Page 68 of Blackwicket (Dark Hall #1)

During the reckless drive to Blackwicket House, I learned some things from my sister, who became more and more lethargic.

I’d offered my magic to her, but even the Drudge shied away, refusing to accept it, or perhaps no longer knowing how.

She spoke faintly, her words trembling, and I worried she would lose consciousness.

I held her against me as we bounced wildly onto the main road.

She murmured about the Narthex, how she’d started building it the night our mother left, how she’d constructed another many years later when she and Thea started looking for a way to remain undetected by William, once a doting lover, grown more fanatical following the Authorities’ procurement of Jack.

“He was so wonderful those first years.” My sister spoke deliriously as we roared up the drive. “I thought we were going to change Nightglass.”

We drove past my sister’s open grave, and the charred remains of Victor’s car, arriving at Blackwicket House, desolate as an old log, its many inhabitants evicted. I couldn’t be sure where they’d gone, but I imagined the tourists stranded in Nightglass were having a very bad time.

“Who helped him meld with a Drudge, Fiona?” I asked gently, knowing there were very few people powerful enough to anchor the Drudge and soul together, like two bodies sharing a heart .

“Roark.”

Everyone’s attention was captured.

Victor’s interest arose from the violent empathy he felt for others in the same circumstances he’d survived, but Hannah and Ramsey’s investment was odd.

“I think that’s why he ran away.” Fiona finished, aware of the unwanted scrutiny. This explained Fiona’s blame. Even if Grigori and William hadn’t orchestrated Roark’s disappearance, they were still responsible, and it was a crime a mother’s heart could never forgive.

As we climbed from the car, my sister lost her footing, and I barely caught her before she hit the cold ground. Even as I helped steady her, Victor approached and, without preamble, scooped her frail body into his arms.

“I’m not a child,” she snapped, but didn’t physically resist.

“We’ll get to Jack and Thea faster if I carry you,” he said, effectively silencing her objections.

The front door stood wide open, never having been shut when we departed for William’s final High Tide.

Cold and hollow as a body emptied of its life magic, the house sagged on its foundation.

The interior was no better. Within a day, Blackwicket House had become the home I’d expected to find when I’d first arrived, floor buckled from the weather, the foyer ceiling sagging under accumulated moisture, splitting the coffers.

Black mildew clung to the walls where patches of plaster had crumbled, revealing lath, and the same shriveled blackberry vines that had grown so prolifically in the tower and entwined among the bones of Fiona’s victims in Dark Hall.

“You’ve been living in this?” Hannah’s tone was a blend of sympathy and repulsion.

“It’s changed,” I remarked as we made our careful way up the steps, creaking and groaning beneath our feet .

“You’d be amazed at what curses can keep together,” Fiona said.

Victor placed my sister on her feet when we reached the third floor. She stood more steadily, the proximity to Dark Hall fortifying her, its pulsing thrum recognizable now that the white-noise of curses was absent.

“The Narthex is upstairs.” I said. “You’ll sense the portal to the Vapors. It’s the only other one still active, but I don’t know where you’ll end up inside.”

“The dressing room, behind the bar.” Fiona had continued to improve, gauntness reduced.

It was the same room Thea had put the makeshift Curse Eaters in during High Tide. It made sense. The force strengthening Fiona would have amplified whatever small ability the Brom had, making them less likely to void.

Before I could continue forming the half-cocked plan, Ramsey intervened.

“I’m afraid we can’t go through the Narthex, Ms. Blackwicket,” the grizzled man explained regretfully. “Any Authority stationed in annexed provinces are monitored. We aren’t allowed to enter Dark Hall under any circumstances unless we’re leaving for good. One exit.”

“Then break the rules.” Victor’s brow furrowed in anger.

“Our Authority does have something in common with yours, Inspector.” Hannah’s reply was calm. “Annulment. It’s strictly enforced for the safety of Elsewhere.”

“Annulled by them or me,” he growled. “You can choose.”

He took a threatening step forward, urging Ramsey to shield his wife with his arm, though she didn’t seem threatened. Instead, she appeared endlessly empathetic, inspiring unexpected rage in me.

“Fine,” I hissed. “Ramsey and Hannah can wait outside the Vapors for the wards to be dismantled. I’ll go by myself. Victor, stay here with Fiona; she can’t be alone..”

I’d already mounted the broken stairs when Victor took me by the arm.

“Like hell you’ll face William alone,” he said.

“Victor, the Fiend will sense you immediately.”

“And it’ll politely ignore the portion of William’s Drudge you’re carrying around, will it?” He asked with some impatience.

There’d be no shaking him.

“I’ll keep the portal open,” Fiona offered, and when she saw I was about to object, “I need to stay close to Dark Hall, Ellie. I won’t be any help at the Vapors. Hannah and Ramsey should go.”

A knot of fear tightened in my stomach for what we were risking.

With Fiona clutching me for balance, we ascended the decayed steps, returning to the room filled with my sister’s terrible secrets.

The cursed plants had been reduced to brown, rustling husks of vines and stalks, mingling with the remnants of blackberry fruit.

It possessed the smell of an overgrown graveyard, and the floor beneath us was soft, weaker for the absence of roots holding it together.

The portal shimmered, responding enthusiastically to our combined magic. I sensed the call, the melody of Dark Hall beckoning me. Much like the sea, it was familiar and welcoming, despite the dangers lurking within.

My sister’s trophies lay scattered around our mother’s hope chest.

“Why did you keep their clothes?” Morbid curiosity compelled me to ask.

“So I could remember how much I hated them all. It helped the cursed fruit grow.” No pride or offense existed in her tone, only the resignation of someone who could never change the past, and wouldn’t if given a choice.

“You should know I never fed on their magic. Of all the horrible things I am, I couldn’t bring myself to do that. ”

It was a shot at Victor, whose abuse of the Brom had never been a secret.

“We all make choices,” he replied, but the words lacked their typical steely edge.

Fiona touched the Narthex, and it quivered, connecting to her. She sucked in a small breath, in pain, and I reached to her, but she waved me away.

“Don’t baby me. You’ll have to go directly after her, Victor. Don’t linger. There’s no telling how near the Fiend is.”

I spared seconds we didn’t have to hug her, longing for a day when neither of us would be looking death in the face and asking for a minute more.

“Eviscerate the bastard,” she whispered, releasing me and turning her attention to Victor.

“I don’t like you, Inspector,” Fiona said pointedly. “But you’re not the worst thing that’s ever happened to Eleanora. Take care of her.”

“In Dark Hall? If history serves, it’s going to be the other way around,” he replied with a note of teasing, as though he’d just remembered that once, he and Fiona had been friends.

My sister surprised us all by hugging him as well. Victor stiffened in the embrace, expression the closest thing to bewilderment I’d ever seen on him. He offered her a graceless pat in return.

“Go quickly.” She hurried us, tears in her voice.

We said nothing more as I faced the Narthex. The wall was pliant, and I leaned into it, suspended for a disorienting moment in space, before I found myself upright in the dark.

“Victor?” I whispered.

“I’m here,” he said, at my elbow .

It occurred to me, as pointless thoughts sometimes do when you’re trying not to be frightened, that this was our first journey to Dark Hall together since childhood. I hoped this one would be an improvement over the last.

“This way,” I said, hushed, moving into dark, trusting my magic to guide me. I was unwilling to wait until the corridors fully materialized, uninterested in seeing the bodies again.

But Dark Hall had different plans. Eager to exist with two people inside, it formed in two steps, replete with bones and vines, rendered ever more ghastly by their entrapment in the magical, scarlet flora. Victor muttered an oath.

“It’s certainly not the Dark Hall I recall,” he said as we traversed the overgrown catacomb.

“It finally matches what everyone’s afraid it is.” I was bitter about the transformation, growing increasingly resentful that nothing from my childhood had escaped spoilage.

A set of bones shifted as the vines grew, impatient to show off their green leaves, their trumpeted flowers tinkling like bells. Victor reached for the holster at his waist, to find it empty.

“Fiona,” he groaned, “That little pickpocket.”

“It explains the hug.”

I struggled to keep my mind off our surroundings and the looming danger of the Fiend, which often appeared with no warning, as it had the night Thomas had almost been lost to it. “Seems I wasn’t the only one Darren mentored.”

“He taught you to pick pockets?”

“As any good father would.”

To my great relief, we moved out of the morbid copes, nearly jogging, following the pulse of the Vapor’s portal. We navigated several turns, passing door after door in quick succession, but no matter how far we went, I still barely felt the itch of the Narthex.

Panic set in, and I suspected that the faster we moved, the further the portal would drift. I slowed down. I would need to open my magic to sense it, but doing so was an incredible hazard.

“I can’t find it. I have to use magic,” I breathed. “I don’t want to do this. I can’t endanger you again.”

But I couldn’t abandon Jack or Thea, the woman who’d made my sister’s life bearable. Facing Fiona and admitting I’d bowed to my fear wasn’t an option.

“Eleanora.” Victor’s hand brushed mine, not taking it, knowing it would impede our ability to run when the time came, and it would soon. “There are a thousand moments I would change if I had the power, but that day isn’t one of them.”

My heart skipped a beat as I raised my eyes to his.

“Do what needs to be done,” he said.

When I was finally able to speak through the rush of warmth and unending gratitude, all I could manage was, “Get ready to run.”

As though dropping a garment from my shoulders, I released my guard, power rising with eager exhilaration, unaware of what it might invite.

Right away I perceived the direction of the Narthex, like a song playing from another room.

As soon as I’d locked on, the Drudge haunting me reared, presenting itself, greedy to experience Dark Hall.

I broke into a run, trusting Victor to follow as the Fiend responded to the presence of the impurity in its domicile, the roar of rushing water drowning out the sound of our breath.

But we were already close. On another turn, we entered a dead-end hall, the single door there swinging open to greet us.

My magic lunged, colliding with it, a boulder breaking water.

We didn’t slow, stumbling blindly through the thick, strange borderland, and into the dimly lit gloom of the Vapor’s dressing room, light filtering in from the staff hall. Blood jittery in my veins, I sealed the portal shut behind us .

“We got lucky,” I huffed. “But it’s active, so we can’t go back this way.”

In response, Victor caught me in an unexpected, fervent kiss.

This embrace wasn’t motivated by desire, but by an urgency to express feelings we hadn’t been able to articulate—ones we feared for their significance and the pain they promised.

I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, committing every sensation of him to memory.

We would have delayed the inevitable for centuries more, but we couldn’t disregard the miasma of dreadful magic that had begun to close in, as choking as the smoke from the Nightglass fire.

“Stay near me,” Victor murmured as we parted.

The hallway was suffused with a low glow from overhead lights whose bulbs had gone dim.

The effect was unsettling, creating shadows in all corners of the ceiling and floor.

Surrounding us were the uneven palpitations of corruption, the antithesis of High Tide’s fizzing, intoxicating atmosphere.

But despite this, the theater we entered wasn’t empty.

Awash in the familiar blue glow was a full house of tables, each with a candle and cocktails placed out for the guests, none of whom were indulging.

Because though there was a body in every chair, none of them were alive.

The corpses had been arranged in various ways, hands around glasses, legs crossed, and a woman at the table nearest us had a lit cigarette tucked carefully between blackened lips, her eyes a cloudy white.

A drift of ash fell onto her lap. The macabre audience had all been positioned to face the stage, where Thea and Jack sat on the floor, huddled together, disheveled but in one piece.

William was nowhere to be seen.

“There are too many places for him to be hiding,” I said unnerved, genuinely afraid as I scanned the scene, my eyes darting to every dark corner .

“He’s not hiding,” Victor said, low, his Drudge ascending rapidly in anticipation of mortal danger. “He’s hunting.”

“How right you are.” The dockman’s accent was abrupt, thick as smoke from a cigar, a sharp pressure against my throat as someone seized me from behind. “And look what I’ve caught.”