Page 24 of Blackwicket
“The war. If I were magic, I’d have abandoned us too. I was infantry, you know. Top rank, because I could conjure a spell or two.” He paused. “What they did to humans and magic alike inthe name of power, well, the Authority tried to make sure it would never happen again, but I fear they’ve lost their way.”
The undertaker’s ancient hand rested on my arm, a hand that had helped countless dead.
“Eleanora.” He grew hushed, worried someone might overhear. “People are looking for ways to bring magic back here, somewhere it doesn’t want to be. All it can do here is create monsters. Your sister, she got caught in the middle of this new, invisible war, and look what happened. If you linger in Nightglass, it’ll come for you too.”
My senses sharpened in alarm. The high, tart scent of formaldehyde invaded my nose, and I became conscious of every noise, every shuffle of feet and small groan of sorrow. When I looked into his green eyes, I noted something more than urgency. Fear.
“We’re not a world for magic anymore,” he said. “We should let it die. In pain or in peace, let it die.”
The house was no less foreboding when I returned to it, walking the hill slowly, focusing on the whip of the breeze, the snowflakes’ steady kisses on my cheeks. My visit to the morgue had solidified my plans. After Fiona’s burial in three days, I would run, and neither the Brom nor Inspector Harrow could stop me. The Nightglass port no longer functioned, but surely at least one remained open somewhere. An opportunity to escape to another country, though I knew nothing about nations beyond the sea, only that we’d once been at war with them, and that trade had been abruptly cut off when I was a child. My mother had avoided discussing neighboring lands with us, and the Authority limited information and discouraged curiosity.
The Inspector’s car was absent, the door still locked, but that meant little, and I remained vigilant. I needed to check for broken windows, worn latches, any other way the loathsomeman might have weaseled his way inside. This practical plan gave me purpose. The house opened to me with no struggle. Of course. I was the only person left who could keep it alive.
My head ached.
When I entered, I noticed lights—a dull wash of yellow spilling from the parlor, illuminating the front hall. A flash of outrage fueled me with fresh energy, propelling me toward a place I never intended to enter again, because stronger than my desire to avoid it was the wrongness of the intrusion, of someone invading a space full of painful secrets. Blackwicket House inhaled my furor as I rushed past the stairs, the kitchen, down the hall and over the threshold of the family room.
It was deserted.
Two lamps glowed, their sickly light intensifying the surrounding darkness, transforming bookshelves and furniture into ominous figures. The first thing drawing my eye was the cupboard-sized space between the white bookcases and fireplace mantel, where my ancestors had carved with consistent use an invisible door to the endless nebular void of magic. Throughout her life, my mother moved freely to and from that forbidden place, one I’d often secretly visited myself.
I tried to keep my eyes here, but more horrors awaited than the memory of the night my mother entered Dark Hall and sealed the portal. My gaze slid to a sooty smudge partially concealed by the rug. This was the spot where Thomas Nightglass had breathed his last breath.
The trembling came, the world growing small until I was aware of only the streaked wood that had drank blood and bile and couldn’t be cleaned.
The shrill ringing of the phone in the foyer broke the thrall like a pick on frozen water, and I gasped, sucking in air I’d stopped breathing. I bolted, grateful for a reason to withdraw that wasn’t merely cowardice.
I reached the phone, its screeching bell echoing loud and long.
“Hello,” I said, turmoil making the word terse.
“Hey, Cricket.” Darren’s voice was so unexpected, and a sob lifted, but I swallowed it down. “Listen, I’m staying at this hotel, the Vanderson, in town. It’s a damn sight better than sleeping in that wreck. I know you’re mad at me, but why don’t you get a room here? I’ll pay for it. You shouldn’t be up there by yourself.”
I longed to sink into the concern in my father’s voice, the care I’d have once given anything to experience, but it had come too late. Besides, the Inspector would ferret me out, make a scene. If Darren learned the Authority was in town, he’d beat a hasty retreat, and as much as it pained me to admit, his presence at Fiona’s funeral would be stabilizing.
“That’s nice of you, but I’m already unpacked, and I need to go through Fiona’s things. I went to the funeral home, changed the plans.”
“Right,” he said. “When you set your mind to something, you’re a bull. When’s the service?”
“No service. Just a burial here at the house. I’m going to put her next to Mom.”
Next to an empty grave.
“A lot of people in Nightglass loved your sister, Eleanora. You should have given them a chance to grieve her.”
“What people?”
“She had friends.”
“Where were they when she died on the porch?”
“Eleanora.” The weariness in his tone infuriated me anew.
“If people loved her, they would have helped her.”
“Sometimes there just isn’t anything you can do, Cricket,” he replied, and the sadness in his voice was too aching, too real.
“I have a lot to do. Fiona’s burial is in three days, at noon.”
