“But what about Alex? I love him.”
Eulalie shook her head. “He doesn’t matter. Only you do. You need to leave. Today. Can’t you feel it? There’s danger all around you. Creeping. Lurking. Lying in wait. Even the air in that house is poisoned,” she said, nodding toward the pink candle. “You need to leave. I’ll help you. It’s why I came all this way.”
Her last word drew out long and lingering and its tone reminded me of something. Something worrying and wrong.
I sat up, slipping free of Eulalie’s embrace. “Why did you come?”
“I just told you. I’m worried about you, Verity. That house is evil. That man is—”
I shook my head. “That’s not what I meant. Why are you the one here? I’ve not seen you since I was six. I can barely remember you. If you wanted to send a warning, why not use someone else, someone I know, someone I trust? Hanna. Why is Hanna not here now?”
Her tongue ran over the back of her teeth. “Not many are strong enough to leave the Brine.”
Warning bells rang in my mind and my eyes narrowed. “But you are?”
She nodded.
“How?”
Eulalie’s face remained flat and expressionless. “I can’t tell you that. That’s not how it works.”
“How does it work? How exactly? Tell me, Eulalie.”
She backed away, expanding the space between us as she realized things weren’t going as she’d planned. “Why are you being this way? I’m here to help you.”
“Maybe so, but you’re not my sister.”
Her head cocked to the side, eyes wide and wounded. “Of course I am.”
“My sisters are in the Brine.”
“I know that. I said that—”
“Hanna is at Highmoor. Hanna has always been trapped at Highmoor.”
“To…to watch over you,” she fumbled.
“You said she was in the Brine. Who are you?” I squinted at her, seeing everything for the first time. She did look just like Eulalie, an exact replica of every portrait I’d ever seen, down to the fine lines lacing over her skin, like cracks in oil paint.
Her eyes grew bright, filling with tears. “I don’t understand. Why don’t you believe me? Why don’t you—”
As the tears welled up and spilled over her cheeks, they ran black, leaving lines of pigment slick as tar across my sister’s crackled skin.
“Kosamaras,” I murmured darkly.
It had worked.
I had brought the Harbinger to me.
She smiled and her teeth grew into sharp points. She stretched and Eulalie’s fa?ade fell away, revealing her true form. Kosamaras appraised me with those bottomless black eyes and laughed.
“I truly did not know what I was getting myself into all those years ago, little Thaumas girl.” She tsked, her voice raspy as the husks of dead beetles. “You see through everything. It would be quite impressive if it didn’t create so many annoyances for us.”
“Us.”
She raised her fingers, swishing them through the air as if to indicate a place beyond the forest, beyond Chauntilalie, beyond anything here in our world.
“The gods?” I guessed. “They care what’s going on here?”
“They care,” she said simply. “We all care.”
I snorted back a laugh. “I brought you here. I was the one who poisoned myself and then you come with all these theatrics—”
Her face hardened with scorn and the air between us crackled with power. “You couldn’t handle me without my theatrics, Thaumas girl.”
I did not doubt that.
“I suppose I could have selected a better ruse than your long-dead sister, but my message remains the same: Go. Now. Get yourself as far from this manor, as far from that monster as you can.”
Though everything inside me was aquiver wanting to cower before the presence of something so much more than myself, I tilted my face with an imperiousness I did not feel. “It’s funny to hear you call someone else a monster.”
She snorted. “Don’t press your luck with me, little Thaumas.”
“Why did you go after my family all those years ago? Two of my sisters are dead because of you. My father. My stepmother.”
She shook her head vehemently. “I had nothing to do with him. With her. That was all him.”
I could hear the distinction she imparted the word. “Who?”
“Viscardi,” she hissed.
I shuddered.
A Trickster. The god of bargains and lord over the People of the Bones.
She shrugged. “That’s neither here nor there, though.”
“But it is, isn’t it? Whatever happened to me then is why I’m at Chauntilalie now. You did something to me.”
She stood up and paced the clearing, her gray gown wafting from her like smoke. “An unfortunate mistake.”
“Unfortunate,” I echoed, following her every move.
The Harbinger stopped beside one of the Menagerie statues and let out a sigh, sounding bored by the conversation. “I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?”
“What you are.”
My mouth fell open in alarm. “What do you mean? What am I?”
“Stop parroting back everything I say,” she snapped.
“Then say something that makes sense!” I was on my feet in an instant, charging toward her. My fear had been replaced with indignation, anger licking up my spine. She’d tormented my family, sent two of my sisters to cold, icy deaths, and altered some essential part of my very being. The absolute least she could do was give me a straight answer. “What did you do?”
“I beguiled you. The same as your sisters.”
“Not the same. They stopped seeing things long ago. I haven’t.”
“You…you were different,” she mused. “Usually when someone is beguiled, they see what I want them to.” With a flick of her wrist, her fingers erupted into fiery blue flames. I could hear the crackling. I could feel the heat.
“Stop it,” I said, ducking as she swiped her hand close to my face, laughing.
She lowered her hand and the flames burned out. “When the bargain ended, so too did the beguiling, but you still saw things. Things not of my creation. Things not here, but there…” Again, she made the little gesture indicating the air around us.
“Ghosts,” I guessed.
She nodded.
“Echoes of the past.”
Another nod.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t,” she added quickly. “There’s just something in there, Thaumas girl.” She poked at my temple. “Something different.”
Her words sent a shiver down my frame, gooseflesh crawling over my skin. But an idea flickered over me and my heart leapt high. I reached out, grasping her hand. Her skin was oddly textured, like toothed watercolor paper, but I held on fast. “Make it stop.”
She squirmed out of my fervent hold. “There’s nothing I can do. The door was already open. The beguiling just propped it wider.”
“Then shut it!” I cried. “You’re a god. If you don’t have the power, then who? Pontus? Viscardi? Bring Vaipany here right now and make it stop.”