Gallant(52)

Only she didn’t break for the door, didn’t run.

Instead, she held her breath and moved through the dark, slow as a shadow sliding over the wooden floor. And Agatha never even noticed.

That is how she moves through the garden now.

She passes the roses she touched the night before. Surrounded by dead limbs, that single plant blooms, petals blue-black beneath a blanket of silver light. Something sings beneath her skin at the sight of it, the urge to reach out again, to run her hands over the other wilted things. How many could she revive? It hurt, a little, that prickle, that chill, but it was wondrous, too. How let down she’d been in the other garden, when nothing rose to meet her touch.

Go on, says a voice in her head, but there is something strange about it, as if the thought is not quite hers. She forces her hands into fists and keeps walking.

Ahead, the house draws her eye like a candle in the dark, like a ghoul in the corner of a garden shed, and she has to stifle the urge to look, keeping her attention instead on the tangled stretch that curls around the side of the estate.

In the dark, the dead limbs and twisted husks make shadows everywhere. Nothing moves, and everything seems to move at once. The ground is uneven, old roots pushing up, thorny weeds sprawling, as if they’d had one last, riotous bloom, spilling over their banks before losing their hold on life. It would be so easy to snag on a sharp branch or fall, and she is sure that if she cuts herself, the ground will know. The thing in the house will know. If it does not already.

So Olivia steps carefully, trying to summon a patience she has never had as she moves in the shadow of the house that is not Gallant, to the front drive.

And the fountain.

No moon, but silver light still falls on the statue rising at its center.

The woman looms, dress chipped and arm broken, the basin hidden from view.

Olivia draws Edgar’s knife and scans the drive, so exposed compared to the garden. No cover, nothing but the bare stretch of gravel. Her eyes flick to the front steps. Empty. The front doors. Closed. No sign of the three soldiers in their glinting armor.

No sense in waiting. She darts forward, the gravel shouting under her shoes, too loud, too loud, as she races to the fountain, hoping to reach the stone lip and see Thomas curled in the bottom, and—

The fountain is empty.

Nothing but cracked stone and several threads of ivy, the same ivy that was wrapped around his wrists, now broken and cast off on the basin floor.

Olivia hisses through her teeth. She knew it wouldn’t be that easy.

She turns, expecting an ambush.

But all around her, the grounds are still.

The shadows do not move.

She puts away the knife, takes a step toward the house beyond the wall. Then stops.

There’s a difference, after all, between walking into a trap and slipping between its teeth, storming through and skirting the edges. She creeps to the door on the side of the house, the one that leads in to the kitchen. Hovers, breath held, listening for sounds of life or motion.

The door whispers open, but in the heavy silence of this place, the whisper might as well be a whistle.

Olivia jumps back, pressing herself into the cool stone side of the house. She waits for the sound of boots, waits for the soldiers, for the master of the house. She waits until the silence settles like a sheet, until the world falls still around her. And then she steels herself and steps inside.





Chapter Twenty-Five




Olivia tells herself it is a game.

Like hide and seek. Like tag. The kinds of games the girls played back at Merilance, after the lights went out. Games Olivia always watched, but was never called to join, because she was too good at hiding, because she was no fun to find, since she never yelped or laughed or screamed.

It is just a game, she thinks as she creeps through the kitchen. The floor tiles are cracked and broken, but she does her best to move with quick and silent steps, past the empty cabinets and the barren shelves, the apple still sitting, shrunken, on the counter. She peers into the darkened hall.

Where are you? she wonders, trying to keep her thoughts as quiet as her feet.

Something moves behind her, and she spins, heart lunging up into her throat. But it’s just a ghoul. The ruined echo of a young man, details drawing together and crumbling apart. She sees the slope of its shoulders, and the shape of its eyes, deep-set and dark in that familiar way.

The Priors all fought . . . they forced the creature back beyond the wall. . . .

And they never came home. The door was sealed. Their lives, a forfeit in the fight. The ghouls here, all Priors who died to keep the darkness in its cage.

Olivia begins to sign, then stops, remembering there is no need.

The ghouls can hear her.

Where is the boy? she asks, waiting for the ghoul to gesture to a room, a door, to show her which way to go. But it only shakes its head, and there is something in the rapid side to side, not a refusal so much as a plea.

Do not look, it seems to say.

But Olivia has no choice.

Answer me, she thinks, trying to make the thought an order. Where is Thomas Prior?

But the ghoul will not say. It shakes its head again, hand drawing through the air.

You must go.

But she can’t. She can’t go back without the boy. She can’t see the look on Matthew’s face. Can’t let her family down.

She leaves the kitchen and the ghoul behind, stepping through into the hall. The floorboards warp and sag and splinter. The air tastes like dust. The hall branches, some doors open, and others closed. The house is too large. He could be anywhere.