Page 47 of Blackwicket (Dark Hall #1)

The detestable man seemed unnerved and didn’t wait for an invitation, barreling inside, proving Inspector Harrow’s point. Ramsey stayed outside, hands folded, eyes cast to the wood boards.

“William told me to bring the boy here, said you could fix him up,” Coppe said gruffly, and I clocked his anger, perhaps at being forced to come to this house and ask for help .

“What’s the matter with him?” I said, reaching to touch Jack’s face, turning his head towards me. Tears of red ash were trickling from the corners of his eyes. I froze as memories engulfed me.

“Do something, woman!” Coppe yelled, and Victor stepped into his view, gun raised, the barrel level with the Brom’s head.

“Victor,” Coppe spat. “The hell are you playing at?”

“Give the boy to Eleanora,” Inspector Harrow instructed.

I reached for Jack while struggling with the hysteria ripping at the fragile membrane of my mind.

Coppe hesitated, then handed him over to me.

The exchange brought me closer than I ever wanted to be to this man, who smelled of cigars and sour whiskey.

Although Jack was tall, he felt remarkably light, and I cradled him to me as if he were a much smaller child.

“Get out,” the Inspector ordered, using the revolver to indicate the door.

The rim of Coppe’s eyes had gone red, the same color as the rest of his face, as a violent rage bloomed.

“Don’t you hurt this kid,” he started, but Victor was on him, grabbing his collar, yanking him off balance so he could toss him out the door like a stray dog.

He landed on his ass near Ramsey’s feet.

The driver stepped away from Coppe’s prone form as though he were filthy water thrown from a window.

He then raised his head, locking eyes with me meaningfully.

“Ramsey,” Jack said, the name falling dry from his cracked lips, and the man made an assuring face as Inspector Harrow slammed the door and turned the lock. Holstering the weapon, he came to collect Jack from my arms.

“Curses. I don’t know how many,” I said, as Jack was gathered from me. The inspector made a direct course to the parlor.

“No!” The word was a high shriek, and I mindlessly clutched the fabric of the blouse near my heart. I couldn’t help Jack in that room, where another child, infested with polluted magic, had breathed his last breath, all because of me.

When the Inspector stopped, I gestured to the stairs, attempting to regain my composure.

“Up. The first room. Take him there,” I led the way, giving the Inspector no room to argue. I was grateful that he asked no questions.

The doors were still locked, but I didn’t need keys, not anymore.

My magic coursed, the lock snapping, the door flinging in with such force it crashed against the wall as though blown by a gale.

Inspector Harrow was right at my shoulder.

He took Jack to the bed, neatly made in crisp white linens, and lay him down with all the gentleness of a father.

Attempting to mimic Victor’s unearthly calm, I sat on the edge of the mattress and pressed the child’s hair from his temple. “Jack, look at me.”

The child’s head rolled in my direction, wisps of curses rising from his mouth.

“How many curses did you eat?”

“Dunno,” he rasped, “One? Don’t remember.”

I took his hand in mine as his eyes closed, his breath coming in deep, uneven pulls.

His fingers were icy despite the fever in his cheeks.

I began my search for the blight, fearful of what I might uncover.

His affliction wasn’t hard to locate; it churned in an oily cloud, eclipsing Jack’s natural power, trying to suffocate it.

This wasn’t a single curse.

“Victor, it’s a Drudge,” I said.

“Help him,” Inspector Harrow replied, low.

Tears sprang to my eyes as memory after memory of Thomas Nightglass’s face flickered in my thoughts: his bright smile, gradually becoming solemn resignation, the way he’d held my hand so tightly the night we walked Dark Hall, and the tears that left tracks on his temples from fighting then as Jack was fighting now.

And I’d done everything wrong, hadn’t been able to help. I’d killed my best friend.

“It’s going to hurt him.”

“Better hurt than dead.”

I took hold of the shattered pieces of my life and my history and pulled them together, knowing I would have to be whole to help the boy whom the Brom had used as bait, a trap to keep unwanted Drudge at bay.

The Drudge was so entwined, I couldn’t coax it free.

Even when presented with an offering of my stronger magic, it had no interest in coming willingly, happy with its current quarry.

So I began the tedious work of plucking at the Drudge, like pulling threads from a knot, searching for whatever was left of Jack’s magic.

It was a process that might take more time than we had.

Jack opened his eyes, whimpering, not from the pain of the corruption gnawing at his insides, but from fear.

His gaze fixed on the ceiling, where a Drudge had emerged from the shadows of the beams, slinking in a ghostly crawl, its neck disproportionately long, its head small and concave.

It twisted its face as it moved to keep the boy in sight, eyes billowing with the same smoky red as Jack’s.

Another was forming on the underside of the desk, limbs tangling with the chair legs.

They would keep coming, sensing death nearby and preparing for their next meal.

Jack was panicking, and the Drudge he’d consumed fed off this turmoil, growing stronger and pushing me further aside. I’d been so close, but the tainted power was more determined than ever to consume what remained of the boy, and I could no longer sense the thread of his natural power.

I was going to fail—kill another child, the same way I’d killed Thomas, through my ineptitude, my lack of strength.

“Hey, kid,” Victor’s voice startled me, stern. Jack’s eyes turned to him, wide, the whites yellowed. “You think they’d get past me? ”

The boy shook his head slow, delirious. Inspector Harrow raised his hand to block the view of the creature hanging above us, trembling with anticipation.

“Not a chance in hell, but if I’m being honest, it’s not me they’re scared of,” he said in a conspiratorial tone, nodding in my direction. “As long as she’s here, no harm’s coming to you. Understand?”

This unexpected vote of confidence fueled my determination, and I continued my work with renewed focus, promising myself I would reflect on the strangeness of this moment when it was all over and Jack was safe.

“Like Fiona,” Jack said, his exhaustion overcoming him. I lifted my head, exchanging a brief look with Inspector Harrow.

“Yeah,” Harrow said at length, and I knew he wasn’t sure it was true.

“I’m really tired,” Jack said, and I shook my head in a small, quick motion, signaling to the Inspector that the boy shouldn’t sleep.

I was too afraid he would never wake again.

A little at a time, I tore pieces of the Drudge away, the corrupt fragments drowning in my more mature magic.

But I’d made limited headway, the boy’s terror and belief he’d never survive strengthening the curse even as I weakened it.

“I got myself in a pretty bad scrape like this too,” the Inspector said, and Jack’s heavy eyelids flicked up. Mine almost did as well. “Used to make a nuisance of myself in Devin when I was your age. Caused a lot of trouble. There was this Authority man, Chief Barrick Harrow. Mean.”

He sucked a sharp draw of air between his teeth to emphasize the last statement. I marveled at how different Inspector Harrow sounded while talking to this frightened child.

“I was scared to death of him, knew what the Authority did to kids like me. I knew everything back then.” There was a smile in his voice. “I was pretty crafty, good at getting out of scrapes, and it took him a whole year to catch me.”

The story did its job and when Inspector Harrow grew silent, Jack gasped in a lungful of air, gathering his energy to rasp, “How’d he get you?”

The Inspector obliged.

“See, I got into a row with these older boys. They wouldn’t pay me for some magic I scalped for them. I was angry and stupid and started a fight. Almost didn’t make it. Chief Harrow broke it up, took me to the hospital. He thought I was a goner. I did too.”

“Were you scared?” Jack asked, his strength continuing to fade, the light of his magic growing ever dimmer.

“Sure, I was,” the Inspector replied, “Anyone who says they aren’t scared to die is a liar. But you know what Chief Harrow, the scariest man in all of Devin, did when I woke up?”

“Huh?” Jack was locked onto this tale, and I believed with my whole soul it was the only thing keeping him alive while I searched with increasing desperation for a path to the heart of the magic.

“He cried.”

“Yeah?”

“Like a baby. Nurses told me later he’d sat by my bedside for three days, barking orders, praying prayers, willing me to pull through. That’s why I’m alive. Someone was there to walk the hardest road with me, believing I was strong enough. You’ve got the same here, kid.”

Inspector Harrow abandoned shielding the boy from the sight of the monster and instead took Jack’s other hand, encapsulating it between his palms. The effect was immediate: Jack’s magic surged, breaching the horrible miasma.

I grabbed hold as quickly as I could, like reaching for the hand of someone drowning in dark waves, intertwining my power with his .

I laughed in disbelief and utter relief as the Drudge came apart, dissolving piece by piece in the warm current.

Gradually, the white vapor rose, not only from my lips but from Jack’s as well.

Tendrils of mended and tainted magic merging to become pink, diaphanous clouds before fading, running clean.

Jack was curse eating.

At length, his breathing grew even, his magic calm, and he fell asleep, just as the last of the Drudge passed from him.

His feverish skin cooled, though there remained a purple cast below his eyes, a gauntness to his cheeks that would be relieved with rest. Pale helixes of restored magic circled our heads, finding their way into cracks and crevices, sinking into gaps in boards, searching for sanctuary, a place to hide until it was well and could move on.

Surprising me, the Drudge remaining in the room didn’t rush to these strands of power, letting them pass with scant curiosity, attention firmly on the boy.

They no longer seemed to be waiting for something to consume, instead, they watched him as they’d once watched me.

“They want to be near you,” mother had said one night when Fiona and I had run to her bed in fear, cuddling close.

“Why?” I’d asked, pressing my cheek against her chest, comforted by her powdery scent. There were Drudge in this room too, but they kept their distance, never stood at the foot of the bed.

“Because you two are special. You remind them of their home.”

“But you said we didn’t come from Dark Hall,” Fiona’s words had been teary. She’d always been the most sensitive, the sister most likely to cry.

“You came from me. Dark Hall’s in your blood.”

“Inspector,” I whispered, careful not to wake the boy.

He heeded me, hands still clasped around Jack’s.

“That Drudge would have killed another child in minutes. ”

Once I said the words, my greatest fear would become a reality. But there was nowhere to hide from it.

“He’s from Dark Hall,” I said.