House of Salt and Sorrows(92)

Kosamaras laughed in delight. “Now you’re putting it together!” She turned back to Cassius. “You know, I must give credit where it’s due. Your little sweetheart was much harder to beguile than most of her sisters. The boy had to slip her something every time, just to knock her out enough to dream. Wine, tea, champagne, whatever.” She shifted her attention to me again. “But I always got you dancing in the end.”

“You had Fisher drug me?”

She slapped my cheek to the side and drifted over toward the beacon, like a moth to a flame. “Him?” she asked, turning back to the pile of Fisher. “It’s never been him. Not truly. He’s been a moldering sack of meat for weeks. I”—she drew out the word with preening importance—“controlled everything.”

“That’s not possible. I saw him alive just—”

“You saw what I wanted you to see!” she snapped, every trace of mirth gone from her voice. Around her eyes, dark webs of spider veins throbbed with rage, and a fresh wave of tears cascaded down her cheeks, dripping to the floor with abandon. “Everything you’ve seen, everything you’ve done, has been what I wanted you to.” Her eyes flickered across Cassius. “Well, nearly everything.”

A bolt of lightning danced by Old Maude, striking the cliffs far below us. I wanted to cry. The storm was here, and we were trapped on Hesperus until it let up.

“So you sent the girls dancing,” Cassius said. If he’d noticed the lightning, his voice did not betray him.

I spotted the dagger still in his hand, limp at his side, and briefly entertained the thought of stealing it to plunge into her chest. But a little bit of steel wouldn’t even scratch an immortal and I shuddered to think what she would do to me if angry.

“It’s quite an impressive beguiling, very elaborate, I’m sure. But I don’t understand your endgame. Why send them off to dance in extravagant castles in pretty dresses? It hardly seems your style.”

Kosamaras stepped over Fisher’s ankle to stare out the window. She tapped on it once, leaving a bloody smudge across the glass. “I see what you’re doing, nephew—cajoling me into telling you more than I should.” She shrugged. “It’s not as if anyone’s going to believe either of you, though, is it? Not with me in their minds.” She hummed a pretty waltz, dancing around pieces of Fisher. “I admit, the complexity was part of the appeal. Controlling the visions of eight girls at once, with none of them the wiser…it was a challenge I couldn’t pass up. And they were all so moony and swoony. It seemed the perfect theme. I lured them in with baubles and brilliance, then let their own madness take over.”

Another strobe of lightning briefly lit the sky, far brighter than Old Maude’s beam.

“Two already danced themselves to death,” she continued, her voice swelling with pride. “Straight out into the cold like lunatics, spinning around and around until they froze into blocks of ice.” She whirled back to us. “And this one—she’s close, so close, Cassius. I wouldn’t be surprised if she takes her own life any day now. You can’t have nightmares like mine every night and not break. You should have seen the way I made her squirm. Did you like the turtle, Thaumas girl? I made it especially for you.”

“What turtle?” Cassius asked, turning back to look at me. His eyes were heavy with worry.

“You killed Rosalie and Ligeia,” I murmured, ignoring him as I remembered that horrible day, running through the forest, so hopeful that we’d find them alive. “The third set of footprints in the snow was yours.”

“His, technically,” Kosamaras said, pointing down at Fisher. “I’ve been inside him for a very long time.”

There were so many thoughts swirling in my mind, gaining speed as they flew in and out of focus, demanding attention. But they all snapped to silence at her words. “How long?” I demanded, my voice so much stronger than I felt. “How long have you been doing this to us?”

“Annaleigh,” Cassius cautioned, reaching out to stop me.

“No, I have a right to know. You said you make us see things—was that what Elizabeth saw? We all thought she had a touch of madness in her—was it you all along? Did you use Fisher to push Eulalie from the cliff? Octavia from the ladder? When did he stop being my friend and become whatever that was?” I pointed to the festering pile of body parts. “How many of my sisters are dead because of you?”

“You mortals are all so ridiculous, trumped up and puffed out with your petty importance. Who are you to question me?”

“Tell me!”

Her eyes narrowed, still and contemplative, before bursting into a skittering, jittery blur. She was on me in an instant, mottled thighs straddling my chest. Her knees pressed into my collarbone, cutting off my air supply. Though she was smaller than me, her weight was crushing, pressing me into the wooden floor until I thought my bones might shatter. As she leaned in, two giant moths—just like the ones I’d seen that night in the gallery—crept out from her hairline. They crawled over her forehead before reaching out with hooked feet to latch on to my hair. Moldering wings brushed against me, and I felt one’s spiral tongue uncoil, licking at my cheek.

“Just two,” she hissed. “For now.” She snorted in amusement. “Plus the little clockmaker.”