Give the Dark My Love(84)

And, one by one, they stood.





FIFTY-FIVE


    Nedra



The faces of the dead tipped to me.

I could sense each person—dimmer now than when I’d held their souls—and I knew them. I understood their thoughts. Their feelings. There was sadness within them, but also hope. And I knew that hope came from me.

There were three who remained dead. They were the souls that had shrunk away from me. They had not wanted a second life, so I had not given it to them.

But twenty-seven others watched.

It wasn’t a true life.

But it was enough.

Ernesta. I turned on my heel and darted back onto the landing. The shell of my sister stood there. I reached for her unwittingly with my ghost arm, stroking her cheek, and her head tilted into my touch as if she could feel the hand that wasn’t there.

“Follow me,” I said, intending to drag her to the stairs if I needed to. But she moved at my command without my touch, followed me as I raced down the spiral staircase, the only sound throughout the entire hospital our clattering footsteps.

I reached Ronan first. “Did you see her?” I asked, shoving Ernesta toward him. “Wherever you were . . . ?” My voice trailed off.

He shook his head. “No.” And because he could sense my sorrow, he added, “I’m sorry.”

Something shifted in my vision. There was a glimmer of gold inside the boy, shining through his eyes.

“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” he said, standing up on his disease-withered leg. “In fact,” he said in a slower voice. “I don’t feel . . . anything.”

“But you can talk. You can think?”

He nodded.

But Ernesta couldn’t. I scrutinized her, trying to figure out why she was different.

Other revenants drew closer. “Did any of you see my sister? In the other place?” I asked desperately.

They all shook their heads, but there was some hesitation within them. “What?” I asked. “What is it?”

A woman stood from the crowd. I had not known her before, but I knew her now—her name, Phee, her three small children, who all died before her, her husband, who killed himself when he saw her blackening hand. She pointed now with her withered fingers. At the crucible I still held.

“She’s there,” Phee said.

My eyes darted between the revenants, the crucible, and my sister.

The golden glow. It wasn’t in Nessie’s eyes. When I’d tried to raise her, the light didn’t sink back into her body. It melted into the iron crucible.

I dropped to my knees, the crucible in my hand. Now that I knew what I was looking for, I could feel it, sense it within the metal. I had given my twin her body back, but I had trapped her soul.

Surely I can get it out. I have to get it out.

I concentrated, forcing my eyes to focus on the unnatural light. It wisped around the edge of the metal. Almost . . . almost . . .

The light slipped through my fingers, snapping back to the crucible. At the same time, the revenants around me screamed as if they were experiencing agony no human should ever feel. They dropped to the ground, their bodies writhing.

“What’s wrong?” I gasped, moving to Ronan.

“I don’t know,” he choked out. “But please, stop whatever you’re doing. It hurts.”

“There has to be another way,” I mumbled, standing.

But I could sense the answer from them all. Their souls had passed through the iron crucible. They had felt her the way I felt them.

And they knew she was past the point of saving.



* * *



? ? ?

The dead did not sleep. But I was not afforded the same luxury. It felt creepy to claim a former hospital room as my own, so I set up a little nest of blankets and pillows in the tower and let the dark, dreamless night engulf me, my heart keeping steady pace with the ticking clock. Ernesta sat in the center of the floor, unmoving.

When my eyes opened the next morning, I was immediately aware of all my revenants.

Someone’s coming, they told me.

I walked out onto the balcony in front of the clock. The sun was rising over the bay, the water so bright that it was at first hard to see the boat that drew closer to the stone steps leading to the hospital.

I took the stairs two at a time as I raced down. My revenants were all waiting for me, save Ernesta, who I left in the tower.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“My father.” Ronan stepped forward. “And others.”

My mind flashed to Dannix’s anger when he’d assaulted me after his wife’s death. What would he try to do to me when he saw his child turned into a revenant?

As one, my revenants looked to the door. I knew—because they knew—that the boat had arrived. I mentally ordered the others to stay in the foyer as I strode to the door and stepped into the morning light.

Five men and three women were making their way up the stone stairs. They stopped short when they saw me.

“What are you doing here?” I called down to them.

One of the men—Dannix—broke into a run. He stumbled up the last steps. He looked far wearier than when I’d last seen him, his face pulled tight with stress, his eyes rimmed in red. “You,” he said, recognition dawning. “Did you come to help—?” He choked over his own words, unable to continue, then turned and shouted to the others, “She’s an alchemist!”