House of Idyll E-Book

Delilah S. Dawson

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 250

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

From the New York Times bestselling author of Bloom and Guillotine comes a seductive tale of beautiful rock stars, mysterious cults, and a magical oasis where dreams come true, for a price. Angelina Yves is a struggling singer/songwriter offered the chance of a lifetime to join the experimental luxury compound sponsored by the most famous band in the world, Black Idyll. With her every need accommodated, she finally has the time and space to perfect her music. Her muse? Reclusive rock star Jesper Idyll, who lives up to her every high school daydream. But when people start to disappear and Jesper's ex turns up dead and mutilated, Angelina begins to suspect that something more than money powers the cult that's grown around the band... A decadent and wickedly compelling tale of a Hollywood dream turned nightmare, Delilah S. Dawson's darkly delicious prose will seduce you, tie you up, and never let you go…. ]]>

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Praise for HOUSE OF IDYLL

Also by Delilah S. Dawson

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Before

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

After

About the Author

Praise for

HOUSE OF IDYLL

“Delilah S. Dawson is a hot horror ticket! Every new release delivers. House of Idyll is a heady cocktail of dreams, desire, and danger blending together to create a perfectly intoxicating, pulse-pounding rush. I turned the pages like an actual mad woman.”

SADIE HARTMANN, Bram Stoker Award®-winning author of 101 Horror Books to Read Before You’re Murdered

“A creeping nightmare wrapped in white roses, House of Idyll warns the reader to be careful what you wish for—your wish might be splattered in blood.”

CHRISTINA HENRY, author of Alice and The Place Where They Buried Your Heart

“Erotic, horrifying, and woven through with strange, sinister beauty, Dawson summons a waltz from sacrifice.”

LINDY RYAN, author of Bless Your Heart

“F—off, Ozzy. Roll over, Axl. Run to the hills, Lemmy. Delilah S. Dawson is horror royalty and you all better kneel. House of Idyll is a blood-drenched denim jacket of a rock ’n’ roll novella, scrawled with the names of all your favorite bands and horror authors... and you better believe I’ve got Delilah sharpie-markered right over my heart.”

CLAY MCLEOD CHAPMAN, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“With a punk attitude and a gothic soul, Delilah S. Dawson’s House of Idyll delves into the cost of making great art—what it gives and takes. There’s a fine line between opportunity and darkness—will you walk it? Remember: only cowards run.”

ANGELA ‘A.G.’ SLATTER, award-winning author of The Crimson Road

“This was a trip and a half—part rock anthem, part isolation horror, and totally intoxicating. Delilah S. Dawson delivers this story with a guitar in one hand and a knife in the other. A seductive exploration of art, fame, and the desire to be seen that is every bit as consuming as an 80s power ballad—and twice as difficult to get out of your head.”

JOSH WINNING, author of Heads Will Roll

Also by Delilah S. Dawson

It Will Only Hurt for a Moment

Bloom

The Violence

Guillotine

THE BLUD SERIES

Wicked as They Come

Wicked as She Wants

Wicked After Midnight

Wicked Ever After

THE HIT SERIES

Hit

Strike

Servants of the Storm

Midnight at the Houdini

Mine

Camp Scare

Star Wars: Phasma

Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge: Black Spire

Star Wars Inquisitor: Rise of the Red Blade

Disney Mirrorverse: Pure of Heart

The Minecraft Mob Squad Series

Dungeons & Dragons: Ravenloft: Heir of Strahd

THE SHADOW SERIES, WRITTEN AS LILA BOWEN

Wake of Vultures

Conspiracy of Ravens

Malice of Crows

Treason of Hawks

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House of Idyll

Hardback edition ISBN: 9781835414217

Hardback signed edition ISBN: 9781835416815

E-book edition ISBN: 9781835414224

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: September 2025

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© D. S. Dawson 2025

D. S. Dawson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

EU RP (for authorities only)eucomply OÜ, Pärnu mnt. 139b-14, 11317 Tallinn, [email protected], [phone]

Set in Agmena Pro by Richard Mason.

For those about to rock:We salute you.

BEFORE

INTERVIEWER:

BLACK IDYLL IS THE TOP-SELLING BAND IN THE WORLD, FINISHING YOUR FIRST SOLD-OUT INTERNATIONAL STADIUM TOUR, TOPPING ALL THE CHARTS WITH YOUR FIRST ALBUM. HOW DOES IT FEEL?

JESPER IDYLL:

(LAUGHS) SO BIG I CAN’T WRAP MY ARMS AROUND IT. INCONCEIVABLE. SHAPELESS. EXPLOSIVE. A FORCE BEYOND UNDERSTANDING. HEAVY. LIKE GRAVITY. IT’S A GREAT GIFT, BUT IT’S OUT OF MY HANDS. ALL I CAN CONTROL IS THE ART. THE MUSIC.

INTERVIEWER:

SO HOW IS THE BAND GETTING ALONG WITHOUT VIVIAN? THE FIVE OF YOU CAME UP TOGETHER, AND IT SEEMS LIKE A TRAGEDY THAT SHE NEVER GOT TO SEE YOUR ALBUM GO PLATINUM.

JESPER IDYLL:

VIVIAN WAS THE HEART OF BLACK IDYLL. THE SUN AROUND WHICH WE ALL ORBITED. WE MISS HER EVERY DAY. WE WOULDN’T BE HERE WITHOUT HER—WITHOUT HER VOICE, HER WORDS, HER BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS. WE OWE HER EVERYTHING.

INTERVIEWER:

THE WAY SHE DIED—

JESPER IDYLL:

THIS INTERVIEW IS OVER.

1

Sometimes a moment is filled with infinite possibility: a letter opened but unread, a phone ringing but unanswered, a morning that has only just begun and is thus far splendid even though it will surely be ruined once the front door is unlocked and the customers begin to arrive. Three percolators are merrily chirping as they turn oily beans into wake-up juice, and not a single splatter of cream mars the counter. Silver pitchers sit, shiny and clean, waiting to steam milk for people who think that an extra dry cappuccino is actually good. The fridge is stocked, the rags are bleached, and the floor smells like lemons. The sun is shining—because the sun is always shining in LA. Anything could happen today.

That’s what Angelina Yves tells herself.

Anything could happen.

What will most likely happen is that she will get shouted at for not knowing a secret recipe that doesn’t exist, and she will burn a finger pouring a boiling hot drink into a Stanley cup for a woman with a hypoallergenic dog in her purse, and she will take home far fewer tips than she deserves because she’s pretty sure that Greyson is stealing from the tip jar. It’s such a cliché, the wannabe singer-songwriter working as a barista at a Hollywood café, scribbling lyrics on napkins during her timed break, praying one of her raw-voiced original songs goes viral online, but she needs the health insurance and at least they pay over minimum wage.

As it turns out, and much to her annoyance, her dad was right: the only job for people with music degrees is teaching other people how to get music degrees. If her favorite professor’s eccentric aunt didn’t have an extra room and need a part-time caretaker, there’s no way Angelina could afford to live anywhere near LA, and yet here she is, working so hard to make her dreams come true that she doesn’t really dream at night anymore.

“Zosia?” she calls, hoping she’s reading the name right: Zoe-see-a.

A red-taloned hand swipes the cup. “It’s pronounced Sasha.”

No tip there.

“No actress can go by Emily or Kate anymore. They’ve gotta stand out. I had a Kaylee yesterday who’d added two Hs and half a dozen vowels,” Lauren says, leaning in to where Angelina is now hiding behind the espresso machine. “Kuh-hay-uh-huh-luh-hee.” She sounds like she’s panting. “Almost ran out of breath trying to call her name. Don’t let it get to you.” Lauren is in her fifties and was once a C-level actor, back in the eighties when perfection couldn’t be forced with surgery. These days, she’s an unflappable battle-ax, and she’s the closest thing Angelina has to a friend in this city. “Didn’t you close last night?”

Angelina rubs her eyes, careful not to smudge her heavily smoky eye. “Yep. Rick texted me after midnight asking me to open because Greyson had to study.”

“Can’t let his nephew get sleepy now, can we? Jeez. Nepotism and Hollywood.” Lauren shakes her bleached curls, still teased to the heavens. “You’d think it only happened in the movies, but it’s everywhere.”

And yes, it’s true, but Angelina still believes that hard work and a good attitude have value. If she stopped believing that, she’d fall apart. She’d stop writing songs. She’d give up.

She makes the next drink, trying to inject it with what little artistry the job allows. This shop is so busy that there is no time for friendly chitchat with the customers, no time to draw swans in the foam. She is a machine, her only goal to avoid being yelled at. Everyone is in a hurry, everyone is angry, and it is always, always her fault.

“Beavis?” she calls, knowing the teen boys will snicker before the tall one swipes his drink, but grateful that it didn’t say Saoirse or Björn. She knows how to pronounce Beavis. The next drink, at least, is simple: a green tea for Sol. She double cups it so he won’t burn himself and, yes, come back to yell at her.

“Sol?”

She holds out the cup, and the guy who takes it is so beautiful that it’s kind of disturbing—and yet he’s also vaguely familiar. They lock eyes for a moment, and he smiles and blinks once, like an owl. He’s wearing all white, his dark skin making the contrast all the more striking. White slim-fit jeans, white loafers, white linen shirt, a silver necklace nestled in the unbuttoned V, and long, black locs loosely bound. He looks like a movie star, but if he was, she would definitely recognize him.

“Thank you, love,” he tells her with a posh British accent, and he sounds like he means it. He slides a twenty toward her and winks.

“Thank you. Have a good day,” she tells him. Her eyes flash to the camera in the corner, and as soon as he’s gone, she goes to deposit the twenty in the tip jar. There’s writing on it, and she looks more closely before abandoning it among the ones and spare change.

Oddly, the bill is stamped with a lyric from a popular song she loved when she was in high school.

There’s no such thing as neverOnly now, only forever.

It’s a little trite, but it brings back fond memories of when she was a teenager, sitting in her closet, hiding from her parents, singing along to Black Idyll the summer they hit it big. She begged to go to the concert, but it was a firm no. Her dad was nearing sixty then and her mom has always been as boring and limp as a wet lasagna noodle, and they both refused to acknowledge any music that wasn’t glorifying God or America. For a time, Black Idyll was her whole world, and she was half in love with Jesper Idyll. Everyone was. Both because he played teen heartthrob Carter Dunaway on This Is How It Is and because he was the lead singer for a band of beautiful teen boys in all black who seemed to channel all the rage, weirdness, and yearning of the collective generation. What a strange thing to find on a crisp twenty that will become possibly two crumpled ones in Angelina’s pocket when they divvy up the tip jar later on.

Angelina has forgotten about the handsome man and his lovely but ultimately useless tip when her phone rings an hour later. The number is unfamiliar, but the caller ID says it’s from her college. She’s not supposed to take calls at work, but...

“Hello?”

“Angelina, it’s Doctor Bradley.”

Despite the heat of the milk steamer and the sweaty hairs straggling against her temples Angelina’s blood goes cold. Usually, Dr. Bradley is just Lisa, and usually, Lisa calls on her own cell phone to dish about office politics and complain about how no TA will ever compare to her favorite student and future Grammy-award winner.

“Hi, Li—Dr. Bradley. What’s up?”

A sigh. “Look, I’m sorry about this, but Aunt Barb says it’s not working out. She says you steal from her.”

Angelina gasps. “You know she has dementia, and I think you know me well enough to know that I would never steal from anyone.”

“I know all that. And it’s stupid—she said you stole a ceramic turtle from her collection. Which—why? Nobody wants that shit. But she’s not going to let this go. I think we’re just going to have to call a service.”

Angelina’s mind is racing, trying to find some way to stay exactly where she is, to not lose what she has. “I’ll get her a new ceramic turtle. Ten more. I’ll buy cameras and install them. Please, Lisa. You know what this means to me.”

Everything. It means everything.

This is the only way she can afford to be here. Even with free rent, even working two jobs, she can barely afford it.

And if she’s not here...

Her dream is over.

The only way to get jobs in LA is to be in LA. She can’t busk on the streets of Ellijay, Georgia and hope to get discovered.

And if she has to go home...

No.

She can’t.

Not after how she ended things with her parents.

“She called the cops, kiddo. Told ’em you’re a thief. And also, oddly enough, a robot. So they called me. She needs to be under actual medical supervision. Dementia plus Capgras syndrome? It’s only going to get worse.”

No wonder the old lady had been giving her the side-eye. Angelina had thought they were getting along just fine, had done everything in her power to be the perfect roommate/nurse. And yet. And yet.

“So... so maybe I stay with her but don’t help her out? She won’t even see me. She doesn’t leave her room.”

“Kiddo, once she thinks you’re a robot who steals turtles, you can’t un-ring that bell. We can give you two weeks to find a new situation. I’m sorry. You’re talented and you deserve better, and I know you were doing a good job, but it just isn’t going to work out.”

“I wiped her ass!” Angelina barks. “I have cleaned up her pee puddles, and I have remade her Cream of Wheat three times every morning until it’s perfectly smooth, and we both know I’m neither a robot nor a thief!” Her voice is rising, and Rick is walking toward her, with his stupid pleated khakis and tucked in Hawaiian shirt that make him look like a tropical snowman.

“I know, and I’m sorry—”

The milk she’s been steaming boils over the sides of the silver pitcher, burning her hand. She drops the piping hot metal and screams, “Fuck a duck!” The pitcher lands on her foot, and scalding milk soaks her ankle and splatters across the floor mats as the steamer continues to spurt steam into her face.

“Outside. Now!” Rick grinds out through clenched teeth.

Angelina feels the tears rising and tries to blink them back down. “I’m sorry—”

“Was that for my upside-down caramel ribbon crunch macchiato with extra whip and seven sugars?” asks a bored teen girl with extensions to her butt who’s holding a thirty-thousand-dollar handbag. “Because I’m in, like, a hurry.” She holds up the latest iPhone, shoving it in Angelina’s face to record whatever bad behavior follows.

Angelina looks down at the cracked old phone in her own hand, then at her guitar-callused fingers now boiled red and curled up like a dead bug, coated in tan milk froth.

“Kid, you there?” Lisa’s voice in her phone is so far away.

Everything is.

“My drink?” the girl asks again. “Because if I have to wait one more second, I want a refund. Do you even know how many followers I have?” She turns around, her back to Angelina so she can film them both in selfie mode. “Fam, I just had the worst experience with this ho. It’s boycott time. Make this bitch go viral. Do not ever go to—”

Angelina looks directly into the girl’s brand new iPhone and starts to sing the chorus of Lily Allen’s “Fuck You” while she strips off her apron for the last time.

2

Angelina has just been fired for the first—

Ha!

No, the second time.

First by Dr. Bradley five minutes ago, and now by Rick the Tropical Snowman for “conduct unbecoming in the workplace”. Never mind that Greyson sometimes writes “Nice tits!” on the cups of attractive teen girls when he actually bothers to show up. No, apparently cursing as a contralto while sustaining third-degree burns on some wannabe influencer’s TikTok channel is enough to end her coffee career.

She sits on the bench two stores down, her tote bag slumped beside her. Her hand is crumpled like a boiled rabbit in her lap as tears stream down her face. She should’ve grabbed a wad of napkins on the way out, but Rick got pretty pushy, especially when she refused to stop singing. She didn’t really want to be a barista, anyway. She wants to be a singer—she is a singer—and now she is also homeless and jobless, all in one fell swoop. She used to think the starving artist was such a romantic motif, and then she learned that it’s hard to write good material without electricity and a comfortable chair.

So she does the first thing that comes to mind: She puts her hat out on the concrete and starts singing. As much as she would prefer to perform originals, she knows full well that the best tips come from songs that feel familiar and evoke emotions. Today, feeling what she feels, that means Bon Jovi’s “Blaze of Glory.” She’s three songs in with ten dollars and some change when a car rolls up to the curb, one of those huge black SUVs that rich people take to the airport. The back-seat window rolls down, and a familiar face appears. It’s Sol, he of the green tea and twenty-dollar tip. His amber eyes are filled with concern, his long fingers with white-painted nails tapping along the edge of the sunglass-black window as he listens.

She holds the last note, daring him to interrupt, and when she’s done, he asks, “The worst day of your life?” with a curious mix of empathy and bemusement.

“Third worst,” she corrects. “So far.” She sniffles, willing herself to meet his gaze without shame. He raises an eyebrow, and it feels like a dare, so she continues. “When I was nine, I tried to peek in my grandmother’s coffin at her funeral, the lid fell and broke my finger, and I toppled on the ground, hit my head, and peed myself. And then there was homecoming, but I don’t tell strangers that story.”

She is aware that the tears are still streaming down her face.

She doesn’t care.

What does she have to lose now that she’s lost everything?

“You’re an intriguing woman with a hell of a voice.”

A tear traces down her cheek, past her lips, and falls off her chin.

“Intriguing doesn’t pay the bills, sadly, and as of today, music doesn’t either.”

“You’re pretty when you cry, you know. You could model.”

She snorts. “Yeah, no thanks. That’s what the kids these days call a red flag.”

She picks up her hat and shoulders her bag, and he says, “Wait.”

They’re eye to eye now. Soft music fumbles from the car along with cool air and... is that the scent of jasmine?

Sol seems to be considering something.

“So what will you do?” he asks.

Simple enough words, but she recognizes the familiar cadence. The song has been stuck in her head since she read the lyrics stamped on his twenty. This guy must be a Black Idyll hardcore fan, for all that he looks like a Prada model.

“‘Show me what’s real, which face is true,’” she sings softly so only he can hear it.

He smiles. “Go on.”

So she keeps singing lyrics she knows by heart. “‘Only cowards run. The edge of the cliff is the starting gun.’” She mimics the finger-gun pistol shot Jesper Idyll used every time he performed that line in his all-black Goth Mr. Darcy tailcoat and fluttery blouse. “Are you saying I’m at the edge and getting fired is my starting gun?” A mad half-laugh, half-hiccup escapes her. “God, Black Idyll. Whatever happened to those guys?”

The car door swings open, and Sol settles back into the darkness of the SUV.

“Come and see,” he says from the shadows.

Angelina is caught between laughter and curiosity.

What’s happening now is absurd.

Either she’s having the worst luck on the planet or the best.

No job, no home... and this beautiful man is either scouting her as a model or taking her somewhere quiet to put her head in a jar and make scones out of her rib bacon while he sings Black Idyll songs wearing a bathrobe made of her skin.

“What is this?” she asks.

“An invitation.”

“To what?”

Sol chuckles from the darkness. “That’s the thing about the cliff’s edge, love. Either you jump or you run. You don’t get to find out what’s on the other side if you don’t jump.”

Is he... admitting he’s going to murder her?

She turns on her phone and shares her location with Lauren, Lisa, and her mom. Then she walks around to the back of the car, takes a picture of the license plate, and sends that to all three of them.

Getting in this car. If you don’t hear from me again, track my location and tell the police, she texts.

Now that she’s made a point of capturing the tags, she’s surprised the car hasn’t streaked away—as far as a car can streak in LA traffic. It’s still idling.

“This is a perfectly safe situation, you know,” Sol says. “But I can appreciate your caution. If you’re comfortable with your safeguards, you have ten seconds to get in, and then the cliff disappears.”

Angelina looks down at her hat. She looks back at the café. She thinks about how it will feel, going home to Crazy Barb Who Thinks She’s a Robotic Thief and frantically looking for an affordable place to stay in a place where nowhere is affordable. What has she got to lose?

She steps up into the vehicle.

3

So, for real, what is this?”

Sol doesn’t answer. He’s in the other bucket seat, one long foot splayed over his knee as he taps into his sleek white phone. He looks like he has never been more relaxed in his life, like he couldn’t find the word stressed in the dictionary if offered six figures. Angelina, on the other hand, is on full alert. She’s expecting a bag over her head, a gun in her ribs, a chilled bottled water with a hypodermic hole hidden under the wrapper. There is no divider between the front and back seats, at least, no signs that the car has been customized to hold prisoners. The driver is an older white man in a black suit who looks unnervingly like her father.

“Sir, am I being abducted?” Angelina calls to him.

The man looks back at her in the rearview mirror, eyes crinkled up like a mall Santa. “No, honey. He’s on the up and up. Like he said, perfectly safe. I don’t go abducting no girls.” He’s got a New York accent—and looks like he’s busted his knuckles multiple times.

“Where are we going?”

At that, Sol looks up at her. He has an ethereal beauty, with cheekbones that could cut glass. But there’s something puckish about him, something impish and delighted and pleased. Something weirdly, glaringly authentic.

This is not a trait she sees very often in LA. Or anywhere.

“You mentioned modeling. Am I... being scouted?” she asks.

She knows she’s pretty, with her milky white skin, dark tumbling hair, and haunted gray eyes. And she knows she’s lost weight since arriving in California and being forced to count every penny against her pride. She’s not tall enough to model, but... well, there was a girl under five feet on America’s Next Top Model once, so at five-seven, it’s not impossible.

His full lips twitch with a smile as he looks out the window. “Something like that.”

The driver navigates out of the city and onto a highway. After Angelina’s thousandth question, Sol shakes a finger at her. “All will be revealed in time. Just enjoy the ride.”

Enjoy... the ride? Through LA? Not likely. It’s either traffic or oil derricks or charred earth or new construction. Angelina scrolls through her phone looking for a living situation and then a job, but these are the same ads she’s seen again and again, and she’s fairly certain they’re all scams. She hasn’t gotten a single nibble for anything besides the barista gig, and she’s applied to something full time every day. Her bachelor’s in music isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, much less the loans she’ll be paying off until she’s fifty.

You OK? Lauren texts.

So far. But watch my location in case I disappear.

Nothing from Lisa, nothing from her mother, who generally leaves her phone in her purse and only uses it to scroll through Facebook joke groups when she’s in a doctor’s waiting room.

As for Sol, he regards his phone with a preternatural calm. They drive so far into the forest that Angelina’s worry kicks up another notch, but no one has attempted to take her phone away. She still has bars. Her location is still sharing. She is terrified but also curious. She has never been gently kidnapped by a beautiful person before.

It’s been an hour and a half, and she’s on the edge of asking about stopping to use the restroom when they turn down a recently paved road marked by two white stone pillars. They come to a guardhouse crafted of the same stone, and a man in all white waves them through a grand set of white iron gates.

Now they’re on a long drive bordered by heavy bushes and tall trees that kiss overhead. After a while, the trees open up to show a house—

No. A mansion.

A compound, really.

One huge white villa flanked by numerous smaller cabins and a two-story barn. The forest curves around with the impossible perfection of a Hollywood movie backdrop, holding the snow-white buildings in a cozy sort of hug. It’s early afternoon, and the deep blue sky arches overhead, containing the sprawling valley like a snow globe that has captured one bright and perfect moment.

Yes, if Sol is part of this place, he is probably on the up and up.

Whoever owns this compound—or even has enough money to rent it for one night—can buy anything they want, including, most likely, human beings. They wouldn’t need to snatch pretty girls off the street. Angelina isn’t sure if this makes her feel more comfortable... or less.

The SUV follows the drive around to the massive home’s front steps and stops. The driver opens the door for Sol, and he gets out and offers Angelina his hand.

“I can get out of a car,” she mutters as she scrambles to her feet, wishing she weren’t quite so covered in coffee stains.

“Courtesy is not a command,” he tells her as if reciting a beloved poem. “But a gift.”

He walks in the villa’s open door, and she follows. The car drives away. It feels as if she is in another world, spirited away to Faerie. They are in a round foyer with a floor of polished white stone. A unicorn made of white-stained driftwood dominates the space, half guard dog and half welcoming committee. Everything is white and gold and beautiful. The air is perfumed with white flowers and sandalwood, white fans twirling lazily on white ceilings. The windows are thrown open as if inviting the world to French kiss the home’s every eager mouth. There is a feeling of care here, of choice, of craftsmanship. Not a single corner has been cut. In a world of gray, this place has been rinsed clean, its beautiful ivory bones bravely exposed.

Sol takes the curving stairwell of wood blocks up to the second floor. Angelina has decided that she will follow him until he tells her to stop because she has to know what’s going on here, what this place is and why she’s been invited. She will go as far as they let her go, whoever they are. She has never witnessed such wealth in her life, and she would happily sleep on the floor under the spread hooves of the murderous wood unicorn if it meant that she could stay a while longer.

The floors upstairs are honey gold wood, their waxy shine making her wish she was barefoot instead of wearing squeaky, coffee-soaked Converse high tops. It feels like desecration to be dressed in ratty jeans and a plain black shirt here. Sol’s all-white ensemble fits in as naturally as a sheep among its flock. He leads her down a long hallway and knocks on the heavy wooden door at the end.

“Enter, friend,” calls a man’s voice.

Sol stands back, inclines his head toward the door.

“You’re not coming, too?” Angelina asks, suddenly shy.

“Welcome to the cliff. If you take the first step, you have to take it on your own.” He winks and heads back down the hall, leaving her alone with the door.