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“The closet,” I say.
The coat closet is choked with fur and moth-eaten wool. We kick out the boxes at the bottom and squeeze ourselves inside. The only way to fit without pressing against the door is to duck under the bar holding up the hangers and let that wedge me in. The rod bangs into my arm, and Lila comes in after me, closing the door. Then she’s pressed against my sore ribs, breathing in short rapid gasps. Her breath is warm against my throat.
I can’t see her, just slivers of lights along the outline of the door. One of my mother’s mink collars brushes my chin, and there’s a faint trace of perfume.
I hear the front door open and then Philip’s voice call, “Cassel? Grandad?”
Automatically I make a sudden movement. It’s just a reflex, not much but it makes Lila grab my arms and dig her fingers into my biceps.
“Shhhhh,” she says.
“You be quiet,” I whisper back. I’ve grabbed hold of her shoulders without consciously deciding to, a mirror of her gesture. In the dark she’s a phantom. Not real. Her shoulders are trembling slightly, vibrating under my hands.
Both our hands are bare. It’s shocking.
She’s leaning forward.
Then her mouth is sliding against mine. Her lips open, soft and yielding. Our teeth click together, and this is the kiss I fantasized about when I was fourteen, and even later than that, when I knew it was sick and wrong and horrible to desire the girl I murdered. Every kiss I ever gave or took was shadowed by her presence, so the real thing catches me wholly off guard. My shoulders press against the wall. I reach out with one hand to steady myself, gripping the wool shoulder of a coat so hard I can feel the ancient cloth rip.
She bites my tongue.
“He’s not here,” Barron says. “The car’s gone.”
Lila turns away from me abruptly, tilting her neck so that her hair is in my face.
“What do you think he said to Grandad?” Philip asks.
“Nothing,” Barron says. “You’re overreacting.”
“You didn’t hear him on the phone,” says Philip. “He remembered—I don’t know what. Enough to know someone had been working him.”
Something crunches under one of their feet. Considering all the stuff scattered on the floor, it could be anything. “He’s a smart-ass. You’re just being paranoid.”
Lila’s breath is hot on my neck.
Footfalls on the stairs tell me they’re going to look for me up there.
We’re so close that it’s impossible not to touch her. And that makes me recall that she must have been touching me to make me dream.
“That night, at Wallingford—were you in the room with me?” I whisper.
“They needed me to get you,” she says. “To make you sleepwalk out to them. I made lots of people sleepwalk right into their hands.”
I picture a white shape on the steps, the hall master’s dog starting to bark before she made the dog dream too.
“Why did you kiss me?” I ask her, keeping my voice low.
“To shut you up,” she says. “Why do you think?”
We’re silent for a moment. Above us I can hear my brothers walking across the creaking boards. I wonder if they’re in their old bedrooms. I wonder if they’re in my bedroom, going through my things like I went through Barron’s.
“Thanks,” I say, finally, sarcastically. My heart is beating like a rattle.
“You don’t remember any of it, do you? I figured that part out. Barron told me that you laughed when he told you I was in a cage, but you didn’t laugh, did you?”
“Of course I didn’t,” I say. “No one told me you were alive.”
She gives a weird short, gurgling laugh. “How did you think I died?” I think of the cage and of her being there for the last three years. How that could drive anyone crazy. Not that she seems crazier than anyone else. Me, for instance.
