“Yes,” he said. “That’s what I said.”
There was a long pause. Clearly, he wasn’t going to say any more on the subject. Not for now, at least.
“Well,” I said, taking up his empty plate. “Good night, then.”
“Good night,” he echoed.
9
Eventually, the pace of new rooms appeared to slow down. New doors appeared like cards shuffled and dealt, but when I turned the handles, they opened into an unsettling void, without even the pretense of reality. The House was running out of ideas, I suppose.
I was a little pleased with myself, I have to say, that I was exhausting it so quickly with my sheer determination. If I had sat and thought about my predicament too long, I would have started to fret, and so constant motion was my solution, whether cooking up a storm in the kitchen or stomping about the House and trying to run it ragged with sheer force of will.
“You must know every inch of this place, surely,” I said to Cornelius. “There must be some other place I can look.”
He gave his ear a quick wash. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “The House moves about a lot, as you can see. Changes shape. Even I haven’t seen all of it. Gets me feeling queasy, sometimes, and then I have to get away for a bit.”
“Get away outside?” I asked. “I thought you said you couldn’t get out?”
“Notoutside,” he said, as though I were an idiot for suggesting it. “To the Other House.”
I stared at him. “You’ve been watching me ransack this place for days and only now tell me that there’sanotherHouse? Where?”
“It’s not any use to you,” he told me. “I can go in and out as I please, but I’ve never seen him do it. It’s not magical, you see. It’s what used to be here, before he moved in, and this other black place grew up around him and shoved the old place out of the way. It’s always the way with these magic people. Cats can go back and forth between such places, but I don’t know if humans can.”
“I have to at least try. Maybe he’s stashing my heart there somehow.”
“I’ve never seen such a thing there. And I told you, it’s not magical.”
“Please, Cornelius. At least show me how you do it.”
He gave his funny cat shrug that I was coming to recognize. “No skin off my nose,” he said, and vanished. I jumped back at the shock of it. Then he seemed to wink back into existence, his tail lashing.
“See?” he said, as if it should all be perfectly obvious now.
“How did you do that?” I cried.
“You have to sort ofthink sideways,” he said.
I closed my eyes and concentrated, feeling foolish. For a moment, I thought I had it. The world slipped out beneath me as if someone had pulled a rug from under my feet, and I tripped and fell into somewhere dim and dank, with dust swirling about me. Then it was gone, my stomach lurched, and I was back in the black belly of the House.
I tried again, ignoring the rising nausea, and thought for a second it might have worked, but I opened my eyes to find that nothing had changed. I sank to the floor, my magic-made skirts settling around me like the petals of a dark flower, and put my face in my hands. After a moment, I felt a cold, damp nudge on my elbow, and then a shiver of soft fur, as Cornelius tried to comfort me.
“It’s all right,” he purred. “I told you I didn’t think humans could do it.”
“I don’t know where else to look,” I said, knuckling my eyes roughly to discourage any tears from falling. “I could search this place forever, and open a thousand doors, and not find a thing. I might as well be wandering the inside of hishead, if what you tell me about the House is true. And he’ll never give up his secrets.”
Cursed at birth, and now cursed to love a sorcerer who saw me as a sort of sentient household appliance.
“Cheer up,” said Cornelius. “It’s not so bad here.”
But he didn’t know what I had left behind.
I went to deliver lunch to the sorcerer as usual. Perhaps I could ask him more questions and find out something about my heart that way, without tipping my hand overmuch. Once the door to the throne room creaked open for me, however, I saw that it was empty, save for his throne. Where was he? I backed out, keeping the tray steady, and stood at a loss.
I noticed that the House seemed to be twitching a little underfoot. It wasn’t quite forcing me to walk in a certain direction but was definitely encouraging it. If it had been a person, it would have been winking and jerking its head meaningfully.
“Fat chance,” I told it. “I’m leaving his lunch here, and if it goes cold, that’s his own fault.”
