Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(102)

(I know she did not mean to exclude me, but it’s difficult to keep from feeling excluded.)

The cooker was bigger than I’d guessed; it looked menacing and awful—open wide and faintly bubbling, its corrosive agents always working, always cooking . . . even when there was nothing fresh to feed it.

I tiptoed around it, and when I was past it, I paused to heave the cabinet door closed.

It winded me something awful, but I couldn’t chance leaving the thing opened like a trap—ready to swallow me up if I were frightened or careless.

More frightened than I was already, I mean.

I reached the satchel, and pulled it toward me by the strap—dragging it across the table and almost spilling the vials within it. (This was not careless. This was hasty by necessity, and those two things are not the same.) I sorted them quickly, for my knees were weak and I was horribly aware that they could fail me at any moment.

I did not know how long I had.

Globulin here, in these glass tubes—labeled on white paper with blue ink. Toxins here, in these tiny jars with the wax-sealed stoppers and warnings written in red ink. Simple enough.

There was less globulin to go around than toxins, for we’d been sampling those ourselves (and giving them to Nance), but it was too late for those anymore. If I was not immune by now, I never would be—and if those globulins had not been enough, more would be meaningless.

I had a theory. Or rather, Seabury had a theory.

It might be the last sane, intelligent thing he ever constructed, because if we are all to be honest with ourselves, and therefore with everyone else: The man is going mad. I don’t know how much more time we’ll have with him, before he is too far gone.

Upstairs, I heard footsteps. One, two, three, four. Pressed heavily into the floorboards, each with a musical creak. Each announcing something much larger than a man, or much heavier than a man ought to be, though I had seen its shape and it did not appear uncannily huge. And between the steps, the slow, inexorable motion of the thing drawing forward through our parlor, I heard the dull punctuation of his cane, tapping alongside his feet.

My brain raced. I would have given anything for more time.

There were so many things I could have done, should have done, if only I’d had the strength and foresight. There might be time yet if I hadn’t been left behind, ignored and abandoned like a baby bird having fallen from the nest, left for the cats.

It paused, and tapped its cane. Thoughtfully? Impatiently? I could not say.

And then it crossed the threshold into the kitchen. The timbre of its footsteps became more muffled when it reached the linoleum.

Had Lizzie taken her axe? She sometimes left it upstairs, and sometimes down here in the laboratory. I didn’t see it. Not that I could’ve necessarily lifted it, but like the gun I did not have, it might’ve made me feel (or at least look) somewhat less defenseless. I’m not sure how long it’d fool anyone, but again, I did not know how much time I had.

My knees were quivering, and I knew they wouldn’t remain locked for long. I grabbed the toxin vials and pocketed them all, a half dozen or more. Into my pockets they went, except for one—which I clutched as, yes, my legs gave way and I folded to the ground.

I withdrew as far as I could, scrambling slowly backward, with great difficulty. My whole body ached, and felt like it was not precisely mine. My bones felt like rubber, or something softer. Darkness scattered across my vision, and I struggled to see through it, to focus on the little vial full of awfulness in my hand—and its careful wax seal around the stopper.

I picked at it with my nails, and I looked up at the landing.

The gaslights were on, but they were not working correctly . . . unless that was some aggravating trick of the blood loss. The laboratory was not alight, but it glowed strangely, partly from the fixtures and partly from something I couldn’t put my finger on. Around me the walls had a greenish tint, or maybe bluish from another angle. It was like being underwater. It was like holding your breath.

I looked up at the landing.

I didn’t hear the footsteps anymore, because Zollicoffer had stopped walking. He was paused at the edge, not quite venturing onto the stairs. His feet and the tip of his cane. I could see nothing more. The light upstairs was brighter, and it illuminated him from behind; from my vantage point he was nothing but a pair of shoes and a walking stick, planted against the seam between my house and my cellar.

I did not move, not even to wipe my nose. I was bleeding again, and I could taste it all the more strongly—leaking down into my mouth as I gasped for air.

I’d overexerted myself, stretched myself so far beyond my ordinary limits that I thought I might be dying. I might not even live to see Zollicoffer come down the stairs. If he ever came down the stairs.

His disinclination to do so was driving me insane.

I wanted to scream at him—to tell him to come on down and do his worst, for heaven’s sake! Or go away, if he’d rather. Go away, and wreak his preternatural destruction on some other town, some other house, some other woman. But I did not have the breath, and my lungs would not have let me speak above a whisper. (It would have been a wet whisper, and the words would’ve come out covered in blood.)

Zollicoffer, whether he was man or monster, ran the tip of his cane along the slim bit of wood into which the closed cellar door should sit. And he began to speak.

“What a funny superstition.” The words poured down the stairs like boiled tar. “All these nails, beaten into place. An old ward. Something about the fey, or goblins, or whatever else you’d prefer to prohibit from your home.”