Indy wakes with the scent of campfire smoke still clinging to her hair. She stays where she is for a moment, blinking away that disorienting, bizarre sensation of waking in a bed in a room that isn't hers: the comforter against her shoulders dense like a weight, bright blue wall in front of her like something in a hospital or a daycare center.
She sits up. The guest room she's staying in also appears to double as a display room for the Mitchells' various travel trinkets, and the glass shelf across from her upon which they sit gleams dully in the grayish morning light. There's beach sand and seashell shards in tiny corked bottles. Snow globes and painted clay figures and bobblehead turtles and psychedelic scarves. A felt hand adorned with semi-precious rings and hand-woven bracelets, reaching up towards nothing. Mexico and Nigeria and Thailand and the U.K.âthey've touched almost every continent, and brought something back.
Indy listens for a moment, but hears no movement in the house, no floorboards creaking or voices speaking or water running. Her phone tells her it's barely past seven in the morning, and she should probably just go back to sleep.
She doesn't. She tugs a sweatshirt on over her pajamas and tiptoes to the hall bathroom to freshen up. Then she slips outside.
The backyard looks haunted. Thick gray fog hangs in the air like a curtain, clinging to the sparse birch trees from top to trunk. She can only see the trees just in front of her, at the beginning of the cobblestone path. The rest disappear as lanky, limbless shadows into the murk.
The grass is freshly cut and dewy, more gray than green beneath the obscured sun, the scent of it strong and sylvan. It squelches beneath Indy's shoes as she walks. A cool wind brushes across her face, but it's refreshing, like a bite of mint. Her mind's clear and the birds are singing, one long, trilling note over and over again.
Everything has suddenly become so real, as if Elizabeth Dobbs's words have sketched over it all, bolding every outline. Never before has a project ever meant this much to her, asked this much of her. She thinks of Percy in the attic, kneeling, pressing a band-aid over the cut in her leg. Is he right? Is all of this too much for her hands to hold?
She hears footsteps. Rapidâsomeone running. Apprehension tenses each one of her muscles, until she sees Percy, in basketball shorts and a T-shirt dark with sweat, earbuds tucked in his ears. He jogs through the mist, skidding to a stop when he notices her there.
"Jesus Christ, you scared the shit out of me," he says, popping one of his earbuds out, though he's still speaking louder than usual. "I thought you were some mythical bog woman for a second."
"You just came running out of an eerie cloud of fog, you realize that, right? If anyone's the mythical bog woman, it's you," Indy says, and Percy cackles at this. "What are you doing up so early?"
He shrugs. The words come out fast: "I didn't sleep well; I just needed to get up and move. You?"
Something similar, she supposes. Her desire to be awake had simply outweighed her desire to be asleep. "The guest room creeps me out," she says. "I don't think I like all the bobbleheads staring at me while I'm sleeping."
"You'll get used to it."
"Will I?"
"They're bobbleheads. They can't hurt you," Percy says, fanning himself with his shirt and starting forward againâthough walking now, gratefully. From here Indy can barely see the faded white brick of the house, the black shingles like the crest of a mountain just barely piercing through the fog. "Walk back with me? I'll see if I can find some coffee or something in the kitchen."
She falls into step next to him, and though she tries to keep her mind from wandering to the past, in a place like this she can't help it. She can't remember the last time she was here in the birch labyrinth of Percy's backyard, but she certainly knows it was long before now, when her biggest problems were mastering multiplication tables and picking out a training bra. They passed so many afternoons here, running barefoot until their hearts were thudding in their chests like living drums, hide and seek as weighty as war. She holds so much more understanding now. So much more space for perception. Sometimes she wishes she didn't.
Indy folds her arms, studying the way the wet grass folds underneath her boots with every step. "Do the Creightons still live around here?
"Who the hell are the Creightons?"
"The family with all the gerbils named after Transcendental poets. Their sons were both short but really good at basketball, and the daughterâEmmeline, I thinkâshe was our age but she was already a figure skating prodigy?"
Percy looks at her like she has lost her final marble. "I literally have no idea who you're talking about."
Indy frowns. She can picture them clearly, gerbils and all. Emmeline used to tie purple bows in her hair and drink sparkling water all the time. Indy hated Emmeline. "She played hide and seek back here with us sometimes," she says. "I guess it was a long time ago, though."
The cobblestone path deposits them beyond the thicket of trees and onto the back porch. The windows dotting the back of the house are still all dark, not one noise but the creak of their feet against the wooden steps, the swallows singing at the sun.
Percy smacks a mosquito on his wrist with a grimace. "I guess if they were still around, whoever they are, they'd probably be at this auction tonight, then."
Indy's still sleep-drowsy nerves buzz with excitement at the words, and she feels much more awake then. They might be commonplace to Percy and his brother, but Indy's never attended such a high profile event. Her mind wanders with everything that could go wrong and everything that could go right. She thinks of Dobbs's journal. She reminds herself why she's doing this.
"By the way," Percy goes on, shouldering open the door, old wood painted over thickly in white. "Tonight, it's better if you're..." He pauses, and Indy watches him frown, eyebrows working, before he sighs and turns away to head inside. Finally, he settles on: "Careful."
Indy makes a sound she hopes is as exasperated as she is. The door thwacks shut behind her. "You and Jude, both telling me that. What, has someone planted a bomb in the house, or something?"
The narrow hallway opens into the kitchenâone of the kitchens, at least, as the house is big enough to have both a main one and a side prep kitchenâwhere Percy stops and leans against the counter. "I sincerely hope not. I just mean, likeâmake sure you're being discreet, you know? The last thing we want is to draw attention to ourselves like that, or the next time Kelso comes by, I might not be able to do anything."
Indy smirks. "I'm not scared of that cop."
"Indy."
It's all he has to say. Indy tugs on a coil of her hair mindlessly; it springs right back into place. She nods her head.
Pleased, Percy turns around and stretches to grab a coffee tin from out of the cabinet. The edge of his shirt lifts as he does, the carved, narrow divot at the base of his back glistening with sweat. "Do you see Jude often, still?"
If she takes it apart, if she strips it of any and all context and looks at it objectively, it is a harmless sentence. Yet she senses the weight of it: a weight the tone of Percy's voice adds to it, like a warning.
Indy leans against the wall and fusses with a loose thread in her cardigan. She listens for a moment to the clinking of utensils as the scent of coffee rises in the air, warm and bitter and energizing. "From time to time, yeah. He reached out to me again lately. I think he still wants to help."
Percy scoops coffee into the machine in silence. He goes for a glass measuring cup and fills it with filtered water. He is not looking at her nor speaking to her.
Indy bristles with discomfort. "Oh my God, Percy, if you have something to say, just say it. You're killing me."
"I think you should stay away from him."
The words are audible, of course, as briskly spoken as they are. It just takes another moment for Indy to really hear them.
When she does, she chuckles in utter disbelief. "Why? Just because of the warehouse incident? That little cut on my leg?" She glances down at it now, where it's become nothing more than a scab. "Please, Perce, that won't even scar."
"No, it's notâ" Percy exhales and slams the coffee machine's on button with a little too much force. He shrinks away from it, away from her, pressing himself into the corner cabinets. "I mean, it is, I guess. Partially. But I justâI don't think he's being one hundred percent honest with you. I'm worried he has...I don't know. Bad intentions."
A floorboard creaks above them; there's movement upstairs. Indy is focused on Percy's face, the ever-so-slight pout to his mouth, the way his eyes keep avoiding hers. "I appreciate the concern," Indy says, "but I think I would know if there was something glaringly wrong. You're not the most perfect person either, Percy, and I still hang out with you."
"This isn't about me," Percy snaps. "This is about Jude. Gatz and I saw him hanging around some alleyway not too far from Dauphine. I think he might be...involved in some bad circles, if you know what I mean."
What Indy considers to be her generous patience is wearing thin. She crosses her arms. "I don't."
Percy's eyes are pleading. "Don't make me say it."
"I'm making you say it, Percy, because I really don't understand what you're getting at."
The coffee machine gurgles, steam filling the air, wiping past their faces, brushing along the side of Indy's cheek. Percy tries to sink again into his corner, but finds he can go no further.
"I think he might be using drugs," he says at last. "That's what worries me."
In the back of her head, she knows she shouldn't respond right away, that it is better to wait until the heat of the moment has cooled, until she has had a moment to think. But the accusation slices right into her and it stings, and she can't think. She can't think at all.
"Real mature, Percy," Indy says. "Now we're just making stupid assumptions? And besides, even if he was, would you really be one to judge?"
His brows tense towards each other, and he drags an open palm down his face before gripping the counter. "Would you justâ"
The coffee machine beeps loud and aggressive in the air, and before Percy and Indy can recover, Gatz comes swirling into the kitchen as if magically summoned by the noise.
"Percival, Indigo. You two sure are up early," they say, affecting a lackluster British accent which sounds like it's from everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. "Where can I get a mug in this place?"
Percy sighs and moves aside, gesturing at a glass cabinet where a set of uniform white porcelain mugs are on display. Gatz beams and grabs one, patting Percy's shoulder as they head straight for the coffee machine.
They watch Gatz pour their coffee in silence, and when Gatz turns, quickly look away againâat the floor, the wall, anywhere but at each other.
"God, the air in here is fucking weird." Gatz takes a very slow, intentional sip from the mug. "Indy. Can I steal you?"
"What?" Indy says. "Right now?"
"Yeah. It's important."
Gatz is looking at her like they're conveying some under-the-radar message she is meant to pick up. She's not sure she understands, but she accepts the correspondence anyway.
"Sure," she says. "Lead the way."
Before she follows Gatz from the kitchen and into the winding halls, she steals a surreptitious glance in Percy's direction. The words she's just said to him linger, leaving a bitter taste in her mouth, nausea in her stomach. Yet the look on his face as he turns towards the window is entirely placid, like armor she hasn't even begun to pierce.