Page 57 of Blackwicket (Dark Hall #1)

Thea stood in the foyer, the door left open so she could escape at any moment, draped in a black fur stole offering limited warmth over her thin satin gown, simple save for the ruching below her bust. Upon noticing my expression, she raised her defenses in anticipation of the snap of angry magic I aimed at her.

“How could you lead Jack back to William?” I seethed.

“Is he safer in this house with your pet Drudge? Those creatures nearly killed him!” She echoed my fury.

My skin tingled with the electricity of her temper, equal to mine. The house ought to have reveled in this display, yet it remained motionless as a dead rabbit.

“Who is he, Thea?” I demanded.

“Not Roark.” In so many words, she was telling me that not only was I wrong, but it was none of my business.

“Because Roark is dead, isn’t he?” It was better my magic hadn’t fully recovered from the ordeal with the door; otherwise, I might have been tempted to misuse it.

“I don’t know.” Each word was a staccato insistence.

“Was he my sister’s son?” I urged, eager to extract at least one honest answer.

“No more than Jack is mine!” Her voice rose, sorrow flickering in her dark eyes, “She loved that boy, but he wasn’t hers. She stole him. ”

Thea wilted, her determination to stay proud and unbending crumbling as her shoulders drooped.

She raised a manicured hand to her face, pressing her fingers above her brows to stifle her tears.

I wanted more from her, the urgency for it burning, but in the presence of a woman overwhelmed by the same forces that had devastated Fiona, I reluctantly softened and allowed her a moment to breathe.

When she finally looked up, her gaze drifted around the foyer.

“I lied to you,” she confessed, “About ever being in the house.”

“You’ve come here?”

Thea smiled, and it was the shape of a beloved memory. She swiped at her tears. “We practically lived here. Jack and me. Before Roark’s disappearance, before Fiona started blaming Grigori, and William began blaming her.”

A horde of questions crowded my mouth.

“Is Roark’s disappearance the reason Fiona killed Grigori?”

“Who knows why she did anything.” Thea took a deep breath, her sense of fragility lingering. “I stopped knowing her that day. She turned her back on us, on the people who cared about her.”

“She gave you her life,” I contended, Fiona and my Mother blurring into a single person, both having sacrificed everything to meet the relentless demands of being a Curse Eater for Nightglass—a woman who continually cracked herself open to sew everyone else together with her own sinew.

“And I gave her mine.” Thea pulled her stole closer, shielding herself from memories. “She needed me, and I stayed. Jack and I could have run, we had opportunities, but we’d built a life. Maybe not a life anyone else would want, but it was ours.”

I understood—the picture of my sister, hand on Thea’s knee, laughing in a moment of pure joy, the bottle of jasmine perfume on the dresser, half empty despite my sister favoring honeysuckle, the red lipstick on the vanity, the same shade Thea wore, and the children’s clothes and toys for more than a single child.

She’d been more than a friend to Fiona.

“Oh, Thea,” I said gently, heart aching, suddenly wanting to know her—this woman my sister had loved.

But it was all far too late for that. Our paths hadn’t converged in a manner that made trust or friendship possible.

I distanced myself from these regretful new emotions by asking, “Did my sister steal Jack from Dark Hall?”

Thea cast a glance behind me, where Ramsey had been standing quiet as death, some ways away, leaving room for our animosity. He nodded to Thea, encouraging her.

“Jack belongs to the Authority,” she explained, voice dropping low as though not wanting to be overheard, “They traded him to William Nightglass.”

“For what?” I cried, voice pitching high in shock, the antithesis of secrecy.

“For access to curses.”

The idea seemed almost too ridiculous to believe. The authority had built their platform on making the world safe, protecting it from the Fiend, from Drudge, by eradicating curses and rogue magic users capable of manipulating them.

“It’s the very thing they’re against,” I argued, though it was feeble logic.

“If you haven’t noticed,” Thea’s contempt for my ignorance was on full display, “The Authority is interested in power. They want to make sure they’re the ones in control of it.

It’s why they snuffed out Curse Eaters, banned Narthex.

But when the power dynamic shifted, and the Brom became strong, they grew interested in playing nice. ”

I remained silent, fearing a misstep would jeopardize Thea’s willingness to share the crucial insights I needed to navigate the hornet’s nest I’d stepped on, filled with warring factions I’d been, until now, ignorant of.

“So the people in charge gave in here and there, made concessions, let the Brom open clubs like the Vapors, rubbed elbows with powerful men like Grigori. Their elite got first access to all the vile magic we were pumping into the veins of our clients, got hooked, every last one, and when Grigori Nightglass asked for Dark Hall children to help support the whole disgusting scheme, they agreed. It benefited them.”

“What was my sister’s part in all of this, Thea?”

Again, Thea cut her eyes to Ramsey, and I caught the lead, following it to face the stocky man dressed in a driver’s uniform, who was no more a chauffeur than a shark in a bow was a little girl.

Forgetting the regret I’d once felt for crossing a boundary I hadn’t been invited over, I viciously snatched at the edges of his magic. This time, he didn’t hide from me, and our power struck head-on. His unexpected strength fueled my ferocity.

“Easy there, Blackwicket,” he cautioned, voice strained with the effort of holding me at bay.

“Is this magic yours?” I snarled.

“It is, girl, stand down.” With effort he hadn’t expected to spend, he shook me off and raised his defenses. It was an unnecessary precaution as I’d depleted myself well below any ability to attack further. The sensation in my head was airy and vast.

Ramsey noted my wooziness.

“A warning for you, Ms. Blackwicket. It takes stamina and control to wield magic that forcefully, and you have neither. You keep exploding like that and you’re going to burn yourself out permanently.” He shook his head. “It’s a damn waste no one taught you to control all that power you have.”

“I’m more than capable of keeping it under control. I’ve done it my whole life.”

“Repressing it isn’t control. It’s fear. ”

I didn’t want advice from this strange man.

“Why does Thea keep silently asking your permission to speak?” I challenged.

“She doesn’t think you’re safe,” he replied, raising his hands as though he were calming a wild animal. “She’s checking in with me because I’m good at determining that sort of thing. It’s part of my job.”

“As a driver ?”

“There’s something far bigger going on here than you know, Eleanora.”

“Don’t patronize me, Ramsey.” I spat, wondering if they knew Victor was once a boy fed curses by Grigori until his soul couldn’t remember a time before it wasn’t half made of them.

“I know Fiona Blackwicket is responsible for the disappearances,” he said, his curt voice like sandpaper on the hull of an old boat.

“I know the Veil tried to use her to bring the Nightglass family to its knees, then delivered their wrath over her failure to your door. Now, I’ll ask that you appreciate my honesty by keeping your magic to yourself. ”

“Who are you affiliated with?” I demanded, shivering from the cold sweeping through the open front entry. After expending so much energy clashing with Ramsey, the chill seeped deeper.

“Barrick Harrow,” he replied simply.

“Inspector Harrow’s father?” The words stuck slightly.

“A good friend of mine. We went to academy together,” Ramsey’s voice was rough with an emotion I recognized as grief. “He was assigned by the Authority to monitor the strongest magic users, keep them out of the Brom toolbox, so to speak. He was also tasked with uncovering Dark Hall children.”

I knew a bit of this story already.

“But he didn’t turn any of them in,” I ventured. “He hid them away.”

Ramsey studied my face briefly .

“Yes. You can’t do that kind of job without eventually realizing what it’s for,” the man acknowledged.

“And when Barrick figured it out … that’s when he started doing his job too well.

Suddenly, he was bringing down the boom so hard few magic users remained for either the Brom or the Authority, and all the children were disappearing.

He was happy with everyone thinking he was annulling them, it kept the scrutiny off, gave him more room to organize safe places for kids like Thea. ”

Ramsey indicated Thea James with a tip of his chin.

“I was a child when the Authority began collecting unlicensed Curse Eaters,” she explained, clutching the stole tight. “I’d been acquired by the Bobbit family.”

I met a Bobbit woman , Inspector Harrow had said.

“He realized what I was, lost my paperwork, then sent me to live with a sympathetic couple on a farm far west with a new name: Theadora James.”

“You and Victor know each other.”

“I came to Nightglass because Barrick needed someone less volatile than his son to keep an eye on things,” she confirmed.

“I’d never met the Inspector, but rumors travel fast. I knew he was a wild card, zealous about his father’s work.

He was different then, not much cuddlier, but he had life in his eyes.

Now he’s frozen over. Sometimes I worry the only warm thing left in him is hatred. ”

The involuntary blush pinking my cheeks caught Thea’s sharp attention, but I interrupted her comment as it formed.

“So you’re an Authority informant, like Cora?”

Hearing Cora’s name shook Thea profoundly, a visual quake of shock jostling her. Her reaction was genuine, and I regretted my callousness.