House of Furies

  I needed to escape Coldthistle, but not before knowing Lee was safe. Even if I managed to get to America, an ocean of separation would not save me from the guilt of his death.

  In the barn, I decided to stash the shovels and sneak back into the hayloft to retrieve Mr. Morningside’s book. I had considered leaving it, but Mr. Morningside was right about one thing—I was still curious. Curious to know if there was any truth to what he said of the larger world and Unworld, curious to read more of his ridiculous tales even if I only half believed them. And without finishing the thing completely, I had no idea whether it might instruct me, directly or otherwise, on how to undo the book in the attic’s binding power. It seemed foolish to rely forever on a mere pin.

  I pulled down the stairwell to the loft and scurried up into the cozy little hideaway, stopping dead when I found it occupied.

  Mr. Morningside. He flipped through his own book casually, his back to me, then slowly he turned, lifting one black brow as he regarded me over the tattered cover.

  “Do you know, it’s extremely rude that Spicer didn’t bother even to take this with him. Cad. I suppose I shouldn’t expect anything less from an Upworlder.” He snapped the book shut and held it out to me, the picture of casual benignity.

  I didn’t reach for it. This felt, like everything else, like one of his traps.

  “How was your little jaunt across the countryside? Do anything interesting? Bird watching, perhaps?”

  “You sent those crows,” I said, feeling the seconds tick by at an alarming rate. The wagons would leave without me if I didn’t make haste. “They attacked me. I thought you said I could leave.”

  “Of course you can. I gave you the pin, didn’t I? Anyway, how do you know the birds were after you, mm? Maybe they were meant for that old fool in the shed.”

  “You know about the shepherd?” I asked, eyeing the small loft window. It was fully dark now. I needed to hurry.

  “Our dear, dear neighbor. One of his stupid sheep will wander onto the property every once in a great while. So, yes, I’ve dealt with him. Looks rather like an undercooked pudding, don’t you think?”

  “He was kind to me,” I said, lifting my chin defiantly. “And he isn’t harboring a house full of murderers.”

  “Then perhaps you should go live in that dirt hovel with him. I’m sure you would find it incredibly stimulating. Sheep! What a thrill. I hope your little heart can take the excitement.” He took a step toward me, grinning his white, toothy grin, extending the book until it grazed my arm. “Take it. I have a hundred of these cluttering up my closet.”

  “Nobody wanted to buy a collection of fairy tales for children?” It was a gamble, but perhaps I could anger him enough to make him leave. If he stayed, there would be no getting to Lee and seeing him safely away. Yet the jab only made him snort. I snatched the book out of his grasp and crossed my arms over it.

  “Gotten to the chapter on Changelings yet, Louisa?” he asked, squinting.

  “No. It sounds insipid.”

  “Appropriate, then.” He chuckled at my blank expression and bent almost in half, checking the loft window and clucking his tongue. “It appears your ride to Derridon is about to leave. You should scurry along now.”

  My ride? I couldn’t help it; I gawped at him, the book nearly sliding out of my grasp. “Why should I go to Derridon?” I asked, even as my heart leapt with the possibilities.

  “There’s something not aboveboard about that George Bremerton person,” Mr. Morningside said, straightening. He cocked his head to the side, golden eyes roaming the ceiling. “He came with his nephew to investigate some boring claim of inheritance, but he has done nothing but flirt with the dearly departed Mrs. Eames and poke about the house. If he’s so eager to rob that boy of his money, then why not try harder to get it in Brimble’s hands in the first place? No, something does not smell right, if you take my meaning. There’s no good reason for Bremerton to go to Derridon this evening, and I want to know why he’s suddenly so keen to go. You can help me with that.”

  He was moving too quickly. Of course it was a possibility, and yes, the house did seem to attract villains, but this seemed like an extraordinary effort just to swindle his nephew. And yet I hadn’t liked him from the first, had I? My head began to hurt. No, no, no, I simply disliked him because he was exactly the sort of rich bastard I could steal from easily. This had to be a ploy of some kind. . . . A distraction. A way to pit me and Lee against one another.

  “I won’t spy for you,” I said, backing away toward the loft ladder.

  “Who said anything about spying?” Mr. Morningside asked. He held up his hands innocently, but I knew better. “I thought your friend Lee Brimble was innocent. If his uncle has designs on the young man’s fortune, then surely you must want to protect him. I only want to know if my suspicions about his uncle are correct. You were ever so keen to prove Brimble’s innocence. Has that changed?”

  “It hasn’t,” I said, turning away from him. “Maybe he and I will just go, have you thought of that?”

  “There’s nothing to think about. If he belongs at Coldthistle, he will be there. Nothing short of a miracle will prevent that.” Mr. Morningside shrugged and strolled toward the ladder, crowding me. His proximity made my skin crawl, and yet I could not move, his orbit as repellent as it was irresistible. I hated him, and still I wanted him to say more. Reveal more. How could he have such power over people? How could he know of books and curses and an Unworld that moved like an evil shadow beneath our own?

  I glanced up at him, fuming into his catlike eyes. “Then perhaps I am that miracle.”

  At that, he burst out laughing. “You?” he asked when he had recovered, wiping invisible tears from his cheeks. “Are you a miracle, little Louisa, or are you a curse?” He lowered his voice and his head, bringing his lips close to my ear and finishing his thought in a throaty whisper. “I think we both know the answer to that.”

  “Sir? Sir? Mr. Morningside?” It was Chijioke calling from underneath us, his voice booming through the timbers.

  “Up here.” Mr. Morningside removed himself to a safe distance and smiled at me once more. “I think that’s your cue, Louisa, unless of course you’d like to stay and chat a while longer?”

  “No,” I said, disappearing down the ladder. I refused to look at him anymore. I refused to be snared. “I’m leaving, Mr. Morningside, and I won’t be back.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chijioke helped me into the back of the wagon he would drive to Derridon. I inched around to the right bench, fixed to the floor. A second bench lay on the opposite side of the wagon bed, and between that and me lay the body of the widow, wrapped in a heavy sheet. The floor of the wagon was caked with dried bird shit.

  “I’d rather sit in the carriage with the others,” I said softly, letting only my tiptoes touch the floor. Now it would be almost impossible to convince Lee to go away from Coldthistle forever, with or without me. Still, going was better than nothing. I had to make sure he didn’t return to the house. Even boosted to this height, I was only slightly above Chijioke’s eye level. He wore a heavy woolen coat now and a chunky knitted scarf.

  “Mr. Bremerton requested privacy for him and his nephew,” he replied, also in a whisper. “For now he’s a guest and must be accommodated. There’s no room for you on my bench, lass. With you lot and the widow’s body, I barely have room for this week’s supply crate up front. Just keep your head about you, aye? The doctor isn’t to be trusted. None of them are.”

  “I trust Lee,” I shot back. “He’s not like them. And besides, the doctor stood up for me.”

  Chijioke shook his head and waited until Dr. Merriman arrived to step up into the wagon bed. The back was latched shut and Chijioke ground his jaw, waiting to speak until we locked eyes. “Think what you must, Louisa; just remember what I said. Give a shout if you need me.”

  He stalked away into the darkness, and for a moment I lost sight of him as he passed out of our lantern’s safe g
low and around to the horses. There was an old blanket on the bench, and I slipped it over my lap, trying to keep back a shiver.

  Foster called to the horses in the carriage ahead of us, and I heard the crack of a whip as they started off into the night. We followed, and I thought longingly of the warmth inside the carriage. God, how much had changed since the last time I had been inside it. That was less than a week ago, yet I felt so different, as if the whole world had been tipped on its side. Innocence could die in the blink of an eye. I had been so eager to get to Coldthistle, and now I could not wait another minute to leave it all behind. I would survive the drafty ride for what was on the other end of it.

  With a friend, I reminded myself. This was my chance to get us both away from Mr. Morningside and his evil plots. It would probably require leaving Lee’s uncle behind. Whatever his nephew said, what grown man would believe my story? He would call me hysterical and silly, and perhaps poison Lee against me.

  If he wasn’t already doing that now. Requested privacy. That did not bode well. He was doing his best to separate us, but why? Did he sense that we were becoming close?

  “You look troubled, young miss.”

  The wagons turned out of the drive, wheels crunching over stone and gravel, lanterns squeaking on hinges as the motion rocked them and us back and forth. I had curled up like a dead thing on the dirty bench, and I turned my head with a bleak smile for the doctor. At once, the road turned rough and uncomfortable, the rains ruining any chance at a smooth ride.

  “Traveling by night always leaves me unsettled,” I lied. The night did not scare me, not anymore, not now that I knew far scarier things than darkness existed.

  “Fear not. I have some skill with a pistol,” he said with a chuckle, “and not just the doctor’s knives. Foster, too, must have some martial training, and Mr. Bremerton mentioned at tea that he’s quite handy with fist and saber. Boxed in his youth, apparently, and spent time in the Levant and the Americas.”

  I nodded, pretending to be heartened. The chill under the blanket persisted, and my eye drifted always back to the wrapped bundle between the doctor and me. It seemed only a concept, that a dead woman should be so close to me. The corpse did not smell, and, wrapped up like that, she was more like a carpet or a package than a once-living thing.

  “How quickly it all can change,” I murmured.

  It was a surprise that the doctor could even hear me over the noise of being rattled around in the back of a supply wagon.

  “The beauty of life lies in its fleetingness,” he said seriously, closing a hand over his heart. He was a truly ridiculous fellow, but more palatable than the Colonel at least. “I hope you are not overly troubled by our . . . somewhat unusual travel arrangements.”

  “I will find a way to endure,” I replied. I wondered if he could even hear me over the commotion of the wheels as they clattered over the bumpy road.

  I made the mistake of glancing up at him, only to find that he was regarding me intently. Intensely. His expression was one of deep fondness, as if he looked upon an old friend and not a young girl who was completely strange to him. I shifted, pulling the blanket more tightly around myself. Then I pretended to put my head back and sleep, yet still I felt his leaden gaze upon me.

  “You know, you look just like an angel that way. So peaceful. Innocent.”

  My eyes snapped open in alarm. “I am no angel, sir, just a tired servant.”

  “No, that’s true, you are no angel.” He chuckled, running his forefinger over the dark smudges of his mustache, outlining it. “One must wonder if you really did do in the widow.”

  “I beg your pardon?” I wanted to disappear under the blanket, or perhaps throw him out the back of the wagon. The road flattened out, and Coldthistle became a small speck behind us. Still, I could see the shadows that flitted among the windows, the Residents coming to fervent life with the fall of night. I glanced to my right, to the drawn curtain and Chijioke beyond it.

  “Oh, the others think you were jealous of her, of her beauty and wealth, but I doubt you would sink to murder over such pettiness,” he said, still stroking his mustache. “You seem an intelligent girl. Did you happen upon her letter? Did you know she intended to swindle those men blind?”

  “I found her exactly as you saw her,” I replied quickly. “Her plot had nothing to do with me. Why should I care?”

  Dr. Merriman nodded slowly, but his stare intensified. “Then you are innocent of her death.”

  “God above, of course I am!”

  The wagon wove hard from side to side, tossed by the uneven ground. That was the wrong thing to say. The doctor smiled at me and moved, quickly, darting from his bench to mine, stepping over the widow easily with his long legs. He sat down next to me. Close. Too close. I remembered then his hand on my leg in the Red Room, and the frost of the nighttime air turned perilously cold. How long was the ride to Derridon?

  “True innocence is so rare,” he said, and I recoiled at the sultry note in his voice. He no longer regarded me with that odd but endurable fondness. His intent had sharpened, his breath heavy and sour on my shoulder. “My young girl was innocent, too. You remind me of her—my daughter—the same dark hair and dark eyes . . .”

  I scrambled for the right thing to say. The right distraction. “What is she like?’

  “Not very clever, but trusting and good. She always listened to her father. Always did as she was told.” He sighed wistfully. “Until one day she didn’t. I always wondered how it came to pass. . . . How a good, loving child could change into a sullen chit too important for her father, too important for all the world.”

  The doctor sighed again, but now he sounded disappointed.

  “It might be that innocence is a candle; it can be blown out short or it can burn down to nothingness, but it is destined one way or another to die.” He shook his head and placed that dreaded hand on my thigh, and I felt my spirit wither at the touch. God, Chijioke was right—and curse him, Mr. Morningside was right. These people drawn to Coldthistle were rotten to the core. “For a long time I blamed her mother, but no, Catarina chose her own path. She chose another man above me and was never the same again.”

  “Please,” I said in a choked whisper. “Could you remove your hand . . .”

  “I don’t think so.” He tightened his grip, fingers biting through blanket and skirts and into my flesh. “I buried her with my own two hands, you know. Washed the body. Dressed the body. Digging the grave took much longer than I anticipated, but it was worth it, to do it all, to be the only one alone with her in the end.”

  I swallowed hard and looked up at the ceiling. Perhaps he was just a lost and grieving father. This moment would pass once he collected himself. I would survive it. “You must miss her terribly.”

  “Every single moment, yes.”

  “If it upsets you so, then we need not speak of—”

  “It helps to talk about her,” he interrupted. His dark brown eyes filled with tears. “There is sadness, yes, and bitterness. Rage. Regret. . . . So much regret.”

  “I’m sure you did everything a father could,” I said weakly. A reliable voice in the back of my mind insisted I did not want to know how the girl had died.

  The roughness of the road and the way it rattled us made my jaw ache.

  Dr. Merriman rocked back and forth, his hand still tight around my thigh like a vise. His expression relaxed after a moment, and he patted my leg. It felt as if he might veer from this upsetting conversation, but then he looked at me once more and I felt my heart stop.

  A feral dog looked like that. Hungry. Blind, hungry, and mad. And though he smiled, I sensed no joy in it, only fixation. “You could be like her. Like the good Catarina. You could be obedient and sweet, never placing another man above your father.”

  “I . . . I’m certain your daughter is irreplaceable.”

  The laugh he gave was indistinguishable from a sob. “You have no idea what it’s like. You couldn’t know . . . what it’s like to make
someone. To make another person! It is heaven and hell in one, for the love you bear them is painful. Every lie they tell, every scrape they incur, it wounds you. They are your flesh, but they do not act as your flesh. You cannot control them; I could not control her. You cannot understand it, young Louisa, how it feels to fail that way.”

  I made my face a blank mask of submission. Do not smile. Do not frown. Even the slightest hint of mockery or dissent felt like it might plunge him deeper into this melancholy. His hand became wet with sweat, a dampness that seeped through the blankets and my skirts to my skin. I gulped down a shake of revulsion.

  “I failed her. I failed myself. I made a body with my own body and she turned wild and strange. In her last days I hardly recognized the soft, sweet girl who once sat in my lap and sang lullabies. My father beat me, oh God, did he beat me! But I never laid a finger on her, never until she became a stranger. Your own flesh and blood should never become a stranger to you.”

  Coldthistle was out of view now, swallowed by the night and a light mist that rolled in off the moors. Its vanishing frightened me more than I cared to admit; we traveled through the night in what felt like a sea of fog and shadow, unanchored, adrift until we reached Derridon.

  If I reached Derridon.

  My thigh ached, a cramp spreading out from where he squeezed my veins shut.

  “Sir, you’re hurting my leg.”

  The doctor rambled on, perspiration making his skin glisten. The wagon thumped into another crater in the road. “I created her flesh and it spoiled. There was only one way open to me: to take that flesh back in and try again.”

  “Take . . . the flesh back in,” I repeated in a horrified whisper.

  “You recoil, sweet girl, but like the tribes of New Guinea, I have sought to ferry Catarina’s soul on to another generation. I am the vessel and I carry her now within me, as I did before she was born into this world.” He looked over my shoulder at the wall with a dreamy expression. That thoughtful smile soon crumbled, and he turned his attention back to me, nostrils flaring, jaw tense. “Was I wrong to take her life? I know not. Was I wrong to consume her? Who can say. . . . I regret raising her poorly. I regret taking early signs of impudence as nothing more than childish whimsy. And now I think on it, I see that I must take another for my daughter. Her soul is tainted. It was not innocent when it left her body.”