Page 21 of House of Furies
“And so I’ve instructed Poppy to do away with thelovelyMrs. Eames on the morrow.”
Murder. Brazen, remorseless slaughter.Of a woman who killed her husband and child and stood to profit from it.Hadn’t Ihated rich, haughty women like Mrs. Eames? Hadn’t I watched with disdain as ladies like her came to collect governesses from Pitney? Appraising us like farm animals. Choosing a human being like one would choose a pair of earrings or shoes? Why should I care that someone like her might be killed?
But it mattered that it was Poppy doing the deed. She was just a girl like me. A child. Could she really be a killer?
“Poppy... But she’s so... so...”
“Sweet?” Mr. Morningside nodded toward the brilliantly plumed parrot.
All that loveliness, and it conceals savagery.
“Are you always this quick to murder your guests? That’s monstrous!” I stood, ready to hurl myself out the door, out of the house, and into the cold. I couldn’t stand to be there another minute.
Mr. Morningside stood, too, but it didn’t quite seem like a threat. “Monstrous? Killing two innocent people is monstrous. I’m merely practical. Yes, I lured her. She may claim she came on her own terms to visit the spring, but that’s only half true. You said the book compelled you to touch it. No doubt you felt drawn to it, and no logic or reason or burst of foresight would keep you from doing so, correct?”
I nodded, trying frantically to piece it all together. This was madness. I didn’t belong here. It was time to leave.
“Ah. Well. That is how rats like Mrs. Eames feel, Louisa, only toward this place. They are drawn here. Compelled.” Heleaned toward me and placed his palms on the desk, his smile crooked and cocksure. “They do not know why they come, but they do, and once they step through the doors, their fate is sealed. They come here because they are evil. Irredeemable. They come here to die.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Let me out of here. I want to leave.At once.” Panic rose hot and strangling in my throat. I backed toward the door, wrist throbbing to the erratic beat of my heart.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Mr. Morningside said with a sigh. He did not advance on me. “You cannot leave.”
So this encounter was not meant to mete out punishment, but to be a death sentence. I had to get out. If there was one skill I had developed in all my years, it was self-preservation at all costs.
I made my eyes wide and innocent, and pleaded with my hands in prayer position. “I’ll tell nobody of what you’re doing here. I just want to leave—”
“You misunderstand. It is not possible.” To his credit, he looked genuinely upset. “You touched the book, Louisa.”
That made me freeze in place. The book? What did that have to do with anything? How could a damned book stop me from leaving? Did it command coaches? Horses? The very road itself?
“Just slow down and let me explain.”
“No! You’re a murderer.”
“A murderer of murderers; the farmer who kills the lamed animal; the laborer who throws the match on the refuse heap. What’s the difference?” he said matter-of-factly. “Still, I cannotargue with you there.”
I took another big step toward the door and turned, preparing to bolt. “Nor do I wish to argue. I want only to leave this place and forget all about it.”
This time I did not wait for his response. The door to his study was already open and I shoved through it, feeling his eyes upon me, knowing it was just a matter of seconds until he caught up and restrained me. But he moved not, and I was at the bottom of the stairs, on the brink of freeing myself, when he spoke once more.
His voice boomed in my ears. “You should already be dead.”
My hand clutched the railing of the stairs, and I twisted, listening, staring back at him, afraid but unwilling to let him see it. There was nothing to say. I should be dead? Were those shadow monsters meant to kill me?
“That is why I know you belong here and why you cannot leave. The Residents—those shadows—they are there to watch over the house, but they are also meant to protect the book. You should never have gotten near it, and you certainly should not have touched it, but having done so, that single touch should have struck you dead.”
“N-nonsense,” I stammered. This was more madness. More bizarre lying. “It’s just a silly book. How could a book do that?”
“Thatsillybook can persuade a murderous widow to come to it from hundreds and hundreds of miles away.” He at last advanced toward me, moving slowly around the desk, his goldeneyes no longer friendly but focused and fiery, trained on me not with malice but with total concentration. There was no escaping such a gaze, no matter how dearly I wanted to flee. “That silly book calls to all corners of this world and tempts killers and criminals of all kinds, persuading them to ignore little things like distance and inconvenience, and they come. They come to it because they cannot help themselves. All that power, and you think it would be difficult for the book to take a simple human life?”
“Let me go,” I whispered. Now I was frozen in earnest, sinew and bone rigid, my hand tented over the railing but unmoving. Some force held me prisoner, suppressing even a tremble. But there had to be a way out, some trick to releasing me if I was indeed caught in some invisible spider’s web. “Please, just let me go.”
“It’s the middle of the night,” Mr. Morningside pointed out. “It isn’t safe.”
I could control my limbs enough to flinch as he cleared the desk, passed the chair...
