, and the “hrmph” she made was something between clearing her throat and hawking a loogie. Almost made me want to practice it.
We passed huge rooms filled with art and rugs and furniture that could be in a museum, and here and there I caught sight of uniformed maids polishing gleaming side tables inlaid with bone and ebony, or cleaning fireplaces big enough for a person to stand inside. We finally stopped in front of a large wooden door on the second floor.
The Hobbit produced an old-fashioned iron key that opened the lock. I wasn’t excited to be staying in a room with an exterior lock, but to her credit, she left the key on the dresser. She set my bag down at the foot of the bed and studied me. “Ye have the look of your mother. It’s why herself won’t care for ye overmuch.” The Hobbit raised an eyebrow. “Ye’ll be needing a skin of iron, ye will. The People hope ye have it.” And with those strange words, she was gone.
A four-poster bed with carved wood posts and a faded silk canopy dominated the room. I flopped back onto it and took a deep breath, the first one since landing in England. I’d been living on pure adrenaline since the night in the tunnels, and I finally felt it start to loosen its hold on my body. Maybe too well, because three hours later I snapped awake and suddenly realized I was going to be late for dinner.
I slammed the bedroom door behind me and flew down the hall, tying my hair into a knot as I ran. It wasn’t a dress, but at least I made an effort. I was probably already busted for being late, so jeans and a sweatshirt couldn’t make it worse.
At least that’s what I thought until I saw Millicent’s face.
My grandmother was wearing a long dress that was practically a ball gown with a diamond choker around her neck. On anyone else it would have been a costume, but on Millicent it was armor. I realized then that late would have been much better than jeans, but there was nothing I could do now. Her jaw was already set.
“If you weren’t Claire’s daughter you would be eating in the kitchen with the staff.”
I had just taken a seat at the only other place set at the long table, but I immediately stood back up. “Show me the way and I’ll go.” My cheeks flushed and I was being snotty to cover it up. Apparently Millicent was onto me though, because she coldly waved me to my seat.
“You won’t get off so easily with me, Saira. Please sit down.” She took a sip of her wine, and my gaze was trapped by the glittering jewels on her fingers. The woman sparkled everywhere but her eyes.
I sat. Every instinct in me wanted to run away from the gilded stranger across the table, but that’s exactly why I wrapped my ankles around the chair legs. My mom always said fight and flight were at war in me, and considering how I ended up here, she wasn’t too far wrong.
A mousy maid put steaming bowls of soup in front of us. Millicent studied me as she ate. “Why, exactly, are you here, Saira?”
“You’re better than foster care.”
Millicent raised an eyebrow with a look that said my thin ice was cracking. “The last time your mother left, were you alone then, too?”
“Every time since I was about thirteen.”
“Don’t you have friends? People you could stay with?”
“You say that like it’s normal for a mom to disappear for a week every couple of years.”
“Yours has to.” The matter-of-fact way my grandmother spoke about something that was basically child abandonment told me volumes about her.
“Whatever. All I know is that if she had been home like a normal mom, our place wouldn’t have been trashed, her clock necklace stolen, and I’d be sleeping in my own bed right now.”
Millicent stared at me like I’d just sprouted wings. “Clock necklace?”
“The one my dad gave her before I was born. She never wears it, but it was locked in the paint cabinet with our passports and money they didn’t take.”
She finally schooled her expression and then spoke in a voice that was trying too hard to be casual. “Show me the design you were drawing on the window in the car. Here, on the tablecloth, with your finger.”
Okay, weird. I got up and moved to the other end of the table. She smelled of some fancy old perfume, powdery and really expensive. I used my finger like a pen and started drawing the spirals on the white tablecloth. Before I was even halfway done she stopped my hand. “That’s enough.” I’d just gotten in a groove and my fingers itched to finish. “Do not draw that design again … ever.”
I stared at her. “You don’t tell me what I can draw. Nobody does.”
“Saira,” Millicent’s voice finally got some emotion in it, but I didn’t like the tone. “Do as I say. It’s for your own good.” I snorted and her voice turned steely. “I am your elder and you will respect me.”
“Respect gets earned.” I pulled my hand out of Millicent’s grasp and stalked to the door. “I understand why my mother left here.” I was angry, but for some reason my eyes welled up with tears, which made me even madder. “You act like you have the right to fling rules at me because we’re ‘family,’ but family cares, and you never did. Don’t pretend to now.”
I wiped the tears away fiercely and gave myself credit for not slamming the door, no matter how badly I wanted to make brick dust fall. The Hobbit was watching me from a darkened doorway, shaking her head. And with her disappointment, I felt the protective armor I’d spent seventeen years wrapping around myself begin to fracture.
The fancy bed with all the luxurious sheets was hard as a rock. I was fairly sure the mattress wasn’t actually from the sixteenth century, but no amount of tossing and turning could make me comfortable enough to sleep. After trying for an hour or two I gave it up as a lost cause and around eleven pm, I got up to explore.
But the doorknob wouldn’t budge. I tried again with more force and then flipped a light on to grab the key from the dresser. Not there. I did a full search of the area. No key.
Millicent had officially hit monster status. I glanced around the room looking for something I could use to get myself out of my new prison. There was a botanical print hanging on the wall, backed by a piece of cardboard that could work. I detached the cardboard from the frame, then untwisted the wire. With that I had my tools.
Everything was quiet in the hall. I slid the cardboard under the door, angling the piece so only a small corner was left on my side of the room, then stuck the wire into the old lock and hoped my warden was too lazy to take the key. The wire hit something that moved, so I jiggled it carefully and finally pushed. The key fell to the hall floor with a soft thud, hopefully landing on the cardboard underneath.
Bit by bit I pulled the cardboard in, like reeling in a fish on a line. The glint of metal showed under the door. Another inch and I had it in hand. I tried the key in the lock and the doorknob turned. I was free.
Now what? I knew my stay at Elian Manor had just expired, but I wasn’t quite sure of my options. I quickly reassembled the print, threw on my clothes, then stuffed extra clothes, my passport, money, and toothbrush into my backpack. A last-minute addition was a heavy black marker and a can of red spray paint.
With my Maglite in my back pocket, I slipped out of the bedroom and secured the door behind me, leaving the key in the lock. Make them wonder how I got out if nothing else. I navigated my way through the east wing and down to the kitchen where I thought there’d be a servants’ entrance. The door was latched from the inside with a heavy wooden bar – very middle-ages of them, but effective. I closed it quietly behind me and stepped out into darkness.
It wasn’t the first time I was glad for great night vision as I picked my way along the unfamiliar perimeter of the house. The manor seemed like a fortress, built of solid stone with high windows and few doors. Everything about this place screamed ‘prison’.
A cat suddenly yowled in front of me, and I stumbled and went down on all fours. Hard. Something sharp cut my hand and I hissed in pain and waited for a light to flick on inside the house. None did. The cat was long gone, and even though my mother swears I’m part feline, I silently re-confirmed my preference for dogs.
I picked myself up and bolted for the garages, but stopped short when I saw a lit window. Jeeves was inside the garage apartment looking as startled to see me as I was to see him. I nodded respectfully to him, and Jeeves cocked an eyebrow, slowly nodded back, and then waved his hand at me to scoot. I blew him a kiss and saw him smile as I ran for the woods.
When I got too tall for gymnastics, free-running had been the next logical step in my stealth-tagging habit. It’s using acrobatics to move around urban environments at high speeds, and for me it made running around a nighttime city like playing on a giant jungle gym. And since a bad landing or a missed vault could break an arm, I didn’t have the brain space to worry about a little thing like my lack of a permanent residence, so it was my escape too. I’d just never used it to actually escape before.
The forest along the long driveway was seriously creepy. Ancient trees were like sentries standing guard, while the underbrush probably teemed with hidden – and hopefully sleeping – wildlife. I would have preferred no moon to the almost full one that cast huge pools of darkness around me. My thing about shadows was kicking in hard, and I fought down a rising panic as I headed toward the main road.
As much as I wanted to believe every sound I heard was a normal nighttime noise, and every movement was just my eyeballs playing tricks, I knew in my soul that I wasn’t alone in the woods. My most primal instinct screamed out that something, or someone, was tracking me. So the question was, animal or human? Predator or just curious?
A car engine sounded in the distance and I froze. It came from the main road ahead, not the manor behind me. I hoped that meant I might be able to hitch a ride toward London, maybe from an early commuter? I could see the glimmer of headlights through the trees, so I broke into a run … and whatever was tracking me started running too. I could hear two feet hit the ground behind me instead of four. A biped then. A much scarier prospect than an animal.
I dodged around low branches and over fallen logs that tripped my pursuer, then broke from the trees. I spotted a dark-colored luxury car, maybe an Audi or a BMW, pulled over by the side of the road. It looked like the driver was reading a map and I made an instant decision to call out. “Help! Help me!”
The driver was a middle-aged guy in a suit, with blond hair and refined features. He looked shocked to see some girl sprinting down the road in the middle of the night. I dropped into the passenger seat and looked up to find him smiling at me. “Hello, Clocker. I wondered when we might finally meet.”
That reptilian voice liquefied my guts, and a shot of pure adrenaline went coursing through my veins. Slick – from the Venice tunnels – with a menacing smile on his almost handsome face. Slick looked past me to a tall guy who had just run up outside my window. My biped pursuer. Instinctively, I grabbed the keys that were dangling from the steering column and hurled them out the window past Slick. Then I threw open the passenger door and nailed Biped right in the nuts. He went down, swearing loudly, and I took off running.
“Grab her!” Slick yelled.
I heard the rev of a car engine, then saw the shadow of headlights coming up behind me. A silver sports car appeared, and a guy called through the open window, “Get in!” He sped ahead and slammed on his brakes just as I reached his car. Primal survival instinct was back in spades as I flew into the passenger seat. He hit the gas pedal, and we did zero to sixty in about half a second. I looked over at my rescuer who was driving with one eye on the rear-view mirror. In the light from the dashboard he looked young, maybe early twenties, with dark hair and a strong profile. His jaw was tense as he watched to see if they were following us, and I could see muscles working as if he was grinding his teeth. Then my rescuer turned to look at me, and I felt his eyes reach right down into my lungs and suck all the air out.
With that look I knew I’d just jumped straight from the kettle into the fire.