Page 102 of Blackwicket
“Holy mother, Victor!” Ramsey’s voice. “Did you do this?”
“Not the fire,” he replied.
“Oh, Eleanora,” Hannah’s hands fluttered around my face.
“We can’t find Thea and Jack, are they out?” Ramsey demanded.
“I saw them running across the back lawn when I was searching for Eleanora,” Victor said.
“We need to get you both somewhere safe.”
“Not Blackwicket House. Please.” I croaked, never wanting to set eyes on the house again, to set foot in the place I’d once so loved that held secrets and horrors far beyond the curses of my childhood.
“But we can’t go into town, and the train isn’t running. Ramsey, we have to take them through right now,” Hannah argued, though it made no sense.
“Not in their state, woman, they’d never make it.”
“I know somewhere,” Victor said. “Come, before someone notices us.”
“I don’t think there’s anyone left to,” Hannah replied solemnly.
Hurting from my injuries, both magical and otherwise, but far too glad to be alive for a woman who didn’t deserve to be, I laid my head against Victor’s chest and stopped fighting the dark.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
I floated in the meadow of gray gloaming between life and death, with the pull of both suspending me in stasis. I could see nothing in the murky haze of this realm, either real or imagined, but I wasn’t alone. Voices spoke in tongues I didn’t know, murmuring in the middle distance, swirling like eddies in tide pools. And there was the smooth brush of the Drudge, a serpent winding through water. When it grew too bold, slithering over my stomach, a warm light, reminiscent of those that flashed in the immense vastness of Dark Hall, startled it away. And so I waited, for a lifetime, two, wrapped in the cycle of curses and magic, neither of them staking claim.
When I could sense my body — the smoky rawness in my throat, muscles sore from being tightly wound, the tingling in my wrist where magic had burned flesh — I knew I was being released.
I opened my eyes to a rough-hewn beech-wood ceiling, abused by the elements. The nip in the air was kept at bay by the fire roaring in the iron fireplace nearby. I’d been placed on an old sailor’s cot, tucked under blankets smelling mildly of mildew and wood smoke. The sound of the sea was persistent, a white, even wash of waves hitting rocky shores. It sang a song that felt like home, even when I didn’t have one anymore.
The ruined dress had been removed and lay discarded in the corner of the small room, and I wore my silk slip, skin washedclean of soot. Someone had unpinned my hair, rinsed the foulness from it with seawater, and left it to dry, coiling at my shoulders.
The traumatized skin of my wrist was smooth, scarred, and shining from the magical cauterization of the flesh, the outline of my fingers obscuring once-visible branches of veins. It should have been agony, but the wound appeared to have already healed, a mark I would bear forever in memory of William Nightglass.
As for the Drudge I’d been strong-armed into accommodating, Auntie had taken most of it, which was a mystery I’d consider another day when my emotional energy wasn’t so depleted that I felt like a shell. What was left of the Drudge lay curled like a viper in its den, interested more in maintaining its residence than taking ground. For now.
The rest of the space was simple: a single room with no electric lights, a small copper sink, and a heavy wooden table. I was in a dock house, part of a row of bare quarters built for the sailors who had worked the ships. Although it had contradicted our mother’s rules, Fiona and I had played in these houses, imagining someday having safe, humble homes of our own, our dreams small and impossible.
Near an open window overlooking the pebbled shore, Victor leaned, arms crossed, dressed in a worn cotton undershirt and a pair of battered corduroy work pants, favored by dockworkers from times gone by. His hair was untamed, curling at his temples, brushing the top of his scarred cheek. He gazed at the waves, golden light from either sunrise or sunset illuminating him with a divine glow, wisps of white escaping his mouth like smoke from an absent cigarette.
He was curse eating.
When I sat up, Victor’s trance was broken, and he turned his head my way.
We stared at each other; the silence punctuated by the creak of the house’s stilted foundation in the winter wind.
“Ramsey and Hannah are searching for Thea and the boy,” he said. “They’ll be back at sunrise, and we’ll discuss what to do.”
The comment was pragmatic, logical, making me aware the golden glow indicated nightfall rather than dawn.
“How long have I been asleep?”
“A full day,” he replied, “less than you need. Get more rest. I’ll keep watch.”
Instead of lying back as instructed, I stood, pulling the blanket with me to offer some cover for my near-nakedness. Victor uncrossed his arms, preparing to catch me if I took a tumble.
“My injuries?” The words were accusatory, as if I were angry someone had stolen the proof of what I’d survived.
