Page 42 of Blackwicket (Dark Hall #1)

“You can wait in the parlor, Mr. Farvem,” I said.

While I was still uneasy about the room, I had no alternative. The kitchen was still filled with Fiona’s blackberry jam.

“You’ll be comfortable there. I’ll bring you some water.”

He touched my wrist to delay me.

“My Patrick’s dead, you know.”

The hush of his voice was heartbreaking, and my tender response was for Mr. Farvem’s sake, not Patrick’s, although I wondered if he’d been aware of the type of person his grandson had been. Either way, it was irrelevant now.

“I heard. I’m so sorry. It’s too much tragedy for one town.”

“During the war, that’s how we killed the Curse Eaters.” He confessed, as if I hadn’t spoken. “We slit their throats, let their corrupted magic flow out with their blood.”

A ripple of alarm swept down my spine.

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“I was part of a special unit. The Veil. It was our job to eliminate the most formidable magic users, prevent them from spreading their curses across borders. Our men were so tired, filled up to the gills with tainted sludge. So many died. When the war ended, I vowed I’d do everything in my power to make sure nothing like that ever happened again. ”

He hadn’t been looking at me before, choosing a distant spot beyond my shoulder, but now he caught my gaze in his, and he sighed.

“Then the Brom began to grow.”

A shout erupted from outside, followed by a thunderous explosion that rattled the house, windowpanes shaking, flakes of ceiling plaster falling on us from overhead.

The chandelier rocked back and forth, the crystals clinking, and a deep moan, like a steel boat hull adjusting under pressure, resonated through the house as the Drudge inside it moved.

“What was that?” My voice warbled. “What’s happened?”

I made to run for the door, but Mr. Farvem halted my momentum by seizing my hand.

“Don’t look, my dear.” He pulled me back. “You don’t want to see. It’s a shame. The Inspector made successful strides in eradicating the Brom, but men like him no longer fit here. We need to learn to take care of our own problems. No magic, just utility.”

I withdrew my hand from his, adrenaline spiking through my limbs.

“You should’ve been in that car, Eleanora. It would have made this easier.”

Farvem produced a scalpel from his sleeve.

It slid into his palm in a sleight of hand that mimicked Patrick’s disappearing trick with the trench knife.

My eye was distracted long enough for him to bring the weapon in a close arc towards my throat.

I reeled backwards just in time, nearly tripping, and the instrument glanced the underside of my chin.

I screamed in pain and horror, and the undertaker reached for me, gripping the collar of my shirt, which tore as I jerked aside, the top buttons popping free. He swung at me again as I fled, and I felt the blade in my hair.

“Fiona was supposed to make everything better,” Mr. Farvem roared. “We had an agreement! ”

The nearest refuge was the kitchen. Although its doors swung both directions, Mother had installed a latch when her compulsive baking peaked, and she didn’t want to be disturbed by the outside world.

I made it, grabbing the door and pushing it too hard.

It swung out first, and I was forced to lunge, grab hold of it again, as Mr. Farvem raced to stop me.

He aimed a swipe at my fingers, missing barely, as the door found its casing, and I slammed the metal lock home.

It wasn’t a strong thing. It hadn’t been meant to keep out insane old men with sharp objects, only curious, lonely teenage girls who missed their mother.

The force exerted against the wooden panels was remarkable for a man in his nineties, each impact exceeding the last, rattling the pans on the wall and unsettling the spices on the shelves.

“I knew better than to work with a Curse Eater,” Farvem yelled. “But decided to have faith! I helped her!”

Bang.

“I trusted her!”

Bang.

The door was splintering. I stood straight, trying to find a controlled breath in my panic, as blood dripped from my chin onto my arms. I hurried to the wooden block table, where all the jams sat wrapped in their satin ribbons for gifting. I attempted to push it, but it budged only an inch.

Please. Please.

I pleaded with the house, lowering my defenses, reaching for any help it could offer, no matter what I’d be asked to give in return, and it came alive.

Like curls of smoke from a snuffed candle, drudge materialized in corners, behind pantry doors, beneath the table.

Something grazed my ankle—a leathery, cursed creature clawing its way from beneath the sink.

The wood holding the latch in place cracked and splintered, sending the metal flying, crashing onto the table in an explosion of glass and pulpy blackberry jam.

Mr. Farvem entered, eyes wide, his frail body no worse for wear from all the turmoil he’d put it through.

Immediately, the Drudge converged, scrabbling up his figure from the floor and dropping from above to engulf him.

I braced for his screams, anticipating the garbled choking sounds as they invaded his body, but all I heard was a chilling stillness.

Then Mr. Farvem, obscured by the gaseous ashes of the Drudge, began to walk toward the table.

“They can’t penetrate my defenses, Eleanora,” he said, lifting his arms as though showing me a trick.

The scalpel caught the fading light of day filtering in from the tiny window, which offered no prospect of escape.

“I run a tight ship. Learned that in the infantry. To survive, you can’t let the curses in.

I’ve encountered more impressive monsters than these paltry bags of dust. Humans and Drudge joined in terrible union. ”

Despite the confidence in his voice, he became agitated by the swarm, swinging the scalpel in wild punctuation to his final remarks. The Drudge, bewildered and uncertain, retreated, creeping to their corners to observe the events as they developed, waiting.

By calling on the Drudge, I’d unwittingly put myself at a disadvantage.

If I invited one in to bolster my magic, they would all come.

I leaned into the power I already had, hoping it wasn’t so under-used it wouldn’t respond the way I needed it to.

What I was preparing to do would be painful, and risked dangerously depleting my energy, but it would give me the opportunity to put some distance between us.

Mr. Farvem’s strength was unnatural, driven by magic, but I thought I might still have a chance of outrunning him.

“What are you doing, girl?”

I thrust the table, power erupting in a panicked, desperate burst, sending the heavy piece of furniture flying several feet forward.

Jars crashed, breaking one by one, the corner rocketing toward Mr. Farvem.

But instead of being knocked down, he slammed his hands on the tabletop, heedless of the glass, and vaulted over it, as nimble as a boy, sliding through the remnants of sticky jelly.

He seized a handful of pinned curls near my temple, and I slipped on the mess I’d created in my useless efforts.

“Don’t take it to heart, young lady,” he said, kicking my feet so that I slipped further down in the glass, weakening my ability to stave him off.

“I bent the rules a little bit, took on a bit of nasty cursed magic to regain some of the vitality I’ve lost over the past twenty years. Disgusting but necessary.”

“Mr. Farvem, don’t do this. I only wanted to help.” I gasped, both hands wrapped around the wrist holding the blade, barely keeping it from coming any closer to my neck. At the angle he was holding me, I had very little leverage, and if I slipped any further, my arms would buckle.

“So did Fiona. She was supposed to stop the Brom, set it on fire from the inside. Instead, she created a living hell for us all. So many dead. My Patrick, murdered.”

The scalpel came ever closer, and I sobbed. The Drudge were moving, sneaking in like carrion birds waiting for their chance to feed.

“Magic abandoned us.” Spittle dripped from his mouth as he yelled. “The Fiend is our punishment if we keep trying to bring it back. Your sister became a monster, and I’m going to make sure it doesn’t happen to you. Let me save you, Eleanora!”

The sound of gunfire shattered the air. Two shots.

Mr. Farvem fell against the table, an awful gurgling rising from his missing throat, blown away by two well-aimed bullets from the gun Inspector Harrow held steady in his hand at the threshold of the decimated kitchen door .

Seeing their opportunity, the patient Drudge converged, burrowing into Mr. Farvem’s red mouth with such feral vigor that his jawbone snapped.

As he slid to the floor, the flesh between his jaw and neck tore, making room for more Drudge to settle in, feasting on whatever magic remained.

But not just the Drudge moved towards this source of sustenance.

From the debris of jam, rose furls of red. Breaths of curses tucked in each jar.

Inspector Harrow holstered his gun, and in a few strides, he was leaning over me, tucking an arm under mine and another behind my knees, scooping me off the floor.

He smelled of gasoline and smoke; his clothes filthy with dirty snow and soot, skin smudged with the same, blood seeping from a gash above his eye.

I held onto him, burying my face in his neck, anguish twisting my features while I struggled to suppress tears of relief rooted in the reality that neither of us were dead.

Wordlessly, he carried me up two flights of stairs, and slipped into my family suite. He kicked open the bathroom door with the toe of his shoe, and deposited me on the vanity stool with a care I hadn’t believed him capable of.

“How are you alive?” My trembling made the words a shaky vibrato.

“Halfway to the gate, the front driver’s side wheel started to smoke.

I worked two car bombings in Devin, and the acrid smell was familiar.

” His voice was strained. He was stifling emotions that had gathered like ants under his skin, whether it was anger or panic, or concern, I couldn’t tell.

“These bastards barely knew what they were doing; the spring-loaded trigger wasn’t balanced, the fuse was too long. Gave me enough time.”

He stood at the sink, gruffly grabbing a cloth and soaking it in water to tend to my face.

Small bits of glass fell from my clothes, and I considered every part of my body with care, looking for pain.

My arms ached from shoving the table, my temples were tender, and my chin, which Inspector Harrow was examining, stung viciously.

“You need a stitch,” he muttered.

“I’m not leaving this house.”

“Well, then, do you have a sewing kit?” he asked, with a significant amount of sarcasm. We both became aware he’d made a joke. He didn’t seem happy about it.

“I can try to use magic,” I said. My mother had treated our minor injuries this way.

Cuts, sprains, and contusions were all magically nursed, despite the difficulty of bending the material of the human body.

Magic was stubborn and unpredictable when it met with human biology, and even before magic use had been restricted, hospitals had banned the inclusion in medicine.

Blackwickets, as far back as anyone could remember, had despised hospitals.

Our mother especially was worried someone would recognize what her children were and take us. We were lucky we’d never needed one.

I tried to stand, but the Inspector placed a hand on my shoulder, guiding me to sit again.

“I’ll do it,” he said, returning to the sink to rinse the cloth and wash his hands in the scalding water.

“You know how?”

“You pick up some things working with the Authority.”

Kneeling before me, he pressed his fingers to my cheek in a silent request for me to tilt my head.

I lowered my eyelids to peer at him as his fingers brushed from my cheek to the wound, blood still trickling down my neck.

Suddenly, there was quiet in him, something very near serenity, and the world turned soft and pillowy before a pinch jolted me back.

“And you can soothe as well.”

“Stay still.”

I followed his instructions, pondering his gentleness .

“How long until the Drudge are done?” He asked when he was finished, handing me the washrag to press on the magically cauterized wound as he stood.

He meant with their work of feeding from Mr. Farvem.

“They’re done now, is my guess,” I replied softly, dabbing my chin to distract from the memory of the old man’s throat. “What are we going to do about…”

“I’ll handle it. Wash. Rest.”

As he turned to leave, I noticed a tear in the shoulder of his jacket, to the right of his shoulder blade, blood staining the gray fabric in a broad patch.

I didn’t call after him. Instead, I remained in the quiet bathroom, grappling with the knowledge that Inspector Harrow had tended to my wound first, even when his injuries were far greater than my own.