Signa waited until Elaine was down the hall before she set her palm atop Gundry’s head with a sigh. “Let’s find ourselves a room of our own, shall we?” And perhaps a spirit, too, while they were at it.
She gathered her belongings and turned her attention to the stairs. They were far more standard than the ones at Thorn Grove, the banister a hefty mahogany wood. A small chunk seemed to have broken off, the wood around it stained dark. The farther into the home she ventured, the slower her steps became as anxiety crept into her bones.
She was trying to have a good outlook, truly. She was trying to stay positive. But now that she was alone for the first time all day, the nerves were settling in.
What if she opened her nursery by accident? Or worse, her parents’ suite? Signa’s mind warred with itself—half of it wanting nothing more than to find that suite and gather all the information she could about her parents’ lives, while the other half warned that their belongings should remain untouched. What if there were things in there that her parents wouldn’t have wanted her to find? What if there was something that made her view them differently than the pristine parents she’d finely crafted in her mind? Not to mention that there was a spirit somewhere nearby. She could feel eyes against her skin, raising goose bumps along the back of her neck. What if it was malicious, as Lillian had once been?
Gundry ran ahead of her, and while Signa had imagined that he might look at least a little menacing while hunting spirits, his lolling tongue hung sideways out of his mouth as he circled back every few minutes as if to say that their path was clear. Signa caught glimpses of a sudden light beneath the door of a room she passed, and flickers of the telltale pale blue of a spirit blinking in and out of the far corner of her vision. Whoever it was, Gundry seemed unconcerned. And if he wasn’t worried, Signa told herself not to be, either. She was a reaper, after all.
It took several minutes of pacing the halls before Signa gathered her courage to try one of the doors. Fortunately, the first suite she came across had clearly been meant for a guest. It was so wonderfully plain that the moment Signa was inside, the unshakable itch in her bones and the roiling in her stomach settled. The tension in her shoulders eased as she dropped her luggage to the floor.
She decided that the first thing she should do was clean. Elaine didn’t deserve to do such an arduous task alone, and the chore would help get her mind off things. And so Signa stripped the bed of its sheets—they might have been white once, though she couldn’t tell through all the dust layered onto them. And that was as far as she got before all the dust made her think back to living with her aunt Magda, and how miserable she’d been before Thorn Grove. From there, it didn’t take long until the dam of swelling emotion she’d been repressing since leaving finally burst open, reminding her once again just how alone she was.
Her stomach tight and her chest trembling, Signa kicked the bedding so that the dirty side lay flat on the floor and sank onto it. After sneezing several times from the dust, Gundry padded to her side to lie beside her, resting his chin on her leg with a gentle lick. Signa curled her fingers in his fur, tears coming hot and fast.
“It’s just you and me, boy.” She sank low enough to rest her head against Gundry’s back and burrowed her face into his neck. He was one of the few slivers of normalcy left in her life, and he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing—the thought was so ridiculous that she almost laughed, clutching him tighter until there came a crash of thunder outside the window.
Gundry burst to all fours, hackles raised as his fangs bared. Signa followed his pointed ears to an old vanity near the window, tense and holding her breath. Its mirror was hazy from dirt, but not so hazy that Signa couldn’t see the billowing hem of a dress, there one moment and gone the next. Panic surged in her throat, but seconds later she saw the likely cause: not a spirit but a tiny gap in the windowsill that was causing the curtains to billow with the sharp wind. She hurried to shut the window before drawing back to Gundry’s side.
“It’s all right,” she whispered as she brought the other side of the blankets over them like a cocoon. She had to say it a few more times, scratching him behind the ears before he wound his body protectively around hers. “We’re going to be fine. This is our home now, and I won’t let anything hurt us.”
They fell into silence, and though Gundry’s breathing soon deepened with sleep, every creaking floorboard and gust of wind kept Signa wide awake. For a while she debated forgoing sleep entirely, but Foxglove was her home now, and she refused to let anyone or anything make her fearful of it.