Harper again glanced at the silhouetted figure still visible in the upstairs window. If that wasn’t Delilah Mason, the owner of the house, then who was standing there, looking down at them?
“Tariq! Wait!” she called out.
But it was too late. Tariq had been swallowed up by the black void of the mansion’s open door.
Harper looked toward the street, hoping to spy the flashing lights of an approaching police car or ambulance. Nothing yet.
She could not let Tariq face a potential murderer alone.
“You’ll stay with her?” Harper asked Lamont. He nodded.
She ran toward the house, through the open door, and paused in the dark foyer.
“Tariq?”
The house was cloaked in shadows, lit only by the hazy light sifting in through the windows from the streetlamps and the garden lights. She groped for a light switch and turned it on.
Something was staring at her.
She jumped back, startled by a taxidermied raccoon in a wall niche. It was dressed as a cowboy, with a red scarf around its neck and a miniature Stetson on its head.
Harper took a deep breath and willed her heart to stop pounding.
The mansion’s ceilings were low, the adobe walls thick. The interiors had been sculpted from adobe and stucco, creating benches, inset niches, and organically shaped built-in shelves emerging from corners. The main hallway opened onto large rooms on either side of the front door. She poked her head into a crowded living room. The cowboy raccoon was just the start of the oddities: The house was chock-full of tchotchkes, collectibles, and curios of all sorts. Glass-fronted wooden cases were jammed not only with books but numerous jars and assorted figurines. A paint-stained wooden easel stood in the center of the room, and colorful paintings and half-finished canvases were scattered throughout, leaning against walls and furniture. A huge fireplace was crowned by an ornate, gilt-framed antique mirror that had been draped in a gray shroud.
“Tariq?” she called again. There was no response, but she heard a muffled screeching sound overhead, as if a chair were being dragged across the thick wooden planks of the floor. What was he doing up there?
Hurrying down the hall to the stairwell, Harper started up.
As soon as her foot hit the third step, she started to feelstrange. Dizzy. Confused. She thought she was mounting the stairs, and yet when she looked down, her feet were not moving. The walls began undulating, the stairwell growing thinner then thicker on either side of her, as if the walls were breathing. She grabbed for the wooden banister, gripping the rail, worn smooth and slick over the centuries, like a lifeline.
She heard faraway music in her head: a soaring requiem for the dead.
Harper paused, closed her eyes, and tried to regulate her breathing.I must be more affected by the shock than I realized.
The welcome sound of sirens approaching outside indicated that help was on its way.
“Tariq?The police are almost here!”
Still no response. Then she heard something behind her. A barely-there rustling. Tariq must be downstairs after all.
At least…shehopedit was Tariq. Why wasn’t he answering her?
With effort, Harper made her way back down the few steps and into the hallway. As soon as she stepped off the stairs, she felt more herself.
Another muted rustling sound. It seemed to be coming from the living room / art space. Picking up a heavy ceramic bust to use as a weapon—just in case—she stepped in, her eyes darting about, but the large room appeared just as before: cluttered with objects but nary a soul. Two doorways on the other side of the room led to other hallways or rooms. How deeply into the bowels of this mansion did she dare to venture?
Out of the corner of her eye she spotted something move and whirled around. What was it? She saw nothing now, but…there was something about that shrouded mirror over the fireplace. Swallowing hard, she approached slowly, reached out to lift the shroud, and—
“Boo.”
She jumped, whirled around again, and punched Tariq in the chest.
“Jackass!” Harper said, her heart racing. “Wherewereyou? And where did you come from?”
“Came through the back. There’s a servants’ stair that leads off that little hallway.”
“Did you see anyone upstairs?”
