The second-floor rooms were derelict, as were most on the third. The fourth-floor rooms with their sloped ceilings and small windows—servants’ quarters, clearly—had better withstood the elements.

Laurel found a bare interior room with a stooped ceiling and no window—nowhere for nature to have slipped its erosive fingers into the walls. An empty iron bedframe stood in the corner, a small table next to it. A hook-latch held a narrow closet door closed. On a shelf inside the closet lay a dark picture frame. Laurel picked it up and blew dust from the glass. It was an embroidery of a copse of aspen trees in autumn colors, each outlined in fine lines of yellow, orange, and brown, with black and silver tree bark. Laurel held the light closer, let it play over the impossibly fine lines. They shined in her light, reflecting back in delicate frayed curls.

Laurel gasped and tasted the dust of the place on her tongue. The picture was embroidered in human hair, from the bright yellow and orange leaves to the silvery tree bark. Beneath the trees, she could make out tiny figures, poised as if in dance, each a different color of hair, only a few strands thick. Silver grass formed a meadow at their feet.

She carried it from the closet and scanned the walls. There was a nail by the door. It was bent and rusty, but a gentle tug showed it to be sturdy. She slid the frame hook over it and stepped back to admire the piece. At a distance, it almost looked like a watercolor. She’d never seen one wrought so finely.

Laurel walked to the bedframe and slid her pack from her shoulder. She’d lay one of the fallen doors across the metal and sleep in her sleeping bag. There might not be any sweeping mountain views, or sunlight dazzling off snow, but this room was hers. She relaxed her shoulders and let out a long, deep breath.

The battery in her lantern died, as if she’d blown out the light. The walls of the room felt closer in the dark—pressed in on her, hiding her, keeping her safe. They’ll never find me here. Safe and small, like sink cupboards or under beds. No one is looking anymore, she remembered.

***

“The chambermaid’s room? Is this some sort of martyr complex?” Ashley leaned closer to the huge fireplace, rotating her skewer of veggies.

Laurel stabbed a second sausage onto the end of hers and leaned across Ashley to the flames. “No, it’s just a nice room. Not all moldy like the others. And there’s no gaping hole in the floor.”

“I can walk around a hole. Mine’s still the Presidential Suite.” Ashley slid a red pepper off her kebab with her teeth.

“Talk about a complex.” Laurel leaned back in a rickety chair and chewed her sausage.

“Seen any ghosts yet?” Ash asked.