Page 67 of Blackwicket (Dark Hall #1)

Fiona glanced at him, but her eyes remained unfocused.

“Farvem thought if Grigori fell, the Brom would scatter. But none of us had anticipated Williams’ willingness to step into his shoes. So it all backfired. William became more aggressive, moved plans forward faster, and tightened his hold on me. It’s why we faked my death.”

“Grigori wasn’t the only one, was he?” Victor asked, his tone sharp and predatory, the one he used to extract information from reluctant sources.

It didn’t matter that she was my sister, or that she’d been through hell.

He remained intent on uncovering the truth of what evil had been moving under the shining exterior of this town.

I prepared to defend her, but color rose to her cheeks, the slightest tinge of pink around her nose.

“Good boy, Inspector.” Fiona intoned, full of hatred. “Figuring it out all by yourself.”

Thatcher, Patrick, Cora, our Darren—their throats all cut.

“I might have made the connection sooner, but I don’t usually include the deceased on my suspects list.” Victor offered a humorless smile.

When I found my voice, the words it produced were weighed down with painful astonishment.

“Darren?” I said. “You murdered our father? ”

“He brought you to Nightglass.” Fiona’s anger with Victor for revealing everything lifted her voice. “He traded you for a payday!”

I stood slowly to my feet, needing to move, to feel my body, gone numb from shock. Fiona followed me, wobbling, losing her balance and falling to her knees.

“And Thatcher refused her a train ticket.” Victor began stringing it all together at last, his eyes locked on Fiona as she attempted to stand, needing to hold on to the table to pull herself up. “Patrick wanted to gut her in the street. All men who did her harm.”

“How could you,” I asked her, still reeling. I could have lived a lifetime without Darren’s shadow ever darkening my door. But the knowledge he was gone, that I’d held him while he died, because my sister had been feeding the monster in her bones, was difficult to bear.

“Ellie,” Fiona rasped.

“He was a terrible man.” My voice pitched. “But he was the only one left who knew anything about what we’d suffered.”

“I heard what you said to him. Everyone did,” Fiona argued. “You didn’t want him!”

“But I didn’t want…”

“Some people just deserve to die!” My sister screamed, interrupting me, and the Drudge overcame her again, shifting her into the beast which gnashed its jaws, twisting its horrible head on its long neck.

When she wrested control and regained her human form, she sank, the effort costing her too much.

I dove to catch her before she hit the ground, and the contact with her body cleaved my anger, reminding me I hadn’t lost everything, and had been given something precious back, no matter how broken.

I helped her stand, and she leaned on me, gasping for a moment, crying small sobs into my shoulder.

I’d become her protector, the last person in the world she could depend on.

I needed to put my hypocritical judgment to rest and love her despite everything.

“At risk of being insensitive,” Victor chimed, his voice devoid of interest in Fiona’s suffering. “I need to clarify what crime Cora committed to invite your retribution.”

His callousness reminded me of the man he was capable of being when focused on keeping his own demons at bay. I hadn’t considered what it might be costing him to be in such proximity to Fiona’s Drudge. Still, my anger flared. Fiona answered him, preventing me from offering a rebuke.

“Cora was keeping track of Jack for the Authority,” Fiona rasped. “She used Thea to stay close, to ensure she didn’t do anything to disrupt their plans. They wanted to see what William would do, how he’d use Dark Hall children to change the landscape of magic in this world.”

“But you helped Grigori with that, before you killed him, you gave him a child from Dark Hall. You stole a boy to support Grigori’s plans to create Drudge soldiers.”

“Victor,” I snarled.

“That wasn’t what Grigori was doing, you fool,” Fiona said, voice thickening. “And I didn’t steal Roark from Dark Hall.”

This information interested both Victor and me a great deal.

“Where did he come from?” Victor demanded.

“I made him.” She spoke the confession with sober pride.

“You made him?” I repeated. “With William?”

She stared at me for a beat too long.

“Oh, Ellie. You really don’t know any of it.”

Voices raised from outside, Ramsey calling to us, urgent.

“Why is he here?” Fiona was suddenly on edge.

The door flew open, Ramsey barging in with Hannah close behind. They were agitated, faces tense, eyes sleepless.

“We found them,” Ramsey said by way of greeting .

“Then why do you look so afraid?” My heartbeat ratcheted.

“They’re locked in the Vapors,” Hannah said. She had a long wool coat clutched to her, yellow as daffodils, and she handed it to me as she said, “with William.”

“What the hell do you mean?” Victor roared, punctuating the stab of horror that momentarily crippled me. I clutched the coat as blood fled from my face, leaving me woozy.

Hannah chose that moment to notice Fiona, and she took hold of her husband’s arms, gripping them with the shocked strength of any woman who’d seen someone rise from the grave.

“Fiona Blackwicket?” Ramsey stared at her, disbelieving.

Fiona had leaned against the table for support, eyes fixed on the two of them with cold distrust.

“William’s dead.”

She enunciated each word as though saying them strongly enough would keep them true.

“We tracked their magic all night, finally traced it to the club,” Ramsey said, off balance by the sight of my sister. “It’s strong, they’re alive, but I’d recognize William’s noxious trail anywhere, and it’s there too.”

My shock had abated, replaced by a detonation of wrath.

“You’re lying. No one’s capable of tracking people by remnants of magic that way.” I said, the wicked creature in me expanding, glorifying in the wreckage my horror was making of my magic.

Hannah reached to put a hand on my arm, but I recoiled, finding Victor near, his steadying touch not to hold me up but to assure me he was on guard.

“You’re not just a driver for the Brom, or an informant for Barrick. And your wife,” I shoved a finger in Hannah’s direction, and she raised her chin. “She can almost make a body whole again? I’ve never witnessed magic do more than barely cauterize a cut! ”

“It can’t do more than that,” Hannah said. “Not in this sad little world.”

“Hannah,” Ramsey barked.

“How are you involved in this?” I insisted, aiming for the tender spot Hannah had revealed. “Are you Authority? Veil? Brom? Who ?”

Fiona had moved towards me as well, standing silently at my shoulder as I interrogated them. Neither my sister nor Victor was inactive, they were bullets loaded into a gun, cocked and ready for me to pull the trigger.

“There’ll be an inquest,” Ramsey cautioned his wife.

“There’ll be an inquest anyway,” she cried, two spots of red blooming on her cheeks. “They deserve to know. They’re involved!”

“You’re both from Dark Hall.” Victor interrupted the back and forth. “That much is clear. Now you’re welcome to reveal the rest before we decide you’re responsible for Thea and Jack’s current circumstances.”

Ramsey ran a hand over his face, long-suffering, muttering a string of words in a language I wasn’t familiar with, but it was clear as day they weren’t polite.

“Make it quick,” Victor said, his form deviating beside me as the anxiety of the moment drew too taut, encouraging the Drudge.

“They’re Authority,” Fiona said in their stead, taking their narrative power, her voice icy as fingers of frost on glass.

“Not the one you’re familiar with,” Hannah said. “Not the one that’s failed so miserably to protect you all.”

“What other Authority is there?” I asked.

“The one responsible for annexing this world, removing the magic,” Ramsey answered.

My instinct was to reject what I was being told as drivel to cover some worse thing, but Hannah’s eyes were pleading, begging me to accept what they were saying despite the implausibility.

I turned my face up to look at Victor. He said nothing, but his Drudge ceased its attempts to take the forefront.

“I guess we have no choice but to tell you the rest, but it’ll have to be later,” Ramsey said, an urgency in him. “We’re running out of time. I don’t know what William Nightglass has in mind with Thea and Jack, but we have reason to believe he wants to open Dark Hall.”

“For what purpose?” Victor remained menacing, just as he’d always been when dragging information from unwilling mouths.

“To release the Fiend,” Fiona said with resigned certainty.

My breath stalled, and I spiraled back to the claustrophobic study at the Nightglass Estate, the taste of bourbon on my tongue, the smell of William gagging me.

“Jack’s the key.” I blurted it out in panic. “That’s what William said. He wants to use Jack to open a portal.”

My sister’s eyes became wild.

“No,” she said. “Thea can open the portal. He wants Jack as a new vessel.”

“For what?”

“His Drudge.”

There was too much missing information, secrets and wounds, all the horrible knowledge my sister had collected without me. And though she was here, there was no time to know it all.

Victor was aware of that too.

“Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen,” Victor replied, taking the coat from my white-knuckled hands, opening it with a snap, helping me into it like a gentleman taking his lady to the theater, not to face a madman she’d already killed once.

“We can’t get in,” Ramsey said. “That’s the problem. We’ve been working most of the night, trying to break through the doors, a window, anything, but it’s all magically sealed, and the magic is strong. More than William should be able to do. Nothing in, nothing out.”

“There’s a way in,” Fiona muttered.

All eyes were on her.

“There’s a Narthex.”

The flutter I’d felt in Dark Hall, the gentle tug. I’d been unable to open myself to the possibility, but my suspicions had been true.

“We need to go,” I said, pulling Fiona’s arm around me to help her walk to the door.

“Where?” Ramsey followed us out, ready for any answer I gave him.

“To Blackwicket House.”