Passing through theliving room, I can see June working in the brightly lit kitchen. She’s kneading dough on a large marble board.
I tiptoe into the mudroom by going outside and around, coming in through the screen door. She could hear me while I get the keys, but Ihaveto go to Bone Tower when she’s not in it. She hasn’tleft the property in more than two weeks, so when she’s baking is the only time I can be sure she’s not there.
There’s a thump of dough on her marble board. A clatter that sounds like ceramic bowls.
The hiss of the teapot. The pop of the fridge door opening.
I take the keys from theSpoils of Warbox and check on June by peeking through the windowed door that leads from the mudroom to the kitchen. She’s eating a bowl of granola and reading a book. Dough is rising in a large bowl next to her.
In the living room, I’m hardly breathing. There’s no music, no podcast, no sound to distract her from the sound of my key in the tower lock, so I wait for June to start moving again.
After what seems like hours, I hear the clank of dishes and she begins running water in the sink. I try the keys with shaking hands.
The fifth key turns in the lock.
I hustle through and close the door behind me, draw a deep breath and turn on my flashlight.
On the ground floor of Bone Tower are storage rooms full of Kingsley’s paintings. There must be at least fifty in each room. They stand in enormous wooden racks.
The second floor houses two rooms that must be June’s workshops. One has a sewing machine and bolts of fabric, rolls of indigo yarn. There are a number of looms, and the walls are hung with complicated weavings. The other room is more of a laboratory. Herbs are drying in the windows and growing in pots. Several hot plates are plugged in. A thousand brown tincture bottles.
Third floor, instead of two rooms and a bathroom like on the others, there is only a single door. This door is locked and bolted, but I try my keys. Eventually, one turns and I shoot the bolt.
It’s Kingsley’s studio, and it occupies two stories. A spiral staircase goes from the third floor to the fourth. Tall windows look out to the black of the sea. It smells of paint and turpentine, and beneath that, something earthier. Sweat.
The floor is covered by a canvas tarp. In the beam of my flashlight, I make out a large easel at the far end of the room. The walls near me are lined with canvases—some painted, some raw, some large and others small.
I take a risk and switch on a lamp that stands near the door.
I am surrounded by near-finished paintings.
One of them is of me.
52
The canvas isabout four feet tall and it leans against the wall. Its title is written on masking tape attached to the thin top edge:Melinoe, Bringer of Madness.
Meh-lih-no-eh. That’s what Kingsley called me in my dream. When I dreamed he’d come home to Hidden Beach.
—
InMelinoe, Bringer of Madness
I sleep with my hair spread out across my pillow. Larger than life.
I lie on a bed of indigo-dyed linens atop an ancient-looking ironwork four-poster.
I wear my UC Irvine sweatshirt.
Underneath my bed are
goblins and gargoyles, the creatures I saw in Kingsley’s sketchbook.
They are fearsome small beasties,
a thousand of them, crushed together beneath the bed frame,
crawling on each other and clambering,
