Page 110 of Blackwicket

I had so many questions, but Fiona looked tattered, defeated. She knew what she was, and didn’t need me to point it out anymore.

“I thought you were Auntie.”

I offered this small bit of humor in hopes it would help bridge the chasm between us. Return us to our history as sisters, reminding her we’d once shared so much and that regardless of her transgressions, I loved her.

“I suppose I am,” she said, giving me a faint smile. “There was no more Auntie after Mom entered Dark Hall. I naturally filled that void.”

Just as I’d thought I’d caught up, Fiona gave me a new revelation to struggle over. Auntie wouldn’t have followed our mother into Dark Hall so willingly, not when she’d avoided capture for so many generations. Then a horrible knowing crept in—all those nights Auntie had stood in our room guarding us, keeping other Drudge at bay, mother always making excuses for why she couldn’t unravel her, humanizing her with a name, giving us a lullaby to sing when we were afraid.

A song a mother would recognize through the haze of the Drudge.

Oh, Moira, my love

Weeks ago, I would have rejected the suggestion, but with the work Isolde Blackwicket had done our entire lives, there’d been plenty of room for a Drudge to take root. The unease I’d soothed previously returned, and the curse, settled comfortably in my magic, breathed.

“Mom?”

“Yeah,” Fiona said, pained. “I didn’t know until that night.She’d changed, Ellie, permanently. I think that’s why she did what she did. Why she left.”

Fiona was fighting tears again, and she wiped them fiercely from her face.

“I made sure every person I gave to Dark Hall had earned it, that they were all people who’d hurt her or would have. It was going so well for a while. Then Grigori caught on, and Roark disappeared.”

“And so you killed Grigori Nightglass. Slit his throat,” Victor said casually from his station nearby, strung tight.

Fiona glanced at him, but her eyes remained unfocused.

“Farvem thought if Grigori fell, the Brom would scatter. But none of us had anticipated Williams’ willingness to step into his shoes. So it all backfired. William became more aggressive, moved plans forward faster, and tightened his hold on me. It’s why we faked my death.”

“Grigori wasn’t the only one, was he?” Victor asked, his tone sharp and predatory, the one he used to extract information from reluctant sources. It didn’t matter that she was my sister, or that she’d been through hell. He remained intent on uncovering the truth of what evil had been moving under the shining exterior of this town.

I prepared to defend her, but color rose to her cheeks, the slightest tinge of pink around her nose.

“Good boy, Inspector.” Fiona intoned, full of hatred. “Figuring it out all by yourself.”

Thatcher, Patrick, Cora, our Darren—their throats all cut.

“I might have made the connection sooner, but I don’t usually include the deceased on my suspects list.” Victor offered a humorless smile.

When I found my voice, the words it produced were weighed down with painful astonishment.

“Darren?” I said. “You murdered our father?”

“He brought you to Nightglass.” Fiona’s anger with Victor for revealing everything lifted her voice. “He traded you for a payday!”

I stood slowly to my feet, needing to move, to feel my body, gone numb from shock. Fiona followed me, wobbling, losing her balance and falling to her knees.

“And Thatcher refused her a train ticket.” Victor began stringing it all together at last, his eyes locked on Fiona as she attempted to stand, needing to hold on to the table to pull herself up. “Patrick wanted to gut her in the street. All men who did her harm.”

“How could you,” I asked her, still reeling. I could have lived a lifetime without Darren’s shadow ever darkening my door. But the knowledge he was gone, that I’d held him while he died, because my sister had been feeding the monster in her bones, was difficult to bear.

“Ellie,” Fiona rasped.

“He was a terrible man.” My voice pitched. “But he was the only one left who knew anything about what we’d suffered.”

“I heard what you said to him. Everyone did,” Fiona argued. “You didn’t want him!”

“But I didn’t want…”