Page 8 of This Haunted Heart

For me the line between fear and thrill, pleasure and pain, was disastrously thin. As my heart sped, muscles in my stomach clenched. A delicious thumping pulse surged between my thighs. The promise of danger-tinged adventure was a shot of bliss to my system that I chased harder than men with pickaxes and shovels sought silver.

* * *

That night, I had a nightmare, a vision of wandering lost in the mire I used to call home. The dream was instantly familiar. I’d had it many, many times before. Only, it was different in some ways, the images more vivid, the pain they inspired starker. My senses were heightened as I slogged through wet earth. The smell of silt and mud and broadleaf tobacco coated my nose.

A menacing voice shouted at my back, calling me terrible names, and I ran from his anger as fast as I could, afraid the monster would catch me.

Then I heard a melodious voice humming a happy song. The melody drifted to me through the trees, calling me closer.

I came to a clearing surrounded by heavy fog. There, I spotted a strange woman seated at a great loom. The loom itself was made of the drooping branches of the nearby weeping willow trees, pulled together to craft the frame, shuttle, and posts. I knew immediately that she was one of the weaver women, witches of legend like in the old stories from my childhood. Witches who guarded the woods and demanded offerings from travelers.

I sensed that if I stayed close to her, she would keep me safe from the monster, but I didn’t know what offering to giveher for her help. I had nothing. A feeling of foreboding and ancient wonderment settled over me, as intertwined as the threads in the blanket she was making.

Her dress was dark fog and black smoke. She wore a wicker hat over corn-silk yellow hair. The wide brim shadowed her face. I wanted to give her something, so I sang a silly song for her I’d invented as a child. The song seemed to please the witch. She sang it with me, and I drew nearer.

Her yarn was blood red, and as she wove her magic into the fabric, I realized the crimson wool was being drawn right out of her wrists, straight from her veins.

A scream caught in my throat.

Chapter 3

Lochlan Finley

Ivisited Rynn’s chambers again overnight while she slumbered. Snooping around like a sneak thief, I found a wall safe behind the painting of a pirate ship being tossed in a stormy sea. It hung against the paneling across from her bed.

I tried a variety of combinations: her birthday, important holidays, her favorite number, over and over again, then her second favorite number over and over. I assigned a letter code to the name she’d given to all of the chickens she’d raised, but Daisy wasn’t the answer either. I attempted a variety of patterns until I was exhausted, but I couldn’t crack it. The lock was high-end and made of heavy iron. She’d spent a pretty penny on the equipment.

Whatever was concealed inside, it likely contained theleverage I’d need to break my nightingale and see her put in the cage I had prepared for her.

Rynn’s dreams weren’t restful. She thrashed about the bed, mumbling incoherently, and I wondered if my sudden presence in her room had caused her nightmares.

I hoped it did.

Having seen her, laughed with her, I was more troubled than ever before. In my imagination, meeting her again had gone very differently. She should have behaved like the villain she was, not like the vibrant sweetheart of our youth. Her mind always turned to teasing and mischief. It was impossible not to get sucked in by her.

She was a delightful vortex. That’s how she’d fooled me before, and here I was getting swept up all over again.

With a flustered grunt, I gave up on the code. I couldn’t crack it, and I needed to get some rest before I returned. I readied another cigarette for her. It was the exact kind we used to sneak when we were young. She’d served as a kitchen maid to the family who had adopted me. Most of the time, my father had treated me just like another domestic rather than a son—sometimes less than that.

When he was particularly unkind to me, she’d steal from him, usually a cigarette or a coin. Theft was a very bad habit of hers—her favorite form of retribution, but I’d admired her for her boldness then. We’d smoke it together after the house had fallen still. In memory of that time, I lit the cigarette and took one long drag, blowing the smoke toward her bed, letting it pass over her like a moving spirit.

Sometimes in my dreams Rynn would come to me as a ghost to ravish me in my sleep. She’d hold me after and sing to me. It was a favorite of mine, one that I often revisited when I wasawake, despite how it put a bittersweet ache in my chest.

I snuffed the cigarette out on the window ledge and dropped it there by the lantern for her to find in the morning.

I hoped it brought her terrible visions. Even worse than the ones she’d inspired in me every night for twenty years. In my nightmares she was murdered in the mire again and again. I tried to save her but couldn’t get to her. I tried to reach her slain body, but a fog settled between the trees and I couldn’t find any trace of her.

I wandered the marshes, searching for her lost ghost, desperate for whatever remained of her. I’d take any token. A bone, a lock of hair, a piece of clothing. I wanted her. I needed her. I begged her ghost to please come to me.

But it had all been a lie. My nightingale was never dead. I’d been tricked. Rynn had made a mockery of my grief.

* * *

When I came to call the next evening, I brought a bouquet of purple hyacinth and sweet briar roses, and I hid a wrapped present in the double-breasted lapel of my summer sack coat. I was prepared to pay another entry fee, but the madam of the Lark saw the flowers, knew who I was, and told me to head around back.

A gaunt attendant introduced himself as Matthew as he waved me in. After removing my hat, I hung it on a rack by the door. I took a moment to brush fingers through my hair, fixing what my brim had mushed.

“The ladies upstairs are a sure thing as long as you’ve got cash in your pocket,” Matthew muttered. “There’s no need to make a fuss.”

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