Page 11 of Blackwicket
Shehadn’t. She’d wanted me to stay away.
“No,” I replied, the words barely a mutter. “I won’t.”
He took my shaking hand. “Sweetheart, look at yourself. You’re out of options.”
Chapter Four
I stepped down the hallway, careful to avoid the floorboards I knew to be the most contrary. My mother and sister were asleep, and I wasn’t supposed to be out of bed this late. My next footfall brought with it a stab of memory. No one was asleep. They were all gone.
I halted, a decade of memories converging. How had I gotten here? I barely remembered boarding the train.
A soft mewling sounded up the corridor from a door that poured firelight onto the faded runner. Someone was in the parlor, the place where all my warmest, most tender memories had been made, and where they’d all been so thoroughly corrupted. I wanted to stumble back to my room and confront these terrible feelings in the light of day, but a figure moved in the shadows, drawing my attention.
Fiona.
She was alive. It had all been a hideous lie.
I sucked in a breath and hurried toward where she paused at the parlor threshold, pale hand lighted on the doorframe, only daring a peek. She was so near, and I reached to touch the shining braid of her hair, a style she hadn’t worn since we were young.
I didn’t notice her turn, but suddenly she was facing me, snatching my wrist in her icy fingers, shushing. She tugged me forward and relinquished her spot close to the door so I couldlook inside. There were two people there, in the center of the room—a prone child and a crouching woman. By the soft curl of the chestnut hair, I knew the woman to be my mother, and the child…a scream stuck in my throat, strangling me, as the hallway breathed, writhing with invisible life. The boy’s head lolled sideways, copper smoke billowing from his small nose and chapped mouth, his hazel eyes devoid of life. The woman scuttled around, resembling an animal guarding its kill, and I found it wasn’t my mother. It was me.
Reeling back, I bumped into a weeping Fiona. Instead of tears, that same red vapor rose to halo her golden head, and a sound intoned, deep and doomed as metal creaking underwater.
“Dark Hall is open,” she whispered, her mouth filled with ashes.
A slurry of tentacles surged from behind, overwhelming her. Her neck, clavicle, and shoulders snapped in sharp succession, echoing like gunshots as the Fiend of Dark Hall twisted her body into an impossible shape.
I jolted awake in the train car, the rumble of the tracks grounding me, and waited for my heartbeat to slow. Watery light streamed through the window, and I observed the passing landscape, the expansive fields, fallow and snowy, and the distant hills of bare trees. Here and there, a break in the woods revealed a stretch of water glinting beneath the apathetic winter sun. We were nearing Nightglass.
The door slid open, and Darren appeared, holding a paper-wrapped sandwich. I hadn’t asked how he’d afforded a private car, because I’d been too grateful not to have to share this distressing trip with strangers. Sharing it with my father was bad enough.
“Feeling sick, Cricket?”
“Not looking forward to our destination.”
“You’re going for your sister. Lay her to rest, clean out thehouse. Then you can return to your”—he waved his free hand dismissively—“normallife. Here, I brought you food. You’re looking like a revived corpse.”
My stomach turned, the image of Fiona flashing, bright as lightning.
I didn’t take the sandwich.
“Clean out the house?” I repeated, and he sighed, realizing I wasn’t going to accept his offering.
“Yeah.” He unwrapped the food. “Get rid of all the stuff your mother and sister left.”
He was talking about the curses, the ones buried in the bones of Blackwicket House.
Once upon a time, they’d been deposited there to begin the slow, languid process of unweaving. Their rotted threads would be plucked away, then filtered through unadulterated magic until it remembered how to be itself again. Our home had boasted a Narthex, which mother had painstakingly built to connect us to the living power of the world beyond ours, where magic lingered. The proximity had kept the curses docile, but that Narthex had been closed, and magic was scarce these days. Most of what remained was damaged, and the small amount belonging to each of us by natural order, too insignificant.
Clearing the house of its burden required more than a single Curse Eater. Even two were woefully deficient. A familiar guilt nauseated me. I’d abandoned an impossible job on Fiona’s shoulders all so I could escape the house, the shame, and myself.
“I’m not staying long enough for that,” I replied.
“The house shouldn’t be left the way it is. D’you know how dangerous that would be?”
“What do you know about it?Anyof it?”
“Cricket, your mom and I weren’t married, and sure, I was gone a lot, but we loved each other. She confided in me. I know how it works, how the place runs. I couldn’t help, but…”
