Something Strange and Deadly (Something Strange and Deadly #1)(91)

What had Elijah said to the Hungry? Dormi. Sleep.

“Go back,” I sang. “Go back to your realm, and sleep.”

The line grew taut and then broke in the middle. Like a fuse, it shortened in both directions. It shivered and shrank; and when it reached the corpse, the final drops of energy disappeared.

I moved to the next corpse and repeated the technique. After ten or so, the process grew easier. After thirty, I was adept enough to do more than one at a time. How the dickens Joseph could do all of them at once was unfathomable to me, but my method worked, so I kept going.

When the last corpse was sent to the spirit realm and I could no longer sense corruption, I searched—or rather I groped much like one does in the pitch of night—for Marcus.

I found him far away. He was running, and his soul slithered and slid from my grasp. He must have felt the breaking ties and fled the scene. Even if I had been able to grab him, he had fully bonded with my brother’s body, and I didn’t think I could banish his energy so easily—or perhaps at all. The farther he ran, the more my ability to even sense him dwindled. Then he vanished entirely.

I turned my attention to Joseph. He was still alive. Good.

Then I noticed the curtain. It was a shimmery, hazy thing that hung before me. Thick like velvet but opaque like prisms. Elijah was there, at the edge, and watching me. I saw his soul. It sparkled like the sun on the river, and warmth washed over me. It was the smile after the storm. He was no longer tormented, but the boy I’d always known. Beside him was a fainter light. A tender, bearlike glow. My father.

It was right. That was right.

Then I was Eleanor again. I slammed back into my body and into my own awareness.

I gasped. I was on the ground, and the stench of rotting flesh was everywhere. I gulped and coughed, and my lungs screamed for breath.

“Empress,” someone called.

I panted and panted, my eyes clenched shut. I felt like a big, scratched bruise.

“Eleanor,” Daniel said. “Miss Fitt! Wake up!”

I fluttered my eyelids open. “I’m not a misfit anymore,” I rasped. “I thought I told you that.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The Spirit-Hunters wound up bringing me to Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Hospital. My right hand, the one the corpse had bitten, was a bloody pulp and had grown foul quickly. Infection was imminent. Joseph had fared little better than I, but he couldn’t enter the hospital because of his criminal status. Jie had promised she could heal him, though.

They’d left me with a strict but able nurse and then departed. I didn’t know if I would see them again.

I was in a large room in the women’s wing of the hospital, and at least fifteen other patients were with me. Mama couldn’t afford a private room, but I hardly cared. If anything, I enjoyed the companionable pain of the ill. Their hacking coughs were pleasant music to the wretchedness in my right wrist. To the grief in my heart.

I lost my right hand. The doctor was forced to amputate.

I’d heard stories after the war with the South. Stories about broken men. So many soldiers came home without legs or forearms or fingers, and I’d always thought that was what “broken” meant. Now I knew it wasn’t the physical pain that had shattered the soldiers’ hearts but everything else. The death and the loss and the constant, heavy choice to keep fighting or give up.

The days passed, and when I thought of Clarence, I forced my mind to see his beautiful smile. I also clung to my final vision of Elijah and Father. At times I imagined I could see them still, watching me from the spirit realm.

I knew there would be no going back to the way things were. No more sitting in the cherry tree, no more playing chess, and no more dreaming of a world with Elijah. So I spent the long, empty moments considering what I wanted now. What I would do when I left the hospital. Blazes, I longed to find Marcus and shred his soul to pieces, but first... first I had things in Philadelphia that needed doing.

It was Sunday, June the eighteenth, three days after I’d destroyed my own brother. Half a week since the final dregs of my old life, of the old Eleanor had been erased.

At that moment Mary sat on the end of my hospital bed reading Twelfth Night to me. I half listened, my left fingers scrubbing gently at my face. My right cheek constantly begged for scratching. The doctor swore I would have no scars so long as I left the scabs alone.

The murmur of Mary’s words echoed like a soothing wind through the hospital wing. Mary visited daily since Mama would not. I suspected guilt ate at Mary’s insides for letting me leave the house.

I cleared my throat, and Mary stopped reading.

“If we sell the piano, we can afford to keep the house. For a while at least. Have you told her that?” I eased myself into a sitting position.

“Aye, and your ma won’t let me sell it.” She closed the Shakespeare volume and looked at me warily.

“Do it anyway. Tell her I told you to.” I massaged the nape of my neck. “And sell all my evening gowns and jewelry. The gowns alone should cover the hospital bill.”

“True.” A flush grew on Mary’s cheeks, and she picked at the book’s spine. “I’ve got some amethyst earrings that... well, if you’re willing, I could sell—”

I laughed, a hollow sound. “Keep them, Mary. I doubt you’ll get paid for a long time. Hell, I don’t even know why you’re still working for us.”