Page 21 of Darkest at Dusk (Revenant Roses)

Peg glanced back at her over her shoulder. “A charm my mam taught me when I was little more than a babe.” She gave a small nod. “It works, too,” she said.

Then she drew a long breath and resumed climbing.

Isabella followed, silent but thoughtful. She had never before seen someone else meet fear in the same fashion she did, not by pretending it was nothing but by pushing back against it with whatever tools she possessed. Peg had her rhyme. Perhaps that was enough.

After they returned with the folded cloths, Mrs. Abernathy gave Isabella a brief tour of the house, or rather, the parts of it that were “safe” for her to see. Drawing rooms and parlors, the dining room, corridors lined with faded portraits and sconces. But not the north wing.

The tour ended before a tall, arched double door at the far end of a dimly lit hallway.

Heavy curtains veiled a narrow window nearby, muting the daylight and casting elongated shadows across the carpet.

Cobwebs hung in the corners, testament to her suspicion that the small staff could not possibly maintain a house this size at its best.

“The library, Miss Barrett,” Mrs. Abernathy said with a faint smile. “Mr. Caradoc instructed me to leave you to your work here. He trusts you’ll know where to begin.”

The doors were grand, but the corridor leading to them felt oddly neglected, as though the library had been pushed away from the heart of the house, exiled to this forgotten corner where the chill seemed sharper, the silence deeper.

“The north wing lies just beyond this wall,” Mrs. Abernathy said. “Sometimes I imagine I can smell the smoke through stone and mortar.”

“I have read that smoke binds to the resin in wood,” Isabella said. “It can be trapped there for decades, released anew with every change of weather.”

Mrs. Abernathy glanced at her. “So not my imagination, after all.”

She reached down to herchatelaine where a collection of keys hung heavily from one of the chains. The faint jingle of metal against metal cut sharply through the quiet corridor as her fingers selected a key from the crowded cluster, her movements careful and deliberate.

For a moment, she simply held it, turning it between her fingers, her expression contemplative.

“Here we are,” she murmured at last, holding up a long, blackened key with an ornate bow shaped like a serpent eating its own tail.

“Ouroboros,” Isabella said.

The housekeeper sent her a questioning glance.

“An Ouroboros is a serpent eating its own tail. It is a symbol from ancient Egypt.”

“Is it?” Mrs. Abernathy studied the key. “What’s it a symbol of?”

“Eternity,” Isabella said softly. “But eternity is only a circle that devours itself. My father found references in old texts that said it marks completion, warding, a safe ring where nothing escapes.”

“What is safe for the living can be a prison for the dead. Imagine being trapped in the in between, unable to escape,” the housekeeper murmured, then gave a start, as if her own words distressed her.

Isabella made no reply, thinking that the wraiths were trapped exactly like that.

Memory flared of herself at fifteen, pointing out the symbol to Papa.

“Life feeds on death and makes more life,” she had said, bold with theory.

“Ghosts are where the bite halts, where the circle cannot close. Break the ring, open the smallest gap, and the restless will slip from repetition into rest?—”

Papa’s pen had jerked, blotting the page. “Hush. Do not speak of such things, Isa.” His eyes had begged her silence. She had still been learning then. Never say it. Never show it. Papa was adding a new rule to the list. Never speak of it, even obliquely, even in philosophical terms.

Now she said gently, “Continuity, Mrs. Abernathy. Beginnings swallow endings and turn them into beginnings again.”

The housekeeper turned the key in her palm, thoughtful. “A comfort, put that way.”

She slid it into the library door’s lock, the metal scraping softly before the mechanism gave way with an audible click.

The doors groaned as they swung inward, revealing a cavernous room beyond. A draft rose to meet them, dry as sand, carrying the scent of dust and neglect.

Mrs. Abernathy hesitated for just a heartbeat, just long enough for Isabella to take note.

“There you are, Miss Barrett,” she said.

Isabella stepped across the threshold into the library. Mrs. Abernathy did not join her.

When Isabella glanced back at her over her shoulder, she had the odd impression that the woman was listening for something. The housekeeper’s gaze flicked to the lintel, then Isabella’s eyes, then away.

“Well,” she said softly. “I will leave you to it.”

With a nod, she turned and walked away, the heavy ring of keys clinking as she turned the corner at the end of the corridor.

Isabella stepped deeper into the library’s waiting gloom. Inside, the air felt heavier, as though it carried centuries of secrets trapped between the rows of towering shelves.

The room stretched vast and hollow, its corners lost to shadow.

The floor was laid with wide planks of ancient English oak, the brown surface darkened over the centuries to near black, the rich patina lending a sense of silent grandeur.

High windows, partially veiled by brocade curtains, let in thin slashes of light.

Shelves climbed toward the arched ceiling. To Isabella’s surprise, they were mostly empty. A thick coating of dust had settled in the vacant spaces where books had once rested.

Against one wall sat dozens of crates, lids pried open and leaning, nails half drawn, straw spilling across the carpet. Volumes lay strewn across the floor or perched precariously in disordered piles. Papa’s collection, rifled in haste.

On a side table was a deliberate heap: Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy ; Barrett’s The Magus ; Kircher’s Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae ; pamphlets on angelic alphabets and natural sympathies.

The pile included only titles that touches on the supernatural.

She knew every spine at a glance. All were part of Papa’s collection, as were the books left on the floor in disrespectful disarray.

Anger rose beneath her ribs at such rough handling, bright as a blade.

Had Mr. Caradoc created this mess himself?

Or had someone else unpacked the collection, someone unfamiliar with the delicate nature of aged tomes?

Instinct bid her immediately begin setting all to rights, but practicality made her finish assessing her surroundings first. She could not put the books on the dusty shelves and packing them back into the crates only to unpack them once more after she had properly cleaned the room would be a ridiculous waste of her time.

A lone desk sat at the far end, angled toward one of the tall, arched windows. A straight-backed chair waited beside it, its wooden seat worn smooth, the armrests polished to a subtle shine from years of human touch.

The desk bore evidence of recent occupation.

A leather-bound ledger lay closed, a crimson ribbon marking an unseen page within.

Scattered papers, their edges bearing smudges of ink, rested like fragile wings across the polished surface.

Beside them sat an empty glass decanter, the bottom stained amber, and a tumbler etched with faint fingerprints.

Isabella approached, dust motes dancing around her. Her fingertips grazed the desk’s surface, leaving trails in the layer of dust. The scent of leather and aged paper filled her senses, mingling with something very faint, something that made her pulse quicken…citrus and mint.

Her hand hovered over the closed ledger, her index finger brushing lightly against the crimson ribbon. A flicker of temptation curled through her. What secrets lay bound within these pages?

They were not her secrets to know.

A glimmer of metal caught her eye. Nestled in the corner of the desk, almost hidden behind the pile of papers was a small, ornate box.

Isabella lifted it, its weight surprising in her hand.

The box was rectangular, its brass surface tarnished in places.

She turned it this way and that, examining the etchings carved into its surface.

They were sharp and intricate, winding along the edges and curling around the keyhole at the front like coiling serpents.

At each corner, a scarab was engraved, wings splayed open, tiny eyes almost lifelike.

A central motif dominated the lid, a sun disk flanked by two uraei—cobras rising tall and regal with their hoods flared.

The craftsmanship was exquisite, the details impossibly fine.

Her breath hitched. The scarabs. The serpents. So familiar.

Closer now, she saw a maker’s mark, no wider than a thumbnail: a tiny bee in a cartouche, T and S stamped beneath.

She knew that mark. It hid on the escutcheon of Papa’s trunk.

Thorn and Sons, Ludgate Hill . She remembered filings in the carpet when Papa had the lock replaced, and the locksmith saying he would cut the wards to match the key.

Her free hand rose to her collarbone, her fingertips grazing the hidden key resting beneath her dress. Slowly, she drew the chain over her head, letting Papa’s key dangle before her eyes.

The bow was circular, decorated with an engraved Eye of Horus at its center, the lines impossibly delicate. The shaft was etched with tiny spirals that echoed the same sinuous shapes carved into the brass of the box.

The similarities were unmistakable.

Papa’s key appeared to match this box in Rhys Caradoc’s library. It was possible enough; warded locks were often cut to common patterns. Still, the coincidence made her pulse count out a warning.

Almost did she slip the key into the waiting lock, almost did she turn it and let whatever secrets lay hidden within spill free.