Page 52 of Blackwicket
“Yes, I needed you to see this. You don’t understand what we’re going through here, Eleanora.”
“You’re forcing people to eat curses!”
“We don’t force anyone to do anything; they’re here by choice.”
“What were their other options?” I snapped.
“Don’t play righteous with me, Eleanora Blackwicket.” Thea took a step towards me, her own fury darkening her cheeks. “You have no idea what I know about you.”
I intended to clarify that she knew nothing, but that was a pointless argument. We stared each other down instead, each of us trying to find traction. At length, Thea straightened her shoulders, proud.
“You’re right,” she said.
The concession was unexpected.
“Those people are desperate,” she continued. “Most of the Brom here in Nightglass are. When the Authority axed the ports, they lost their way to make ends meet, and most of them couldn’t leave. Fiona poured her heart and soul into this town after that, all the money she had.”
So that’s where the fortune had gone: toward renovations that turned a crumbling tomb back into a functioning Inn, and to a dying town my sister loved despite everything.
Thea was struggling not to deflate, the pressure heavy.
“She opened Blackwicket House, took the curses the Brom collected, and gave them back the magic we used for this sickening circus. She never attended. By the time I got here, Nightglass was prospering because of her. She was always standing with arms and heart open for whoever needed her, never a complaint, never a waver of fortitude.”
Thea’s voice was thick with something—frustration, grief, I couldn’t determine. My sister’s dress suddenly felt overtight on my body, constricting me with the responsibilities she’d shouldered because her heart had been too big for her own good.
“But things started to go wrong, people went missing: clients, customers, and a few of our own guys. Gone. It wasgetting more and more dangerous to do the devil’s work, but the devil didn’t care.” Thea raised a shoulder, as if she could shrug off the horror of everything she must have been living. “Grigori was an old bastard, but he was putty in your sister’s hands. Fiona knew how to handle the Nightglass men, how to sweet-talk them.”
Just like my mother.
“Then Grigori got himself murdered.”
Murdered. The Inspector hadn’t been forthcoming with this information.
“Throat cut like a fucking holiday turkey. Like that poor Ticketmaster at the station.”
“Mr. Thatcher?” I asked, shocked.
Thea nodded. “Happened last night.”
Her revulsion and regret matched mine. Grigori had done everything to justify his bloody exit, but Christopher Thatcher had merely seemed scared.
“Grigori deserved worse,” I said, and Thea’s dark gaze found mine.
“Damn right he did,” she whispered, taking in a shaky breath. “William had always been strange, but he was kinder than his father, and he loved the hell out of Fiona. We thought he was going to step up, change everything, but...” She paused here, stuck on information she didn’t want to give me. “When he and Fiona fell apart, he went strange, spent a lot more time with that crazy geezer. Then Grigori died and locked himself away for weeks. When he finally showed face again, it was with new plans for the Brom, goals for a long and prosperous future. He was meaner, unpredictable. That’s the time Fiona began acting wrong, too. She withdrew, closed the house, and wouldn’t talk to anyone.”
I wanted to ask about Fiona’s son, or the son she’d believed she had, but wondered how much she’d tell me, how deeply shewas involved in what led my sister toward the spiral that ended her life. Thea appeared genuinely disturbed by the world she lived in, but if there was one thing I’d learned in the handful of hours we’d spent together, this gorgeous musician was also an incredible actress.
But I had little to lose, so I took a page from the Inspector’s book and attempted to throw her off guard by a quick change of subject.
“When we talked last, you told me my sister didn’t have a child.”
“She didn’t,” Thea replied without missing a beat, but there was a hardness in her tone, a warning that this was territory she wouldn’t cede easily.
Either I wasn’t good at asking unexpected questions, or Thea was always on her toes. It was possibly both.
“So whose boy was in the picture, Thea? Who’s Roark?”
“I don’t know everything about your sister. We were close, but she never let anyone into her inner world. I’ve never even been to that house of yours. What I’ll tell you is that the only way women like us survive in a place like this is to go along, Eleanora. It’s what Fiona did, what she had to do. Then she changed her mind and started bucking. It exploded in her face.”
