Page 79 of Blackwicket
We remained there in silence as the afternoon sun cast the room in a flaxen glow, punctuated by the twinkling of the magic, bright enough to shine even in daylight.
At last, Jack’s breaths grew long and even, and we left him to rest from his ordeal.
“I’m not returning him to William,” I told the Inspector as soon as the door was half shut.
“I didn’t expect you’d want to,” he replied, “But how do you plan to care for him here? William Nightglass controls this town, and if he can make sure you don’t get a train ticket out, he’ll make sure you can’t get necessities.
“I know. Grigori did that to us.”
“He tried to starve you?”
“He couldn’t. My mother was too smart. We had little gardens and grew everything we needed.”
Admittedly, I’d become tired of potatoes.
“And in the winter?”
I smiled at him, the upturn of my lips carrying both a fondness for the memory and a curdling resentment.
“Magic isn’t just good for sweet dreams.”
“Sounds like a lonely life.” The statement came with no sympathy. He’d simply acknowledged of the true shape of things.
“It was good for a while. My mother worked hard to make it seem we were the luckiest children in the world. I only realized later that the things that made it special here were actually hardships.” We were treading perilously close to memories I didn’t want to consider, so I deliberately changed focus. “You were a Brom boy?
Inspector Harrow glanced at the partially closed door, checking for young boys who snuck from of bed.
“I was,” he replied after a breath. “Until Chief Harrow.”
“Your name,” I said, and it wasn’t a question, more an acknowledgment. Victor Harrow only existed because a grizzled Authority chief took pity.
“Interested in my history suddenly?”
“Not suddenly,” I replied, “Besides, you know everything about me.”
“Not everything,” he murmured.
All at once, the hallway was too narrow, and the internal panic I’d grown used to experiencing around the Inspector kindled, making it all the more difficult for me not to bare my soul.
“It’s just that the gentleness you experienced surprises me. The Authority has always been cruel,” I said, no affection lost for an administration that vilified the vulnerable, who’d pushed my mother to confess to a crime she hadn’t committed all to protect me from the horrible consequences they’d impose for my actions.
“You think the Brom would fear us if we weren’t?”
“Being what you are, how could you support what they do to people like you, like me? What they would do to Jack.”
“What would I do to him, Eleanora?” Inspector Harrow asked softly. “He’s innocent. He didn’t choose this.”
Neither had I, but I stowed the defense. I’d been a full-grown woman when I’d made my decisions regarding Brock Moftan, who hadn’t been Brom, only an awful man.
“I was the first kid Barrick took into his home.” The Inspector surprised me by continuing to divulge some of his history. “He knew I wouldn’t last anywhere else. I was too impulsive, bad tempered. But I wasn’t the first Dark Hall child he’d rescued. He’d made it his mission to ferret us from hiding and out of the clutches of people who were misusing us. Do you honestly believe Curse Eaters were keeping the children they kidnapped safe?”
I wanted to answer, to refute his prejudices, but I knew nothing of other Curse Eaters. I knew only what my mother had told me. But Isolde herself believed the practice of procuring children from Dark Hall was barbaric, had broken tradition instead. I wondered what sort of person Granny Fora had been.Had she been a Dark Hall child herself? Sadly, there was no one left to clarify my family’s sordid history.
“I can’t say,” I confessed. “But I suppose you believe the Authority did.”
“Barrick Harrow did,” the Inspector said. “He found places for them to go, people who’d care for them. For as long as he was alive, he kept track of every single kid he’d recovered. His work was the entire reason I followed in his footsteps, joined the Authority. What he was doing wasn’t sanctioned; nobody knew what was going on, only that he was good at keeping Brom and their Curse Eaters under control. They probably assumed he was murdering them, but he never invited anyone to think different.”
The Inspector was describing a man who pretended to be a monster so he could do good. I wondered for the first time how much of the Inspector’s monstrousness was for show. But I was in no danger of convincing myself Victor Harrow wasn’t who he claimed to be. I’d been a witness to his violence.
