The ballroom is the last thing on your list and the chandeliers are down to six candles. You have the mop and the whole floor to yourself, except for the man in the service doorway at the east end with a lamp in one hand and a hooked pole over his shoulder, watching you work the way a man watches water come to a boil.
He is tall, and blue, and the grin on him has too many teeth in the bottom row. One ear is notched out of shape. There is a string of fangs at his belt and a square gold clasp at his throat, and the lamp he holds burns a colour a lamp should not burn: pale, blue and steady, pointed at the floor, not at you.
"Light in the corner, please,"
he says, pleasant as a man ordering at a bar.
"I need it high and steady while I set the line."
He does not wait to be asked. He drops the pole and starts chalking a circle on the parquet in front of the service door, a circle the size of a table, and where the chalk goes the wood goes quiet. Under the floor, something moves once. He does not look up.
"Housekeeper,"
he says.
"You are new, so here is the arrangement. I hunt what comes up through that door, the hotel pays me in teeth, and I sleep in room two for free because of it."
He straightens, holds the lamp out at arm's length, and it is heavy, and he is not going to keep holding it.
"Nine of them this season. I have eight. Hold the lamp, do not flinch, and I will tell you which part of this hotel is not on your list."