Page 47 of Blackwicket
“We don’tsellmagic!”
“Yet, your and your sister’s friendship with Nightglass…”
His words were severed by a spasm taking over his body, every muscle tightening, as if a seizure was pulling him inward, dragging his eyes shut amidst an onslaught of pain. It lasted for seconds, yet the torment lingered in the tension that kept his shoulders from straightening.
I made to approach. “Inspector?”
He raised a hand to prevent me from coming nearer.
“I’m fine, your sympathy isn’t required,” he said, the aftermath of the fit making his tone brittle.
“I was offering medical attention, not sympathy,” I replied. I’d once been happy to imagine the Inspector suffering, but seeing it in person wasn’t as pleasant as I’d dreamed. If I’d been a witness to the outcome of what I’d done to Brock, I wondered if I would have experienced the same concern.
The Inspector’s chuckle was unexpected, breathy, and humorless. “Neither are needed.”
“Did the Drudge…”
“I’m well.” At last, he was capable of his previous intensity, shoulders leveling. “As much as this conversation has been eye-opening, I need to excuse myself to rest. Being in this soggy little town is a drain on my soul.”
“I don’t think you should stay,” I said, hoping my warning wasn’t received as a threat. “I can’t guarantee this won’t happen again.”
He began his trudge to his room.
“Drudge don’t scare me anymore than they scare you,” he replied. “I was caught off guard today, I won’t be next time.”
I was going to let him go, but as he passed, the question burning inside me spilled.
“Do you really believe the Brom are stealing magical children from Dark Hall?” I asked, giving proper reverence to the weight of the question.
He paused, weary, his energy diminishing even as we stood there.
“Was Isolde Blackwicket born here?” he asked in return, and he wasn’t inquiring if she’d been born in Nightglass, or in Blackwicket House as Fiona and I were.
This was my mother’s secret, the shame of a family that didn’t belong to her, given to me and my sister to keep. But she wasn’t here, and the storm this would bring couldn’t hurt her.
“No,” I said, the word hushed.
He examined my face, eyes lingering once more on my lips as though looking for the trace of a lie there.
“Yes,” he replied, then surprised me with a shift in his tone, made soft by his peculiar exhaustion. “Miss Blackwicket. I want you to consider the possibility that the clothes and toys in the wardrobe weren’t meant for just one child.”
Dread draped me in an oily shroud. I glanced at the open door leading to the suite of rooms, once a haven, now destroyed and soiled by the implication that my sister had turned Blackwicket House into more than a waystation for cursed Brom.
“She wouldn’t.” I said it with conviction, permitting myself to reject the possibility without being sure. I owed Fiona that much. The Inspector didn’t refute me.
We went our separate ways in resigned silence, until Inspector Harrow’s voice carried the short distance across the hall.
“Eleanora.”
I glanced back from where I stood, staring into the room Fiona had made her own. The Inspector leaned against his door frame, preparing to close himself away.
“I’ll find out what happened to Fiona,” he said. “But you need to mind yourself and the company you keep. You should know better than anyone that there are monsters in Nightglass far bigger than those you harbor here.”
Chapter Nineteen
I sat in the threshold of that room, knees to my chest, staring in at the wreckage for so long that the afternoon began to fade. I imagined the many memories hiding in the cracks of the floorboards and seams of the wallpaper. A million rice-sized secrets undulating out of view like maggots. Once, nothing could have made this room feel unsafe. Now, all I could sense was the foul possibility that my sister had been helping the Brom kidnap children, just as Grandma Fora had taken my mother. It would have required traveling between the joints Dark Hall’s magical corridors—quadrants I’d never been brave enough to venture into. The ones where reality grew insubstantial as a cloud, and magic moved in illuminated streaks through the vacuum of darkness.
Mother had never spoken an ill word of Fora Blackwicket, the only parent she’d ever known, but in truth she’d hardly spokenanyword of her. Isolde’s childhood was a mystery to me beyond the occasional story told by others. Even after she’d divulged her origins as a Dark Hall child, she’d never discussed with us the possibilities of where her home was, but I suspected she was searching for it during all of her trips to Dark Hall near the end.
