Page 9 of Blackwicket (Dark Hall #1)

He towered over the check-in counter, melted snow dappling the shoulders of his earth-brown overcoat, which he’d unbuttoned, signaling he’d been inside for some time.

His hands were tucked in the pockets of his well-tailored wool trousers, casual as a commuter waiting for a train.

I’d only ever seen his coal-black hair styled in a precise, sleek wave at his temple, the fashion as buttoned up and controlled as the rest of him, but the sea gale had abused it, curling the ends around his ears.

The effect did nothing to soften his features, serving instead to draw attention to his stern brow and the aquiline arch of his nose, unarguably broken, perhaps on multiple occasions.

More than these aspects, it was the violent scar that drew my eye, a testament to his infamous line of work.

It ran from the apex of one high, tawny cheek to interrupt the severe line of his jaw, skipping the jugular only to begin again an inch above his shirt collar.

The wound had likely been deep, magically cauterized by a hasty hand, leaving the skin puckered and shining, blanched of all color.

He’d been considering my abandoned bags when I’d come nearly crashing down and raised his eyes to me, dark as his history of tormenting magic users in the name of order.

“Inspector Harrow.” The words emerged strangled.

“Ms. Knoles,” the Inspector said, drawing the name out in his gravely baritone. He made a small show of wincing, “Oh, that’s right. It isn’t Knoles, is it? ”

My foot rose to retreat up the steps.

“If you run,” he cautioned softly, as though speaking in a sacred place, or perhaps a damned one, where evil is easily disturbed, “I’ll chase you. If you fight, well, you’re a delicate-looking thing, but I’m plenty aware you pack a nasty punch, so I’ll take no chances.”

He shifted his coat aside with a flick, revealing the grip of a revolver holstered at his hip.

But it was an empty threat. This man possessed the power to do far worse than shoot me.

Inspectors like Harrow were trained in Annulment, the merciless act of severing the natural magic from a body.

Unlike Curse Eating, which carried the risk of tearing away fragments of the soul along with diseased magic, Annulment was the deliberate removal of a facet of humanity impossible to survive without.

“How did you get in?”

He glanced at the door. From this angle, the scar was in full view. When we’d first met over an interrogation table, he’d caught me noticing it.

“Brom.” He’d tapped it. “I wasn’t lucky enough to be dealing with an adept like yourself, Ms. Knoles. The fool didn’t know how to use the magic he’d stolen, so he pulled a weapon. It was undoubtedly less painful than what you did to Mr. Mofton.”

“Brock was my friend.”

“Liar liar,” he’d murmured, fixing me with his icy gaze, piercing and fathomless with hatred.

“Door was open,” he said, amusement in his voice, though there was no smile on his broad mouth.

I’d bolted that door. Even if I hadn’t, the house was experienced with thwarting attempts at lock-picking, which meant it had invited him in, the worst person it could have welcomed outside of Grigori Nightglass himself.

There was no longer any question about where I stood in its favor. His presence was punishment.

“I figured you’d be scurrying out of Devin. Went to your flat and found it ransacked and thought someone else got to you first, but then a tip comes in: Darren Rose is in Oldtown at some rattrap with a cagey, bloodless looking dame.”

Somehow, I still found the gal to be offended by the fact the Authority assumed the woman to be me before being outraged that my father hadn’t disclosed he was on their radar. Admitting to being blood-related to Darren wasn’t an excellent card to have in my hand, but other implications were worse.

“Darren’s my father.”

His right brow twitched upward.

“I haven’t talked to him in ten years.”

“That long? How lucky he shows up to help you in your hour of need.”

I had no rebuttal. The timing of Darren’s arrival following my foolish decision at the department store was too unbelievable. The Inspector would never accept it as a coincidence.

“Oh,” he added as an afterthought, “You might be interested to know that the woman, Ms. Rosley, didn’t survive the stunt you pulled at Galtons.”

A shock of regret jarred me. All of this, and I hadn’t even been able to help her.

“I was trying to save her life,” I said, gritty and uneven.

“An interesting way to go about it.”

Scorn handed me back my spine. I released my white-knuckled hold on the banister and took the last step down to prove I didn’t always run, that I was capable of standing and taking ground when necessary.

“Let me make something clear, Inspector . What happened at Galton’s was the result of someone else’s wrongdoing, not mine. Whatever Ms. Rosley was involved in had nothing to do with me.”

The Inspector rose to my meager challenge and took a few relaxed steps forward, bringing us ever closer.

My pulse jumped and I considered what he might do to me now that we were no longer in Devin, divided by a metal table, with no other Authority to observe or inhibit him.

The most effective weapon at my disposal was angry with me, and I wasn’t sure if the house would come to my aid if called.

He drew close enough that I was forced to raise my chin to maintain eye contact, and the pride keeping me from opening to the house bowed.

“I think it has everything to do with you, Eleanora Blackwicket.” He raised a hand toward me, and in a flash of blind panic, I dropped my defenses to let Blackwicket House in. But no response came, no flood of cursed magic, no rippling of the fabric of the shadows. Only static, empty, nothing.

The Inspector’s fingers brushed along a wayward curl at my forehead, and when he withdrew, he held a shard of frosted glass, curved and sharp as a sickle.

I’d forfeited my self-respect for nothing, but at the very least, I’d maintained physical composure, denying the Inspector the satisfaction of knowing he’d frightened me.

“I didn’t murder Ms. Rosley.” I was proud of my even tone.

“No,” he said, looking at me as if he thought that was a shame.

At last, he gave a regretful shake of his head and turned away, examining the sliver as he went, a piece of a puzzle he couldn’t place.

“The curse you so charitably removed caused Kate Rosley’s death.

You stealing it is a separate crime, but I won’t jump to any conclusions until I learn a bit more about you and your unusual family.

I especially have questions regarding your sister, Fiona. ”

Here it was—the moment when the consequences of the lives we’d lived, the secrets we’d wrapped ourselves in, all the wretched, dreadful mistakes, were finally coming to call.

The Authority knew about Darren, Fiona, me, and if I didn’t tread carefully, there’d be no stopping them from discovering the scar of the Narthex etched in the wall of the parlor.

“My sister is dead, Inspector. That’s why my father was there, to fetch me and bring me home for her burial.”

“I heard.” Sympathy fit in his mouth too poorly to be sincere. “My condolences. Was she involved in anything untoward, Ms. Blackwicket? Something that might have had a hand in her untimely end?”

“Like my father, Inspector, I haven’t spoken to Fiona in a decade. I have no insights into her life.”

“But that’s not true.” He set the shard on the desktop next to the guest book, arranging it like he expected future visitors to prick their fingers and sign their names in blood. “She met you in Devin several weeks ago at that tedious new cafe near the University district.”

He’d been tailing me, haunting me for weeks after my arrest.

“You had no right to follow me.” My voice rose despite my efforts to remain placid. “I was absolved of all wrongdoing in that case.”

“You were ,” he conceded, “An oversight on the Bureau’s part, but in any event, they don’t let potential Curse Eaters back on the streets without monitoring them, acquitted of murder or not.

Plus, I had a feeling. You didn’t quite fit the bill for a displaced country girl, far from home, a victim of circumstance. And the curse that got Brock Moftan?”

He offered a low whistle.

“All I want to do is bury Fiona. She deserves that. Then I’ll leave and you can stop wasting your valuable resources attempting to soothe your bruised ego.”

This encouraged a tight smile .

“I didn’t just track you out here for a good time, Ms. Blackwicket.

I was assigned by the Authority to this backwater hole to investigate several disappearances, all involving some powerful, well-connected families.

We have reason to believe your Fiona was involved in these cases and perhaps taking part in a few more unsavory things besides. ”

“What reason?” I demanded, hoping I sounded like a woman outraged by the accusation rather than one who feared it could be true.

“I’m sure it’s all a misunderstanding, and we can clear her name.

” He evaded the question, his placating tone rankling me, then scratched his cheek and feigned contrition.

“That reminds me. I’ll be staying in town a while, and the recommended hotels are a little too crowded for my tastes.

So, I’ll thank you for renting me a bed for the time being. ”

Laughing in his face seemed like an unsafe route, so I refrained.

“You can’t stay here. This isn’t a functioning inn. it hasn’t been for years.”

“Your sister would have disagreed,” he replied, watching for my reaction. He knew something I didn’t, and so did Darren. Fiona’s secrets belonged to everyone but me. “Don’t bother yourself with the details, I’ve already chosen my room.”

He held up his hand, clasping in his previously empty palm a set of keys taken from the cabinet.

I spared a look at the board. The key missing belonged to the room near the top of the third-floor stairs.

Animosity spread through my limbs, dampening the heartache and fear that had been keeping me off balance.

My cheeks grew hot with the impotent rage bounding behind my ribs, nowhere to be safely expressed, doomed to feed the scraps of the Drudge I hadn’t yet dislodged.

Said creature twisted, its maw opening to swallow my fury.

If the Inspector was so eager to stay, to stick his hand in corners where vicious things were hiding, I’d allow it.

Blackwicket House wasn’t inclined to protect me, but it would most certainly protect itself, and, like Brock Moftan, I’d be happy to see curses do their work on the Inspector.

“This is an opportunity, Ms. Blackwicket. Two people with a history like ours,” Inspector Harrow motioned between us, indicating a connection, “are owed a second chance to get it right. We have another opportunity to get better acquainted because, as it turns out, I don’t know you at all. I look forward to remedying that.”

Another man might have accompanied these remarks with a gamey wink, but even this was too human a thing for Inspector Harrow, whose countenance remained dispassionate.

“I already know everything I can stomach about you,” I said, venting my anger.

“Hm,” was his dismissive response as he tucked the room key into his pocket and began buttoning his overcoat. “I have some business to see to before I beg further hospitality, but I’ll ask you to refrain from padlocking the main gate, it was a bitch to get open.”

“I wasn’t expecting company,” I snapped.

“An honest mistake. You make a lot of those, don’t you?”

“Inspector…”

He was already leaving. As he gripped the door handle, the house made its first move since I’d been upstairs. It shuddered. Inspector Harrow paused, turning his head a fraction, eyes lowered, listening.

My breath stuck in my throat. I could accuse the wind, the shifting of the old frame on an even older foundation, harassed by the weather, but any word from of my mouth about it would only draw further attention. I turned to distraction.

“Don’t expect me to feed or clean up after you, Inspector. You’re here against my wishes, and I’m not an innkeeper. ”

“You’re not,” he agreed, opening the door, allowing in a rush of winter air that cooled my hot skin. He yielded the ghost of a smile, smug. “You’re a Curse Eater.”

I watched through the white muslin curtains as Inspector Harrow entered his sleek, long-bodied car, the ivory white of natural pearl.

Chrome flashed on the fender as he circled the drive.

It was a far cry from the utilitarian unit that picked me up in Devin, and I wondered how an Inspector afforded such a luxury.

Cruelty must pay well. I stood there as he drove through the distant gate, despising him every second.

I was trapped here, caught like a fly in the jaws of a languorous sundew.

There was nowhere I could go short of swimming across the sea to escape the Authority’s attention now that they’d linked my face to a name that interested them.

My life was in shambles and my heart present merely to remind me it hurt.

I touched the windowsill but didn’t lower my defenses again.

“You’ve really done it,” I muttered to the house, to myself, to the spirit of my dead sister whose body was waiting in a morgue, a body I’d have to identify. I floated the argument that viewing Fiona’s remains wasn’t necessary—both my father and the Authority had corroborated her passing.

However, a nagging suspicion remained. There was something I wasn’t being told, some vital information being withheld for the benefit of everyone but Fiona.

I pressed my knuckles against my eyes until bursts of white light exploded behind my lids, then grabbed my coat.

The house didn’t resist my departure, but walking over the threshold wasn’t as easy as I’d imagined.

Leaving Blackwicket House always came with the sensation of pressing through a bubble, abandoning the comfort of familiar dangers to confront a world filled with people I couldn’t predict, who often surprised me with their capacity for both spontaneous kindness and animosity .

I glanced back toward the gloomy memories of my childhood, then along the arching drive that gave way to the gardens, once my mother’s point of pride, wishing wishes that were far too late to make.