The haunting wail of a siren stopped her mid-sentence.
Iris’s fingers froze above the keys, but her heart was suddenly pounding.
That was a hound siren.
She had three minutes before they reached Avalon Bluff, which was plenty of time to prepare herself, but it felt as if Dacre’s wild hounds would leap from the shadows any moment.
With a tremble in her hands, she hastily wrote:
I haver to go! Sorryy. More latwr.
She wrenched the paper from the typewriter. The bottom half of the page tore, but she managed to fold it and send it over the portal.
Quickly, she thought. Cover the window, blow out the light, go to Marisol’s room.
Iris strode to the window, the siren continuing to wail. It made gooseflesh rise on her arms, to hear the keen of it. To know what was coming. She stared through the glass panes, into the dark pitch of night. The stars continued to wink as if nothing was amiss; the moon continued to shed light with its waxing. Iris squinted and could just discern the sheen of the neighbor’s windows and roof and the field beyond them, where a gust raked over the long grass. Her bedroom faced the east, so chances were the hounds would come from the other direction.
She yanked the curtains closed and blew out her candle. Darkness flooded around her.
Should she grab anything else? She began to reach for her typewriter, fingertips tracing its cold metal in the dark. The thought of leaving it behind made her feel like the wind had been knocked from her.
Everything is going to be fine, she told herself in a firm voice, forcing her hands to leave the typewriter on her desk.
Iris took a step toward the door and proceeded to trip on the rug. She should’ve waited to blow out her candle until she was with Marisol. But she made it into the hallway and nearly collided with Attie.
“Where’s Marisol?” Iris asked.
“I’m here.”
The girls turned to see her ascend the stairs, holding a rushlight. “The downstairs is prepared. Come, to my room, the two of you. You’ll spend the night here with me.”
Attie and Iris followed her into a spacious chamber. There was a large canopied bed, a settee, a desk, and a bookshelf. Marisol set down her light and proceeded to shift the heaviest piece of furniture against the door. Attie rushed to help her, and Iris hurried to close the window curtains.
It was suddenly very quiet. Iris didn’t know what was worse: the siren, or the silence that came after it.
“Make yourselves comfortable on the bed,” Marisol said. “It might be a long night.”
The girls sat against the headboard, cross-legged. Attie finally blew out her candle, but Marisol still had her rushlight lit. She opened her wardrobe, and Iris could see her shoving aside dresses and blouses to find a flashlight and small revolver.
She loaded the gun and extended the flashlight to Iris.
“If the hounds manage to get inside, which they shouldn’t but there’s always a possibility … I want you to shine the light on them so I can see them.”
So she can shoot them, Iris realized, but she nodded and studied the flashlight, finding its switch with her thumb.
Marisol eased onto the edge of the bed, between the girls and the door, and she blew out her rushlight.
The darkness returned.
Iris began to count her breaths, to keep them deep and even. To keep her mind distracted.
One … two … three …
She heard the first hound on her fourteenth inspiration. It howled in the distance, a sound so chilling it made Iris’s jaw clench. But then the sound grew closer, joined by another. And another, until there was no telling how many of them had reached Avalon Bluff.
Twenty-four … twenty-five … twenty-six …
They were snarling in the street, just below Marisol’s window. The house seemed to shudder; it sounded like one of them was raking its claws on the front door. There was a bang.
Iris jumped.
Her breaths were frantic now, but she gripped the flashlight like a weapon, prepared for anything. She felt Attie take her other hand, and they held on to each other. And even though she couldn’t see, Iris knew Marisol was directly in front of them, sitting like a statue in the darkness, a gun resting in her lap.
The shrieks faded. They returned. The house shook again, as if they were living in a loop.
Iris was exhaling her seven hundred and fifty-second breath when the silence returned. But it was just as Marisol had foretold.
It ended up being a very long night.
{21}
Knight Errant or Rogue
Are you safe? Are you well? What happened?
Please write to me, whenever you can.
Roman sent the message through his wardrobe not long after Iris sent her abrupt one. He knew something unexpected and terrible must have happened, for her to misspell three different words. He paced late into the night, his eyes straying to the closet, to the clean-swept floor before it. Hour after hour passed, dark and cold, and she didn’t write.
What was happening? He was desperate to know. Eventually he was so exhausted that he sat on the edge of his bed, overwhelmed with misgivings.
Perhaps the town she was stationed in had come under attack. He imagined Iris having to take shelter while bombs cascaded, exploding in a blazing array of sparks and destruction. He imagined Iris wounded. He imagined Dacre’s soldiers swarming in victory, taking her prisoner.
Roman couldn’t bear to sit.
He stood and paced again, wearing a trench into the rug.
If something befell her … how would he learn of it?
“Iris,” he spoke into the lamplight. “Iris, write to me.”
It was three in the morning when he withdrew her old letters from their hiding place. He sat on the floor and reread them, and while he had always been moved by her words to Forest, he realized that he felt pierced by all the words she had written to him. They made him ache, and he didn’t know why.
He left his room to walk the mansion’s dark corridors. He took the route that he had walked night after night in the wake of Del’s death, when sleep evaded him. When he had been fifteen years old and so broken that he felt like his grief would bury him.
Down the stairs he went, quiet as a wraith. Through cold rooms and winding passages. Eventually he was drawn to faint light spilling from the kitchen. He expected to step into the chamber and discover the house had set out warm milk and biscuits for him, sensing his distress. Roman startled on the threshold when he saw it was his nan, sitting at the counter with a candle and cup of tea.
“Roman,” she said in her typical brusque tone.
“N-Nan,” he replied. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to … I’ll be going now.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nan said. “The kettle’s still warm if you want a cup of tea, although I know you prefer coffee.”
It was an invitation to talk. Roman swallowed; he was haggard as he slowly entered the kitchen, reaching for a cup. He poured himself some tea and sat on the stool across from his nan, fearful to make eye contact with her at first. She had a knack for reading minds.
“What has you up at such an hour?” she asked, her shrewd gaze boring into him.
“I’m awaiting a letter.”
“A letter in the dead of the night?”
His face flushed. “Yes.”
Nan continued to stare at him. She had smiled only maybe three times in her entire life, and so Roman was shocked when he saw her pursed lips curve in a grin.