House of Salt and Sorrows(87)

I drifted toward the doorway, wanting to keep an eye on Verity but also hating to miss what the commotion was. I heard Papa’s muttered curses mingled with the thud of his feet in the stairwell.

“Papa?” I called down the long hallway. “What’s going on?”

“And you’ve woken everyone in the house!” he chided Roland. They were both still dressed in bedclothes. “Go back to sleep, child. It’s only a messenger.”

A messenger in the dead of night?

I threw a glance over my shoulder to Verity, still peacefully slumbering. Dimming the sconces—I didn’t want her to wake in total darkness—I dashed out of the room, bolting past my sisters’ doors. If they were still twisting and twirling with their phantom partners, I did not want to know.

By the time I arrived in the foyer, a crowd of cooks and footmen, maids and groomsmen, had gathered. They circled around a ragged-looking sailor. He was soaked to the bone, with a wool blanket thrown over his shoulders. Still, he shook, nearly frozen from the cold night. He frantically searched the room until he spotted my father.

“My lord!” the sailor cried. “I bring awful news. There’s been a shipwreck just off the northern coast of Hesperus. Many have died. They’re trying to salvage the cargo, but the clipper is taking on water fast. We need help.”

Papa stepped forward as those gathered gasped at the news. “Why have you wasted all this time coming here? Silas needs to light the distress beacon. Men from Selkirk and Astrea will come to your aid.”

“We tried Hesperus first, my lord, but something is wrong there. That’s why the clipper ran aground. The light was out. Old Maude has gone dark!”





“Our first priority is getting to the wreck,” Papa said, pacing in front of the large fireplace in his study. Above the mantel hung our family crest. The eyes of the Thaumas octopus glittered in the candlelight, as if it were amused by our predicament.

Cassius, Roland, the sailor, and I perched on chairs scattered about the room. Large maps and ocean charts, held in place at the corners with anchor-shaped paperweights, covered Papa’s desk.

“We need to save whatever lives—and cargo—we can.” Papa nodded to Roland. “Wake every able-bodied man we have, and set sail for the Rusalka immediately.” He peered out the window behind the desk, studying the weather vane attached to the lower gable. “The winds are in our favor, at least.” He tapped the map where the sailor said the ship had struck rocks. “If they hold up, you should be able to reach it in two hours’ time.”

Roland was gone with a click of his heels, taking the sailor with him.

“Papa, what about Old Maude?” I asked. “Shouldn’t we send someone to check on Silas? I can’t remember the light ever going out before.”

He sank into his chair, staring into the crackling flames as he rubbed at the circles under his eyes. “I just don’t understand what is happening. First Eulalie, then the girls. Now this. It’s almost as if…” He shook his head, clearing away his dark thoughts. He looked at me in confusion, as if truly seeing me for the first time that night. “What are you wearing, Annaleigh?”

“I…” I trailed off, unable to truly answer.

He waved it aside. “It doesn’t matter. Old Maude needs to be relit. I’ll wake Fisher. He needs to return and get the light back up and running.”

My mind wandered upstairs to my sisters’ rooms. Fisher had been at the ball with us. Would we find him dancing about his room as well?

“Papa—there’s something else I need to tell you,” I began, but Cassius shifted his head, warning me to stop.

“You have so much on your plate right now, sir,” Cassius said. “Let me go and wake him.”

“That would be very kind of you. I really ought to check on Morella. She was in such a tizzy when Roland woke us. Thank you both.”

I watched him head toward the foyer, his shoulders hunched with too much weight.

“Where’s Fisher’s room?” Cassius asked, drawing me to the task at hand.

“On the second floor, just above the kitchens on the servants’ side.”

We hurried up the stairs, moving aside as Roland clattered down the steps past us, a group of sleepy-eyed footmen following after him.

“You said he was at the ball with you?”

I nodded, leading him down the dimly lit hall. The walls were stark white, the doors plain with brass handles. I’d been to Fisher’s room once, when we were children. Hanna had boxed his ears when she found out. “Is he going to be like Camille and the others?”

“I don’t know,” Cassius answered. “I honestly don’t know what to expect from this night.”

“Was I like…that?” I asked, stopping outside Fisher’s room. I did not want to imagine myself spinning about and contorting into the poses I’d seen my sisters perform. That the Weeping Woman might have somehow forced me to made me want to cry.

“You were,” he confirmed quietly. “I thought it was some horrible prank, but you went through a beam of moonlight and I saw your face….”

“Were my eyes all black?” I asked. My voice felt impossibly small and tight.

“It might have been a trick of the shadows…but it was awful, Annaleigh. It was like you were just…gone. I was so scared I’d lost you somehow.”