Cate’s brow furrows, and Millie’s worried she’s said or done the wrong thing, but then Cate nods. “Thanks.”
Millie takes Cate’s hand, gives it a little squeeze, then flinches when something sharp jabs into her palm. “Ow!”
Cate pulls back suddenly. “Oh, sorry, I guess I broke a nail.” Sure enough, her pointer finger has a jagged edge. She puts it in her mouth and starts to chew. It makes her look like a mouse with a morsel of cheese.
Millie pulls back and looks around. She’s never actually been in the library before. She does a loop around the room, scanning the shelves in vain for a single book that does not have ARTHURFLETCHwritten down the spine.
Well, she thinks, so much for finding a character name that hasn’t been used yet. She lets out a small, exasperated huff.
“Looking for something?” asks Cate, glancing up from the model.
“It’s just, when I walked past this room before and saw the walls of books, I thought they were byotherauthors. I didn’t realize it was just a thousand copies of his own.”
“Mad, isn’t it?” says Cate.
“Try narcissistic. Like, dude, do you evenreadother people’s books? Or do you literally onlyowncopies of the ones you wrote?”
“It’s pretty impressive, though. Having enough work to fill all these shelves. To see your name staring back at you from every single spine.”
“I guess,” says Millie, even though Cate’s right. It is impressive. But it’s also ridiculous. A grim reminder of the chasm between someone like her and someone like Arthur Fletch. Back when she was just starting out, like Cate, the sight probably would have inspired her. Now, it just feels like twisting the knife. “But like, wouldn’t you get bored? Like, oh, think I’ll grab something to read.” She plucks an Italian edition of the first Petrarch novel from a nearby shelf and flips through it with a groan. “God, even the paper quality is better.”
She tosses the book onto the leather chair and strolls up to the model, running her finger across the tiny roof tiles. “Nowthis, I can get behind.”
The model house is creepy, but it’s also impressive. No wonder it’s been given pride of place in the middle of the room. It sits mounted on a pedestal, a copper floor lamp arching over it, the unlit bulb like a sun that’s gone out. Up close, the detail is amazing.
Kenzo’s the one who mentioned that it was a perfect replica of the House That Petrarch Built. And like the house itself, the model’s full of secrets, like the hidden door to Fletch’s room.
She leans close, peering into the other chambers.
“Did you have a dollhouse, growing up?” asks Cate.
Millie laughs—not a funnyhahalaugh, but a short, sharphah no. “It wasn’t that kind of childhood,” she says. “What about you?”
“I had something that might have been a dollhouse, once. But by the time Mum salvaged it, it was more duct tape than plastic.” Cate shakes her head. “She used to say there had been an earthquake. That the house was even more impressive because it was still standing.”
Millie smiles. “Sounds like she was doing her best.”
Cate keeps her eyes on the miniature. “Perhaps.” There’s a lot of sadness in that word, and Millie can practically feel the girl’s thoughts sliding somewhere dark, so she says, “Hey. At least she tried.Mymom thought toys were earthly burdens that kept us from focusing on God.”
That does it. Cate looks up at her, her face torn between horror and shock. Millie makes a point of shrugging to show she’s over it and leans closer to the house, putting her face right up against the window of the room at the top that must be Fletch’s own. The one Jaxon insisted he saw someone standing in. But for all the tiny furniture and tiny weapons, tiny pictures on the walls and tiny pots in the kitchen and tiny pillows on the tiny beds, there are no tiny people. Not that she can see.
“Do you think it opens?” She glances at Cate. “I mean, it has to, right? How else did they get the pieces in?”
They spend the next few minutes searching for a clasp, and then Cate runs a hand along a miniature drainpipe, and the dollhouse lets out a soft click, one half swinging open. The two of them gasp in twin delight.
“No way,” breathes Millie.
Cate stares, eyes wide in childlike wonder as Millie reaches in, and runs a fingertip along the shelves of tiny books in the tiny library, its own tiny model sitting in the center. It reminds her of nesting dolls, like if she could see inside that tiny model, there would be another, even smaller.
Cate is examining Fletch’s office, where even the miniature safe has little red numbers on the front. But they’re painted on, permanently set to00:00:01. A single second away from opening.
Millie’s gaze drifts up to Fletch’s bedroom. The sloping roof, the papers scattered on the unmade bed, the rug askew. The infamous red hat, the one from all his author photos, hanging from a bedpost. And there’s the hidden staircase, running down from the third floor to her hall. Kenzo was right—on the model the door is clearly there, right between her room and Jaxon’s. There’s something else between the walls, but even with the model open, it’s too dark to make it out.
That must be what the lamp is for. Millie switches it on, and warm light spills onto the house, illuminating the rooms, casting shadows on the tiny furniture, falling through the stained-glass windows on the landing like late-afternoon sun.
She tries to move the light so she can angle it into the secret stairs, only to find it doesn’t move. The lamp has been mounted to the floor, the light angled just so.
“Huh,” Millie says as Cate crouches down, entranced by the way the multicolored light lands on the foyer floor, but her own attention keeps going to those stairs. Or rather, the spacebehindthem, the patch of shadow that looks at first like a solid wall, but on closer inspection turns out to be hollow.
