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The simplicity of it strikes harder than it should. I look back at the map, at the marked exits, all the notes in Alcott’s precise hand. Lazarus’s more dramatic additions in the margins. They have not built a cage around my fear, they have built doors into the hunt. Ways out, ways through and ways back all for me. With me. My family. My monsters.

I reach for the map and my hand no longer trembles. “Show me everything.”

Lazarus’s smile is slow and beautiful. “With pleasure.”

PART IV – Love Hurts More Than Death

51. Polar Bears Are White – Olive

Left for Good

Thirty years later

The fire whispers in the library hearth.

I sit beside it in a velvet chair that has molded itself to my bones over the years. I hold a book open in my lap, with an accompanied wool blanket tucked over my knees. Outside the tall windows, the leaves rustle and the sun peaks through the glass in golden threads. Beyond the gardens, the old trees sway as though gossiping with the storm.

The library smells of leather, smoke, old paper, and Lazarus. It has always smelled of Lazarus. Even now. Even after all these years, the room holds him in its shelves, in its shadows, in the strange little objects he collected and refused to explain. A silver compass that points nowhere. A cracked porcelain swan. A skull carved from black stone and six editions of the same dreadful poetry book because, according to him, each one suffered differently.

I turn the page and the words blur.

I blink, but they do not clear.

How strange.

I lift the book closer, then farther away, then close again.

The letters shift like insects. A faint irritation prickles beneath my skin.

“Ridiculous,” I mutter.

The fire pops and my body jerks. The book slides from my lap and lands on the rug with a soft thud. For a moment, I do not move.

The room is wrong.

No. Not wrong. Unfamiliar.

The shelves rise too high. The ceiling is too dark.

Where am I? My heart begins to pound as I grip the arms of the chair, leather beneath my palms.

A fire. Books. Night. A house I do not know.

No. No, I know this house. Do I?

My breath catches.

Then there are footsteps in the hall. Slow and careful, as a shadow moves beyond the doorway. Every part of me goes cold and I push myself from the chair, too fast, as pain lances through my hip. The blanket tangles around my legs and I kick it away, searching the table beside me with trembling hands.

A letter opener. That is sharp enough.

The man enters the library. He is tall. Broad-shouldered. Dark shape against the low hall light, though I cannot see his face.

“Stay back,” I say.

My voice is older than I expect. Thin and ragged, it does not feel like mine.

The man stops immediately, with both hands lift with empty palms.