Page 17 of To Clutch a Razor (Curse Bearer #2)

A SONG FOR THE DEAD

The next song is “Zegar bije, wspominaj na ostatnie rzeczy,” and Elza feels the familiar tune prickling over the back of her neck. The clock is ticking, the droning voices from the living room say to her, remember the last things.

She remembers the last time Filip spoke to her—doubling back to the house before he left on this mission that brought him only death, he asked her if she’d seen his wallet.

She rolled her eyes and reached into his left jacket pocket to produce it.

“You know me best,” he said to her. “More a teacher than a student from the start.”

Remember the last things, she thinks, and she leaves the chaos of the kitchen to get just a moment alone.

She walks down the narrow hallway and around the corner to the part of the house she shared with Dymitr and Kazik, growing up.

After Kazik moved out, it was just her and Dymitr, their doors facing each other, a cramped bathroom perpendicular to them both.

She steps into her room and runs her hands over the clothes in her closet without turning on the light.

She feels scratchy tulle and stiff brocade and soft cashmere and sturdy wool.

She lets a tear fall, and then another, thinking of the lonely clearing in the woods where Filip fell, owl feathers all around; and thinking of sitting across the chessboard from him as he bit down on the top of a pawn—he was always chewing while thinking, her uncle Filip.

She hears a creak in the hallway outside, and says, “Dymek?” And she wipes her cheeks and nudges her bedroom door open with the toe of her boot. Sure enough, Dymitr is standing in his bedroom.

“Got tired of washing up?” she says to him.

“Just needed a break,” he says. “You?”

His tone is off. Gruff. Like he’s angry about something. She wonders if it’s the same thing that’s making her angry.

“I hate funerals,” she says. “I know, I know—who likes them? But I really hate them.”

Another tear falls, and she hardly feels it. She leans into her doorframe, and he leans into his, so they’re across from each other.

“Do you ever think…” His brow furrows in a way that looks new to her, though she’s seen every expression his face is capable of. “Do you ever think about what sort of people we are, that we celebrate a murder like this?”

It takes her a moment to understand. They’re not here to celebrate, after all. But maybe that’s how it feels to him—like a feast. So she nods. “No one has shed a tear for him. He was murdered by a monster and all we do is cheer about the monster being dead.”

His face is passive.

“I know, I know,” she says. “You don’t like when I call them monsters. You never have.”

A twitch of a smile. “I suppose I prefer specificity.”

“You prefer compassion, even when you have to repent of it.”

“Repent of it.” He looks a little startled.

“Don’t tell me all those hours of penance have slipped from your memory.”

“No, no. Of course not.” His smile doesn’t quite spread to his eyes.

Unease surges inside her like the swell of a wave. She’s been dismissing Dymitr’s odd behavior all night. His fearful expression as he listened to Marzena’s story, his insistence on calling the strzyga “she,” and now this.

“Did something happen in Chicago?” she says.

“No. Why?”

“No reason.” She smiles. “Hold on, I need some lip balm.”

She steps back into her dark bedroom and fumbles in the drawer of her bedside table, keeping an eye on the hallway.

As she pretends to search the drawer with one hand, she curls her fingers into her palm with the other, her fingernails cutting into the skin.

Knight magic floods her body, hot and prickling, and she looks back at Dymitr, her heart racing.

But there’s no strangeness in him, no shadow. Just her brother.

She lets the magic fade before she goes back into the hallway.

“Do you remember our hiding place?” he asks her.

It’s the feeling of their names drawn on the cabinet door that comes to mind first. DYMEK on one side, ELZA on the other, scribbled on the wood in crayon.

If their parents—or even their grandmother—had found out about it, they would have both been punished for the defacing, but no one ever had, not even Kazik.

It was how they passed notes, even after they had both started their training as Knights.

Maybe especially then. Because complaining wasn’t allowed, and the punishment for it was too severe to risk anyone overhearing, so their best chance at an honest conversation was to write it down, fold it up small, and tuck it into the corner of the bathroom cabinet, just above the bottle of bleach.

“Under the sink? How could I forget?”

“I just wondered if you’d checked it recently.”

She feels suddenly aware of her heartbeat. “Why, did you leave me something?”

Before he can answer, she hears the sound of broken glass in the kitchen, and trades an alarmed look with him.

She walks down the hallway to see what broke, and finds one of the vases of chrysanthemums shattered on the floor, the water spreading out from the point of impact, and the flowers scattered everywhere.

And on his knees, picking up the biggest pieces of glass one by one… is Dymitr.

Elza looks over her shoulder, but she doesn’t see the Dymitr she was just speaking to behind her.

She thinks of the strzyga mirroring herself with magic.

Her breaths come faster and shallower, but her mind is quiet.

She walks across the kitchen, sidestepping the young cousins and walking into the room where Filip’s body waits with a feather and a rosary tucked into his palms.

She touches her grandmother’s elbow to get her attention.

And at that moment, the front door opens for a second time that evening. The singers, Krystyna included, falter in their hymn for just a moment, and her grandmother gestures for them to continue. Kazik steps into the house, breathless, and says:

“A wieszczy! A wieszczy at the burial plot.”

Elza’s grandmother straightens, becoming Joanna My?liwiec all at once.

“All the Knights except Marzena and I will search,” she says to him. “All the rest will stay and sing.”

“You don’t think I’ll be an asset to the search party?” Marzena demands hotly.

“I think you’ll be an asset in protecting Filip’s body and the vulnerable people who remain behind,” Joanna replies.

“Babcia,” Elza says.

“We can’t allow that thing to pollute Filip’s grave.”

“Babcia!” Elza is surprised by the force of her own voice. Joanna turns toward her, her mouth in a thin line, the way she looks when she’s about to scold someone. But she must see the urgency in Elza’s eyes, because she doesn’t scold, she only waits.

“I have to tell you something, too,” Elza says. “Right now.”

She thinks of the old hymn.

The clock is ticking .

Hell is opening.