by Kelley York
The phial clatters to the floor. It’s all I can do to wedge an arm against her throat to hold her at bay, her bloodied teeth snapping inches from my face.
I can scarcely think through the pain.
The water. I need the holy water.
Groping blindly with my free hand, I can’t locate it. Instead, my fingers close around an object that must have fallen from the overturned table—a kitchen knife.
I swing up with as much force as I can, wedging the small blade into the woman’s throat. It slides easily into the meat of her neck, glancing off her clavicle.
She snarls, but she does not stop.
Dimly, I hear James’ voice shouting my name, but it does little to draw the woman’s attention away from me. She’s far stronger than she ought to be; she’s a slight, bony thing, and yet it’s taking everything I have to keep her from ripping into my face or throat again. Blood—my blood—drips from her gaping mouth, and I can feel my arms aching with the effort of trying to shove her away. “James!”
Not a moment later, James has his arms around her middle. The weight of her atop me finally vanishes as he heaves her off me and stumbles back. I suck in a sharp breath of air, shaky and dizzy. I roll to my side, again feeling around for the holy water, although I haven’t the faintest where it’s rolled off to, or if it even survived the fall.
The woman gnashes her teeth at James, one hand lashing out to catch him across the face. He’s just a step ahead of her, holy water in hand. The second the water splashes across her skin, she shrieks and rears away. Rather than attack again, she shoves past him and makes a wild dash for the door, somehow having the intelligence to unlock it before fleeing outside.
For half a heartbeat, I fear James is going to give chase. But in the next second, he’s scrambling to my side, bloodied scratches upon his cheek. “William! Are you all right?”
It hurts. God, it hurts. I’m shaken and largely in shock, so I haven’t any idea how bad the damage is. I’m aware of the blood from the bite in my neck, the scratches along my jaw and chest where she tore right through my shirt. Mostly, though, I am frightened.
The moment James is close enough, I lock my arms around him, equal parts afraid and yet relieved, because he’s all right. I’m completely useless at formulating any kind of answer to his question.
He drags me to him, stroking my hair and voice whisper-soft. “It’s all right, darling. You’re all right. She’s gone now.”
I tremble in his arms, a combination of fear and my heart racing as fast as it is, and I’m unable to tear my eyes off that door lest she return and catch us unawares. “She was—James, under the bed. She—”
“Christ.” He sighs, placing kisses across my forehead. “I’m so sorry. I hadn’t thought to check there.”
It’s hardly his fault; neither of us did. I drag in slow, deep breaths to steady my shaken nerves. As much as I want to bury my face against his chest and hide there awhile, I force myself to pull away, still jittery as I get to my feet and head for the door. In part to look outside to see if the girl has gone, but also because leaving the door gaping wide open is asking for trouble. “I stabbed her. She didn’t even flinch.”
James keeps close to my side, still watching me in concern. “She was human, wasn’t she?”
“I… I don’t know.” I touch a hand to my bleeding throat, lightheaded. “What sort of human gets stabbed in the throat and keeps going?”
“One not right in the mind,” James answers. “You can’t stab a ghost, however, so what else could it be? Come, let me clean that and bandage it.”
“Shouldn’t we…” Go after it, is how I mean to finish that statement, but the words catch on the back of my tongue because I honestly, truly, do not want to. Not in the middle of the night in an unfamiliar place. I swallow it back and nod, shutting the door and locking it. How in the world did she get in here in the first place? When? Has she been hiding under that bed since before we arrived?
James ushers me into the bedroom where I shed my jacket, waistcoat, and bloodied shirt, and have a seat upon the edge of the mattress. He joins me in short order with a small medical supply kit we keep on hand and sets about tending to me. The sting of antiseptic against the open wounds makes me hiss between my teeth and he grimaces with a murmured apology.
I do my best not to squirm beneath his efforts. The scratches are flesh wounds, they’ll heal fine. The bite is deep enough that it’s likely to permanently mar my skin, but fortunately, she didn’t bite deep enough to do any real damage. I’m still alive, after all.
My nerves are still alight, something unlikely to change until I sleep or medicate myself into a calmer state, although James’ gentle attentions do help.
“Should we try to track her down?” I ask.
“In the dead of night, in a place we don’t know?” James finishes wrapping the bandages about my throat and reaches into his pocket for my laudanum. I let out an audible noise of relief at the sight of it, refraining from grabbing it from him. James opens the bottle to dole out my dosage, which will not be enough to fully steady the racing of my heart, but it will help. “We’d only succeed in getting ourselves lost in the cold. We can search in the morning, perhaps ask around town. For now, you should get some rest.”
It occurs to me only after I’ve swallowed the medicine that I probably should not have taken it for the very same reason I didn’t take it earlier. “I’m not certain I should leave you to keep watch alone.”
“I won’t leave the room without waking you.”
I could point out how useless I would be if woken after being medicated, but I don’t have much of a choice. I extend a hand to touch his jaw, minding the scratches upon his cheek. “Let me clean those before I lie down.”
It grants me a few moments to focus on something other than my own discomfort, to fuss over James while my medicine has a chance to take hold. I clean the wounds, and then lean in to press a kiss to his mouth. When I lie down, I take his hand in mine.
“I did see one of the children. The boy. He said that woman was the one who attacked his family.”
James folds his hand securely around mine. “We’ll have to ask around to see if anyone knows her.”
“Mm. You promise to wake me if you see or hear anything?”
His expression softens. “I swear it.”
“Thank you.” I draw his hand to my lips, kissing his knuckles. “I love you.”
Even with my eyes closed, I can practically hear the smile in James’ voice as he says, “I love you, too.”
As worked up as I am, my exhaustion coupled with my medicine will work quickly to put me to sleep. As I always do when medicated, I sleep like the dead, scarcely budging throughout the night. The most I do is reach out for James when I stir, insisting on holding onto him for dear life.
What jars me awake some hours later is a rapping sound elsewhere in the house. Blinking blearily, it occurs to me that James has fallen asleep beside me, and that my head was resting upon his chest.
It also occurs to me that I hurt. The pain radiates all throughout my neck and into my shoulder. I sit up, touching a hand to the bandages as I inch to the edge of the mattress. The rapping appears to be someone knocking. Foss must have come to retrieve us.
“James, someone’s here.”
He makes a low noise. “Tell them to go ‘way.”
“I’m not sure that’s an option.” I brush his hair back from his face and push myself to my feet. If he wishes to stay put a bit longer, I’ll not force him out of bed. Instead, I pull on my shirt and make swift work of buttoning it, and then head into the other room to open the door. Surprisingly, it is not just Foss standing there, but also Lord Wakefield himself.
Wakefield’s eyes widen at the sight of me in my crimson-stained clothes and bandages. “Good Lord. Mr. Esher, what’s happened?”
“It was a long night.�
� I step aside to let them in. Wakefield hesitates, and the way his gaze darts about the room makes me wonder if this is the first time he’s been inside this house since the murders. He did say he hadn’t the stomach to see the bodies, and none of the photographs he showed us were of the interior of the farm.
The kitchen is a disaster from last night. I right all the furniture so at least everyone has a place to sit, and it’s with a grimace that I realise some of the blood on the floor is now mine. “I encountered one of the ghosts last night. The Brewers’ son.”
Wakefield sinks slowly into one of the chairs, eyes locked onto me and expression unreadable. “He couldn’t possibly have done that to you, did he? What did he say?”
I proceed to explain the events of last night, up to the point where the woman fled the house. Foss and Wakefield stare at me in silent horror and disbelief, sharing looks now and again as though they aren’t certain what to make of this.
After I’ve finished speaking, James chimes in, “We were hoping someone would be able to recognise the woman based on her description.”
I glance over to where he’s leaned against the doorway with his arms across his chest. He’s not even bothered to button up his shirt, and were we alone, I’d be inclined to pause and admire the lovely line of exposed skin.
Wakefield looks to James, seeming to take in the wounds on his face, as well. “What did she look like?”
“Small,” I say. “Your daughter’s height, perhaps. It was difficult to tell. Long, blonde hair.” I couldn’t tell him the colour of her eyes, seeing as she looked half-dead, clouded irises and all.
Wakefield’s brows furrow. “I mean, that could be any number of women, really.”
“Given that she was in a nightgown, I suspect she was a local girl not terribly far from home. Know of anyone who’s been acting odd as of late?”
Foss shakes his head. “You said she ran off. Did she leave footprints? Could we attempt to track her?”
“That was our next plan. We were just waiting for daylight,” James says as I rise from my chair. “Which we have in abundance now. If it didn’t snow too heavily in the night, we ought to be able to follow her tracks.”
I step back into the bedroom to slip into a fresh shirt. The collar rubs stiffly against my damaged throat and I wince, deciding to forego my usual tie. I pull on my coat and toss James’ to him before heading for the door.
It doesn’t appear to have snowed much or at all, so the tracks are still prominent leading away from the farm. James shrugs into his jacket and off he goes, leaving me to fall into step alongside him and with Lord Wakefield and his assistant at our backs.
It’s early enough that the sun is still low in the sky. Honestly, I’m surprised Lord Wakefield is even up at such an hour, though by the way he’s yawning, it’s clear he’d rather not be. Early or not, it’s for the best that we be on this trail before something can disturb it.
The trees stand far enough apart that traversing the forest is not particularly difficult. I lose track of how long we walk. The prints, which began further apart as the girl ran, begin to close in distance, signifying when her gait slowed. It’s only then that the blood becomes noticeable against the forest floor.
I’m so focused on those details and studying the prints that I damned near trip over the body.
James grabs my shoulder to steady me as I suck in a breath. We find ourselves staring at the woman lying face-down and motionless in a stain of red snow, her head angled toward us. Any doubts I may have harboured about what we saw last night being human are certainly dashed now. I needn’t even go to her to see if she’s breathing. Her eyes possess the glazed look of a corpse, and she’s been here long enough that ice has begun to crystalize on her skin, glittering in her long lashes. The knife that was embedded in her throat when she fled is gone, which would explain the blood. Either it dislodged during her escape, or she extracted it herself.
Foss and Wakefield catch up to us, slightly winded from our trek.
“What is—oh, oh my goodness.” Wakefield halts beside me. Foss hesitates, but crouches beside the girl, grimacing as he touches her shoulder to roll her onto her side so we might get a better look at her face.
I’m attempting to work through this in my head. She was alive last night. I felt her. Her skin was warm—too warm—and she was breathing. A living, breathing human being. Now she’s dead and that is…
My fault. I’m the one who stabbed her.
I have never killed anyone before.
A small favour that my stomach is empty, else I fear I might lose my breakfast. As it is, I have to take a step back and turn slightly away. James keeps his hand on my shoulder, squeezing, studying my face, and I suspect he knows exactly what is going through my head.
“Isn’t this… Isn’t this Madeline?” Foss says to his employer. “Phineas’ girl?”
Wakefield frowns, but he appears reluctant to get too close for a better look. “Now that you mention it, it might very well be.”
“Who is that?” James asks.
Foss says, “Phineas Edison. Lives not far off from the church. His girl went missing a while ago.”
I push a hand through my hair and force myself to turn back to the conversation, although I attempt to keep my eyes off the girl. Madeline. “A girl was missing? That would have been helpful to know when we asked if anyone was acting odd.”
Foss shakes his head. “It was three, maybe four months ago. Her family thought she’d run off with a boy from another family.”
“So, two people went missing?”
“Together, yes. Young lovers run off together all the time when their families don’t approve. He was of a much higher station than she. No one thought much of it.”
A frown pulls at James’ features. “Who was the other?”
“Abraham Fletcher,” Wakefield says.
“Sounds like we need to be looking for him, then.”
Wakefield folds his arms across his chest. “To what end? We know now that this girl is responsible for the death of the Brewers, yes? If she’s a murderer, then it’s likely she ended that poor boy, too.”
James gives him a sideways glance. “Forgive me, but somehow I doubt a woman of that stature could have slaughtered an entire family on her own.”
“By the sounds of it,” Foss interjects, “she was in possession of some impressive strength and did not even respond to being stabbed.” He looks to me as he says this. “If she caught Mr. Brewer unaware, then the children and Mrs. Brewer would have been easy targets.”
That is true, I’ll grudgingly admit. But it still doesn’t sit right with me. I cross my arms, huffing and looking to James. “We’ll not sort any of this out standing here. We should have Miss Madeline here transported to the undertaker, see if we can’t better tie her to the victims.”
James purses his lips, still looking as though he wants to argue his point, but— “Yes, that would be for the best.”
Foss waits with the body while the rest of us return to the farm and the driver. The next few hours tick by at a snail’s pace; the police are summoned, which takes time, and James and I are questioned extensively to recount the attack of the previous night. Having to divulge our purpose for being at the Brewers’ in the first place gets us several long, unimpressed looks…and a few uneasy ones. That’s how you tell the believers from the non-believers, I suppose.
The part I prefer not to be present for is when the Edisons arrive to identify the body of their daughter, and thus I duck back into the farmhouse. I’ve no words of comfort to offer these strangers, but the sound of Mrs. Edison’s wailing from outside near the road confirms well enough that the girl is—was—the missing Madeline.
And she’s dead now because of me.
Exhaustion is settling in fast. We’ve not eaten, and it’s still early in the day but I’m already feeling exponentially worn do
wn and irritable. I press my fingers against my eyes.
“Let’s follow the police into town,” I say to James. “The undertaker is still in possession of the Brewers’ corpses. We ought to see if they’ll let us in. Any thoughts on this newest development?”
James has seated himself at the table and is watching me worriedly. “I don’t think Madeline is the one who did this. Or, if she did, she was not acting alone. She was too wild to be focused enough to overcome an entire family.”
“I agree. I think Wakefield is eager to lay the blame and call it done to bring closure to the community. Do you suppose that boy could have been her accomplice rather than her victim?”
He shrugs. “Anything is possible. I would like to speak to his family and hers. Try to get a feel for what kind of people they were, what they grew up in.”
I sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose. Our line of work is not to follow leads to solve a murder mystery. However, I promised a week’s worth of work, and I’ll not back out of that now. I know what I saw, and what I saw was a living, breathing woman with the eyes of the dead.
Madeline’s parents are still outside, but rather inconsolable at the moment. It might benefit everyone involved to give them some time before questioning them. “Very well.”
The front door opens, and Foss pokes his head in. “The police are about to leave if you’ve any further questions.”
Lord, I’ve the worst beginnings of a headache building behind my eyes. “No, but if Lord Wakefield doesn’t mind, we’d appreciate the use of a carriage and a driver.”
In short order, we’re bound for town, following behind the wagon transporting Madeline Edison’s body to the mortuary. It’s going to be a bit of a drive, I’m restless and anxious, and the best cure for that just might be laying my head on James’ shoulder and trying to sleep through it. James touches my cheek briefly and remains silent to allow me to rest, yet I sense his unease. The few times I steal looks up at him, he’s gazing out the window, brows knitted together as though he’s puzzling over something.