House of Salt and Sorrows(21)

I flipped the pages, searching for whatever proof she thought these drawings would offer.

“What am I meant to be looking at?”

She flipped to a scene in black and gray pastels. In it, Verity cowered into her pillows as a shadowy Eulalie ripped the bedsheets from her. Her head was snapped back unnaturally far. I couldn’t tell whether she was supposed to be laughing manically or the odd angle was the result of her fall from the cliffs.

I drew a sharp breath, horrified. “You drew this?”

She nodded.

I studied my little sister. “When the fishermen brought Eulalie back, did you see her?”

“No.” She flipped the page. A chalk-white Elizabeth floated in a red slash of ink, surprising a robed Verity, ready for her nightly bath.

She turned another page. Octavia curled up in a library chair, seemingly unaware that half her face was smashed in and her arm was too broken to hold a book straight. Verity was there too, peeking around the door, a small, scared silhouette.

Another page flipped.

I took the book from her, staring at Ava. We had only one portrait of her hanging in Highmoor. She’d been little—nine years old with short curls and freckles. This…this looked nothing like that.

“You’re not old enough to remember Ava,” I murmured, unable to look away from the festering buboes or black patches of infected skin at her neck. Most disturbing was her smile. It was soft and full, exactly as it had been before the plague. Verity had been only two when Ava got sick. She couldn’t know what Ava ever looked like.

I turned the page and saw a drawing of all four of them, watching Verity as she slept, hanging from nooses. In disgust, I dropped the book, and sheets of loose paper—dozens of sketches of my sisters—escaped. They exploded across the hall like macabre confetti. In the pictures, they were doing things, ordinary things, things I’d seen them do all my life, but in every drawing they were unmistakably and horribly dead.

“When did you do these?”

Verity shrugged. “Whenever I saw them.”

“Why?” I dared a glance back into the seemingly empty room. “Is Elizabeth here now?”

Verity scanned the room before looking back at me. “Do you see her?”

The hairs on my arms rose. “I’ve never seen any of them.”

She took the book and retreated into her bedroom. “Well…now you’ll know to look.”





“It was Ava, I’d swear on Pontus’s trident.”

Hanna heaved a basket of violet ranunculus up onto a side table. Her full cheeks were as flushed as rosy apples. Even she had been enlisted as an extra set of hands today. “You’re telling me Verity sees ghosts? Of your sisters?”

I’d been trailing Hanna around the dining room, telling her the horrors I’d found in Verity’s book. The day of the triplets’ ball had dawned gray and overcast. A thick, soupy fog blanketed the island. Even though it was well after noon, the gaslights burned brightly, illuminating the army of workers bustling about with final tasks before the guests arrived.

“Yes.” I didn’t want to believe it was possible, but the detail with which Verity drew Ava shook me to my core.

“These are to be added into the foyer’s bower,” Hanna instructed two men on a ladder.

They were adding drops of purple cut glass to the chandelier as footmen worked around them, putting the last touches on place settings. Alongside the silver-trimmed plates, dozens of mercury glass candelabras covered the banquet table; as the dinner wore on, their trick tapers would drip purple wax over the glass, delighting the guests. I dropped my basket of the ghoulish candles onto a chair where Roland indicated they should go.

“Ghosts don’t exist. Your sisters are in their eternal rest, deep in the Salt. They wouldn’t be here. Verity’s imagination runs wild. You know that.”

My heart sank. Camille had had a similar reaction when I told her about the pictures last night. She’d then kicked me out of her room, saying she needed a good rest before the party. She’d shut the door without even offering me a candle, forcing me to race down the darkened hallway, certain Elizabeth was going to come out of her room and grab me.

Hanna headed to the solarium at the back of the house. “The girls said they want at least a hundred votives in here,” she instructed the servants hidden beneath towering palms and exotic orchids. “Be sure to space them out evenly, and for Pontus’s sake, don’t set them too close to the plants! The last thing we need tonight is a fire.” She turned back into the hallway, running into me. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” she asked, exasperated.

“I know you’re busy, but listen, please. Verity didn’t know what Ava looked like. She was so little when she died.”

Hanna grabbed my shoulders, drawing me in, face to face. “You all look alike, love. A painting of any of your sisters in black and white could be mistaken for you. I think you’re seeing what you want to.”

My mouth fell open, hurt. “Why would I want to see that? They looked so horrible.” A shudder of revulsion swept over me as I remembered the awful angles of their bodies. “And she didn’t know Eulalie broke her neck.”

“The girl fell a hundred feet from the cliff walk. What else would her neck have done?”

A crash sounded in the kitchens, and Hanna used the moment to push me aside. “Annaleigh, child, you’re about to drive me batty. I can’t remember whether I’m supposed to be polishing the bedclothes or folding the silver. And Fisher is due any moment. You have plenty of preparations for yourself upstairs. We’ll talk about Verity later, I promise. Just please get out from underfoot.”