Page 14 of Blackwicket
I had no business being here, but where else could I go? I was destitute, friendless, and a wanted criminal who’d lost the last real thing she’d ever loved.
Fiona.
Grief replaced my anxiety, and I braced myself, unwilling to indulge in a breakdown in front of my father.
“It’s a shame how far this old lady’s fallen,” he sighed.
“It looks worse than I’ve ever seen it.”
“Fiona struggled the past couple of years.”
Guilt coiled tight around my lungs, shaming me for my absence.
“I used to come up here to flirt with your mom between dock shifts,” Darren continued, surprisingly sentimental. “Granny Fora liked to chase me off with a fire poker. Got me solid in the shoulder.”
He rubbed said shoulder for emphasis, grinning. “Didn’t stop me, though.”
I regarded my father, attempting to see a man worthy of Isolde Blackwicket’s attention. But all I discerned was an aging black-market crook who couldn’t accept the love given to him or offer any in return. My grandmother, who’d died before fifty and left her daughter to fend for herself in a world growing ever more cruel, had sensed this aspect in him and reacted accordingly.
“I’m sure you didn’t deserve it,” I replied.
Grasping the front door’s brass handle, worn shiny by athousand hands, I waited for the telltale thrum of energy, the rush of greeting, but it remained a lifeless piece of metal. I tried it. Locked.
“The key,” I said.
“Oh, uh.” Darren rummaged in his pocket. “I don’t think there is one.”
“Then why are you looking for it?”
“Nervous. This place, you know, it…”
A surge of static jumped from the handle, raising the hairs on my arm, followed by the sound of a bolt retreating. The heavy wood door swung inward a few inches, hinges singing. The house remembered the girl who’d turned her back on it after all.
“Does that,” Darren finished with an uncomfortable chuckle, sticking his hands deep into his coat pockets.
“The latch wasn’t set,” I said, the lie unnecessary, as my father was acquainted with Blackwicket House and its machinations, but some habits were too deeply ingrained.
As I entered the foyer, I was greeted by the familiar fragrance of aged cedar and salty damp. Here, guests would have been welcomed by a sightline that drew the eye along a lushly carpeted front hall to the grand window overlooking the cliffs, offering a sense of being suspended in the air. But the brocade draperies were closed, blocking the light, shrouding the hallway in forbidding shadows. Another step produced the creak of a loose board, one I’d pressed repeatedly as a child just to hear the varying notes of its protest until my mother’s stern, affectionate voice called
Eleanora, please. Even the dead can’t rest!
The ghost of her voice echoed in my ear, and despite myself, I leaned my weight back to make the board squeak again, but it was silent, giving me no more welcome.
This and many other rooms besides had once brimmed with plants, flowers of all kinds, spilling from pots and hangers, the verdant green of it livening a space often wreathed in darkness. Our mother had taught us to nurture them with the lightest touch of magic. It had been her quiet mission to secretly sharpen our senses without exposing our abilities. Organic magic was rare, and the people capable of calling upon it rarer, encouraging the eyes of greed to fall on natural users, no single villain more troubling than Grigori Nightglass. His strange, clinical fascination with Curse Eaters made mother fear he’d discover Fiona and I were gifted.
These plants were gone as well, and in their place, pulpy water scars remained, boards stripped of their stain. The proud formal stairwell, its hand carved banister still stubbornly beautiful, rose to my left, tufted runners removed, steps worn with the nicks and scrapes of use. My gaze slipped next to the wide mahogany counter where arriving guests would have checked in, back when the inn was still well-loved and full.
As nostalgia softened my heart to it, I finally felt the pulse of Blackwicket House. It encouraged the terrible adoration I’d never fully rid myself of, the sort that had accompanied me into every new city, on every train, in every car, tethering me to my bleak heritage. Overwhelmed, I turned to my father for support, hoping to rest my head against the cool collar of his jacket, to be held by someone who’d known me my entire life, who understood what this meant. But he hadn’t come inside.
He stood on the porch, gazing in, wary.
“You’re not coming?” I hated the way my voice clogged in my nose.
“Aw, Cricket.” He hesitated. “I can’t.”
I dropped my bag onto the floor and stormed back to yank the other from his grip.
“You’ve never been needed before,” I said, re-entering the foyer. “This isn’t any different.”
