This was the product of several examinations of the document, the family poring over every page as a group, picking apart the word choice, turning their minds to how they might take advantage. They’d debated it, brainstormed, and collaborated. Then they’d gone to the beginning and done it all over again, with a fresh set of eyes, maybe different people reading it.
Reading it thoroughly, front to pack, notes included, I could imagine what a chore that had been.
It would have been heartwarming that they’d made the effort as a collective, if it weren’t for the fact that they were doing it to screw a fellow family member over.
I saw a shadow move across the hallway. It came from the staircase, and I didn’t have a vantage point to see.
I headed upstairs, bringing the paperwork with me, thumb as a placeholder.
I caught a glimpse of Ellie on the staircase. Heading further up.
The ‘fourth floor’ was only one room. The ‘tower’ with the Barber dwelling in a circle.
Tense, I headed down to the ground floor, looking for some window I could use to communicate with Alexis.
Nothing. No window I could peer through gave me a view of Alexis. There was only Peter, walking as far away from the house as he could get without walking on a slope, treading a circle around the property.
I headed back up, straight to the third floor. There was the mirror in the hidden library, but there were so many ways that could go wrong. What was to say Rose hadn’t set a trap around it?
I’d break a window.
I was in the process of drawing the Hyena when Ellie reappeared.
Too fast a reappearance. Either the door was locked, or there was some other deterrent in play.
Fuck me. It was too dangerous to have someone wandering around.
She moved down the length of the hallway, passing me, checking every room. Satisfied that she was unobserved, she moved quickly through each room.
As she got closer to me again, operating in a room opposite a picture frame, I was able to watch her work. She opened the topmost drawers of a dresser, lifting up socks, bras and underwear in a variety of muted colors – blacks, beiges, whites and grays. Tiff’s or Alexis’, I imagined, since Rose was making do with whatever she could use of Grandmother’s stuff. Ellie retrieved a sealable freezer bag filled with jewelry from one back corner. It disappeared into her backpack.
She turned her attention to the top of the dresser – pill bottles were checked. Two bottles disappeared. She opened little boxes and kits on top of the dresser, finding more jewelry, bracelets she held up to the light, before stuffing them into a sock and slipping the sock in her bag. The now-empty box went back onto the top of the dresser.
Another box was opened, flatter, once a shiny black, now worn in places.
I recognized the old fashioned tattoo machine that Ellie held up. One of the ones, if I remembered right, that Alexis had considered making into her implement. As far as I knew, she hadn’t gone ahead with it, but it was something she put a lot of sentimental value into. One had been a birthday present from me to Alexis, a thank-you for the work she’d done on my arms. Others had been birthday presents she’d given to herself, bought at a time when she’d had to scrimp and save for weeks to get a few hundreds of dollars together to make the purchase possible.
Ellie slipped it into her bag. The box went back where it had been.
Two more boxes checked, nothing taken. She put everything that remained into the position they had been before she’d raided it. More or less.
She stepped out into the hallway, then paused.
Listening.
I reached up, and I knocked on the picture frame.
I could see her startle. I could feel the fear that simple action provoked.
Good.
I knocked again.
She spun around, looking to the end of the hallway.
Somehow, she managed to convince herself it was nothing. She disappeared into the next room.
A phone, plugged into the outlet by the bed, was slipped into one pocket, quickly enough it could have been an unconscious maneuver.
A box was pulled out of a luggage suitcase and opened- revealing a set of home-made knives.
Ty’s stuff.
Box shut. The box with the knives included were slipped into the bag. It rattled. She paused, grabbing a set of socks, and stuffed them in, jostling the bag.
Not a cat burglar by any stretch of the imagination, but she’d done this before.
I held my tongue and kept to watching as she went through everything, a kind of rage simmering within me.
Ty’s room took only a minute.
She headed down to the second floor. Same pattern. She checked every room first. This time, however, she was interrupted. Stepping out of what would’ve been Rose’s room, she found herself face to face with Alexis, who was heading up the stairs.
“Can I help you?” Alexis asked.
“Which room am I sleeping in? Want to drop off my shit,” Ellie said.
“Beds are all taken,” Alexis said. “If you want to stay here tonight, you’re staying in the living room.”
“Whatever,” Ellie said. She brushed past Alexis as she headed downstairs.
Alexis went up to the third floor. I considered following her, but something held me back.
Some people put a lot of stock in the better part of human nature.
I believed in the worse parts of Thorburn nature.
Ellie reappeared, not fifteen seconds after Alexis had gone upstairs. She started doing another quick check of each room. She didn’t enter the rooms, but she definitely looked.
Right.
I headed upstairs, just in time to find Alexis entering the library.
“Alexis,” I said.
She jumped.
“Christ,” she said.
“Do me a favor? Hold the door for me, and move that mirror out of the circle? I’ll update you when I’m back.”
She frowned a bit. “If they find this place-”
“I’ve got your back. Please?”
She offered me a little nod.
I returned to Ellie. From the mirror atop Rose’s dresser, once grandmother’s dresser, I had a view of Ellie as she collected antique brooches, pins, earrings, necklaces, and other old fashioned jewelry. I lurked to one side, so I wouldn’t be right in front of her. When I’d spoken and moved before, I’d drawn attention. They probably didn’t have a clear view of me, but they could see glimmers.
I moved to the bedroom window. I knocked, sharp.
She spun around.
I was already back in the mirror atop the dresser.
She didn’t look in the mirror as she resumed her looting.
I refocused my attention. I let the bag she was piling the stuff into be reflected into my space.
Reaching into my chest, I found a spirit. It almost quivered with anticipation, sensing the emotion. Feeding on it, even.
The bird fluttered a little as I shoved it into my version of the bag.
“Bonds of sympathy,” I whispered. “I bind like to like.”
Ellie stepped back, walking around to the door, peering through to make sure she didn’t have company.
She was working faster when she returned to work.
“Both contain the stolen belongings of Alexis. Both contain the stolen belongings of Ty. Both contain the stolen belongings of Rose,” I whispered.
I saw her pause again, looking up.
I felt the connection. I wiggled the bag.
“I do this,” I spoke to the spirits, “In retribution for actions against me and mine by Ellie Thorburn.”
Ellie fidgeted a bit, gripping the strap of her bag a little tighter.
Did she feel the sentiment.
She reacted, as her bag moved, looking down.
“Ellie!” I screamed the word, slamming my hands against the mirror, face thrust forward, eyes wide and teeth bared.