Page 5 of Blackwicket (Dark Hall #1)

The journey through the alleys leading to my tenement was excruciating, Darren recommending we take every wrong turn in case the woman or her cohorts were tracking us.

I had less time than ever to assemble my belongings and get gone, but when we emerged from the labyrinthine backstreets, we were in a part of Devin I didn’t frequent.

Oldtown. This district was downtrodden, known for its seedy bars, cheap motels, and easy access to carnal entertainments you wouldn’t find on the Galton side of the city.

People here wouldn’t blink an eye at a battered woman being half dragged down the street.

“This isn’t right,” I said.

I feared we’d taken a wrong turn. At this rate, I’d never make it back to my apartment to retrieve the items that wouldn’t help my case once the Authority had them in custody.

“We can’t go back to your place, Cricket,” Darren said. “The Authority know where you live.”

“There are things I can’t leave,” I protested as he continued to guide my steps.

“We’ll talk after you feel better.”

He helped me navigate across the street, steam rising from the sidewalk vents like fog.

We arrived at a four-story motel, squatting between two taller buildings, whose windows were long boarded.

A balding man in a suit jacket several sizes too small sat at the front desk, absorbed in yesterday’s newspaper.

My father waved a set of keys, but the clerk didn’t even raise his eyes.

Following two grueling flights of stairs, Darren unlocked a pinewood door and led me inside.

I shrugged him off the moment we crossed the threshold, stumbling to the dingy yellow bathroom to vomit into the sink.

At least now my mouth tasted of acrid bile instead of Drudge.

A consumed curse often granted its new host a surge of magical ability, a temporary rush of psychic strength, along with a nagging sensation of a toothache in your chest. Drudge didn’t function this way.

They didn’t trickle poison, but spread like blood in water.

“Do you still have the vessel?” Darren asked from the other room as I finished gagging and rinsed my mouth with tepid water, feeling little better than dead.

I retrieved the bracelet from my skirt pocket, raising it wordlessly over my head as I wiped my face on a stained towel.

“Right. Do you need me to…uh.” My father fumbled his words, doing everything in his power to avoid offering his help.

“Don’t bother, Darren,” I grumbled, still queasy. I’d done this so many times without him.

He rubbed the back of his neck.

“You should give this one to Dark Hall.”

The suggestion was ridiculous. Placing a curse in Dark Hall was reckless, and getting caught opening a portal was punishable by Annulment.

“You know I can’t reach Dark Hall.”

“If your mother could…”

“I’m not her.”

“Well, what do you plan to do with it?” He threw his hands out, frustrated with my mulishness.

The curse twisted deeper, searching for a permanent home in my breast. I couldn’t afford the gentler route, like soaking a bandage before removing it from a wound.

Hasty action was required, and I’d have to endure the void it left behind.

I staggered to the bed and sat heavily, the mattress eliciting a distressed creak.

Something dripped onto the floor beneath the frame.

Pressing the jewelry to my chest, I closed my eyes, the ache settling in.

I groped for the edge of the magic, peeling at it bit by bit.

Sensing my intentions, it cringed away. Curses didn’t appreciate cold, lifeless things.

I’d often imagined being trapped in a lifeless host was similar to being confined in a casket with no promise of death and no knowledge of when you’d be free again.

Desperation made me callous, rough, but the harder I tugged, the stronger the curse fought, its teeth sinking deeper, the fiber of who I was warping around it.

Panic rose until all I was doing was feeding this Drudge the noxious nutrients it required to stand its ground and take permanent residence.

I should have stopped, admitted I needed help.

“Cricket.” Darren’s tone was uneasy.

My ribs contracted, accompanied by an audible pop of shoulder joints as the curse wrenched inward.

“Eleanora!” he barked, lunging, one hand eclipsing my folded ones. His magic was as welcome as cool water on a feverish face. Though he possessed little, he’d learned to leverage the momentum of others.

The extra force was all it took, and the Drudge lost its grip.

It ascended from my throat like a wail, its vaporous form drawn back into the vessel, taking a piece of me with it.

The fragment it stole was small, perhaps no larger than a teardrop, and in its place, an equal portion of the curse remained.

“That was real stupid, kid,” Darren muttered, pressing my forehead against his chest, anticipating the next unavoidable event: my swift descent into the gray realm of unconsciousness where curses and absent fathers didn’t exist .

Awareness crashed through me, and I sat up, sucking in air. For a bewildering second, the world spun as I tried to piece together my location and the state of my safety. A hard blink brought the spinning to heel, and I remembered.

“Welcome back to the world of the waking,” my father’s disembodied voice rumbled.

“I’m on the floor,” I managed, coming to a stiff seated position a few feet from the bed. Darren had rolled his coat to place under my head.

My father sat at the rickety table in its single chair, a takeaway bag filled with waxy boxes of food nearby. He was scoffing a pile of greasy noodles, unbothered.

“I wasn’t going to tuck you into that infested sack,” he said, mouth full. “Come eat.”

“You could have killed me.”

We both knew I wasn’t referring to where he’d put me to recover.

“Could have. Didn’t.” He pointed his fork at me to emphasize the last part. “Anyway, you were doing a pretty decent job of it yourself. You got all soft in the collarbones. I’ve seen that a time or two. It’s never pretty.”

“I assume you didn’t offer your gallantry then.”

“You’re my kid,” he replied brusquely.

My father had watched people die of curse rot and likely scalped the magic off their still-warm bodies. He’d saved me out of guilt or, more likely, self-interest, another reason to remain wary.

Skewering another bite of noodles, he added, “I remember you wrestling bigger monsters with much less effort back when you still had baby teeth.”

“That’s an exaggeration.” I rose to my feet, balance still dubious.

“An observation,” he rejoined .

“There were things I needed from my apartment.” I chose condemnation because I didn’t know how to express gratitude for this. By now, the Authority had discovered my collection, and they’d be eager as ever to administer their justice.

Continuing to use his fork as an instructor’s pointer, he gestured to two carpet bags pushed against the wall.

“Didn’t get it all, but I grabbed what would earn you a ticket to having your magic yanked out your ass by the Authority.”

“Your world-class charm appears to be intact.”

“It’s the truth, no charm required. So,” he segued as I rushed to assess my belongings. “How many you got in there? Ten? Fifteen?”

I opened the bags, rummaging, pushing aside the remnants of my most recent life until my fingers brushed the smooth surface of a plain wooden lockbox, festering with vessels full of foul power.

I’d been gathering these artifacts for years, snatching them from shop shelves and off employers’ bookcases and desks.

Two had come from my early days of pick-pocketing when I’d been Carrie Holt in the small city of Weston.

I hadn’t intended to answer my father’s question, but a strange sense of guilt encouraged the response.

“Thirty-three.”

He whistled low.

“That’s a goddamn felony ten times over. Not too different from your old man after all.”

“I don’t sell them.”

“Neither do I.” He offered me an unaffected smile.

“Of course not,” I said.

“Ah, cut it out. You’ve been on the wrong side of the Authority recently yourself. That guy, Mofton…”

“I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

“Of course not,” he replied, echoing me .

I eyed him. My father had always been a dandy, concerned with appearances, but I noticed the stubble on his chin and the faded glory of a once-expensive suit.

There was gray at his temples, but the new bulge of his belly aged him most. For a white-hot moment, I wondered how my mother would have looked if she’d lived long enough to turn soft and gray.

“So, what, you’re keeping the curses as pets?” Darren asked, tossing his empty food container back into the paper bag. “That’s depressing, Cricket.”

After leaving home, I promised myself I’d never curse eat again, and I hadn’t, but as I came across curses out in the world, it felt wrong to ignore them.

So, I became a collector. Every night, as a minor concession, I infused the box with a meager portion of my magic to prevent the curses from growing too restless and turning on one another.

As I accumulated more, the amount of magic necessary to keep them subdued increased.

Soon, I wouldn’t be able to pacify them. But I didn’t owe Darren an explanation.