Page 28 of Blackwicket
Mingling among the others were the occasional photos of Fiona and me in various stages of growing up, from early years brimming with joyful mischief to later days when our bodies had grown long and unfamiliar, and life at Blackwicket House had become difficult to bear. Although our smiles diminished over time, our affection endured, a fierce love I believed unbreakable. I reached for the photo of us on the shore, bare feet in the waves,our hair—light and dark—tangling in the wind. Mother stood, awkward, with her arms around us as we tried to take a formal picture. This attempt had made Isolde Blackwicket laugh so hard she cried, hiccupping for half an hour afterward. She’d kept it by her bedside.
I ran my thumb gently over my sister’s youthful face, comparing her features to those of the woman she’d become. She’d traded her long braids for coiffed styles that complemented her various hats, forsaking the A-line cotton dresses of her youth for impeccably tailored skirt suits and sweater sets. Judging by the pictures, her wardrobe was significant, though I found no evidence of it here, where there’d never been a closet or wardrobe, only the cedar dresser. I investigated the drawers. They were filled with clean sheets, slips, and stockings. Nothing more.
Little else in this space had changed. The wallpaper remained green striped, our beds dressed in handmade quilts, cream and yellow. Our mother had woven the blankets with magic that glowed like fireflies in the dark, encouraging our dreams to be sweet. This magic had long since faded.
A relic from my childhood rested on my pillow. A rag doll, with button eyes, a needlepoint nose, and a crooked smile. Its yarn hair, once the color of strawberries, had dulled to an elderly pink. The curse that had taken residence in this doll, turning it black and sodden with turmoil, had been the first I’d ever eaten.
My mother had guided me through every step, unlatching the parlor window so the sound of the sea enveloped us.
“When I was your age, I sat right here to work. The waves helped me concentrate,” she’d said, tucking hair behind my ears, comforting me as only mothers who understand the fears and determinations of their children can. “This is a big job, Ellie. Don’t you want me to help you? No? Well, alright. Here, hold the dolltight. The curse is depending on you. Close your eyes, find the heart. Do you have it? Good. Breathe out slowly. Now breathe in.”
It had rattled me. No amount of warning could have prepared me for the shock of thick, oily curse smoke invading my nose and mouth, filling my head and lungs with a suffocating pain that didn’t belong to me. But the ache had been brief, and my tears had been wiped away, kisses given on cheeks. For the next two hours, we’d sat at the window together, and I unraveled the curse, picking it apart like a knot from a ball of thread. My mother relocated the freshly healed magic to the Narthex with as much care as she took when replanting a sprout.
In the coming years, I ate curses whenever I could, and though capable of working on my own, I was never allowed. The strictest rules in our house were the limits on when Fiona and I could handle magic—especially cursed magic.
I bent and scooped up the raggedy thing, holding it close and burying my face in the rough yarn. It smelled of old perfume and cotton. Sitting on the bed, I saw to the matter of the Drudge burrowed inside me. The curses I’d collected, festering with my things downstairs, had accumulated because I’d been avoiding this moment—the baring of my magic to hurt.
The curse remnant had buried itself deep, but as I plucked patiently at the raw layers, coaxing, it began to unwind. It surrendered its hold because the power I offered was bigger and promised, at last, a release from misery. I fed the strings of the curse through my magic, as though spinning wool, and when the final tainted fiber was cleansed, I tilted my chin and released it.
A translucent cloud, shimmering in the light, slipped from my lips. In it, I imagined the faces of Ms. Rosley and her children, together wherever the soul journeyed in the end. I had no Narthex to give it to. It would have to find its own way.
I made my sister’s bed, replaced her robe on the hook, and dressed in my soiled clothes. A sense of duty had returned to me, and I was ready to take stock of what was left of our home. My resolve to leave after Fiona’s funeral persisted, but my heart had softened to the idea of gathering a few items here and there to bring with me when I said goodbye to Nightglass forever.
I checked the hallway. The Inspector’s door was closed, and I heard no movement. In the downstairs foyer, I pulled aside a curtain to check the front drive, finding it empty. I was alone. I rummaged in my bags, changing where I stood, unable to withstand the sensation of the filthy clothes for even a second more. Then I advanced to the board of keys, primed to scoop them all off their hook. I was done using magic.
I halted in my steps.
The parlor lights were on again, and the hallway drapes open, framing a vision of gray sky stretching over water until they met in a lover’s embrace with no land between them. The house was baiting me, but I wouldn’t fall for it.
“You’re not clever,” I said, risking the taunt.
The low reverberation of a single piano note rang, soft and muffled as a sigh against a pillow. I’d never known a Drudge to play the piano. They were creatures of dark energy, and while they could manifest vague physical forms, especially here in Blackwicket House, they rarely interacted with things that couldn’t breathe.
My heart jumped, and I hurried to my bags, keeping an eye on the hall as I foraged. Catching the latch on the box where the curses languished, I snatched the first vessel my fingers touched—an old fountain pen, its lacquer discolored, the tip sharp. I’d swiped it from the desk of a bank manager interviewing me for a secretarial position when I’d gone by the name Joan Boldrade. By the conclusion of the interview, I’d known very well why it was cursed. I held the thing like a dagger,approaching as soft-footed as possible. The curse infecting this instrument was small and wouldn’t do much damage, but the lethal point held promise, as the bank manager learned when his hand had ventured to acquaint itself with the buttons of my blouse. It was the last day I’d been Joan.
No more notes had been played, but as I neared the doorway, I could hear the crackling of a fire in the grate, the whisper of paper turning. I pressed my shoulder to the wall and peeked inside as far as I could without entering.
The visible portion of the parlor was awash in anemic winter sunlight and the glow of the two lamps, which I recalled I’d never turned off. But more than this, firelight flickered, the blaze glinting in the black sheen of the piano, its fallboard open, keys displayed white and wide as the grin of a Cheshire cat. From my current angle, the fireplace wasn’t visible. It was a vast mahogany thing, boasting a towering overmantel inlaid with a gilded framed mirror that reflected the views and, in the summer, moonbeams.
Papers rustled, followed by the shifting of shadows, then that beastly voice.
“Ms. Blackwicket,” Inspector Harrow drawled, turning the sound of my name in his mouth nearly obscene. “Good afternoon.”
Leaning my forehead against the doorframe, I shut my eyes tight to ward off my temper and the blush venturing to develop. I’d stripped down to my underwear in the middle of the foyer while that man was mere yards away. I considered saying nothing, returning upstairs and leaving him speaking to thin air. But I didn’t want him in this vault of my history. Aware that walking in with a weapon clutched like a threat in my fist wouldn’t go over well, I tucked the pen deep in my pocket.
As I entered, I avoided looking at the old Narthex or the stain on the floor, and found the Inspector standing by the fire.He held a worn copy of children’s fairytales in his hand. This book had been my favorite as a girl, and I hated it had been discovered. The Inspector was clean-shaven, hair precisely in order, wearing his usual brown trousers and waistcoat over a crisp white shirt, starched and wrinkle-free, the ever-present revolver secured in its holster. I was satisfied he didn’t feel comfortable enough here to go without it.
His gaze flicked from my face to my feet, perhaps sizing me up in case he needed to throw me in the trunk of his car, which was mysteriously absent.
“Your car isn’t in the drive,” I said, making it obvious I’d searched for it.
“I parked around back so as not to obstruct the view.” The answer was dry, but he couldn’t hide the sardonic bite.
“And what are you doing in here?” I demanded, unsettled by how pleasant it all appeared: the fire, the open curtains, the bookshelves lined with titles I’d read perhaps twice each. But both the room and the man were more than they seemed. Together, they brought to mind the yew berries thriving in the rambling overgrowth on the road to town. Beautiful and toxic.
I shocked myself with this thought, not because it was unjust, but because I’d unwittingly categorized Inspector Harrow as something beautiful.
“Getting my bearings,” he replied blithely, closing the book with a snap and replacing it on its shelf.
