22

LEAVING ON A JET PLANE

Mardi-Overbrook-Journal.docx

Ivan answered the door the next morning before I’d even rung the doorbell.

“Good morning, Magdi,” he said, bowing deeply. “If you want to wait in the breakfast room, Ms. Steele and Mooi will be with you shortly.”

“It’s Mardi,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Mar-dy.”

“As you wish, my lady,” Ivan said, and scurried away. It was only after he’d left that I realized he’d never said where the “breakfast room” was. The Gardiners were fancy people, but not quite so fancy that they’d ever set aside one of the twenty-five or thirty rooms in Fair Haven specifically for breakfast. If they took breakfast as a family, they ate in the dining room. Otherwise they scarfed down a bowl of cereal or some eggs in the kitchen, like normal people. I peeked into the dining room first, but not only was there nobody in there, there wasn’t any furniture either: just faded spots on the parquet and on the wallpaper where rugs and pictures used to be. Dust bunnies swirled in the corners, suggesting that Janet had no use for this room at all.

I made my way to the kitchen then, but it was empty too, though filled with an intoxicating smell of fresh-baked pastries and coffee. Ingrid had of course made me breakfast before I left—you have to understand that that kind of thing is, like, part of her DNA—but whatever Ivan (or whoever cooked in Fair Haven) had made smelled so delicious that I was ready for round two.

I raised my head and sniffed, as if I could track breakfast like a dog on the trail of a rabbit, but whatever other abilities I have, the power of supersmell is not one of them. I had no idea where breakfast had gone, so I just pushed through the door closest to me.

I was pretty sure the hallway beyond the door was the one that led to the servants’ quarters: in place of the elaborate parquet of the main hallways, there was simple wood, and the walls were plain white instead of covered in hand-blocked wallpaper, and the trim was unadorned instead of elaborately carved. But what made me pause was the dirt. I don’t mean dust like I’d seen in the corners of the dining room. I mean mud, trampled into the floor and pushing up against the walls, where it had dried and crumpled and been trampled down again until the floor looked more like a tunnel than a hallway in a three-hundred-year-old mansion, with only a few glimpses of the floorboards visible where the inch-thick coating of dirt had accumulated. The walls were filthy too, with trails of dirt and food and other stuff I couldn’t identify lining them in long streaks, as if someone had dipped their hands into muddy puddles or jars of peanut butter or molasses and deliberately dragged them along the walls. And when I stood next to the streaks, I couldn’t help but notice that nearly all of them were either about five feet above the floor—which is to say, Ivan’s shoulder height—or about six feet, which is to say, Janet’s shoulder height. I mean, I knew she hated the Gardiners, but did she hate them so much that she had to defile the house she’d stolen from them?

And I knew I should probably turn around and go back into the, you know, not-crazy part of the house, but I couldn’t help myself. This hallway was obviously in heavy use, and I wanted to see where it led. And so, doing my best to put my new Miu Miu studded patent-leather sneaks into the least dirty parts of the floor, I began to make my way down its length. It got darker the farther I went. There were only a few windows, but they’d been plastered with mud and let in almost no light. But I was still able to see that there were bits of green and brown things scattered about as I went, leaves and sticks they looked like, piling up more and more toward the end of the hall, which made it look even more like a tunnel or a path in a forest. There were also a few feathers and things that looked a bit like fur and bones, all of which made it feel like I was walking into an animal’s lair, just like in my dream.

I came to the end of the hall and turned. There was only a little passageway left. It was darker than the long corridor I’d just walked through, not to mention about ten times dirtier, and there was a bit of a smell too, something not-so-fresh, maybe a little fishy. Here and there among the leaves and sticks, I thought I saw the glint of a bone.

From what I could see, the floor was wetter too, and I hesitated. Before I could decide whether or not to continue, a door burst open at the other end of the hall and Janet Steele appeared.

“Magdi!” she almost shouted, her face startled, guarded.

I caught a glimpse of the room behind her. It was dark but seemed quite large, and even filthier than the hallway. Then she hurriedly pulled it closed and locked it.

“Can you believe this mess?” she said as she turned toward me and began picking her way down the muddy hall in a pair of high-waisted flowy gold pants tucked into stiletto calf boots in black snakeskin.

“Are those Haider Ackermann?” I said. “They’re so chic I want to die!”

“I know,” Janet said. “And I have to walk through this mess in them. Can you believe it?” she said. “A staff of eight, a gazillion dollars in the bank, and yet they let this happen.”

“What did happen?” I said as Janet put her arm on my shoulder and steered us back toward the main house.

“Ivan said a family of weasels was camped out here. Living, breeding, eating, and—” She sniffed, made a face. “Everything else too, from the smell of it.”

“But I thought you said the servants live here?” I said as we walked toward the kitchen.

“Did I?” Janet said, but didn’t explain further.

We were walking past some of the streaks of finger- and handprints on the wall.

“Weasels?” I said. “Really?”

“That’s what Ivan said. He cleared them out before I got here.” She glanced at the stains on the wall and shook her head. “You know Fair Haven sits on a seam between Midgard and Hel?”

“I heard something about that,” I said vaguely.

“Tyr sealed it all up hundreds of years ago, of course, but still, a little energy can’t help but leak through. It attracts all kinds of weirdness,” she said, waving a hand at the dirty floor and walls. “This is the newest part of the house, but I’m guessing we must be pretty close to the seam.”

I knew that in fact the seam was located in the ballroom, which, if I had my bearings (and I wasn’t sure I did), wasn’t far from here. But I didn’t point that out to Janet. If she was serious about this war-between-the-gods thing, I wasn’t going to give her any ammunition.

“I’m tempted to have Ivan bulldoze it.” Janet was still speaking. “Build something nice and modern. Glass and steel. Impregnable,” she added as she pushed the door to the kitchen open. “But I don’t know. These old places have their charms—literally, in the case of Fair Haven.”

“Ha!” I laughed as we stepped into the kitchen.

“Mardi! There you are!” Molly’s voice rang out. “Ivan told me you were here, but I was beginning to think he was having a joke at my expense.”

I was a bit taken aback at Molly’s seeming good cheer, after the frosty invitation she’d given me in the Cheesemonger yesterday. I guess she’d believed me when I said that nothing had happened between me and Rocky. Seeing her again made me realize nothing could happen between me and Rocky. Even if I was attracted to him, I couldn’t do anything about it, and I wouldn’t.

“Sorry, I just took a bit of a wrong turn, but here I am, ready and raring to go.”

“Woo-hoo, Bahamas!” Molly said.

Now, I know I’m the dark, jaded sister and Molly’s the bright, happy-go-lucky one. But not even she had ever said “woo-hoo” in her life. I found myself wondering who had kidnapped my real sister and sent this Stepford clone in her place. But all I said was:

“Woo-hoo.” I couldn’t bring myself to shout it, though, which didn’t matter, since Molly had already turned to Janet.

“What were you doing in the servants’ quarters, Mum?”

“Ivan told me the skunks were back. Thought I’d better check myself.”

“Skunks?” I said. “I thought you said—”

“I’m going to get one of those humane pest removal services in here while we’re in the Bahamas. Hopefully they can trap the little critters and cart them over to Hither Hills State Park on the big island. Well, is everyone packed? We don’t want to be late.”

“Late for what?” Molly laughed. “We’re flying charter.”

“Yes, and I’m paying for it. You miss a commercial flight and you pay a hundred bucks to change your ticket. You show up late for a charter and they charge you five thousand for the inconvenience. And I don’t know about you girls, but I would much rather spend that money on boots,” she finished up, lifting up one of her feet and flicking off a piece of mud with one golden-lacquered nail. “Not to mention bikinis!”

Molly and I looked at each other and smiled, and this time her joy didn’t seem forced. “Yes, please!”

At the sight of the two of us looking all sisters-in-love, a big grin spread across Janet’s face.

“Look at the two of you! My girls, together again.” She extended her long strong arms and pulled us into a three-way hug. I felt Molly’s arms snake around us as well, and after a moment’s hesitation, I gave in and joined in the hug.

“We’re going to have so much fun!” Janet breathed into my ear.

Mum climbed into the Maybach and I went to follow, but before I could, Molly’s hand closed around my arm like a clamp.

“I know you want to sleep with Rocky, you little slut. I’ve got my eye on you.”

“Molly, what the—”

But before I could even finish my question, she’d shoved me out of the way and climbed in next to Mum.

“Hurry up, slowpoke,” Mum called to me. “We really don’t want to be late.”

I got in warily, trying not to make eye contact with Molly. Her rage filled up the back of the car like a toxic gas, although Mum seemed oblivious to it. I just hoped Molly wouldn’t crash the plane.