by Alexa Egan
“Nancy has given me a day to decide.”
“Good. That gives us twenty-four hours to make arrangements.” A horrible thought occurred to him. “Unless you’ve chosen to accept Sam’s suit.”
“I don’t love Sam Oakham.”
“Marriages are rarely about love. The Imnada have their mates chosen for them by the Ossine, who match man and wife based on bloodlines and clan requirements.”
“How callous.”
“No more so than the aristocracy who base their marriages on property and political connections.”
“Both sound heartless and horrid.”
“What would sway you to wed?”
“My parents wedded because they loved one another more than they feared what people would say. They defied family and friends in their desire to be together, and you couldn’t help but feel the electricity between them. That’s the kind of marriage I’m looking for.”
“That’s a rare treasure few ever find.”
“Captain Flannery and his wife found it.”
“They did, but it will be a short-lived joy. The curse will destroy Mac like it’s destroying me. Bianca will be a widow—again. But this time she’ll have lost her soul mate.”
“She’ll have their child, though. A living tribute to that love.”
“Will it be enough? When her bed is empty and she cries herself to sleep thinking of the barren years ahead, will she still believe that loving Mac was the right choice, or will she rue the day she laid eyes on him?”
Golden sparks surfaced in Callista’s eyes. “My father died when I was ten. My mother gave up everything for the promise of an eternity with the man she adored and instead was left with a headstrong daughter, a stepson who despised her, and barely money to keep a roof over our heads. But she told me once she never regretted her decision to risk everything for love.”
She rose to her feet, trapped between the bunk and his body with only inches to spare. “She said it had all been worth it for the memory of perfection.”
He inhaled a shuddering breath, his chest tight against the ache in his heart. He caressed her cheek where a loose curl brushed against his skin, and then the slender column of her throat.
She closed her eyes, a tear leaking from beneath her lashes to slide into the corner of her full pink lips. “I finally understand what she meant.”
Somehow, without talking about it, both of them had known exactly what to say.
* * *
The crowded fairground teemed with activity: a cacophony of shouts, screams, bells, bands, growls, curses, drums, pistol shots, and fiddles running one into the other until there was naught but a constant, deafening roar.
Callista had hastily converted the wagon into a replica of Oriental bazaar meets Romany Gypsy fortune-teller—from under a cushion she pulled a rotten apple core wrapped in a dirty handkerchief—meets boys’ public school dormitory. And while it was not exactly the overbearing cloying elegance of the house in Soho, its single candle and close-set chairs made for cozy intimacies, as if half of North Riding were not just beyond the door.
The fashionable young woman sitting across from Callista held a lace handkerchief to her nose, but no amount of expensive perfume could eradicate the odors of manure, sheep, fried food, smoke, privies, alcohol, and sweat blanketing the still air like a fog. Only time and familiarity could do that, and a mere twenty-four hours into the fair, Callista barely noticed the stench. Just as she barely noticed the uncomfortable endless hours traveling, the awkwardness of sharing close quarters with a half dozen strangers, or the press of seething humanity at every stop along the road north. The last week and a half living among Oakham’s Follies and it was as if she’d never left.
She glanced down at the bells lined up on the table and then back to the sweet, innocent dewy-eyed face across from her. But it was the young woman’s husband who spoke, a man of means by the cut of his coat and the cut of his vowels, but as pink-cheeked and naive as his wife. Dupes waiting to be fleeced.
“It sounds like madness, but she believes it, and that’s all that counts, Miss . . .” He groped for a last name Callista didn’t offer.
The woman leaned across the table, her fingers trembling. “He haunts me. He comes to me in the night. I hear him crying, but no matter how I search I can’t find him.” Dark circles smudged the flesh beneath her eyes. Her cheeks were sunken, the skin sallow.
A child. Callista should have known as soon as Sam beckoned them into the caravan. A young couple hand in hand. Grief etched in their faces and weighing heavy on their frames.
“Annwn is well guarded, but sometimes a spirit will find a way back into this world,” Callista explained. “Most are harmless or, like your son, have lost their way and don’t realize they’ve slipped back into life.”
“Most?” The woman’s voice dropped to a whisper.
The flicker of the candle cast a leaping shadow upon the walls as Callista leaned forward. “There are darker things in the underworld than spirits of the dead, Mrs. Stockton. Why do you think Arawn keeps such a close watch?”
The woman’s big blue eyes widened to saucers. “I . . . I thought heaven was a nice place, a beautiful paradise. That’s what the vicar says. Why would dark things live there?”
“Death is a single realm made up of countless paths leading to infinite places, both beautiful and terrible.”
Mrs. Stockton nodded as if Callista had imparted a wisdom for the age. Her husband’s expression, however, was one of indignation rather than belief. “I don’t need a theology lesson. All I want is an end to these episodes. My wife won’t sleep. She barely eats. I worry for her mind if you can’t relieve her suffering.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Can you let him know I love him, Miss? Can you tell him his mama will always love him?” Mrs. Stockton pleaded, her voice high and trembling.
“The man outside said it cost two shillings. Do I pay you?” Mr. Stockton pulled out a change purse.
Callista felt her insides tighten. She hated handling the money. It made her feel no better than the charlatans hawking love philters or magic elixirs to eradicate the French disease.
Is this what her life would be should she choose to accept Nancy’s ultimatum and join the troupe? An endless stream of bereft parents and heartbroken lovers hoping for a final communion with their loved ones? Giggling, blushing maidens wanting to know if the spirits could tell them who they would wed and swaggering, ruddy-faced farmers’ sons looking for next season’s Derby winner? All accomplished to the tuneless background cacophony of a fair’s mad delights?
She shuddered to think. Yet if she refused, Nancy would turn David over to Corey’s men.
An impossible choice.
David had spoken of a noose tightening about his neck. Was this what it felt like? This inability to catch her breath, a hard knot lodged in her throat, and a pounding headache?
When the man held out his coins, she swallowed back her distaste and took them, dropping them into her apron pocket.
“Let’s begin.”
* * *
“For the third and final time, where’s Callista?” David demanded. Oakham’s pugnacious attitude was wearing at the best of times. After a morning spent haggling over two mounts even a knacker would shun and another interminable hour attempting to maneuver through the crush of humanity blocking the roads, David found it damned irritating.
Oakham scoured him with a belligerent glare. “Working.”
“I need to speak with her.”
“You’ll have to wait. While you’ve been gadding about town, she’s been earning the bread you eat and the bed you sleep on. I’d be grateful if I were you.”
That was the last fucking straw. David’s fist clenched, his stance braced for battle, and only a hand upon his forearm kept him from laying Oakham flat on his back in the dust. Nancy playing peacemaker again. She dragged David away before he could satisfy his urge to send Oakham into next week.
“She’s with
someone. Is it important?”
Of course it was bloody important. And the reason stood looking at him like he was some sort of butterfly-crushing, puppy-drowning fiend. Corey had accomplished what he’d set out to do—flush his quarry out of hiding. Once they left the troupe, it would be a race to Addershiels, one step ahead of every blighter in hopes of a fifty-pound reward. With the two knock-kneed nags he’d purchased, his odds were as long as Rosemary Lane to a ragshop that they’d make it there unscathed.
“I’ll wait.” He spun on his heel, pushing his way through the crowd. His first thought was whisky. His second thought, hard on its heels, was Callista. His thirst died with a sick roll of his stomach.
For some reason, Nancy Oakham decided to follow. She kept pace, her condition in no way impairing her ground-eating stride. She eyed him like a disease with her too-shrewd gaze. “I don’t begin to understand who you are or why you’ve dragged Cally into your mess, but she deserves better. She deserves someone who’ll care for her. Who’ll protect her and be good to her.”
“Someone like your brother?”
“Why not? He’s not rich or elegant and he doesn’t act all high in the instep, but he’s got a good heart and he’d make Cally a good husband. If you cared at all for her, you’d see that.”
Was Nancy right? Marriage to Oakham would definitely thwart Hawthorne’s and Corey’s plans, and if anyone could defend his wife against all comers, the burly showman could. David had witnessed the man’s crack ability with knife and pistol during the few shows he’d performed on the road, and David knew the weight of his fists firsthand. Besides, if he left Callista behind, his odds on reaching Addershiels alive grew exponentially. She would be better off here, among people who cared about her. She would have a home. She wouldn’t be alone anymore.
“You and your brother love each other very much,” he said.
Nancy’s eyes widened, but she gave a jerk of a nod. “Course we do. We’re family. Family take care of one another no matter what.”
He’d had a family once. And a clan. People who loved him. People who were there when he needed them.
He thought of Mac and his steadfast courage against the impossible. He thought of Gray and his hope when all seemed hopeless. And his heart squeezed uncomfortably in his chest when he remembered Adam, dead almost a year now, and the terrible words David had spoken that he’d never had a chance to take back.
The three of them had irritated David and angered him and driven him mad at times, but they had never once deserted him. Could he do any less now when they needed him?
“. . . and leave before things go any further.”
His hand dug into his pockets, coming up against the torn and crumpled notice.
“Before things go any further.”
Too late. They’d already moved far beyond Callista. It was personal now.
Someone wanted him.
Someone wanted the Imnada.
A scream threw his heart into his throat and sent his hand reaching for a nonexistent sword.
“That’s Cally.” Nancy took off at a half run, dodging some and thrusting others aside in her haste. David followed, fists clenched, nerves thrumming under his skin.
A pretty, blond woman stumbled out of the wagon, a handkerchief clutched to her mouth. A man followed, his gaze wildly scanning the crowd as if seeking assistance. He saw Nancy approaching with obvious relief. “Something’s wrong. I touched her and she was . . . she was stone cold. I think she’s dead . . .”
He babbled on, arms gesticulating, the woman by his side sobbing uncontrollably into her drippy handkerchief. David pushed past and into the wagon, leaving Nancy to handle her hysterical customers. Moving from bright light to darkness, he was blinded for a moment. He tripped and stumbled over an overturned chair, grabbing the table to steady himself. The candle flickered wildly while the bells set in a row before Callista clanked and rattled, one falling into her lap. She made no move to retrieve it. Instead she remained completely still, her lips tinged blue, her eyes a shimmering, iridescent gold, as if the heat of the sun boiled in her gaze.
“Callista?” He touched her hand where it rested on the handle of the largest bell. Not the cool moist give of death. Instead her flesh was as cold and white as marble, frost riming her hair and powdering her shoulders. He felt for a pulse, expelled a relieved breath to feel the flutter of her heart beneath his fingers.
“Callista, it’s time to come back.” He knelt beside her, cupping her face in his hands. “Look at me, Fey-blood. Hear me.”
Tears formed at the corners of her eyes, tracking slowly down her pale cheeks before freezing like diamonds at the corners of her mouth.
Frightened now, he shook her by the shoulders. “Damn it, Callista, wake up.”
Nothing.
Again. More roughly this time, his fingers growing numb where they touched her bare flesh, his stomach curdling into a tight ball. He’d never seen a necromancer at work, but surely this shouldn’t happen. This couldn’t be normal. What if she never woke? What if she was trapped in death forever?
12
The path wound. Turned and turned again. Right or left? She couldn’t remember. The thick trees obscured her view ahead and behind, and the landmarks she’d noted to guide her back had faded as if they’d never been.
The right path descended into a thick wood. The left rose to a high ridge before disappearing. Neither seemed familiar. She shouldn’t have come so far. The landscape was foreign, the twining paths looping and circling back. She had wanted to lead the Stockton child’s spirit deep into death, where it could not find its way back out. Now she was lost as well.
She chose the right-hand fork, hurrying down the slope and beneath the trees. Here within the deeper reaches, the paths were either strewn with rocks and exposed roots or sucking, quivering bogs one must traverse with care. The trees reached their black and skeletal branches to grab and harry, and there was always the threat of dangerous beings who would be drawn to her warmth and her light. She’d never encountered one, but Mother had described them all in gory detail, making certain Callista understood the danger—shambling, mindless grel and rotting, worm-riddled dead-flesh, the ghostly, shrouded soul eaters with their reaching bony hands, and phantasms whose eerie wails sounded like the screams of a million condemned souls; the world’s nightmares made real.
The path narrowed, the footing treacherous. Beneath the trees, even the dim gray light faded to darkness. A prickle teased its cold way up her spine as if something watched from the undergrowth. She peered through the gloom, here and there catching a glimmer of light, a whisper in her ear. Spirits flickered like will-o’-the-wisps to lure her from the trail. Tempting her to new paths and untried roads as she struggled to find her way back to life.
She ignored the pull of their call, keeping to the rocky path, praying it led her somewhere recognizable before the cold or the creatures found her. Rounding a bend, she staggered to a halt, gazing out over a greasy gray bog, the water slick and still. Had she come this way? She couldn’t remember. But there was no turning around. The spirits closed in behind her and every now and then, she heard a fearsome growl or an inhuman shriek from the wood behind. Her presence had been discovered. The creatures of Annwn closed in.
She stepped carefully into the thick, oozing mud, sinking up to her ankles, her gown slapping against her legs as she moved slowly out toward the far shore where the trees gripped firmer earth. With the ash-handled Blade in her hand, she felt her way a step at a time despite the panic eating its way up through her gullet.
A ripple slid across the surface to her right; a shape rising and falling into the mud. She increased her pace as much as she dared, but the bog clung, sticky and cold; her stomach cramped against the icy pain, and there was no feeling in her calves.
Twenty paces away from the shoreline. Ten. The ripples moved toward her like an arrow loosed from a bow. She cried out, shoving herself onward through the glutinous sludge. Five paces. She was lurching for
a scaly green branch to drag herself up and out, when the surface peeled away to reveal a long, eel-like creature. Its limbs were jointed at odd places—no normal creature had four elbows and three knees. But it was the face that was truly horrifying. A human skull, though the features seemed oddly askew and drooping, as if the flesh had melted. Its mouth was a wide gash showing rows of needle-sharp teeth; it had two vertical slits for a nose, and eyes round and white though clearly focused on her as it rose up out of the bog with a high-pitched, glass-shattering scream.
Her mother had called them grel—no earthly spirit to be frightened with a banishment spell traced in sound from Blade, the bell clutched in her fist. This was a creature of darkness and murder and disease and pain; a foul denizen of the deepest pits of Annwn that hungered for life and human flesh. Safe in her bed, Callista had shivered with delight upon hearing her mother’s tales of these creatures. Trapped within the tangled maze of Annwn’s realm, her shivers turned to racking, pulse-racing shudders.
She swung around, her lungs burning, her legs clumsy and slow as she fought to escape. Trees scratched and clawed at her face, tugged at her gown. The grel lumbered behind her, its grasping arms reaching for her, claws long as scythes.
The path turned again. She knew this hedge. She’d passed that fallen log. The trees thinned, and she was back on familiar ground. The path broadened to a wide bricked track lined with stately limes. She was steps from the door that would take her back into the world of the living.
The grel broke from the woodland behind her, its bloody mouth drawn back from ear to ear as if someone had opened its skull with a sword, its screeching like claws down a slate, its breath an icy burn on her neck and arms.
It was joined by a second grel, and by one of the dead-flesh, shrouded in a black bloodstained cloak, a face half-pecked, an eye hanging loose from a socket, entrails spilling like greasy snakes from its belly. She stumbled and the closest grel stretched to lash her across the back with one of its long hooked claws, even as the dead-flesh reached with a hand, the skin sloughing away from the bone as it grabbed her around her wrist.