Page 34 of House of Furies
This was how I came to find the Spring of the Ainsprid Choimhdeachta, so-called Guardian Devils. The words were chiseled in half-legible script on a stone to the side of the spring. I had heard whispers of these beings before, guardian spirits of a female persuasion that could be summoned to perform all manner of spells, shielding of the spirit and the flesh principle among those skills. Curiouser still, they were said to be summoned by dark thoughts or prayers, which led many demonologists to suppose they are not guardian angels but more of a curse, a weight ’round the neck of their summoner. I’ve yet to find evidence of such a curse, and I participated in Alec’s game with the hope of creating just such a Choimhdeachta of my own.
Alas, no amount of wishing, praying, or cursing produced a spirit. Either the legend is wrong or a soul in greater need managed to pray her out from under my nose. Regardless, I did feel a great deal of Fae energy surrounding the spring; it filled me with dread and wonder, and I sat beside the waters and the fairy ring for a long time, fancying I could feel invisible spirits dancing merrily around me in the darkness.
Rare Myths and Legends: The Collected Findings of H. I. Morningside, page 210
Ihad only ever seen one dead body in my life.
When my mother and I still lived in Dublin, we watched them pull a man from the river Liffey on market day. He was gray and bloated, draped in a shroud of plants and muck, nothing like the body I was looking at now. Nothing like the still-beautiful Mrs. Eames, who, with her head down on her dressing table, might have been sleeping. She was still clutching her rosary, but the emerald on her hand did not glisten, shadowed as it was by her dead body.
A single trickle of blood ran out of her ear and down her cheek, underlining the eyes that stared out at me in mute surprise.
I stood in the door staring—at her, at the many open traveling trunks heaped with luxurious gowns, at the shoes lined up neatly by her dressing table, at the lacy frill of her robe, at all the trappings of a once-living person—and bile rose in my throat. It smelled like dried roses in the room, sweet enough to remind me of rot.
Nobody had yet found her even though it was midmorning the next day. I had come inside to scrounge up a bit of breakfast, and then found myself drifting up the stairs, wondering if it all was really true—if Mrs. Eames would be dead, killed by a child and abetted by gentle Mary. Perhaps I had also meant to see ifthere were any unlocked rooms and trinkets in them to steal, but that was all forgotten now. Here I was, the taste of toast souring on my dry tongue. It was all true. Her door had been open just a crack, and when I’d peered inside, I’d felt at once that this tableau had been left for me to find.
But maybe that was selfish. Maybe the answer was far simpler: this was not an occurrence of any urgency or rarity. If this were the first guest to be killed on the property then there ought to be some kind of commotion, but in this peace, in this silence, it felt as if this was business as usual at Coldthistle House.
Yet it was not usual for me. I took a careful step into the room, aware that my mere presence would look suspicious to outside eyes, but I had spotted something under her head on the table. A pot of ink lay open next to her, and a quill pen had tangled in her skirts as it fell. The parchment under her cheek was smudged. I dared not touch it, but I held my breath, leaning over her, scanning the letter with a growing sense of disgust...
My dear Enzo: The men here are so delightfully gullible—morbido come pane caldo—one or both will empty their pockets for us soon. I linger here only until their hearts are fully ensnared. Wait for me in San Gimignano, you know the spot, I will
It ended there, abruptly, with a giant ink splotch.
Good God, it was true. Everything Mr. Morningside hadsaid about her and everything he’d threatened to do. It was all true.
My disgust deepened to nausea. Something must be done, but what? I turned straight around and marched out of the room, smashing headlong into George Bremerton.
He had taken everything in already, I could see from the bloodless shock on his face.
“Help,” I murmured, blinking up at him, feeling just as bloodless but not nearly as shocked. “Something terrible has happened.”
Moments later I sat staring at the wall in the Red Room as a man I didn’t know took my pulse.
I was well and truly caught now, caught between these two groups—that of the rich male guests left staying in the house, and that of the odd creatures determined to annihilate them—and I belonged in neither. The venerable old clock on the far wall tick-tocked, tick-tocked, marking the excruciating seconds. Listening to it was better than the alternative: Colonel Mayweather paced the carpet, speechifying endlessly, hands akimbo as he enumerated the horrors of not only the widow’s death but my apparent part in it.
You see, George Bremerton had not kept quiet about finding me in her room, and now two old men and one slightly younger one stared at me as if I might at any moment grow a second head and try to swallow them whole.
The doctor’s hand on my wrist was steady, but I could feel my blood and sinew trembling, the ticking clock growing louder and louder in my brain until it was the only thing I could hear.
“It’s suspicious, I say! Damned suspicious! If this were India, I can tell you what I’d do, oh yes, I can tell you how we handled things in the company.”
No. The clock was less aggravating.
“The girl is already in distress,” the man holding my wrist said. He had a soft, melodic voice, one he quite obviously used to great effect on nervous patients. Dr. Rory Merriman, that was his name. Now I remembered him introducing himself before he sat down to take my pulse. The time between finding Mrs. Eames and now had gone blurry. There’d been commotion, yelling, accusations flung in every direction, but most aimed at me.
“You will only fluster her further,” the doctor continued.
Colonel Mayweather thumped down on a divan with a harrumph. “That’s warranted, wouldn’t you say? She was found in poor Cosima’s room! Practically... Practically leering over her!”
“If I recall, Mr. Bremerton did not sayleering,” the doctor corrected.
“Oh ho! Cosima, is it?” And now George Bremerton sprang to his feet, crossing his arms. “Awfully familiar with the dead, aren’t we? I had no idea the two of you were so well acquainted, Colonel.”
The two men erupted into shouts, each one puffing himself up as ridiculously as possible, threats and challenges flying fast and loose between them. I heard the doctor sigh as he released my wrist. He was young for a physician, with shaggy black hair graying at the temples, a square, unremarkable face, and a wisp of a mustache over his thin lips. His complexion led me to believe he was Spanish or perhaps from somewhere in South America. He had suffered from the pox as a child, with divots and scars now peppering his skin.
“These two,” he muttered, rolling his eyes behind thick spectacles. “If they could raise the dead with the force of their argument...”
“It does seem impolite to fight over a woman who can’t even defend herself,” I replied. That made him chuckle, and he leaned closer, studying me. It was then I noticed his hand was on my thigh, the grip too tight to be incidental. I shifted, but there was nowhere to go on the tiny sofa. “This isn’t my fault,” I added weakly. “I only found her that way.”
