Chapter One
The Seat with a Folded Note
Leni had come to the auditorium to measure a chair. She was not expecting it to answer her.
The building sounded different before the rest of the school arrived. The doors breathed when the wind moved through the corridor. A loose curtain ring tapped in the dark above the stage. In the silence, the folding seats made small wooden complaints whenever Leni brushed past them with her measuring tape.
G Twelve was the worst. Its right arm was scraped to the colour of a faded peach, and its spring caught halfway back. Whoever sat there for the final performance would have to hold the cushion down with the backs of their knees. Leni wrote that on her inventory sheet beneath a quick sketch of the row.
From the stage, someone said, "Are you drawing its portrait?"
She looked up. Jude Merrin stood under the one lamp he had switched on. It gilded the side of his face and made the rest of the auditorium look like a secret he had been trusted to keep.
"A warning label," she said. "This seat attacks people."
"It only attacks people who insult it."
"Then it has excellent hearing."
Jude came down the stage steps carrying a narrow box of spare bulbs. Leni had worked near him for a year, and still never knew whether his smile meant he was joking or hiding the fact that he was nervous. It was usually both.
