As the innkeeper tried to stand, he winced and leaned heavily on his cane. Gwen looked like she was about to move when Oliver raised his hand for them both to stay seated.
“I can get it myself if you tell me where it is. I’m already up,” Oliver said quickly.
“Thank you, son. There’s a linen closet upstairs two doors down from the room you’re in. You can’t miss it. Feel free to borrow whichever blanket you’d like.”
Sighing, Oliver left the warmth of the parlor and trotted up the steps. As he rubbed his arms and scanned the hall of doors for the linen closet, he wondered what had become of his wet clothing. Felipe had interrupted his bath to scoop them up and leave his pajamas behind. He hoped someone in town could clean them as he didn’t want them polluting the other clothes in his bag. Not that it mattered, considering his other charcoal suit stunk of corpse. If he kept this up, he wouldneed a whole new wardrobe.
Opening the linen closet, Oliver wished he had asked Mr. Allen specifically what he could use. Even when someone saidanything, there were always unwritten rules. It felt invasive to go through the man’s things and take what he wanted, but it would have been worse to force him to go up the steps when he was perfectly capable of getting his own blanket.
What would Felipe do?He would grab the first one he saw, Oliver thought. He pulled a thick woolen blanket off the pile and was about to close the door when his gaze snagged on a wad of brown fabric that had fallen behind the stack of blankets. Oliver’s hands shook as he pulled out the familiar brown quilt. It couldn’t be the same blanket. There were probably hundreds of bolts of the same material made and shipped all over the country, he told himself. Carefully unfolding it, Oliver’s heart juddered at the sight of the appliqued horse. The blanket looked so much smaller than it had when he was a boy, and it had grown thin and dingy with use, but it was the same quilt made of scraps of brown, white, red, and blue fabric his nana had made. He would recognize her work anywhere. Flipping over the top corner, Oliver found her mark stitched into the underside.
Oliver stared at the blanket in disbelief. He hadn’t seen it in over thirty years, yet here it was in the linen closet of a stranger. It made no sense that Mr. Allen should have something so precious, that he should have any connection to his grandmother or to him. Oliver’s fingers tightened around the quilt. He didn’t like how the man had looked at him after he fell out of the Dysterwood, and the blanket was the final straw. Storming down the steps, Oliver found Felipe already rising from the sofa when he arrived in the parlor.
“Where did you get this?” Oliver demanded, thrusting the blanket in Mr. Allen’s direction.
Mr. Allen gave Oliver a gaping, wide-eyed look but said nothing.
“How did you get this blanket?”
Gwen looked between Oliver and Felipe in confusion as Argos let out a low growl. The innkeeper stammered a half answer, but Olivermissed it because Felipe grabbed his elbow and steered him into the hall with an apology.
Indignantly yanking his arm from Felipe’s grasp, Oliver cried, “Don’t apologize to him, and don’t let him out of your sight for that matter. There is no reason for him to have this blanket.” The words came out louder than Oliver intended, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t being unreasonable, though the wary, placating look on Felipe’s face gave him pause. Running his thumb over the stitchwork, Oliver deflated slightly. “I only want to know how it came into his possession.”
“May I see it?” Oliver reluctantly handed the quilt to his partner. Opening it up and turning it over, Felipe frowned. “What’s so special about it that you’re ready to interrogate our host?”
“My nana made it. Look, there’s her mark on the back.”
“Oliver, I say this with the utmost respect, but I think you’re overreacting. I’m sure many people have quilts your nana made. Didn’t she sell them?”
“Sometimes, but this wasn’t one of them. She made this special for someone. I remember.”
“Are you sure she didn’t use a pattern or make a second one for someone else? I know you’ve had a very tiring day, we all have, but you can’t just accuse people of— of I don’t even know what. There are plenty of ways he could have ended up with that blanket.”
“I’m not overwrought!” Oliver yelled, his voice shrill in a way that didn’t help his case.
Taking a calming breath, he hugged the familiar quilt beneath his chin. If he closed his eyes, he was four years old again hiding in his grandmother’s attic because she had company over, and he very much did not wish to speak to them. Even after his nana reminded him the blanket belonged to someone else, Oliver had secretly taken it out of its trunk and hunkered into it more times than he could count. A four year old didn’t truly understand or care that the handsome, warm blanket with a horse on it didn’t belong to him. Oliver didn’t remember that much from when he was so young, but he vividly rememberedsorting a tin of buttons while wrapped in the horse blanket and the comfort it brought. When the trunk disappeared one day while he was outside playing with a neighbor, he was beside himself. His nana had quieted his tears and reminded him that he had several perfectly good blankets of his own, but they weren’tthatquilt. After thirty-three years, he still remembered how it smelled back then, like wood and leather and ever so slightly like his grandmother. Now, it smelled like the sachet of herbs hanging inside the linen closet to ward off pests, yet it was undoubtedly the same.
“You don’t understand, I remember this quilt. Icovetedthis quilt. If we had stumbled upon it in a junk shop or some other person’s house, I would have thought it was a marvelous coincidence to run into an old friend, but,” Oliver dropped his voice and held Felipe’s gaze, “Mr. Allen is not saying something. Ever since I got back, he’s beenlooking at me. Mark my words, the man knows something he isn’t telling.”
Felipe ran a tired hand over his face. “Oliver, if you’re worried that he pushed you into the woods, he couldn’t have. He was at the sheriff's office with me the entire time.”
“Then, perhaps he knows who did because he seems very alarmed that I’m still here. I know you think I’m overreacting. If I was overwrought and upset, I would admit it, but I’m not. Ask him. Ask him what he’s not telling us.”
Holding up his hands in surrender, Felipe replied, “All right. We can ask him, but you need to calm down first. Mr. Allen is the only person in this town willing to cooperate with us. We can’t afford to lose that right now. Let’s go into this assuming there is a logical explanation for him having this blanket and looking at you strangely, okay?”
Oliver was fairly certain the explanation was that whoever was raising the dead needed more fodder and killing off a few more investigators would do quite nicely, but he nodded anyway. Frowning at him, Felipe stepped closer and rubbed Oliver’s upper arms as he would back at the society. The tension in his neck and shoulders fellaway under his partner’s touch, but the knot of unease in his chest remained. With a quick kiss and a squeeze of his shoulder, Felipe motioned for him to follow him into the parlor. Gwen gave Oliver a raised brow, but he merely shook his head.
“Is everything all right?” Mr. Allen asked, his hoarse voice thin and his mouth tense as his attention flickered from one man to the other.
“Mr. Allen, can you tell us where you got this blanket?” Felipe asked, gently taking it from Oliver’s hand and holding it out to the other man.
“A dear friend made it for me years ago. Why?”
“What was your friend’s name?” Oliver pressed, ignoring Felipe’s exasperated look.
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“What do you mean you’re not at liberty to say? It’s a blanket, not a bomb. Ever since I came out of the Dysterwood, you’ve been acting weird. Did you get this from Abigail Hansson of Philadelphia or not?”
