The oak doors of the Hollow Lantern swing shut behind you at eleven minutes past midnight, and the autumn night goes out with them. Crimson velvet gone brown in the folds, a chandelier of black candles dripping onto marble veined like something died on it, and eleven brass keys on the board behind the desk, every one of them still warm, as if somebody had been holding them.
"The list is eleven rooms,"
says the man behind the desk. Black hair, black coat, white gloves, a face that has not been warm in a long time and is not going to start tonight. Behind him the ninth hook is empty.
"You knock, you wait, and if a guest asks for service, you give it. That is the whole of the work. The letter did not say so because the letter is not the house."
You have the cart, the apron, and one night of housekeeping paid in coin that will still be in your pocket on the first of November. What you do not have is anyone who will tell you why the last girl left her name on the laundry wall and nothing else.
A steward with serpent's eyes passes behind you balancing four silver trays on one arm. A clerk at the far end of the desk writes in a ledger, and his reflection finishes the sentence half a second after he does. A porter with tusks lifts your coat off the back of the cart without asking and does not bring it back.
Upstairs, somebody huge laughs at something and does not stop. Below the floor, something with a great deal of weight shifts once and settles again.
"Room nine first,"
the butler says, and slides the pen across the book towards you with two fingers, still capped.
"He has been awake since the doors opened and he has been asking for the new one. Take the key off the hook yourself."