And yet there was a nagging little grain of hope in Selena’s heart. She was the next of kin, wasn’t she? Her mother was dead, thank the merciful gods. If the house was abandoned and nobody wanted it ...
It wouldn’t be that way in the city, where everybody lived on top of each other, but maybe out here, in the margins ...
Whywouldanyone want to live out here? It’s hot and weird and there’s hardly anybody here and you can’t go anywhere and the drones can’t deliver packages and the train only comes once a day ...
Dear god, she was tired. The hard light was giving her a headache and she was holding an armful of blankets that were getting extremely hot where they pressed against her body.
She didn’t have enough money to stay in Quartz Creek, but maybe if she spent the night here, she could deal with everything in the morning, when she didn’t feel so utterly exhausted. Couldn’t she?
Copper got up.
She gave the leash a practiced tug, pulling it out of Selena’s lax fingers, and trotted up the walk to the sagging porch.
“Copper!”
The Lab ignored her. Three steps up, and she flopped down on the porch—reallyflopped, not her polite Sphinx pose while she waited for Selena to finish what she was doing. A full-body, over-on-her-side, legs-stretched-out flop, accompanied by a deep old-dog sigh of contentment.
Selena left the wall. Her feet dragged as she approached the porch. She had no energy left to argue, not even with the dog.
“Overnight,” she said. “Onlyovernight. You got that?”
Copper rolled her eyes toward her person, but did not deign to lift her head.
Selena sighed.
She sat down on the porch steps and put her head in her hands, and that, more or less, was that.
Chapter 3
Eventually she had to get up. It would have been strangely comforting to sit on the steps until the sun went down, but Copper would get hungry. And thirsty. Thirsty was probably more important.
Now that she had to actually go inside, Selena eyed the door with suspicion. It might be cooler inside. There might also be snakes or scorpions or serial killers inside.
Well ... probably not serial killers.
They’d get awfully bored out here, I imagine. Unless that’s why they can’t keep people around.
That seems unlikely.
There was a nail next to the door, with a little sign that readJackrabbit Hole House. Selena put her hand on the door.
It didn’t have a doorknob, just a handle: a piece of smooth, polished wood in a shallow arch. When she pushed, the door opened with a whisper of hinges.
The interior was very dark in comparison to the glaring sun.
She had to step over Copper to get inside. The Lab grumbled and rolled partway on her back.
“Some good you’ll be, when the serial killer shows up.”
Copper wagged her tail, perhaps indicating that the serial killer would be welcome as long as he knew how to pet a dog properly.
Selena felt for a light switch by the front door. Did the solars still work?
She found a switch. Something clicked inside it and the light came on. A moment later she heard the dull thud of machinery starting up, and smelled the burnt-dust scent of stale air in the vents.
The inside of the house was a deep yellow-orange shade, somewhere between terra-cotta and saffron. There was one large room, and a door in the left-hand wall, painted rich blue violet.
The walls had soft corners. Selena put out a hand to the nearest, puzzled. There was nothing hard there, a curve instead of an angle. The floor was terra-cotta tile, with a thick rug over it and an even thicker layer of dust over that.
