Chapter Text
“‘The air is sweet and heavy with the perfume of magnolias, but the great, black door of Menagerie Manor seems like the entrance to an underworld. Somewhere within is the lady of the house, the elusive woman in black: Blake Belladonna.’”
Yang chuckled softly and shook her head. “Damn good hook, but the rest of that article is bullshit, Rubes.”
Ruby chewed her toast and looked thoughtful as her eyes flickered across her phone screen. “Still, your new boss seems to have some kind of a…troubled past.”
Who doesn’t? Yang found herself thumbing the puckered ring-shaped scar on her bicep without meaning to. She dropped her hand down onto the smudged kitchen table. “Not my boss yet, sis. I still have the interview.”
Ruby took a gulp of her coffee and looked uncharacteristically grave. It was almost funny to look at, that dark expression on Yang’s baby sister, a girl who always put spiders outside and forbid anyone from squishing them. A girl who took her coffee exclusively with milk and five sugars. “Um, do you think she really did it? Do you think she really”—Ruby whispered it around her hand as if there might be someone else listening—“killed that guy?”
Why did a chill run up her spine then, even though she knew better? Even though she knew all of it was pure sensationalism? “Ruby, come on. Give that a rest.”
By now, Yang was pretty used to being the small town scandal, so the fact that it was someone else now who had become the center of that kind of attention felt a little strange.
As it happened, Blake Belladonna was the only one who would give Yang a damn interview. Blake Belladonna had some kind of personal history that made her a highly thorny subject in the town of Remnant, South Carolina. Blake Belladonna was a politician’s daughter, well-to-do but these days rarely seen. And she may or she may not have murdered her fiancé one night two years ago. Officially, it was an accident, but no one really seemed to believe that. Maybe it was because the truth was never as electrifying or as glamorous as a good murder mystery.
It was then that clock above the hallway mirror finally came into focus.
“Shit. Shit, is it really that late?” Yang swiped the keys to the truck and the other half of Ruby’s toast on her way to the door.
“Don’t get murdered your first day on the job!” Ruby called.
Distantly, Yang recalled the picture at the top of the article. The black sweep of hair and the proud set of that goddamn gorgeous mouth. She remembered the eyes most vividly, golden and wary like a cat’s. The door slammed shut behind her. “She can murder me any day she likes.”
~
She’d missed the sunshine in that simple, desperate way that you missed home when you’d been away for a while. And Yang had been away, for a while. She’d missed Ruby’s graduation. And three birthdays.
And she’d also missed the feeling of sunshine, even if the summer months brought with them a distinctive swamp-weather—that leaden wetness in the air. But Yang could only feel human in the sunlight, in the grass, in the driver’s seat of her father’s old truck. Hell, she’d missed the old country station, too. Patsy Cline. Johnny Cash. Especially Johnny. A familiar trumpet intro came on the radio, and then that baritone voice: “Love is a burning thing…”
The scenery passed in and out of the windshield and Yang felt almost stunned by what little had changed. She’d expected to come back to a foreign-looking place, but Remnant was and would be Remnant. Yang was the one who had changed. Yang was the one who was, who felt, foreign.
The narrow driveway up to Menagerie Manor was lined on either side with enormous magnolia trees, still flowering white. The sunlight that managed to break through the leaves was scarce, and the crowded darkness made Yang feel like she was in a tunnel. After a while, Yang started to wonder if the dusty path she was on even had an end to it.
There was a break in the trees, and finally Yang came upon the manor, itself. A grand, old, dusk-colored building at the edge of town. Imposing, sure, but somehow it had a gloominess to it—like there was a permanent shadow clinging to its colonial pillars, laid out like a mist on the veranda. And then there was the “great, black door,” the apparent entrance to an underworld that hardly looked like it even opened.
Yang climbed the front steps, wincing at the tremble and groan of the wood under the heavy fall of her boots. There was no doorbell. She knocked on the massive door three times with the side of her fist and waited for the signs of life on the other side.
What followed was a long moment of silence within, interrupted only by the cicada cries without. (And the air really was heavy with the perfume of magnolia flowers. Yang didn’t hate it.)
When Yang heard the shuffle of feet before the entryway and the door finally opened, at first she thought that it had been opened by nobody. Like a fucking haunted house in a movie. But someone cleared her throat, and Yang looked down to see a tiny, stooped-over old woman with coke-bottle glasses and a sour expression.
“If you’re the new hire,” she said, tapping her cane sharply against the floor, “you’re late.”
Yang scratched her head. “Prospective hire…ma’am.”
“Maria.” She tapped the cane again as punctuation. “Don’t talk to me like I’m some old lady.”
“Right. Sorry about that, uh, Maria.” Yang resisted the urge to peer past the woman into the house. She could at least admit to herself that she’d been in search of those golden eyes since she had first climbed the steps to the porch. Or maybe she'd even been in search of them—had looked for them in the faces of passing strangers—from the first glimpse of that photo.
Maria turned in the doorway and inclined her head. “This way, groundskeeper.”
The foyer was dark, cold. The rest of the house seemed to be like that, too. Like a museum. There was something indifferent about the atmosphere of the place, like nothing could move the air. Yang looked around and only saw dark-colored furniture and bookcases (walls of them) and abstract paintings. The kind of rich-person house that didn’t look like anyone really lived in it. It was quiet as hell in the place, too.
“So, Maria. How…how long have you worked here?”
The old woman wheeled on her looking indignant. “The nerve of you!” She prodded Yang in the ribs with her cane. “I half-raised that girl. And they don’t pay me a damn thing for it.”
Yang rubbed the new bruise in her side. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to assume anything.”
Maria harrumphed. “Me and the Belladonnas, my father and Ghira Belladonna’s grandfather…well, it’s all old ties between us.”
Old ties, huh. The true, deep roots of the town were old ties twisted up in tradition twisted up in something like vanity. It was all one organism, an everlasting bastard. New ties were fickle. Change was shunned.
“Maria? I heard someone—”
Yang turned to the voice and met those golden eyes at last. Blake Belladonna stood at the foot of a twisting staircase and stared back at Yang for a long moment without speaking. Every second that passed, Blake seemed to retreat more and more into her oversized black sweater. A sweater in July, Yang mused. A sweater even though it was the end of July. But Christ was she lovely.
“Um, the…interview.” Yang’s face grew hot when she realized how stupid she sounded. “I mean, I’m here for the interview?”
Blake smiled, but it was a polite smile. It was a smile that said, with no fangs bared, keep away. “Ah, right.” Her hand curled around the banister. “You must be Yang.”
Yang tried to contain her reaction, her expression, but the sound of her name out of Blake Belladonna’s mouth for some reason had sent a jolt through her whole body. Goddammit, it sounded cosmically right. Say it again, she wanted to say, but didn’t. “And you’re Blake,” she said, more as an experiment than as an address. Well, that sounded right, too.
The other woman seemed to remember herself the next instant, detaching from the banister and walking over to Yang with her hand half-outstretched. It was trembling, just slightly. “Nice to meet you,” she said, as Yang took her hand. “I…guess I should ask you about your experience with…landscape and gardening and all that, but honestly we’re a little desperate here.”
Yang released her hand, a bit reluctantly. “Did something happen to the last groundskeeper or something?”
Blake’s expression fell a little, and Yang realized too late how the other woman might’ve taken that. The article flashed in her head like a neon sign: The entrance to an underworld. “Nothing happened,” she said. “It was nothing, just…well, I guess you’ve noticed that this place is pretty depressing. Pretty dull. No one tends to stick around for long.”
Maria cleared her throat loudly—Yang had pretty much forgotten she was even there. Blake looked sheepish. “Except for you, Maria.”
Yang’s first thought was, You’ve got money. Why not move? If this place is so depressing, why not go someplace else? Someplace where nobody knows you? But she didn’t say that out loud, either. Because her second thought was that there was something more, something complicated. That things couldn’t happen so easily.
When she met Blake Belladonna’s unsteady gaze again—met the eyes of the woman in black, met those eyes that were like a low fire—she flashed a broad smile and asked, “When do I start?”
“Today,” she said, maybe a little too quickly. “You’ll start today.”