House of Salt and Sorrows(76)

Bursting through the ferns onto the tiled area by the pond, I grabbed a little metal table and wielded it between us.

“Stay away from me! I know what you did.”

Even as I hurled the accusation at him, I knew I wasn’t making sense. Poisoned? How? When? But what else could explain my disoriented state?

Cassius’s eyes were wild with confusion, and he held his hands up, presumably to show he meant no harm. “What I did? Annaleigh—I’ve done nothing!”

“Then why are my sisters dead?”

Once the words were out, they couldn’t be taken back. They cut through the air, sharper than a serrated blade, slicing deeper still.

I’d never forget the look of horror on Cassius’s face.

“You think I killed your sisters?” He let out a short, dry laugh.

“Someone did. Someone on the island.”

His jaw clenched. “So you assumed it was me, the outsider.”

He turned to go, and a cold wave of dismay crashed over me. Why was he leaving? A killer wouldn’t walk away from a witness. A killer would make certain they were silenced. His retreating footsteps hammered doubt after doubt into my heart.

Had I been wrong again?

“You knew my sisters’ names!” I shouted after him.

Cassius whirled around, wounded outrage constricting his face. “What is going on, Annaleigh? Is it your head? When you fell?”

“Ava and Eulalie. Octavia and Elizabeth. I never told you their names. You knew them in the portrait.”

“And this makes me a murderer?”

“It doesn’t make you look good. And there are other things…. Verity never told you about the sea turtles,” I guessed, grasping.

“She didn’t, but…” He blanched, losing his composure for just a moment, but I saw it.

“How long have you been watching my family?”

The table clattered from my hands as a fresh horror swept in, spreading across my mind like a red tide, poisoning everything it touched.

“Eulalie wasn’t the first, was she?” My lips trembled. “Elizabeth didn’t kill herself. And Octavia didn’t fall.” A sob burst from my chest. “You’ve been behind all their deaths.”

I fell to my knees, the room shrinking around me. My head spun in dark chaos, throbbing with terror. A low hum, similar to the noise Ligeia’s and Rosalie’s ghosts had made, buzzed from the corners of the solarium. I shriveled against it, pressing my hands over my ears, but nothing could muffle the roar. It grew louder and louder, and I cried out, screaming against the chaos. I was certain my eardrums would burst.

And then it was suddenly gone, and the only noise I heard was Cassius’s footsteps as he approached me.

“Get up.”

I remained where I was, wishing the ground would swallow me whole.

“Annaleigh,” he warned.

Certain I was about to take my life’s final breaths, I rose to my knees, shivering before him.

“You honestly believe I killed your sisters?” His eyes roamed over me, his disappointment a tangible weight.

The pressure in my head tightened, like a fist clenching around my brain, knuckles unmercifully white. I turned to the side, retching. Cassius was immediately at my side, supporting my frame, holding back my hair. He murmured meaningless noises of assurance, his fingers tracing soothing patterns across my back as I threw up. When I dared to meet his gaze, it was as though I’d been lost on the water in a soupy fog, unsure of which way I was heading, before a swift wind picked up, revealing the shoreline had been in front of me all along.

As clarity rushed over me, my confusion turned to horror. What had I done?

“Cassius, I’m so sorry. I don’t…I don’t know what’s happening to me.” I wiped my mouth, wishing for water.

“It could be a concussion,” he muttered, probing the growing knot at the back of my head. “Let me see your hands.”

With far more tenderness than I deserved, he took them, examining the sides, swollen and split, the nails broken from trying to pry the doorframe free.

“What caused this?”

“I…I thought I’d been locked in.”

I could see in his eyes he didn’t believe me.

“And you couldn’t wait until someone came for help?”

We were much too close to one another. Color stained my cheeks and chest, and I looked down, ashamed to meet his eyes. “I saw my sisters.”

“Camille and Lenore locked you in here?”

I shook my head.

He frowned. “The little ones?”

Another shake.

“Oh.”

The jagged ends of my fingernails dug deep into the palm of my hand. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

He paused for such a long moment, I worried he thought me mad, but he nodded. “I do. We need to do something about your hands.”

“My hands?” I echoed. My hands were the least of my problems.

But Cassius drew me from the solarium and down the hall before I could protest. The sconces were unlit; the corridor was silent. It felt as if we were the only two people awake in the house, in Salann, in the whole of Arcannia.

“Hanna keeps a little box of gauze and ointments in a kit in the laundry room,” I offered, but he walked past the hall without pause. “Where are we going?”