“Thanks.”
He yawned, sitting up. “I think it’s nearly eight. Almost time for dinner.”
“How’s Mariana?” Fiona had visited her friend in the morning, but she’d been asleep.
“She hasn’t left the house yet,” Tobias said. “But she’s talking again.”
How had their lives become this screwed up? She sat up, her muscles groaning. Last night, she’d spent nearly eight hours circling in the winds over Gloucester and Rockport. No sign of sea demons. It wasn’t the most eventful night, but her muscles were protesting all the same.
Tobias rose. “How did the patrol go?”
She rolled her head around to loosen her muscles. “At first I was scared, but nothing happened. I was almost disappointed by the end of it.” Need for stimulation. Check. Standing, she raised her arms over her head in a long stretch. She really needed to get out of this gown she’d been wearing since yesterday. She literally smelled like a barn animal. “I’m just going to change.”
He smiled. “I’ll wait outside.”
She didn’t stop him this time, and when he stepped over the threshold, she pulled off the green dress and underwear, jamming them in a corner. She’d stored the clean clothes in a wooden alcove close to the door, where the air was freshest. Smiling, she pulled out a pale-blue dress the color of a chicory flower and slipped into it before stepping out the door.
Outside, Tobias stared at the moon, his back rigid. She could almost feel the strength radiating from him. She linked her arm in his, reveling in his warmth. He smelled of maple leaves and woodsmoke.
He glanced at her. “If Estelle doesn’t let you stay, we’ll all leave. But even if she does let you stay, she’s going to make your life hell. She’ll expect deference, no matter how much gold we give her. You can’t challenge her.”
“I don’t plan to. In fact I don’t plan on doing anything except trying to get at least five hours of sleep at a time. Right now I’d count that as a victory.” She tightened her grip on his arm. “Have you learned anything about your mark yet? What it means?”
He paused for only a heartbeat, muscles stiffening. “It means that when I die, my soul will burn in the inferno. The gods collect souls, apparently.”
Cold dread coiled around her. “You’ll be in hell?”
“That’s what I hear.”
She felt nauseous. “How can a soul burn? I thought they were immaterial.”
“I don’t know, but I’m not looking forward to finding out.”
Her stomach turned a flip. “But there must be a way out. Maybe you can ask Emerazel if there are exceptions…” She trailed off. It sounded stupid even to her.
“Estelle knows more about it. She just wants something in exchange for it.”
“Your body?” Fiona blurted.
He eyed her sideways. “She hasn’t said it outright—yet.”
She didn’t trust Estelle, but they didn’t have a ton of options. “Do whatever she wants. I’m not letting you burn forever.” As if she had any control over the situation.
They walked the rest of the way in silence, listening only to the howling wind and wolves. As they drew closer, the newsreader’s sonorous voice on the radio added a calming buzz to the night air: “…Celtics against the Lakers in a close game…”
Inhaling deeply, she surveyed the spread. Among the flickering lanterns, the tables were laid with lobster and clam chowder. Her mouth watered. With her nocturnal schedule, she was missing most meals.
Just as she and Tobias approached their seats, she glimpsed Estelle stalking closer, baring her teeth.
Instinctively, Fiona took a step back, letting go of Tobias’s arm. Estelle closed in, her hand flying to Fiona’s throat. Fiona tried to block it, just like she’d been taught in her self-defense class. But Estelle was too fast, and her long fingernails pierced Fiona’s neck. Her eyes blazed a pale, wolfish gray.
Fiona’s heart pounded against her ribs. Estelle was going to tear her to pieces.
Growling, her fangs lengthened. “The goddess Borgerith hasn’t spoken to me about you yet,” she snarled. “But if I sense that you’re anything like your father, I will kill you myself.” She released Fiona’s neck, and her eyes darkened again.
Fiona’s legs trembled, and she shot Tobias a sharp look. He hadn’t even tried to help.
For a moment she debated running off into the forest, but she wasn’t going to give Estelle the satisfaction. Schooling her face into a calm expression, she sat in an unclaimed chair, plucking a warm dinner roll from a bowl. Tobias sat by her side.
She ignored him, turning her attention to the radio.
“…after a bullying incident at a high school in Gloucester. The school’s principal has called it an unfortunate…”
Mist gathered over the common, rolling in from the sea. She tried to hide the tremble in her hand as she ladled the creamy chowder into her bowl. “Thanks for the help,” she snapped. She immediately regretted it. He’d only just learned he would be spending an infinite amount of time in the inferno, and she was already mad at him.
“They’re hierarchical,” he said. “We can’t defy her if we’re staying here. We should think about leaving. I just haven’t figured out where we can go.” He halfheartedly ladled a dollop of chowder into his bowl.
The name “Forzese” crackled over the radio, and they stopped talking. The entire outdoor banquet had fallen silent.
“…during a police interview. Police officials say that Josephine Forzese acted erratically during questioning.”
Fiona sat frozen, her spoon suspended on the way to her mouth. Mom didn’t act erratically. Ever.
“The investigation is ongoing. But we do know that when Ms. Forzese lunged for an officer’s gun, another opened fire. The official cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head. Officer Mullen…”
Fiona didn’t hear the rest. She heard only the heartbeat in her ears and the sound of rushing water. The bread in her mouth seemed to turn to ash. The wolves all stared at her, their faces compassionate—even Estelle’s eyes held a flash of sympathy before the mist grew heavier, fogging Fiona’s vision. This can’t be real.
It must be fake. Misinformation. The Purgators were trying to lure Fiona into the open so they could arrest her. Right now Mom was finishing up her dinner in South Boston, clearing the table.
Fiona rose, stumbling over her chair. She needed to tell everyone before they thought it was real, but for some reason she couldn’t get the words to come.
Tobias stood, and she felt his warm arms around her.
“…Newspapers have received criticism for their decision to show pictures of Josephine Forzese’s body…”
How could they get pictures of the body? Maybe they were Photoshopped… She pushed Tobias away. She needed to explain to him that it was all fake. She shook her head, trying to clear it.
Her knees began to give way.
It was true. She knew it was. Of course the Purgators were trying to lure Fiona out, but their tactic of choice was murder.
Mom used to say she would sweep the monsters away before putting her to bed. Sometimes she’d act it out with a little pink toy broom Fiona had kept in her closet. Mom would reach in, grab the plastic handle, and mime brushing out monsters from under her bed. It went on until Fiona had started to find it embarrassing. “You don’t have to keep doing it, Mom,” she’d said. “I know monsters aren’t real.”
What an idiot she’d been. Monsters were all around.
She hid her face in her hands. Tobias’s arm was around her shoulders again, warm and smelling of cedar, but she shivered as though it were winter.
The Purgators should have killed Danny. It made sense for him to die. But of course, the police hadn’t shot Josephine Forzese because she was acting erratically. The witch hunters had murdered her as revenge.
An unwelcome image crept into her mind of the smug look Mrs. Ranulf’s face had taken on over the dinner table—the Purgator Queen crushing her napkin in her
fingers until her knuckles turned white.
Fiona’s swell of rage felt strong enough to make the rocky earth tremble. A second vision flashed—her own hand, wielding a knife that would cut the smug flesh right off Mrs. Ranulf’s face. The thought of jamming a knife into Mrs. Ranulf’s beautiful cheeks brought her a brief twinge of pleasure. There was no point in fighting it.
Fiona was a monster, too.
Her stomach clenched as the voice in the depths of her mind resumed its chorus: Monster… monster… monster…
10
Jack
He opened his eyes to the dull glow of cold morning light, a warped window by his face. Where in the hells was he? A bed’s canopy hung over him, earthy-brown and dusty. When he tried to move his arms, pain lacerated him. He was trapped in his own shattered body.
To his right, a clock stood on a bedside table. The hands didn’t move.
Please, gods, don’t leave me alone with my own thoughts. He tried to take in the room: the bitter smell of foxglove, an embroidered blanket. Through the window, willow branches sagged; a mourning dove cooed.
Why wasn’t he dead, suffering in Druloch’s hell? That was supposed to be his sentence. After death, his soul was condemned to one of the shadow god’s hells: nothing but unending torment and the gnawing void.
But he wasn’t in Druloch’s hell. His entire body shrieked with pain, but he was reasonably certain that hell did not look like an old woman’s bedroom.
The last thing he remembered was the Fury tearing into his abdomen while the Purgators’ temple blazed around him. How could he be alive? A spark of hope ignited. Maybe Fiona had saved him. Maybe she’d changed her mind.
He coughed, and pain wracked his chest. No, she had run from the building. He remembered that much. She’d left him there to die. Did he really mean so little to her? When she’d danced with him at the Purgator ball, her body had hummed with desire. If she hadn’t been lying to herself, she’d have run off with him then and there.
He’d have taken her home to New England. They’d have slept in a field under a giant beech by the old North Bridge, waking to mist rising from the tall grass. She’d have stood by his side when he rewrote the world, and he would have fashioned her a towering palace in the center of the city.
Or maybe a butter-yellow house in the woods. Tea, wool sweaters, hot hands under blankets, her head on his chest while he read books.
That was his other life. The phantom life that should have been, but wasn’t.
He was delirious. Why did Fiona so preoccupy his thoughts? That March day, in the cemetery, they’d lingered by a linden tree. Standing over John Winthrop’s dusty bones, she’d promised to sweep the monsters away. Then there was their first kiss—outside the school, the remnants from his army’s attack still smeared on the pavement. She hadn’t yet known he was a monster, and their future together had bloomed before him like pear blossoms.
But when she’d found him in the woods with blood running down his chin—that was when the rot had set in.
Did she really think Tobias would be any different? Once the Tatter boy learned his fate, he’d go to any lengths to escape a sentence of eternal torment. At least, he would if he had any sense.
Jack swallowed, his throat raw. He could dream of a gleaming future all he wanted, but the sad reality was that she wasn’t here. Wherever “here” was.
Even worse, his plans to snatch the relic were shattered. He lay alone in a quiet and musty room that might as well be a coffin.
He’d failed at everything. Fiona hated him, and he’d lost the trail of the relic. He couldn’t save a single person from death, which meant all the murders he’d committed had served no purpose. He was a broken monster, lingering on this corrupt earth long after he should have expired. Loneliness pressed his chest like a ton of rocks, threatening to shatter his ribs.
What was wrong with him? He didn’t normally wallow in guilt. Maybe that Fury had infected him with a conscience. Or maybe this is my own personal hell. He tried to sit up, but pain screamed through his bones.
Grunting, he settled back into the pillow. He hadn’t felt this brutalized since the 1650s. That one day had changed everything. That one day had created this polluted carcass.
11
Fiona
She just wanted silence.
For two days she’d sat in a dark corner, listening to the dogs bark and yap and the wind rustling the honeysuckle outside the door. Byron had returned, apologizing for failing, but Fiona didn’t want to hear from him.
Whenever Tobias stopped by, asking if she’d slept, she told him she had. He could probably tell by the bags under her eyes that she was lying. She hadn’t slept for longer than twenty minutes, hunched against the wall.
Celia, Alan and Thomas had brought dire drinks, trying to coax her into the sun, but she wouldn’t budge. If they’d known what was warring in her mind, they would have stayed away. Her thoughts were corrupted with shattered skulls and blood.
She still wore the chicory-blue dress she’d had on when she heard the news. Since that night, she’d left the kennel only once, quietly slipping into Tobias’s room to fill a backpack with gold bits. She was still mulling over an escape, but it was nearly impossible to think clearly enough to figure out where to go.
As soon as she was able to get a full night’s sleep, she’d wander out of here on her own. Maybe take a bus to Canada. She’d figure out how to trade gold pieces for real money, and she’d rent a small apartment. She’d change her name—something sassy and intimidating, like Roxy. In a few weeks, she’d have a new life.
But you needed a passport for Canada. Shit. Mom had always kept track of those things, in a little filing cabinet in her bedroom.
She clutched her backpack to her chest, all of her possessions now stuffed into this canvas sack. She tugged at a loose thread, staring at the dimming light on the hay-strewn ground. Her Canada plan was ridiculous anyway. For one thing, she wanted vengeance, and she wouldn’t learn about bloodlust from Canadians.
When she closed her eyes, images flickered in the recesses of her mind. There was the man dredged from the sea—the man whose brains her father had blasted onto the sand. There was the jack-in-the-box Danny had drawn on the wall when they didn’t have enough money for toys—lopsided and red-lipped. When she was five, she had shoved a chair in front of it to avoid catching sight of its empty eyes in the middle of the night.
She wrapped the thread around her finger, so tight that her fingertip blanched. What was it with psychopaths and clowns? If serial killers had familiars, they’d each get their own grinning jester.
But the jack-in-the-box wasn’t the worst image creeping through her mind. There was her mom, slack-jawed, a bullet in her forehead. Mom—a gaping cavity instead of a face, blond curls springing from a blasted-out scalp.
And there was Fiona, looping a noose around Mrs. Ranulf’s neck with a satisfied smile. Fiona jabbing a knife into Mrs. Ranulf’s ribs. Fiona smashing the woman’s head against a rock—Fiona’s curled lips, the shadows below her eyes exactly like her father’s.
With a small grunt, she yanked another thread from the backpack.
Distantly, a foghorn blared. It was dark now, and something different hung in the air tonight. A fog had rolled in, smelling of old wood and decaying seaweed. Her lips tasted salty.
A few shouts rang out from the common, and the hair on her arms stood on end. Something was happening. Something that might give her a way out.
She rose, pulling off her old clothes, and slipped into a clean dress—this one pale green, the color of sea foam, with a pair of black woolen leggings beneath. She slid her arms through the backpack straps, keeping the gold close. She wasn’t going to leave it for any stray wolves to pick through.
When the belfry rang out, her breath froze in her lungs.
It was them. The Picaroons. She stepped out into the mists, hurrying along the craggy path to the common.
They were here for tribute.
12
Fiona
Lanterns on the banquet tables glowed faintly through the fog. Just as she was approaching the crowded tables, the mists began to lift. Four enormous strangers stood in silhouette, their bodies strangely still, like statues. Wolves snapped and growled around her, knocking over bowls and glasses.
Heart racing, Fiona pressed forward until she stood a mere twenty feet from the sea demons.
The fog lifted, and she widened her eyes, taking in every detail. Unexpectedly, they were dressed like actual pirates: velvet doublets in maroon and blue, slim trousers, black damask waistcoats, gold hoops and pearl earrings—oddly beautiful in the moonlight. She stood transfixed. Drawn to their monstrosity, probably.
A broad-shouldered man stood in front of the other Picaroons, his arms folded. Lines crinkled the corners of his eyes, putting him at around thirty. His pale skin shone against a dark beard, and a single gold earring hung from his right ear.
“We’re here for our tribute.” His voice was deep and rough, like rocks grinding together. His blue eyes roved over the wolves. “The rest of our crew wait by the shore, but I’m sure we don’t need to bring them in. I’m sure you know what’s in your best interests.”
She almost hadn’t noticed Tobias, standing quietly on the far side of the tables, until the pirate’s gaze fell on him. By his side, Estelle’s golden antlers gleamed. Her face was hard, teeth bared.
The sea demon’s eyes were a murky green, the color of stormy waters, and he scanned the crowd. “What do you think, Lir?” he asked, his voice like granite.
A second Picaroon stepped into the light of the banquet, and Fiona saw that Granite had a twin. No, not exactly a twin, but a younger version, his face smoother and clean-shaven. He was even larger than his older brother, and strikingly handsome. His eyes flicked to Thomas, and he lifted a finger. “Him. The stag. He’s the strongest.”
Witches of the Deep (The Memento Mori Witch Trilogy Book 3) Page 5