Darkling (10 page)

His pain is like a presence in the room. I have to stop it. I twist the key and
yank open the door, ready to punch and claw, to shove and tear. But there’s nothing there. Tristan’s screaming stops, as well. I look behind me and he’s gone. The room is empty.

What just happened? It sounds like something is sliding around downstairs. Another set of lamps and candles flicker to life below me. I peer over the railing and it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. Then I see it.

Tristan is lying in a heap, unconscious. Something invisible is dragging him into the dining room.

I run down the first few steps then grab onto the railing to stop myself. This is a trap.

As a spirit, even as a corpse, there is little she can directly do to harm me. But there is plenty she can do to fool me into harming myself. My knuckles are white against the banister. I want so badly to go down there and attack her. But even if I had a knife, what good would a weapon be against a dead body? I might chop off her head, sure, but so long as she has Tristan to feed from, she will find a way to reattach it.

So I wait near the top of the stair. I listen with my physical senses. I hear nothing.
Just the creak of the house settling. Maybe she’s gone.

I can still see Tristan’s shoe sticking out from around the corner. I slowly descend the stairs, step by step. She scared me into running down them and hurting myself once. I won’t make the same mistake again. Nearing the landing, I lean, trying to peer around the corner into the dining room to see what state Tristan is in. He isn’t there. My eyes dart to where I’d seen his shoe. It’s gone.

She’s playing games with me.

Tristan had said that she was trying to figure out how to deal with me.
How to kill me. I see now that Tristan is critical to both of our plans. As much as I use him to try to weaken her, she’ll use him to try to manipulate me. I don’t like it. Not at all. He doesn’t deserve to be treated like a pawn. Like a plaything.

I square my shoulders and walk into the dining room. The lamps and candles all snuff out as soon as I do so. I pause for a moment, the hair on the back of my neck and arms standing on end. That’s how I know she’s still here. Good. I want her to witness what I’m about to do.

I walk into the parlor that is musty with mildewing furniture. I can’t see but I’ve gotten used to judging my surroundings in the dark. To feeling for things. I pat around the mossy hearth for a few moments then find what I’m looking for. Flint and steel. Crouching before the fireplace, I strike the steel against the flint, making a spark. The brief surge of light illuminates dried leaves filling the fireplace. I don’t have any tinder so it takes a few tries, but the leaves start to smolder then catch fire. The combustion surges up the chimney and the room is so bright that I shield my eyes.

After gathering some kindling from a stack beside the cook fire in the kitchen, I stoke the flames. After some coaxing, I have a roaring fire blazing in the hearth and the moss growing around it begins to steam. I warm my hands and am about to sit on the hearth when I see the upholstered chairs facing it. I’m sure she sat in one of these chairs in life.

I scoot one towards the flames and sink into it. It stinks and is damp and half the cushioning on the bottom has been stolen by mice. But I don’t mind. I’m not doing this for the comfort. I’m doing it to make myself at home in her house.

A draft picks up, as if I’ve left a window open, but I haven’t. The flames flicker from the weak breeze. It might be enough to snuff out a candle or lamp, but not a fire like this. I smile.
Not so powerful now, are you?

After a while, the breeze stops, but I know she hasn’t given up. I remain in my chair, even though it’s making my dress damp. I wonder where Tristan is. He doesn’t have a body right
now, that much I know. I would quiet my mind to try to listen for him, but that would be too risky with her still around. I’m not sure what she could do to me as a Listener, but my instincts tell me not to invite her in again.

I’m hungry and very thirsty. Tristan brought me water from somewhere, so they must have access within the house. I get up and grab one of the thinner burning logs and carry it as a torch. She doesn’t snuff it out right away, which makes me think she’s observing me.
Calculating. I carry my fire into the kitchen and light a few candles there.

A hand pump is in the corner. My father bought one once from a traveling merchant. He tried to sell it in our village but no one would buy it. They all laughed at such a contraption since the well worked good enough, and the blacksmith eventually bought it for the metal. I pump enough water to fill the basin and drink and drink. When I can’t hold anymore, I fill the basin again and wash.

Though I know Tristan and the woman are still present somewhere, I’m not shy enough to keep my dress on. I slip out of it and wash my body and can feel my hips sticking out of my abdomen. I’m thinner than I was when I left home. Shivering for a few minutes, I drip dry, then pull my mother’s wedding dress back on. It takes a while to tug it up over my damp skin, then I head back over to the fire and warm up. It feels so good to be clean and watered. My energy is renewed.

I comb my fingers through my hair and realize I still have some of the dried pea flowers my mother had stuck in on the day of the sacrifice. I carefully pull them out and gather the frail blossoms in my lap.  Combing my hair out with my fingers, I arrange it to cover the bare portion of my back, helping me stay warm. After a while, I light more candles in the room. When she doesn’t snuff them out, I light every lamp and candle I find. They never seem to burn down.

The house is now so illuminated that I can see every cobweb billowing in the corners, every pile of droppings. A door closes upstairs. I know it isn’t Tristan. He wouldn’t make noises to try to peak my curiosity. It’s her, trying to draw me away. I’m not taking the bait. The door opens and closes again.

The first time I heard her feed on Tristan, he had been in pain before I even noticed her footsteps. This time, she couldn’t touch him until she was outside the door. Anchoring him to the world of the living had been working. I see now my best chance of defeating her. I must flaunt life in her face.

I
start by hunting downstairs for anything useful. I find the linen closet. Anything on top, exposed to air, has mold on it. But there are several clean tablecloths in the middle of the stack. I take one of the molding ones and get it wet. For the next several hours, I dust the house. The cloth is soon so covered in spider webs, clumping the dust that I have to wash it out again. Then again. Over and over, I wring out the rag. I wash the windows and the sills. The table and chairs. The kitchen. Then I find a broom and sweep up all of the rat droppings and fallen leaves. I pry the moss off the hearth.

By the time I am done, I am exhausted and need to wash again. My ankle is throbbing once more. I rest for a little while, but since Tristan isn’t back yet, I keep going. I light the lamps upstairs and clean. There isn’t much tidying up to do in my and Tristan’s room, but I do it all the same. I leave the other two rooms alone. They’re not worth the effort.

I face the door at the end of the hall. I know what happened last time I touched it. Steeling myself, I march towards it. I know what I’m doing must be upsetting her, for I’m taking over her house and claiming it as my own.

This ought to put the final nail in the coffin. Using my cloth, I wash the chains and lock holding her door shut. To my surprise, she doesn’t react, so I work at the chains until they are shining metal once more.

After sweeping up the floors in the hall, I head back down and stoke the fire again. Finally finished, I wash my face and arms then sit by the hearth. Lighted and cleaned, the rooms actually look inviting. The walls are still mildewing and their paper is peeling, but it seems livable now. At least more than it was.

I lean my head back against the armchair, closing my eyes, letting my body relax. The fire has dried the upholstery out a bit. It still smells of must but it feels so nice to sit. I wonder what my family is doing at home rig
ht now. Do they think I’m dead?

Poor Jasper.
He has lost another sister. He didn’t understand what death was until Scarlet died. Though neither did I, ironically enough. Hearing the dead and losing someone are two completely different things.

At first I couldn’t believe that she was gone. I thought it must have been a mistake.
Another girl with raven hair. Someone else’s big sister, not mine. Then I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Like I’d never be able to breathe with ease again. It was her. She was dead. She was gone. She had passed through the veil. She was now one of those simple, eerily confused whispers I heard. She couldn’t hug me anymore. She couldn’t warm our bed or braid my hair or tell me stories.

I fled into the woods. I had heard whispers there
before, whispers I now know belonged to Tristan. I wept and wept and when I finally stopped, I closed my eyes and listened. I made my mind a calm surface and felt for the slightest ripple. I wanted to feel her presence, but there was nothing. It wasn’t fair. I was burdened by the secrets of the dead, by the hopes and failures of strangers, yet couldn’t hear my own sister.

I wasn’t far into the forest so the lights from the cabins of
Morrot were still visible. I could see enough to spot pinecones and rocks to hurl. And hurl them I did. When I had exhausted the debris nearby, I hugged my shawl around me in the cold.

Wings fluttered near enough to fan me but I was too worn out to react. Draven appeared at my side, Lady on his shoulder. He sat down in front of me, cross-legged. He had his crossbow but was empty-handed, except for Lady. Her black-capped head and white speckled chest were beautiful, and with her large brown eyes, she looked rather like her master. In fact, the way the two were peering at me with their heads slightly cocked, they looked like twins. I wondered who imitated whom.

“No,” I said.

Draven just sat there silent.

“No,” I repeated. I didn’t want to talk about Scarlet. I had reached the place where my tears were temporarily exhausted. Where I was so tired inside that I was numb. I knew that as soon as I regained my strength, the pain would return. I wasn’t ready for that.

Lady nuzzled Draven’s hair. Her talons were shredding the shoulder of his tunic and the skin beneath was red. I realized he wasn’t wearing his wrist guard, either. His arm was bleeding from her claws. He followed my gaze then sighed, moving Lady to his arm so that he could look at her.

“She’s weak. She won’t live much longer. I want to feel her whenever I can.”

He kissed the top of the falcon’s head. She flapped her wings, stretching them, her claws digging into his arm, squeezing out new blood, but Draven didn’t flinch. I realized then that Lady was more than a friend and a hunting partner. She was a link to his father.

Though I hated the idea of anyone claiming to know how I felt, I knew that Draven understood. Like Lucian, we didn’t have any warning before Scarlet’s death.

I sniffled and wished that Lady wouldn’t die. That none of us had to die. Scarlet had once said that she was comforted to know the Netherworld was real and not just a story. I wasn’t comforted. I wanted my sister, not a simpleton spirit. I hated to think that was what she had become. She was so vibrant and full of ideas.

“Does it get any easier?” I whispered.

“This has changed you. There is no going back.”

I wiped at my cheeks, even though I knew my tears had dried.

“I don’t think I can do this.”

He studied me for a while, and I knew he was remembering the first few days after his father died. Then he shifted Lady to his shoulder and reached out for me. I took his hand and he tugged me to him. His other slid on my shoulder and guided me down until I was resting against him. He was warm and whole. I snaked an arm around his waist and was happy that I could still feel muscle on his torso. He wasn’t wasting away like some of the other boys.

I rested my head on his thigh and his hand was warm on my shoulder. I know he must’ve felt like it was impossible, too, but here he was, at my side.
Solid. He had lived through his grief. He was still living through his grief. Some of my hair was sticking to the dried tears on my cheeks so he brushed it away then combed his fingers through my curls.

The cold, the uneven ground and pine needles beneath me became comfortable in that moment. Then Draven did something I had never heard him do before. He hummed.