Her eyes go back to the four-poster bed. It is still empty. She looks to the tapestry on the wall. And then she is there, guiding the heavy curtain aside, staring at the second door. It is ajar, the wood whispering open under her touch.
There in the dark of the other room, there is a bed. And on the bed, a boy lies curled beneath the sheets.
Olivia starts forward, then catches herself, hands on the doorway. It is too easy. Which is to say, it hasn’t been easy at all, but this, this part, feels like a trap. Here is the way in, and there is the bait, and she knows better than to reach for it. Instead she takes a step back.
The trouble is that when she does, the floorboards creak under her feet, and the figure in the bed stirs and sits up. Unfolds, and as it does, she realizes it is not the boy she saw in the fountain, but a shadow. A soldier. The short wolfish one with the feral grin. The gauntlet gleams on her hand as she pulls away the sheet.
Olivia lurches back into Matthew’s room, only to collide with another body, one that made no noise when it came in. Out of the corner of her eye, she catches the edge of a tattered black coat.
“Hello, little mouse.”
That voice, like smoke in a narrow space. She can hear him smile, teeth clicking together in his open jaw. Her hand slides into the pocket of her dress and closes over Edgar’s knife.
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
Olivia spins, drawing the blade. She doesn’t wait, but twists and drives the knife into his chest. The master of the house looks down at the weapon protruding from his front and clucks his tongue.
“Now, now,” he says, “is that how we treat family?”
He curls his hand around her wrist, his touch like paper over stone. His fingers tighten, and pain lances through her bones, along with something else, the spark of heat, the sudden cold, the same strange dip and fall she felt when she brought the mouse and the flowers back to life. As if he’s stealing something from her. Sure enough, the faintest hint of color spreads across his skin, and a wave of dizziness crashes into her, making the room tip and her vision blur. She tears free, surging toward Matthew’s bedroom door, toward the hall beyond, only to find another soldier blocking her way. The one built like a brick, armor strapped to his shoulder.
He looks down at her, bored.
Behind her, the master sighs.
“Olivia, Olivia, Olivia,” he chides, and the sound of her name in his mouth sends a shiver through her. She scrambles back, turns toward the hidden door only to see the third soldier leaning against the wooden post of the bed, armored plate shining on their chest.
She is surrounded. Trapped.
But not alone.
Help, she thinks, and the man who is not a man must be able to hear her thoughts, because his mouth twitches, amused. But she is not speaking to him.
HELP ME! she calls again, the force of the words shuddering through her.
And they come.
Five ghouls rise up through the rotting floor. Among them, she sees the one who helped her escape. It glances at her now, a sadness sweeping across its half-there face. The ghouls form a circle around Olivia. They have no weapons, but they stand, backs straight, facing out. And for a moment, she feels safe. Protected.
Until the monster laughs.
“What a quaint little trick,” he says, taking a step toward her. “But I am the master of this house.” Another step. “And here, the dead belong to me.”
He sweeps his hand through the air, as if brushing away smoke, and the five ghouls twitch and waver. They dissolve, crumbling back into the floor, and she is alone again.
The three soldiers close around her.
Olivia fights.
She fights the way she did back at Merilance, when Anabelle’s friends held her down, fights with every ounce of strength and every dirty trick she knows, fights like a girl set loose on the world with nothing and everything to lose. But it’s not enough. A gauntlet closes over her wrist, flinging her into a plated chest, and the last thing she sees is the gleam of an armored shoulder as the third shadow looms.
“Mind the hands,” says the master, right before pain explodes on the side of her head, and the strength goes out of her limbs, and the world gives way to black.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It died.
The cat Olivia saw that summer on the tin roof, the grouchy old stray that reminded her of Matron Agatha. One day she escaped across the gravel moat to the garden shed and found the animal slumped on the ground nearby.
It was so rangy, so thin.
Olivia could feel its bones beneath its fur as she crouched over the body, ran her hand down its soft side, petting the creature as if it were simply asleep. As if she might be able to bring it back.