Belladonna (Belladonna #1)(73)
Signa set the envelope down upon her vanity. “And Mr. Hawthorne… he treats you well?”
With a smile, Marjorie stood. “Very well indeed, Miss Farrow, but enough about me. Have you made your decision?”
Signa returned her attention to the mirror, inspecting the glossiness of her hair and the fullness of her cheeks. Her time at Thorn Grove was doing her well, and there were more important things than to jeopardize it over a handsome face. And so she smiled up at Marjorie’s reflection and said, “Tell Lord Wakefield that I’ll see him Christmas Eve, for the masquerade ball.”
THIRTY-ONE
A DAYTIME JOURNEY TO THE LIBRARY WAS FAR LESS EERIE THAN HER visit with Sylas had been two nights prior.
Signa took the stairs two at a time, easing the double oak doors open as to not frighten Thaddeus in the event that he was reading. “Thaddeus?” she called as she swung the doors open. “Sorry for interrupting. I wanted to thank you for your help—”
Her stomach lurched at the immediate sight of smoke. Clutching her skirts, she ran toward it. Thaddeus stood outside the row of shelves she and Sylas had been searching through. Handfuls of books lay scattered upon the floor, burning. It was a fresh fire, and if the flames weren’t put out soon, it might gain enough momentum to burn all of Thorn Grove. “Who did this?” Thaddeus didn’t answer. He watched his beloved books burn to cinders, flames reflected in his hollow, bespectacled eyes.
Signa wrapped her arms around her waist, hugging herself. This was her fault. Just two nights before she’d stood there, smiling and laughing and thrilled that she’d finally found a way to help her cousin. Someone hadn’t liked that. Someone, it seemed, didn’t want to give her the chance to find anything more.
She needed to fetch some water, or get help, or do something. If they put the fire out now, they could preserve most of the books. They could preserve the library.
Yet the moment Signa turned to run, the library doors slammed shut. Panic rose like bile in her throat as Thaddeus spun toward her. There was no warmth in his eyes. None of the smiles or kindness that there’d been before. His movements were jerky and his eyes like weapons; he appeared every bit as volatile as Lillian had been the night in the garden.
“Thaddeus, help,” she pleaded, voice raw and scratchy in the growing smoke. “We can stop this fire from spreading any farther, but you have to let me go.”
His expression remained hollow, untouched by her words as he stalked toward her.
Signa pressed her trembling hands against her sides to steady herself. “Thaddeus—”
He lunged, moving not toward her body but into it. A cold sharper than anything she’d ever felt numbed her limbs, freezing in the same way it did when Death touched her. And yet this did not feel remotely similar, for there was no power waiting for her. No connection to the world or her abilities as a reaper. There was nothing but ice.
She tried to blink eyelids that wouldn’t shut. To move fingers that wouldn’t close and feet that wouldn’t walk. She couldn’t so much as tremble, and she realized—distantly, for even her thoughts were beginning to haze at the edges—what this was.
Death had warned her that a spirit had the power to possess a person, though she’d never anticipated it happening to her.
The spirit was taking control of every inch of her, seizing hold of her body and even her mind, for her thoughts were now as wild and chaotic as his. His desires became her own.
Thaddeus wanted to toss more books into the fire and let Thorn Grove be consumed. But there was a part of him, too, that recognized help was available. That if they put out the fire now, everything needn’t be lost. It was that hesitation—that tiny inkling stirring within him—that Signa clung to. It was the only hope, and so she tried to push on that thought. Tried to bring it to the forefront of their shared mind and unravel it ever so slowly, drawing him in.
She pushed and pushed, feeling like she was being sucked deeper into his rage by the moment.
She couldn’t tell her thoughts from his when the library doors burst open and the world around them plummeted into a more familiar cold.
Signa had never been so happy to feel Death’s arrival. To see his shadows slinking from the wall, pooling into a form that stood before her. Only faintly did she register that he was holding his hand out for her.
No. Not for her but for Thaddeus.
“Let the girl go.” There was not a single note of gentleness in his voice. When Thaddeus didn’t automatically respond, Death spoke again, low and vicious and seething. “Let. Her. Go.”
And finally, he did.
Signa fell to her knees, trembling and so unnaturally chilled that she had half a mind to step into the fire.
Thaddeus paced before Death, a hint of light returning to his eyes. “They came so fast. So fast, I couldn’t do anything to stop them.”
It was Death who asked, for Signa’s lips could not form the words: “Who couldn’t you stop?”
Thaddeus flinched. He picked a book up from the table and then dropped it again, over and over. “I was reading. I was reading, and I did not see. They came so fast. I was reading. I was reading, and I did not see.”
The fire was spreading. There was no time for Signa to let herself tremble. No time to succumb to the numbness of her body. She took a shaky step, the shadows helping steady her. Then another, and another, until they retreated to Death’s side and she was starting toward the door as quickly as her body could manage.