Page 7 of Blackwicket (Dark Hall #1)

I stepped down the hallway, careful to avoid the floorboards I knew to be the most contrary. My mother and sister were asleep, and I wasn’t supposed to be out of bed this late. My next footfall brought with it a stab of memory. No one was asleep. They were all gone.

I halted, a decade of memories converging. How had I gotten here? I barely remembered boarding the train.

A soft mewling sounded up the corridor from a door that poured firelight onto the faded runner.

Someone was in the parlor, the place where all my warmest, most tender memories had been made, and where they’d all been so thoroughly corrupted.

I wanted to stumble back to my room and confront these terrible feelings in the light of day, but a figure moved in the shadows, drawing my attention.

Fiona.

She was alive. It had all been a hideous lie.

I sucked in a breath and hurried toward where she paused at the parlor threshold, pale hand lighted on the doorframe, only daring a peek. She was so near, and I reached to touch the shining braid of her hair, a style she hadn’t worn since we were young.

I didn’t notice her turn, but suddenly she was facing me, snatching my wrist in her icy fingers, shushing.

She tugged me forward and relinquished her spot close to the door so I could look inside.

There were two people there, in the center of the room—a prone child and a crouching woman.

By the soft curl of the chestnut hair, I knew the woman to be my mother, and the child…

a scream stuck in my throat, strangling me, as the hallway breathed, writhing with invisible life.

The boy’s head lolled sideways, copper smoke billowing from his small nose and chapped mouth, his hazel eyes devoid of life.

The woman scuttled around, resembling an animal guarding its kill, and I found it wasn’t my mother. It was me.

Reeling back, I bumped into a weeping Fiona. Instead of tears, that same red vapor rose to halo her golden head, and a sound intoned, deep and doomed as metal creaking underwater.

“Dark Hall is open,” she whispered, her mouth filled with ashes.

A slurry of tentacles surged from behind, overwhelming her. Her neck, clavicle, and shoulders snapped in sharp succession, echoing like gunshots as the Fiend of Dark Hall twisted her body into an impossible shape.

I jolted awake in the train car, the rumble of the tracks grounding me, and waited for my heartbeat to slow.

Watery light streamed through the window, and I observed the passing landscape, the expansive fields, fallow and snowy, and the distant hills of bare trees.

Here and there, a break in the woods revealed a stretch of water glinting beneath the apathetic winter sun. We were nearing Nightglass.

The door slid open, and Darren appeared, holding a paper-wrapped sandwich. I hadn’t asked how he’d afforded a private car, because I’d been too grateful not to have to share this distressing trip with strangers. Sharing it with my father was bad enough.

“Feeling sick, Cricket?”

“Not looking forward to our destination.”

“You’re going for your sister. Lay her to rest, clean out the house. Then you can return to your”—he waved his free hand dismissively—“ normal life. Here, I brought you food. You’re looking like a revived corpse.”

My stomach turned, the image of Fiona flashing, bright as lightning.

I didn’t take the sandwich.

“Clean out the house?” I repeated, and he sighed, realizing I wasn’t going to accept his offering.

“Yeah.” He unwrapped the food. “Get rid of all the stuff your mother and sister left.”

He was talking about the curses, the ones buried in the bones of Blackwicket House.

Once upon a time, they’d been deposited there to begin the slow, languid process of unweaving.

Their rotted threads would be plucked away, then filtered through unadulterated magic until it remembered how to be itself again.

Our home had boasted a Narthex, which mother had painstakingly built to connect us to the living power of the world beyond ours, where magic lingered.

The proximity had kept the curses docile, but that Narthex had been closed, and magic was scarce these days.

Most of what remained was damaged, and the small amount belonging to each of us by natural order, too insignificant.

Clearing the house of its burden required more than a single Curse Eater. Even two were woefully deficient. A familiar guilt nauseated me. I’d abandoned an impossible job on Fiona’s shoulders all so I could escape the house, the shame, and myself.

“I’m not staying long enough for that,” I replied.

“The house shouldn’t be left the way it is. D’you know how dangerous that would be?”

“What do you know about it? Any of it?”

“Cricket, your mom and I weren’t married, and sure, I was gone a lot, but we loved each other. She confided in me. I know how it works, how the place runs. I couldn’t help, but… ”

“ Wouldn’t help,” I corrected. “You never wanted to and made sure you weren’t ever around to be asked.”

He crumpled the paper around his uneaten sandwich and tossed it onto the bench seat beside him, rubbing a hand across his face, angry.

“I can’t change the past, Eleanora,” he said.

“No,” I replied, bitterly. “You can’t.”

An uncomfortable silence followed, and I focused on the world passing outside, the gentle rocking of the train, wondering how I could manage everything I needed to do and leave before the house sank its claws into me again.

Another glimpse of the coast encouraged a memory of the cliffs overlooking a glorious sea.

There were many dangers in returning to Blackwicket House, but it was the tug in my heart, the unwelcome, undeniable yearning for home that disquieted me most.

We arrived at Nightglass Station at noon. The platform, long ago decorated with only a sagging bench and an empty planter, now featured an array of seating and bright lampposts, modest comforts for the hordes of tourists disembarking.

The scent of travel clung to the throng of bodies that jostled us, mingling with stale perfumes layered thickly over furs and expensive wool. I watched for a familiar face among the congregation, the piercing eyes that saw through my lies.

Emerging from the station proper, we followed the lively exodus to the main street.

There had never been so many visitors during the bleakest season of the year.

The bareness and cold were as inviting to most sensible people as an invitation to lie in a grave.

I hugged my bag close. After living in bustling cities, the crowd shouldn’t have bothered me, but my skin crawled, stomach knotted.

The people felt unnatural here in this wintery port town .

Tired of showing patience for my hesitation, Darren took hold of my upper arm and began hauling me toward the road, raising his hand and whistling at a black cab that had pulled to the curb, eager for a fare.

The man who emerged was stocky and grim, his driver’s cap positioned low over a heavy brow.

This line of work fit him strangely, his shape and demeanor better suited for the docks that had once groaned under the weight of imported textiles and goods imbued with magic from all corners of the globe.

“Where to?” he grouched, turning to me to retrieve my bags, which I handed to him with reluctance. I’d have preferred to keep them in my lap, but drawing attention to my attachment to them wasn’t worth the risk.

I prepared to give him directions to a street at the edge of town, where the road forked and led travelers to either the rocky coastline or up the tree-lined hills to the crag where an old estate towered, haunting the town. If I told him where we were going, he’d refuse.

“Blackwicket House,” Darren declared, extending a fold of bills, more than needed for a trip to the opposite end of town.

The driver’s ruddy features contorted with distrust as he pushed the monetary offering away with two fingers, as if it were contaminated.

“Ain’t a soul going to take you up there. Enjoy your walk.”

“Please,” I said, taking a small step forward to waylay his departure.

He fixed his stormy grey gaze on me, ready to snarl, but instead, he released a gruff breath, lifted his chin, and studied me.

His attention idled on the metropolitan hairstyle popular in Devin, brunette locks pinned from my temple, brushed into a series of well-tamed waves at the nape of my neck.

I wasn’t dressed in finery, but I was a woman from the city, that must have been acceptable .

“I’ll take you to the corner block,” he conceded. Darren offered him the money again. He eyed it with disdain. “No charge.”

“That’s kind of you,” I said, receiving a grunt in response.

I spared a frustrated glance at my father, and he returned his own.

“You’re always willing to take the least you can get,” he grumbled, opening the car door for me.

“And you’re always after the most,” I replied, climbing inside.

“Someday, I hope you’ll put your hatred of me aside. We’re all we have left.”

I set my attention straight ahead.

“Then neither of us has very much.”

My father remained quiet as we crept along the first few blocks, pedestrians slowing our progress.

I felt him next to me like a hope you’re too afraid to embrace, one that’s slipped from your fingers so many times you become wise and stop grasping for it.

But I was myself, forever trying once more, damn me.

“Nightglass seems to be doing well,” I said.

“Better than well,” Darren replied readily. “Grigori did a number on this place the past few years. Made it a real appealing spot for people with plenty of free time and too much money. New hotels.”

He pointed through my window at the Orville , formerly a well-kept, but modest block of apartments for dock workers. It had been joined in a marriage of extravagance, exhibiting both a large glass entryway and a doorman.

“There’s a top-notch lounge here, too, great entertainment and food isn’t bad either. Honestly, it’s a little too hoity-toity for me.”

A woman laughed, high and loud, as we passed the town crossroads where the village green had been, peaceful and rarely disturbed.

Presently, at each of the four corners, a bustle of well-dressed people filled the streets, which were lined with restaurants and lounges where grocers and chandlers had until now held pride of place.

I browsed the recent additions as we made our slow way down the avenue—milliners, tailors, beauty salons, luxury stationers, and a prominent lounge, its arched marquee glittering with blinking lights.

THE VAPORS

In my absence, Nightglass had flourished, and the transformation was both troubling and captivating.

I compared the evolution of the town to the stagnant life I’d been leading, plagued by ghosts of my own making, and experienced an uncomfortable bite of envy.

The car moved from the center of town, and down familiar side streets, I was likely still capable of navigating in total darkness, where new luxury row houses, with their tidy front gardens and stylish balconies, gave way to older cottages, many reconstructed and unrecognizable.

As we approached our destination, the driver slowed, perhaps worried the estate would sneak up on him, or just as likely because the cobbled street yielded to crushed stone.

I found that the quaint timber houses that had once lined this road had been demolished, creating a stark chasm between the town and its most detested family: mine.

The hired car came to a stop at the wrought iron carriage gate, chained closed, its red brick faded and overgrown with bare wisteria vines.

“This is where I leave you,” the driver proclaimed.

“You’re not serious,” Darren argued. “That’s a half-mile walk, and it’s the middle of blasted winter. Just drive us up the hill to the front.”

“No one who knows what’s good for them goes near that house,” the driver said sternly. “I’d warn you yourselves not to go, but I recognize those eyes.”

He glanced at me in the rearview mirror, and our gazes touched. Held.

“Blackwickets always come home.”

He climbed into the cold and retrieved my bags from the trunk, and even went as far as to set them by the porter’s gate, which was unlocked and partially ajar.

As he returned to the cab, he hesitated, muttering, “It’s a shame about Fiona. We all thought she was a good sort.”

This man had known my sister. Curious, I tested the air between us, seeking signs of the telltale buzz, the sensations of chaotic electricity, of magic gone wrong.

“I’ll ask you not to do that, miss,” he barked, and I snatched my senses back, startled and embarrassed. The sensation accompanying someone searching for strings of magic was subtle and difficult to detect without considerable practice, yet this cab driver sensed me before I’d even gotten close.

“I’m sorry,” I managed.

He shoved a finger in my direction. “Don’t go poking where you haven’t been invited. It’ll land you in more trouble than you can handle.”

“I didn’t catch your name,” I said, the pitch of my voice false with friendliness.

“And you won’t,” he replied, gruff. “I mind my business, now you mind yours.”

He climbed behind the wheel, and the engine roared to life. Though he didn’t speed as if the hounds of hell were on his heels, his haste was evident by the way the car bounced too heavily over the deep divots in the broken stone.

Darren hoisted a bag off the dormant grass.

“Making friends already. That’s my girl.”

I watched the car disappear down the road, the whetted point of anxiety threatening to slit the barrier that protected me from my most raw, unpleasant emotions.

I retrieved the remaining bag and approached my fate, peering through brown ivy and wrought iron bars to the cliffside, where the house’s daunting silhouette loomed.

Darren remained at a distance, silent, allowing me privacy as I was swallowed by the gravity of what awaited me on the other side.

With great resignation, I pushed open the porter’s gate.