Page 49 of Little Doll

The stairway was just outside and across from my bedroom door.

Costel was raving drunk. Sloppy. Clumsy.

Even in the dimly candlelit dark, I caught sight of his face. Panicked. Shocked.

Terrified.

I caught sight of it just as he tipped backwards at the top of the stairs.

Costel Westminster let out a gurgling, quick scream that was soon swallowed and silenced by the sound of his big body tumbling violently down the massive stairway.

Until there was silence when he came to a stop at the bottom of the stairs.

“FATHER!” I shrieked.

I raced down the stairs and found my worst nightmare unfurling before me. My father crumpled and bent at the bottom of the steps. His body contorted into impossible shapes, his mouth slack and open, his eyes foggy and dead.

My screams brought others running, the first of which was Arcane. She reached us in a heartbeat and shoved me back so that she coulddrop to her knees before her husband. She beat her small fists against his chest, her pretty face consumed with hysteria. “Costel? COSTEL! WAKE UP COSTEL! GET UP!” She slapped his face and shook him with surprising violence for such a small woman.

Others gathered. A sense of ominous dread crept over the group. I dashed back up the steps, desperate to be embraced by Ren once again, and to see to it that she was protected from seeing the terrible accident at the bottom of the stairs.

But when I ran back into my bedroom, Ren was gone.

It was like a nightmare. Two deaths in our family, in our house, in under one week. It was as though the foundation of our entire family had crumbled overnight.

Mother was despondent. Inconsolable. When she wasn’t out of her mind on opium or sleeping, then she paced the halls in a rage. Fane and I stayed away from her entirely, lest we become the targets of her fury. Draven was still reeling from Cleo’s death; whom he had, for all practical purposes, been closer to than our father. So, by the time Costel’s untimely demise rolled around,Draven was in a trancelike state. He took the brunt of handling Costel’s funeral arrangements. But Fane reminded him of my “migraine problem,” and asked him to once again schedule something to protect me from the painful daylight.

So, Draven set up the funeral for the nighttime.

Neither Fane nor I saw Ren again in the flurry of days leading up to the funeral. He took off numerous times in a carriage, attempting to find her and where she might be staying. We thought she must be terrified over the tragic events she’d had the misfortune to witness. It pained us both to think of her in parts unknown, frightened and lonely, feeling terrible.

After all, for some reason, it had seemed that Costel had been startledby Ren.It had been as though he recognized her. But he’d been in a blind drunk, who knows what he thought he saw that ultimately got him killed. The thought of Ren feeling guilty over it drove Fane and me both mad as well.

The night of the funeral came and went. Once again, Fane and I were sequestered to a back row seat, this time in the garden. More people came to see Costel off into the great hereafter, many of them strangers to me. I suspected most of them were busy bodies wanting to catch one lastglimpse of the supposed murderer, Costel Westminster, before seeing him off to Hell.

My head throbbed. The sound of blood rushing in the veins of all the people around me grew to be deafening. I squinted my eyes and massaged my temples. Even the soft starlight was enough to spark a sharp pain behind my eyes. The priest droned on and on, even as my pain mounted.

When I closed my eyes, all I saw was a river of blood flowing through my mind.

I wanted to murder every single person at Costel’s funeral.

The service wasn’t even over yet when I slipped away. As soon as I was through the gate and behind the hedge, I took off at a run for the carriage house.

The driver was sacked out on a hay bale, smoking, when I dashed into the barn. He startled and scrambled to his feet, looking for some way to extinguish his smoke without burning everything to the ground.

“I don’t care if you smoke,” I said, wincing at the pain that accompanied speaking in the tiniest of voices. “Just get me out of here.”

The driver smiled. “As you wish, Miss,” he said, offering me an elbow. He helped into the nearby carriage. He must’ve sensed my urgency as he made fast work of hitching the horse to the carriage and soon, we were pulling out into thenight and winding down the driveway out of Blackmoth House.

“Where to, Miss?” he asked, yelling to be heard over the beat of the horse’s hooves and the spinning wheels.

“London. I don’t care where.”

In the carriage, I wept on the way to the city. Everything had come undone. Our family was left floundering. My mother seemed to hate me. I had a little sister who was kept hidden away like an embarrassment. My best friend and the person I loved the most was missing, possibly never to return. My skin tingled with need to a point that was maddening.

A need to be touched.

And a need for blood.

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