“All the more reason not to provoke her.”
“There wasn’t another way. We needed him, we needed that”—Zachary can see part of Mirabel’s arm move as she indicates something across the room but he cannot see what—“and the book has been returned. You’ve given up, haven’t you?”
The pause goes on so long that Zachary wonders if the office has another door that Mirabel might have left through but then the Keeper’s voice breaks the silence, his tone changed, his voice lower.
“I don’t want to lose you again.”
Surprised, Zachary moves and his sliver of visible room fragment shifts.
The curve of Mirabel’s back as she sits on the corner of the desk, facing away from him. The Keeper standing, his hand reaching out and sliding over her neck and shoulder, slipping the sleeve of her dress down as he moves closer, brushing his lips against the newly bared skin.
“Maybe this time will be different,” Mirabel says softly.
The ginger cat meows in the direction of the door and Zachary turns away and walks quickly down the closest hall, continuing until he’s certain no one has followed, wondering at how easy it is to miss things even when they’re happening right in front of you.
He turns and looks over his shoulder and there in the middle of the hallway is his squish-faced Persian friend.
“Do you want to keep me company?” Zachary asks and the request sounds sad. Part of him wants to go back to his own bed and part of him wants to go curl up in a chair next to Dorian and another part of him doesn’t know what he wants.
The Persian cat stretches and approaches and stops by Zachary’s feet. It looks up at him expectantly.
“Okay then,” Zachary says and with the cat by his side he winds his way through halls and rooms filled with other people’s stories until they reach the garden filled with sculptures.
“I think I figured it out,” Zachary tells the cat. The cat does not reply, preoccupied with the inspection of a statue of a fox about its own size frozen mid-leap, its multiple tails sweeping down along the ground.
Zachary turns his attention to a different statue.
He stands in front of the seated woman with her multitude of bees and wonders who sculpted her. Wonders how many corners of this place her bees have wandered off to, placed in pockets or assisted in their journeys by cats.
He wonders if anyone ever looked at her and thought she wanted something other than a book in her open palms.
Wonders if she ever had a crown.
Wonders who left her that glass of wine.
Zachary places the golden key from Mirabel’s necklace in the statue’s right hand.
He puts his plastic hotel key card in her left hand.
Nothing happens.
Zachary sighs.
He is about to ask the cat if it is hungry and is questioning how firm the “don’t feed the cats” rule might be when the buzzing starts.
It comes from within the statue. A buzzing, humming sound.
The woman’s stone fingers begin to move, curling closed over the keys. A single bee tumbles from her arm and onto the floor.
There is a scraping sound, followed by a heavy mechanical thunk.
But the statue, keys clasped in her hands, does not move again.
Zachary reaches out and touches her hand. It is closed around the key as though it had been carved that way.
Nothing else has changed, but there was the noise.
Zachary walks around the statue.