“Jane! Jane, open this door!” His body slammed into it, and it jumped against her. Her feet slipped against the floor, but she dug her fingers into the doorframe, hanging on with all her remaining strength.
“I’m sorry, Augustine,” she said, then coughed, bending double. Her lungs burned from the prolonged etherization. She gagged, then took several deep, sucking breaths. The door jumped against her again.
“Jane, please!”
“I am well,” she whispered. Her strength was failing. Her vision was swimming, black around the edges, and it was harder and harder to remain upright. She slid down the door, shivering, blood pulsing weakly from her arm. If only she had the chatelaine. If only force of will alone could turn the locks. She sobbed and felt one more great leap of the door—and then nothing.
Her world was fading, but she thought she heard Augustine repeat her name, a question in his voice.
And then his footsteps retreated, back down the stairs, and he called her name again, and cried out.
She lost consciousness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THUNDER WOKE HER in the early hours of the morning, alone. She jolted upright, then hissed at the resounding spike of pain in her head, her arm following a moment later.
But as the pain cleared and she looked around herself, she realized she was still in the hallway outside the crypt. Augustine had not reached her, had not dragged her back down to the stone slab, and had not cut her one inch further.
She staggered up to her feet, leaning against the doorframe, until she realized there was no frame at all.
Where once there had been the heavy door, the many locks, the broken padlock, there was now only a stretch of pure white stone, the same stone as in the cellar below. Jane retreated, looking up and down the hall. Every other door was unchanged. The wall was undamaged. It was simply … different.
A vanished door, and inside of it, the plinth, the doctor, and Elodie. Slowly, trembling, she approached the stone and laid her hands against it. Pressed her cheek to it.
“Augustine?” she whispered.
A sobbing, wracking cry echoed to her through stone upon stone upon stone.
Her fingers clawed against the rock. “Augustine! Augustine, it’s me!”
The door remained transformed. Once more, she heard Augustine’s voice, pained and horrible, and so, so far away.
You’re safe, a traitorous voice insider her whispered. He can’t get to you now. But she had not wanted this. He had only been bewitched; horribly bewitched. She had wanted only to get him out of the house, so that he could realize how in danger they both were.
And instead, this impossible transmutation. Another trick of the spirits? Or Elodie, retaliating now that Augustine was in her crypt?
Shaking, she retreated from the unnatural not-door, her mind refusing to comprehend it and what it might mean.
She could not stay here. She must fetch help.
Outside Lindridge Hall, a storm raged. Wind bellowed against stone, and windows creaked in their casements. The foyer seemed to breathe, a living thing itself, as she crossed its grand space to the front door. Shaking, she tried the latch.
It turned. The door opened. The wind fought to seize it from her, but she held fast. The carriage was long gone, not even a wagon rut to mark where it had stood. How long would it take for Mr. Lowell to send a carriage up to find her? And who could she even go to? Dr. Nizamiev? It would take at least a day to reach her in Camhurst, and she might have no further answers.
Except she couldn’t go to Camhurst. Guilt clamped shut her lungs. Thorndell farm. Even now, that boy was dying, frightened and alone. He needed Augustine. He needed a doctor. But there would be no doctor, and no way to explain it. And it would be her fault. That boy would die because she had returned to Lindridge Hall.
She was sobbing, tears streaking her swollen face, when she saw two figures struggling up the hill, sheltered by a snapping oilcloth they held above them. Mrs. Purl and Mrs. Luthbright. Jane fled back into the house. She raced up the stairs and into the bedroom, and she shut herself inside, chest heaving in panic. Why couldn’t the storm have kept them away? Why couldn’t she have been spared, granted time to solve the horrible, impossible problem of the crypt door? Her hands shook as she washed away the crusted blood along her inner arm, as she shoved her sleeve back down over the three parallel wounds. What would she tell them? How could she explain her presence, and his absence?
How could she open a door that impossible spirits had sealed?
She sank to the floor at the foot of the bed, drawing her knees to her chest, and moaned, low and pained. An echoing moan rattled from the pipes in the bathroom. Augustine, devoured by the house. Augustine, afraid and lost and consumed.