Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(56)

I flung myself down at her side, dropping the axe and seizing her by the shoulders. I shook her, but she didn’t respond. I dragged her as far as I could, or as far as I dared, then I left her, gathered the scattered stones, and threw them back into the box.

My safeguards hadn’t worked, but they were all that remained in my arsenal.

I reached back to her and wrenched her fist open. I retrieved the stone she held there, too, and saw that it’d burned a weird shape into her skin, but what it meant (or if it meant anything at all), I didn’t know and didn’t have time to decide. I tore the necklace off her, shattering the clasp. I threw it into the box as well, closed the lid, fastened the bands, and dumped it down into the cupboard. I closed the cupboard door and dragged one of my desks over to it, as if the added weight would hold it down.

Ridiculous superstition, just as Emma would’ve called it, but Jesus, what else did I have to work with?

I returned again to Nance, who was lying as if catatonic, slack-jawed and lovely, there on the floor. She wasn’t blinking. Just breathing a quick staccato in and out, her chest fluttering. Her burned hand opening and closing like a flower.

I slapped her cheek, gently at first. Then harder. Then I said her name as I did so, and I realized that I was crying and bleeding both—when the blood splashed down onto her nightdress. I wiped at my nose with the back of my hand, and left a trail of scarlet down my arm, but I did not care. I only cared about her, as inert as a doll except for that uncanny pace of breath.

I couldn’t leave her there.

I had to move her. Could I move her? I looked up at the stairs that would take us to the first floor, and I considered it. I had to try.

I wedged myself under her shoulders, using my arm and my badly bruised legs to lift her, and haul her upright. She didn’t fight me, but she didn’t do much to help—though to her credit, when I made her stand, her knees locked and she remained upright, so long as I prevented her from falling over. I guided her through the cellar, around the repositioned table, past the damnable cupboard, over to the stairs, and I hauled her bodily up them. She cooperated only so much. Maybe she couldn’t do any better. Maybe she didn’t know how anymore. I can’t say, and I shuddered to consider—all I could do was insist to myself that she was only stunned, and would surely awaken any minute now.

Any minute. That’s what I told myself as she languidly moved her legs up and down, not really catching the steps in order to climb them, but going through the motions through the sheer memory of her muscles. (Any minute, she’ll come to her senses. Any minute, she’ll find her footing. Any minute, and I’ll have her back.)

I slammed the cellar door, but didn’t lock it yet. I still wasn’t sure where the key was, and anyway, the damage was done.

Emma was calling for me, but I couldn’t deal with her, not quite yet. Not when I had Nance out of the basement at long last, but sprawled now upon the kitchen floor and looking like a corpse.

I slapped her again, until I was afraid I’d harm her should I hit her any harder, but I received no response. Her breathing slowed somewhat, as if distance from the cupboard had allowed her body to return to something like normalcy; but still she didn’t blink, didn’t answer, didn’t show any sign that she knew where she was or what she was doing there.

Upstairs, I heard Emma shake the bell one last time and then in frustration, she flung it into the hallway. “Lizzie!” she shrieked, though her voice was almost gone. It came out in a fierce whisper with an edge like a razor.

At a loss, I replied, “Coming!” and on the way up the stairs again, I realized I hadn’t used our secret phrase—but then again, I’d been replying from the kitchen, not the cellar.

I dragged myself up the steps to the second floor, and by the time I reached Emma’s room I could scarcely stand. I was drained and aching, and my brain wouldn’t yet stop sloshing around in my skull. Whatever Nance had given me, it’d done its job well, and it wasn’t quite finished working.

Emma was out of her bed, leaning against the tall wooden post at the foot. She asked me, “Well?”

“Nance got into the cellar,” I replied, summing up the situation.

She closed her eyes and took a slow, deep breath. “And?”

“And I don’t know!” I put my face in my hands, but when I covered my eyes the world still wavered, as if I were drunk. I changed my mind and ran my fingers through my night-tousled, unchecked hair instead. “She’s on the floor in the kitchen, and she . . . she isn’t responding,” I said, trying to force myself to treat this like a scientist, as if this must be new data. But it wasn’t new data. It was my lover, and she wasn’t herself right now. For all I knew, she might never be herself again—she could twist and warp and transform into one of the monsters with the glass-needle teeth, and then I’d have to kill her, and put her body into the cooker, and pretend that the juices and stench that remained were never the soft flesh and warm hair of the woman I’d loved.

“Go get Seabury,” she said, and even through the effort of speaking, and the exhaustion in her voice, I heard impatience and anger. “We need him. You’re bleeding.”

“He won’t know what to do any better than we do,” I argued.

“You don’t have any better ideas, do you?”

I shook my head. “I’ll . . . I’ll send for him.”