Page 29 of Court of Shadows
We certainly hadn’t. I felt more and more sure that I needed to find a way to protect Poppy, Chijioke, Mary, and Lee, especially if there was some kind of murderer on the loose. Just because they were touched by magic, it did not mean my friends were invulnerable. I closed my eyes, trying not to imagine myself dead and desiccated in my own bed. We stood in a semicircle around the bed with Chijioke in the middle. He groanedand pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Och, this was not supposed to happen,” he muttered. “They were to marry first.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why does it matter? She was going to die here eventually, yes?”
Poppy leaned around Chijioke and stuck out her lip at me. “Did you do it?”
“Me!?” I laughed with exasperation. “Of course not, I was in the barn mucking out the stalls and then with Chijioke. I couldn’t have done it.”
“It wasn’t any of us,” he cut in flatly. “Unless you have some secrets I don’t know about, Poppy. This doesn’t exactly look like your work.”
She tiptoed closer and leaned over the body. I shuddered, my stomach growing weak at the sight of Amelia. I had not liked her, certainly, but the look of a dead body was still nausea inducing. That, and it was hard to believe that a girl so young could deserve this end. She looked like a husk of a body, shriveled and frail.
Gradually, it dawned on me that this meant we were all in danger. If nobody on the staff had done this to Amelia, then who had? What would stop them from coming for us?
“We should tell Mrs. Haylam and search the house,” I said, turning away from the gruesome sight. “There must be an intruder or—”
“Or it’s one of those bloody Adjudicators,” Chijioke bit out.“Odds are this is their idea of a joke.”
“Come now,” I scolded, pointing to the bed. “You really think Finch could do something like this? He risked his life to help Mary and me last night. I know you don’t like him, but—”
“Sparrow is very mean,” Poppy said. “She could do it.”
“Exactly.” Chijioke began to pace, then went to Amelia’s writing desk and began rummaging through it. We had closed and locked the door behind us on the way in. “You don’t know them, Louisa. You don’t know what they’re capable of.”
“Ha. Fine. If you know them so well, could they do that?” I asked, still pointing at Amelia. “Are they known to fly about sucking the life out of people?”
Chijioke paused with one of Amelia’s letters in his hand. He tilted his head to the side, eyeing me over his shoulder. “I... Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Perfect!” I threw up my hands and stormed past him. It was time to alert the rest of the house.
“I’ve never seen a Judgment, but they can and do kill, Louisa, that much I know.” He slapped down the letter and followed. “Poppy? Stay here. Don’t let anyone through.”
“All right,” she said lightly, sitting down next to Amelia’s corpse and swinging her legs.
We locked the door behind us and left. Fortunately, the corridor outside her chambers was empty. The men had gone down to the spring for a soak, allowing us a narrow window to decide on a plan. Two Residents drifted down the stairs toward us,then turned and hovered outside Amelia’s door as if on guard.
“I need to ask you a question and I don’t want you to judge me for it,” I said softly, giving the Residents a wary glance. “Is it... possible that Lee could have done this?”
I felt guilty even considering it, and while I still worried about Lee, part of that worry extended to what this house and its dark secrets had done to him. What the book had made him become. Maybe finding a way to release him from the book’s power was as much about protecting all of us as it was about protecting Lee from himself.
Chijioke chewed the inside of his cheek and went swiftly down the stairs with me. I was at least happy to find that he wasn’t offended by my suggestion. Before Lee’s death and resurrection, he had been a gentle young man, but it was clear that coming back had changed him. I didn’t relish the idea that he was randomly killing guests, of course, but it seemed foolish not to at least entertain the idea.
“That’s a question for Mrs. Haylam,” he replied as we reached the foyer. “You best prepare yourself for her fury. This will not be a pleasant afternoon.”
“It’s just so strange,” I said with a sigh. “Finch and Sparrow were told to keep out of our business. Would they really do something so... so inciting?”
“I’d ask Mrs. Haylam that, too, lass.”
We did not find the housekeeper in the kitchens, but as we left and turned toward the dining room we heard her come inbehind us. She must have read the urgency on our faces, for at once she stopped wiping her hands on her apron and squinted, then marched right up to us.
“Something strange has happened.”
“Amelia is dead.”
Chijioke and I blurted it out simultaneously, then both fell immediately silent. I had no idea what to expect from the old woman, but for an eternal moment she glared hard at Chijioke. She inhaled deeply through her nose and then pressed her hands together.
“Where is she?” Mrs. Haylam finally asked. I was not foolish enough to mistake her calm tone of voice for anything but the deepest disappointment. Her entire body was rigid, like a hound that’s scented a rabbit.
