(January 2019)

It was cold on Chauvet, which was fitting because Chauvet Page was all shivers and chills, thinking of going back to that cold, dusted hall. Still, she stood in the dim starlight of the grand circular window, at the bottom of the sweeping staircase this time and looking upwards to the stars. Her hands curled into fists and she set her mind--this place would never stop haunting her, not so long as she wore its name, and if she was ever going to learn how to start saving people she needed to draw on its power as if it was her own.

All she had to do was...be brave. If Gwen could do it, then so could she.

Chauvet gulped, her eyes following Gwen’s footsteps to where she knew the hall of portraits would be. Maybe her cousin had been looking for the signet ring just as she was, the needle in this marbled haystack, or maybe she hadn’t known to look for anything at all, exploring heedlessly with the rush of something that was hers. Maybe she’d hopped around, notebook in hand to catalogue everything for her journal, or maybe she’d been scared of all the dark and the dust too. But the only evidence she left behind was footsteps, a sticky note scrawled in loopy hand-writing. Chauvet would have to guess at everything else.

But the hall of portraits was but one spoke out from the round foyer, just outside a closed pair of tall doors, gilded in whorls like her dress--and Chauvet jumped when something clattered and echoed, drawing her eyes and thoughts up. Turning on her heels, she tilted her head, listening for another rustle to clue her in. It could have been the wonder settling, decrepit as it was, but Chauvet rarely believed in coincidences, and it might have been her imagination but she almost swore she felt a breeze out of the stagnant air.

Click-rattle-whiiiiiiiiiiiiiine. Chauvet braced herself, calling her ball to hand. “C’mon, dude, quit messing with me,” she called out into the dim light, and it echoed back to her in waves--C’mon, c’mon, c’mon. Before her eyes, the spiral door knobs struggled against the door frame, and then one turned, the door pulling inwards. From the next room came a glow, distant but casting soft beams that reached for Chauvet’s heels. She was being led.

“...Okayyy,” Chauvet murmured, stepping forward and through a threshold unmarked by her cousin’s touch. She pushed against the cracked door and it swung inwards, and suddenly--starlight, dancing against a glass-wrought roof high above her head, standing resident watch over an open space, fallen pillars and faded tapestries. Like a cathedral, or a ballroom, or some sort of

”Grand Gallerie,” came a woman’s voice, warm and fond, passing by Chauvet for an offshoot passage, a winding staircase to the right and the source of the glow, lit by an uncertain fuel in round sconces. Chauvet Page shook the shivers from her body and nodded, following the lead. She stepped over a fallen portrait, something purple with its own ambient glow in the eyes of the smiling patron, though it seemed passive and not-possessed…for now. Still, she scurried a little faster than initially planned before Glow-Eyes could get any ideas, hopping up the staircase two at a time until she came across another gilded door, already swinging inward at her impending arrival.

This room was much smaller, an office or parlour, though no less lavishly decorated in its time, the walls lined with bookshelves of baubles and paintings and trinkets, save for a single round window observing the gallery below. Chauvet walked past a tufted chaise with a fur stole draped over one side, held together by a few remaining stitches and a prayer, and caught a whiff of tobacco and wine, of incenses long since burned. Interesting, yes, though not half as much as the open roller desk, lit by more of the round sconces overhead. The inkwell holding a feathered pen had long since gone dry, papers yellowed and half-written with a chicken-scratch cursive--and on top of the stack, glimmering in the light, was a simple ring, marked with a six-pointed star.

“Oh, word,” Chauvet hummed, reaching for the ring. It felt right in her hand, the metal almost warm to the touch, as if it had been passed to her only moments before, and as she wiped the dust away she read the words across the band: MEMORES ACTI PRUDENTES FUTURI. Though it seemed impossibly petite on the first twirl, she found that it fit effortlessly over her gloved finger, like it had always been part of her.

Down the stairs, something clattered, and the lamps began to dim. There would be nothing else to find for her here.

As she descended back down the staircase, the echoed footsteps split into so many streams that Chauvet imagined someone was following her, or perhaps jogging ahead, soft flats more than heels, racing ahead. The door back to the foyer was wide open when it had only been cracked when she invited herself through--and what had been a dusted landing was now glittering white, lit from overhead.

“I’ve been waiting a long time,” said the woman’s voice, in a tone Chauvet almost recognized, in a timbre that was less ghostly and more...just up ahead. Closing her ringed hand, Chauvet stepped from the staircase and back into the main room, into the light.

Though still dusty, the foyer glittered in the light of a six-pointed chandelier, twinkling starlight that shone and fell in soft waves as a pale imitation of the galaxies whirling outside the grand window looking out into the blackness of space. But Chauvet didn’t think much of stars or galaxies, not when the window framed a ghostly silhouette at the top of the stairs, coral curly hair wrapped in a fur stole, wearing a knowing smirk on her round face.

“You made it, sweetpea. Welcome home,” said the woman, who slowly began to descend the stairs. Her orange-gold eyes crinkled, smiling and warm under a dark purple cloche, accented with golden whorls and tassels. “It’s a nightmare now, but with a little bit of polish you’ll be able to take the reins as the new lady of the gallerie, and continue our good work--”

“--hold the ******** up,” Chauvet blurted, halting the stranger’s practiced descent. Only...she was no stranger. Chauvet knew that face, that funny smile. Her eyes stung and she choked. “--Gwen. Gwennie, how are you here?”

The ghostly girl made a face, a pout that pulled at Chauvet’s heartstrings. “...You must be mistaken, darling. I am Genevieve Degrasse, eighth lady of the gallery and your priveleged tutor--”

“Gwen, c’mon!” Chauvet banished her glamour like slamming a door, and in her place stood Katie, wide-eyed and aching as she scrambled up the stairs. She reached for the ghost, who recoiled back against the staircase, equally shocked and confused. Katie paused in the silence between them, pulling her bangs against the back of her head. “Gwen, it’s not--Chauvet, it’s me, it’s me, have you been here this whole time?”

Genevieve, or Gwen, stared at Katie and then the space past her where a page had been, her gaze shaking. “I--I don’t--I have always been--” She clutched her curly haired head and turned away. “--Kay--I’m--aren’t I...Genevieve?” Her form glimmered, shuddered, and her eyes opened, young and so frightened. Cracks of light split across her face, her arms. And then, in a flash, she was gone, and with it all the light in the foyer, leaving Katie alone in the dark on a staircase, just like a year ago.

Katie knelt, reached for the air where her cousin had been, and when she felt nothing but the cold, she pressed her forehead to the marble and wept until the dust was clean from her hands.