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“There ain’t one.”

“Then perhaps I could eat in the pub?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Are you asking for more of my mother’s company?”

I shivered delicately. “I think she threatened to shoot me.”

He grinned. “Not to worry. She’d like to shoot just about everyone.”

This didn’t seem any less worrisome. “I’ll say goodnight then.” I turned toward the stairs.

“Sam will be up soon to keep watch,” he said, and I tried not to hear it as a punishment. “Do me the honor of not threatenin’ to bury him?”

My lips twitched.

“You’ll be meeting Margarite tomorrow,” he continued. “Seven sharp. I’ll have Sam wake you and escort you downstairs.”

I turned, my foot already on the first step. “Who is Margarite?” I asked.

He didn’t answer right away. Rather, our eyes caught on each other’s, and there was a long pause. Prismatic blue shifted, melted. A jump along his jaw. I wondered if there was something in his middle that cracked and spilled out, as it did in mine. “You’ll see,” he said.

Keep your pretty eyes where they ought to be—on those far-off lands.

“Good night, Patrick,” I said again.

“Night, Scurry girl.”

Twelve flights of stairs to the top, where Sam’s wooden stool sat empty and waiting. I thought of his mother, red-faced and furious in the teahouse. I thought of his father, buried in an abandoned tunnel.

Guilt filled me, and I silently vowed to be kinder to Sam when I next broke free of my room.

But for tonight, I only wanted sleep. I wanted cherry blossom wallpaper and a swollen ceiling. A long stretch of heavy quiet. One day in public among the kind of noise I’d craved, and already I was spent.

I walked past door thirteen, with door fifteen looming invitingly, just out of reach.

But door fourteen opened on the right as I passed it, creaking on its neglected hinges. The room’s occupant stepped out, tall and wide-eyed. He froze at the sight of me.

“Nina?” he said.

“Theo,” I whispered.

Only I wasn’t sure the name ever truly left my lips.

CHAPTER 26PATRICK

Donny and Gunner awaited him in the pub, and the brothers left without another lick of whiskey.

“Come on, boys,” Patrick muttered, heading straight for the door. “It’s been a long day.”

They walked along brightly lit Main Street until they reached the first canal, then followed it downstream, not stopping until the rooftops shrunk and the pasture peeked over the tiles.

Ferris Manly was asleep, face down in his straw cot, beside horses of a pedigree far above his own.

He reeked of liquor and horse shit. A half-empty bottle had fallen from his hand and spilled out onto the hay. His face resembled pulp.

“Look at this sorry lump, eh?” Gunner said, dragging on his cigarette. “Took me a case of single malt to get him this fuckin’ job.”

Patrick shared his indignation. On occasions like this, he wondered if it wouldn’t be more efficient to just rid the world of men with Ferris’s character than entertain fantasies of righting the ship.