Inside, she heard thunder.
She opened it hesitantly and peeked into its darkness. Unlike her first visit to the hallway, when she had relived a memory, this time, she was a spectator.
She was in the basement of a home she didn’t recognize, and a storm raged outside. A young person clutched what looked like a three-year-old Enne in her arms. As a toddler, Enne’s hair had been curlier, her eyes less wide set. She was red in the face from crying, scared by the storm.
The person shushed her softly. “Loddie has you. Loddie has you.” That was the name Enne had called Lourdes when she was little.
But this person was surely too young to be Lourdes, Enne thought, even though it was clearly her. That evening, her long blond hair was tied at the nape of her neck and braided down to her waist. She wore fluid clothes, but they didn’t fit her properly—it was a time before Lourdes had tailored all her outfits. Otherwise, her women’s clothes were always too short, her men’s always hanging or tight in the wrong areas. If Enne had to guess, Lourdes was about eighteen in this memory.
Neither the child nor Lourdes took any notice of Enne standing there, so she sat down next to her mother, curled her legs to her chest and listened with them to the storm.
Eventually, the toddler stopped whimpering and fell asleep. Lourdes leaned her head back against the wall, her face weary. She winced with every new crack of thunder and, eventually, also began to cry.
It was strange to see Lourdes like this. There was something rawer about her. In all Enne’s memories, Lourdes had never cried. Apparently, she hadn’t always been so reserved.
Tell me what happened, Enne wanted to say.Tell me your story.
But, of course, her mother couldn’t hear her.
Enne didn’t leave until Lourdes fell asleep. Then she slipped out and through the next black door in the hallway, eager for more forgotten time spent with her mother.
Except in this scene, Enne was alone. She was sixteen years old, and she wasn’t where she was supposed to be. She crept across the upstairs hallway in her nightgown, an unused lantern at her side. Last time she’d attempted this, Lourdes had discovered her in the act, and it had devolved into a shouting match—one of the first they’d ever had. But Lourdes was on another one of her trips to New Reynes, and Enne was alone in the house, except for the staff.
She knelt in front of Lourdes’s office door and pulled a pin from her hair.
It took nearly thirty minutes for her to pick the lock. She had no idea what she was doing, but the longer she sat there, fiddling, the more understanding she developed of the mechanisms. Finally, she heard the lock click, and she turned the knob and crawled into the room.
The office was stark, almost empty. She went for the desk first, yanking out drawers full of pencils and rubbish—Lourdes had always been impressively messy—searching for...something, anything to explain her mother’s business in the City of Sin. Enne turned on the lantern, heart pounding, and examined the bank slips in the cabinet.
The address on the papers was in New Reynes, but neither sixteen-year-old Enne nor the Enne peering over her shoulder recognized the address.
1089 Virtue Street, New Reynes.
The statement was dated from a few months ago—from Lourdes’s last trip to the city. And—both their eyes widened as they examined the document—it was for a bank account with a balance of over two hundred million volts.
Both of them gasped.
Memory Enne threw the papers back in the cabinet and slammed it closed, and the Enne who watched her remembered what she’d been thinking. It was wealth unlike that of anyone she knew, anything she’d ever heard of. Enne knew Lourdes had inherited money from her own mysterious family, but she’d never imagined anything like that.
The memory used to hold shame for Enne. This was the one time she had betrayed Lourdes’s trust and uncovered a secret she shouldn’t have known. But as her present self left the room and returned to the hallway, her guilt was gone. She wished she’d explored more of the office that night. Maybe she would have stumbled across another clue, something to help in the present search for her mother. Had Enne known any of the secrets she knew now, everything would be different. Enne would’ve journeyed to New Reynes sooner, or asked to go with Lourdes.
She found a new black door. It was the first one that wasn’t a memory.
The room smelled sweet. Enne stood facing a mirror. Below her, a joint of Mistress burned in an ashtray, its soot golden, matching her costume and the shimmery eyeshadow she wore. Enne’s boots were black, heeled and rose to midthigh. A garter belt snaked up her legs and disappeared underneath a corseted dress, which was sequined from navel to cleavage and crisscrossed in violet ribbon. The bust was strapless, meant to be removed more than admired. The feathers protruding from its bottom would do little to cover her if she bent over.
Still, it was hard to feel exposed when there was no one here but her. She shuffled through the cosmetic products on the counter, then reached for a sweet-smelling perfume and a lipstick black as licorice.
She examined herself in the mirror. No one would call her a doll in this outfit.
Or much of a lady.
She smiled to herself. There was no one but her to know. After all—this was only a dream.
Jazzy music played outside, and she followed it to the stage. The lights were too bright to see into the audience, if there was anyone there at all. She remembered Demi’s routine with a mixture of embarrassment and thrill. Without the leering eyes of anyone watching her, she felt powerful in these clothes. Attractive. If the world were a different sort of place, she might trim off the feathers and wear it for fun.
She danced alone on the stage. Nothing suggestive...at first. It took a few minutes for her to decide such a style would be fun to try. She unlaced the ribbons on her corset.
Several minutes into the routine, she became aware of the fact that she was no longer dreaming. Her head was pressed against the pillow. Her nightdress was twisted around her stomach, her feet dangling off the edge of the bed. But she wasn’t done exploring the dream just yet, so she didn’t open her eyes.
