Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(13)

Yes, just like before. Where the putrescent fluids met the iron, the weapon sizzled like it was doused with acid. But not an acid eating away at the metal—more the opposite, I should say. It is as if the metal eats away at the blood.

Iron hurts them somehow, doing more damage than if I hit them with a bat or a mallet. Wood won’t do it. Stone won’t do it—as I learned on one occasion, having been cornered by the porch stairs and finding only a loose chunk of paving rock to defend myself. It pushes them away, of course. Any sufficient blow will rebuff them, but only iron will stop them.

I took a damp rag from a bucket full of water and soap, making a murky soup. I scrubbed the axe-head down. If it’d been made of shinier stuff, it would’ve gleamed when I was finished.

I moved along to the splatters on the floor, and to the murk on the stairs. On my hands and knees, I washed the steps one at a time. And when I was finished, I retrieved the now-clean axe and brought it with me as I made my exit, pausing briefly at one of the book stacks and selecting a volume.

The axe-head. The iron.

I was reminded of something, and I wanted to double-check my memory on the matter.

The steps groaned beneath my feet, and I groaned with them. My ribs ached from the exercise, from breathing so hard against the corset stays.

At the top, I unlocked the door and let myself out.

Emma was still seated by the landing. The guns rested on her lap, leaving heavy dents in the folds of her skirt. Her hands lay atop the guns. She looked frail, and old.

She sighed with relief at the sight of me.

I tried to smile. “I told you I’d be right up.”

“Yes, and I’m glad. I was worried—I couldn’t remember if you’d taken your keys.”

“I always have my keys. Here, let’s get you to your feet,” I offered, setting aside both the axe and the book in order to slide my arm beneath and behind her.

“I don’t need so much help,” she chided me.

Sometimes, she did not. Tonight, she did. “Stop fussing, and let me get you upstairs. It’s late. We’re both tired. I’ll get you ready for bed.”

Together we walked with excruciating slowness. If I’d urged her any faster I would’ve had to carry her, and that would’ve been embarrassing and painful for us both. Instead we moved at the steady pace that made my aching arms ache all the more, and the bruising at my ribs protested with every step, all the way to my sister’s room.

I drew out the stool at her vanity and lowered her onto it, and I stretched, cringing at the crackle of joints popping, and the dull warmth of strained muscles.

Emma stared quietly at herself in the mirror, and at me. She said, “We’re quite the pair, you and I. The invalid and the murderess.”

I turned away from the mirror and went to the switch on the wall. I pressed it, and the room came alight with the glow of the wall lamp. Its pretty shade was made of frosted glass, so the light was diffused and softened. It was kind to us, or so I saw when I returned to the vanity seat and began to undo Emma’s hair.

One by one, I pulled the hairpins gently free and laid them on the table. “The scholar and the warrior?” I tried. “Let’s say that instead. I like the sound of it better.”

She laughed. I think it was genuine. It’s hard to tell, with eyes like hers—too wise to find many things funny. “Another set of lies, sister. Nicer ones.”

“But you are a scholar. And tonight I’ve slain a dragon. Of sorts.”

“True and misleading. I’m not Professor Jackson, and you’re no Saint George, nor an Amazon, either.”

“Says you.”

I tugged at the final hairpin, the veritable lynchpin of her coiffure’s architecture. It slipped free, and her hair came down in a jagged cascade, unfurling and unfolding in a marbled mixture of brown and silver down her back. I took a brush and began to smooth it. I told her, “No one ever needs to know.”

And likely, no one ever would.

Emma Borden, consumptive spinster . . . masquerading as Doctor E. A. Jackson—retired professor of biology and chemistry. The venerable mythical doctor had authored dozens of papers published in journals as far away as France, on everything from seaweed blooms and ocean temperatures to parasitic infections in crustaceans of the northeastern Atlantic.

Who would even believe it, if we announced it? We could put an advertisement in the newspaper, and no one would consider it possible.

She mused, “Someday, someone is bound to learn some secret or another. Yours, or maybe mine. Someone could come here, looking for me.”

“Someone?” I knew her too well. She had someone in mind.

“There’s a fellow upstate, at Miskatonic University.”

“You’ve mentioned him. You think he might come here? Seeking you?” I moved on from her hair to her dress, which I unfastened one rounded glass button at a time, feeding them through the tiny loops that ran from the top of her neck to the small of her back.

“There’s always the chance. I rather like him, and I suspect we’d enjoy one another’s company. Maybe he feels the same way.”

Only a few more buttons to go. I fumbled with one of them, released it, and moved on to the next. I did not ask her anything. I only said, “If he comes, we’ll deal with it then. We can always claim that the good doctor died since last you wrote.”