Success through sheer proximity.
Malcolm had dragged a stool across the bar, and the sound of those metal feet on the tiles made Sienna want to disappear.
Fletch had patted Malcolm’s arm in an indulgent way, but his eyes had lingered on Sienna as he spoke.
No, Arthur Fletch probably wouldn’t know Malcolm Buchanan from a sack of sand.
And yet, he did invite them here. So maybe, she thinks with a little thrill, maybe he rememberedher.
“Assistant?!” The girl blinks slowly, then suddenly laughs. “Ha! No! I’m Millie Mitchell!”
Malcolm’s brow furrows. “Right...”
“The Queendom of Solace trilogy? It’s YA?”
Malcolm nods, but Sienna can tell he’s not following. Millie stops bouncing. Her smile flickers, just a little. “Young adult?” she adds helpfully, pulling the tie from her hair, shaking it loose, and then immediately putting it up again, leaving it exactly as it was before—a gesture Sienna instantly decides to pocket for a future character.
“Oh, you write for children?” she says. “How delightful!”
Millie’s head bobbles on her shoulders. “Well, teens... but a lot of my readers are actually in their twenties and thirties, so it’s really more of a marketing category than a qualifier...” She smiles conspiratorially at Sienna. “Young is totally just a mindset, right?”
“Totally,” Sienna says coolly.
Malcolm’s still frowning, and she can practically see the gears turning in his head as he tries to work out how Millie Mitchell has scored an invite to this salon. Not that Sienna isn’t wondering the same thing, but she has the tact to keep it off her face. For all they know, Millie Mitchell has sold ten times the number of books as Penn Stonely.
The thought sparks a tiny, bitter flicker in her chest, but she douses it.
“Come on in,” Millie’s saying, swinging the door wide, gesturing to the hall beyond as if it’s hers. Sienna gets a single, fleeting glance of the massive staircase at her back before Millie snags her hand and pulls her through, linking their arms like old friends.
Malcolm puts the bags down, adding to a pile of mismatched luggage against the wall. A black duffle slumps between a designer weekend bag and a fuchsia hard-case she’s already decided belongs to Millie, until she spots the sky-blue roller bag covered in stickers with things likeHe’s a 10 but he’s fictional!and #BookBoss.
“I’d give you a tour,” declares Millie, “but I haven’t had one yet. Apparently Fletch’s office is this way, and there’s a library with a super creepy dollhouse throughthatdoor—”
Sienna glimpses the room in question, the shelves full of books and the dollhouse, which actually looks like a small model of the castle, perched on a stand in the center of the room.
Sienna tries to veer toward it, but Millie doesn’t let go.
“Oh,” she continues, not even stopping to draw breath, “and I listened to a podcast about famous authors with haunted houses and Skelbrae was on there, but I think places like this justlookhaunted, you know?”
She stops long enough to take a breath before plunging on.
“You’re notthatlate. I was just about to suggest a little icebreaker, guessing what genres everyone writes... Oh! But I’ve already told you mine! Oops... You won’t tell the others, will you?”
Sienna says, “No, of course not,” but she isn’t really listening. She’s still taking in the large foyer, the ceiling vaulted like a church, the walls to either side covered in trophies and studded with doors leading to various corners of the house.
Straight in front of them sits a polished table with a centerpiece made entirely of interlocking antlers. A giant bone bouquet.
“Gross, isn’t it?” chirps Millie, reaching out to tap a sharpened point with a painted nail. Sienna looks past it to the grand stone staircase sweeping upward, the steps worn smooth by centuries of feet. Halfway to the top it branches like a tree into two smaller staircases that twist out of sight. On the landing before the split sits an antique bronze gong, as tall as Malcolm.
Sienna represses the childish urge to dash up the steps and strike it.
But then her attention goes past it, to the window over the landing.
A massive roundel of stained glass, like a cathedral rose. There’s an image in it, slivers of yellow and green and blue light coalescing not into a saint or a biblical scene but a portrait of Julia Petrarch herself, with her famous red bob and her black jacket, hands cupping a golden book and head cocked the way it always is in the books, right before she solves a murder.
The House that Petrarch Built indeed.
Millie leads them toward an open door in the far corner of the foyer, next to a display of medieval-looking weapons.
