Page 38 of Blackwicket (Dark Hall #1)

Once William was out of sight, I bundled my rage close and set into town, not bothering to change my wet clothes. I was so distraught that even as I pounded on Darren’s hotel room door, I couldn’t remember arriving or asking for a room number.

“How much did he pay you?” I demanded.

“What?”

“You sold me to William Nightglass!” I was shouting with the wrath of a hurricane fallen to shore. “How much was your own daughter worth?”

“Woah, woah!” He reached to pull me inside. “You can’t be out here screaming stuff like that.”

He checked the hallway for anyone sticking their head out to investigate what was going on before he shut us away.

The room was a damn sight better than where he’d hidden me in Devin, clean and more modest than other Nightglass accommodations likely had on offer, but I knew what money had paid for it and couldn’t appreciate his frugality.

“But it’s true, isn’t it? William arranged everything in Devin, the disaster at Galton’s. He’s the reason that woman and all her children are dead, and you played along to get to me. So I want to know how much money he dangled in your face to make you stoop so low.”

“You’ve got it all wrong!”

When I opened my mouth to interrupt, he did something he’d never done in my life. He shouted in return.

“Would you shut up for just a second!”

I pressed my mouth into a thin line. Darren ran a hand through his hair, unbrushed, several day’s worth of beard on his chin. He looked as though he hadn’t been sleeping, and I could smell the tang of old brandy on him.

“I knew nothing about that dame with the curse until after the fact,” he said. “Fiona was dead, and yeah, William offered me a pretty decent sum to convince you to come back here.”

He witnessed my preparation to resume my rampage and held up a hand. “But I was already going to Devin to let you know about your sister! It seemed like easy money.”

“You didn’t think to ask him why he wanted me here?”

“I’m not stupid, girl. I knew exactly why he did.

” It was Darren’s turn to be angry, but it wasn’t with me.

He swiped a half-smoked cigarette from an ashtray on the round breakfast table and shoved it between his lips, taking the matches next as he talked, lighting it, trying to calm his nerves.

“He needed someone to fill Fiona’s shoes.

There’s no one else in the world who knows how to handle that house and what’s in it. You were a perfect fit.”

“You were after a quick payday.”

“I wanted you to be safe!” he roared, yanking the newly lit cigarette from his mouth, jamming it down into the sooty pile of the others without even taking a drag.

He grabbed hold of the breakfast table, steadying himself, then shook it violently to dispel some of his anger.

The crash of the legs on the floor echoed.

Someone would call the Authority at this rate, but the worst that could happen was being taken into custody. Preferable at this point.

In a final act of frustration, my father slapped the ashtray from the tabletop, and it hit the wall, scattering ash on the golden-striped wallpaper; the smudge of black it left behind was reminiscent of a bruise.

“You think I didn’t check on you? Didn’t track you while you wandered all over the east cities, barely living under the radar?

I’m the one who cleaned up your mess in Harpridge after you stabbed that bank manager in the crotch! ”

“He deserved it!” I battled the urge to grab anything of my own to shake, wishing it could be Darren.

“Of course he did! And I was damn proud of you for it! But you were never in good hands alone, and it was only a matter of time before you fucked up in a way I couldn’t even help you with.

This world isn’t for people made like you, kid.

” He’d calmed, his energy for this battle depleted, and his tone softened.

“But Nightglass is. At least, that’s what I thought. ”

Silence fell, heavy with my hurt and his irritation that I couldn’t understand him, his intentions and methods, his distance.

“I didn’t need your shadow.” I let the tears make their tracks on my face. I hadn’t cried in front of my father since I was little. “I needed you , Darren.”

His eyes grew red-rimmed, and he lifted his hands, palms up, offering me all he had. “And I was there for you, Cricket…in the only way I’m good at.”

I needed us to keep arguing, to continue yelling at each other, reignite the emotional squall.

It was the sincerest my father had ever been with me, but the fight was out of him.

I considered demanding why he hadn’t attended Fiona’s burial, but I knew the answer.

Finally, I recognized the cowardly habit he had of insulating himself from the grief that came with loving people, how he slunk from difficult moments because he’d never learned how to sit with hurt.

I reached into my coat pocket where the photograph of Fiona and the young boy remained, crumpled and wrinkled from all my handling of it. I thrust it toward him.

“You’re going to answer my questions. You owe me at least that much. Who is this boy?”

He eyed the picture, but didn’t approach to take it, knowing exactly who it depicted. He went to retrieve the ashtray instead.

“I met him once.” He scooped the thing up from the floor, threw it haphazardly onto the tabletop where it rattled, then approached the unmade bed, and sat heavily on the edge, elbows resting on his knees.

“Roark. He was six. She told me he was the child of a friend she was helping care for, but that boy called her mama.”

The sadness in his voice was so potent I wanted to leave, to walk out of Nightglass and into the woods until I froze to death in the wilderness.

“I asked around,” he said. “Heard a few different stories—Fiona couldn’t have kids, or William couldn’t, you know, with his injury. But I’ve been doing my job for a long time, tracking curses, judging the magic on people, and this kid felt like walking too near a live wire. Buzzing.”

Darren finally returned his gaze to mine.

“He was a Dark Hall kid, Cricket. And I have a hunch Fiona retrieved him for Grigori.”

I didn’t refute his claim, didn’t argue my sister’s morality. I’d learned some things. Knew better .

“Was he the only one?” I asked.

My father sighed, “Wish I could say. She wouldn’t have let me in the house even if I’d wanted to go, so I never saw anything. There wasn’t ever a bizarre number of kids wandering around that didn’t belong to anyone, but, then again, I guess I wasn’t ever here long enough to tell the difference.”

It was all I cared to know or bear asking. I returned the picture to its place in my coat, touching its soft edges for a moment to ground myself.

“I need you to leave Nightglass,” I said. “And stay gone.”

“Eleanora…” Darren was going to protest, to attempt to charm his way out of discomfort and consequence, but I’d already started to go.

“Wait.” He stood hastily, bounding after me and grabbing hold of my coat sleeve instead of my arm.

Outside of my better judgment, I lingered.

Unable to look him in the face, I turned my head to indicate I was listening.

He let me go, didn’t force himself into my line of view, didn’t offer regrets or apologies.

“There’s something moving in this town,” he said.

“Something I’ve never felt before. It’s bigger than I think even Isolde could have handled.

I don’t know if William’s using it or if it’s wild, but I think it’s responsible for what happened to Fiona.

If I’d known, I swear I never would have brought you, Cricket. ”

I understood what he was offering, but it was far too little, too late, and I wouldn’t accept.

“I never want to see you again,” I replied, cold as the deep earth my sister rested in.

Stepping into the hall, I closed myself off from my father for what I’d decided would be forever.

I’d made it to the glass elevator, the lobby, and to the rotating entryway, when I slipped my hand into my pocket and discovered the photo missing.

My anger was renewed. Darren had picked my pocket, had stolen from me, a thing that didn’t and would never belong to him .

I’d stopped, blocking the door, and a woman tapped me on the shoulder, hoping to get around.

Her expression when I acknowledged her suggested I wasn’t hiding my temper.

She apologized and retreated to the lobby.

I stood fuming, hating that I was forced to decide between eating my words and seeing Darren again or abandoning the photograph.

All the way back to room 15, I steeped in resentment, working myself into another firestorm. The door was partially open, cracked several inches. I didn’t bother knocking, only shoved it in, prepared to spit venom.

The room smelled of iron and decay, vivid red mottling on the white curtains drawing my eye first, crimson droplets on the windowpane so fresh they still traveled in a drunken slink towards the latch, as though racing to escape the carnage that had been visited upon the room in the few minutes I’d been gone.

The spatter continued across the bed and onto the floor where Darren lay on his back in a halo of blood, fed by the streams still flowing from the gaping slash of flesh in his throat.

Anger evaporating, I screamed for help, hurrying to my father’s prone body, falling to my knees and pressing a hand to his throat to staunch the pulsing flow of blood. The pressure of my palm only forced more from his veins. The cut was too deep, too wide.

Darren was still alive. Two tears slipped from his eyes, mirror images of each other as he looked at me.

“Help!” The word escaped long and wretched. Doors began opening, voices raising in the hall, fast approaching.

Darren laid a hand on my shoulder as he gathered the strength to touch my face, his fingers finally grazing my cheek. Blood bubbled from his lips as the corners curled into a frail smile.