* * *
Alice and the others ran through the long corridors of Cairndale, stopping where the fire was too much, turning back, seeking a different way. There were bodies in the hall, small bodies. She tried not to look at them. Go! she was thinking. Just go!
The stained glass over the grand staircase had shattered and as they descended the steps their boots crunched over the broken shards. The fire was burning all around them. A part of the ceiling fell with a crash and Alice stumbled but kept a hand on Oskar and dragged him clear. Her hands and face were streaked with soot, her hair singed. Oskar’s eyes looked wild with fear.
And then they were outside, the night air whooshing around them, and the light from the fire casting the landscape all around in an orange glow. The carriage was gone. She gestured at the gatehouse and the gravel drive beyond it and shouted that the horses couldn’t have got far—they were still in their harnesses; they might have run the carriage up the lane or even into the fields, but they’d find it, they would. She didn’t look to the right—she simply refused to—not at the pile of bricks and masonry that had spilled out onto stones, the clawed hand of Jacob Marber protruding from it. The keywrasse was nowhere.
She was pushing the kids ahead of her, through the fiery courtyard, her long coat heavy at her shoulders. There were too many for the carriage but they’d make do—they’d have to—and she’d drive the horses into the ground to get them all clear.
It was then she saw a figure, collapsed in a doorway, gasping. She slowed; she stopped. The others were some way ahead by then, slender outlines, running across the cobblestones for the gatehouse. She went to the doorway, kneeled cautiously down.
Komako had seen her stop. “Alice!” the girl was shouting. “We have to go! Alice!”
But Alice didn’t look around, didn’t dare look away. It was Coulton. He was leaning with his back to a door, holding his stomach in his clawed fingers. She looked at his blood-flecked face, the red lips twisted in pain, the long needlelike teeth. His eyes were dark with knowing.
“Al … ice…，” he gasped.
She leaned closer, breathing hard. She wasn’t afraid. There was in his expression a recognition, some part of the old Coulton, the man she’d known and trusted. It was as if, with Jacob Marber’s death, he’d come back to himself, and what he saw horrified him.
“Please…，” he whispered, almost crying. “Kill me. Please.”
She wet her lips. The manor was burning all around them, beginning to collapse. The wreckage was filled with the dead. She was blinking something from her eyes and she took out her revolver and cocked the hammer and held the barrel to his chest where his heart should have been. He wrapped his bloodied claws around it, and he held it with her. He nodded.
“Frank—” she whispered.
She’d been about to say something more when his thumbs found her trigger finger and squeezed. The Colt bucked once in her hand, recoiled in a slow cloud of smoke.
* * *
Charlie, weak, leaned over the stone rim. He was breathing raggedly, shaking his head. Berghast had done something to him. His wrist was an agony of fire. Deep within the orsine, down where Berghast had been dragged, he saw the blue shine flicker, grow fainter, and then suddenly it was like the brightness was rising up out of the depths, rushing up toward him. Charlie staggered back.
It was the dead, the spirit dead. Their gray figures were climbing slowly, methodically out of the orsine, one after another. There were twenty, thirty of them now. More kept coming. They gathered and turned and stood swaying, casting their gray heads from side to side, as if seeking something.
The waters began to rise too, overpouring the edges of the cistern, the strange glowing waters spilling out across the floor. Charlie splashed over to Mrs. Harrogate, pulled her by the armpits to the pillar where Marlowe lay. He kept an eye out for the gray figures. Some of them had turned their way.
But when he got Mrs. Harrogate back, he could see it was too late. She was dead.
“No, no, no, no, no,” Charlie cried, holding her head. “Please, Mrs. Harrogate. No.”
The waters pooled around them. Everything was going wrong. The ceiling shuddered. The island was shaking now, starting to come apart.
Marlowe sat up in the rising flood, his glassy eyes watching one of the gray figures. He looked so little.
“Hey,” said Charlie, crouching down, getting right in his face. He forced himself to speak calmly. “I was coming back for you, I was.”
“I know it, Charlie.”