Ivy brought the last of the groceries in and nudged the door closed with her foot. As she started putting things away, she noticed a rat suddenly scamper down the hallway. Had it not been bright turquoise in colour, she would have done something besides merely peek back out the door.

"Drew?" Hm ... no sign of him, so she went back to putting things away. Once that was done she scanned the mail, reluctantly setting aside a rather large priority envelope from Milan. It had to be the new collection that would be on the runway in a month and she was eager to see it. She knew though that if she did look, she'd end up in the studio to work on the jewelry to go with it.

"Not today." she murmured. "This is the day that hideous wallpaper dies." Darting back out to the car she brought in the steamer she had rented to peel it off. She made one last effort to find Drew before setting to work but he didn't seem to be around. It was a pity since he would enjoy hearing about her meeting with the realtor. He had called, asking to meet her for lunch and it had turned out to be a surpise. Instead of asking her to design a piece of jewelry for his wife, he wanted to tell her the history of the house.

Originally, it had been built by Quakers, but when the neighborhood started to go downhill, meaning too many not of the faith had moved in, they sold it and moved away. There were rumors that before the civil war it had housed runaway slaves but there was absolutely nothing to prove that. Finally, in the 1920's, it became the property of a rather prosperous bootlegger who modernized it and added his own touches. The swimming pool he built though, didn't last beyond the next buyer. At that point the house started to get a reputation. The bootlegger shot and killed an intruder that turned out to be the man his daughter was eloping with. After that, the next family who moved in had a slightly more than eccentric Aunt that they kept locked up in an upstairs bedroom. One night the room caught on fire and she couldn't get out. After that it sat empty for a few years until a retired couple bought it and that was about the time the rumors started that the house was cursed. The husband had a painful cancer and so his wife shot him and then herself. That was about five years ago, no one else had bought it until now. That did explain the good price on it, and human nature explained why the realtor didn't tell her about the history before the sale.

Ivy set to work on the stripping the wallpaper off. It was stubborn at first, but finally it gave way to a lovely Oriental pattern that was a bit overpowering for the narrow passageway. Beneath that was a tranquil blue paper with tiny fleur-de-lis and that overlay a white and gold wheat pattern. Finally she reached wood, not plaster as she expected, and it must have looked grand once. Once...her jaw hit the floor as she saw what had been deliberately, angrily burned into it.