The Hacienda(67)

No. But there was no reason for him to stay.

“Buenas noches, do?a.” A turn of the shoulder, and he departed.

My last defense gone.

From somewhere in the hall, a trill of dissonant laughter echoed. How long the night before me stretched, a black maw without beginning or end. I now stood alone in the parlor with Rodolfo, surrounded by walls that had once borne his name in fresh blood. Walls that still hummed with thick hatred for my presence, that watched my every move.

Over the course of my time at San Isidro, I had learned the different tastes of my fear: the sickening awareness that I was being watched. The dread of the sentient cold sweeping through the house, the spears of terror at a flash of red eyes in the dark.

The fear that rooted my feet to the floor as I stared at Rodolfo’s back was different. It was new.

I now knew what it tasted like to be truly trapped.





22





RODOLFO STARED INTO THE fire. His hands were clasped behind his back, and he worked a golden signet ring on his left hand with the right, lost in thought.

I sat, my needlework limp in my hands. There was no more use in pretending I had been counting stitches, that my attention was occupied by anything but awareness of Andrés’s presence passing through the gates of the courtyard. The moment he did, the weight of the darkness shifted. It twitched, first here, then there, as if shaking off an irritating fly, and refocused on the only two people left in the house.

It coiled around us, darkness thickening with each passing moment. A chill crept under the closed door and drew near, slinking across the floor with the sinuous determination of a centipede. Closer, closer, snaking around my ankles.

Beatriz, Beatriz . . .

My heart stopped.

“Come, querida,” Rodolfo said sharply. “I’m tired.”

I stowed my needlework with trembling hands. “Yes, you must be exhausted.”

He grunted in agreement and held out his arm to me. I rose and took it, biting the inside of my cheek as he set a firm kiss on my hairline.

I wanted to throw him off. To run—but where? I had nowhere to go.

I followed him out of the parlor and into the dark hall.

Paloma had left it illuminated by candelabras. I told her she must do so, but also to depart the house as soon as she could and leave the washing up in the kitchen for the morning. I was glad she had, though the opening and closing of the front door had extinguished a few of the candles.

Or had it?

The light from the candles barely penetrated the black stretching before us. At the end of it was the staircase to our bedchamber, but also the doorway to the north wing.

Rodolfo walked confidently down the hall, taking me with him. The cold parted around him like water, catching me in its wake. It watched me gasping for breath from every corner, from the rafters, from within the walls.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

She was here.

Beatriz . . .

“I think you did very well tonight,” Rodolfo said.

Beatriz, Beatriz . . .

The closer we grew to the north wing, the more the barriers I put up against it threatened to split like the skin of overripe fruit. I could not keep that voice from slipping under my skin like a knife.

“Oh?” I said, hoping my voice sounded light rather than strained. I should have kept my eyes straight ahead, or better yet, fixed them on my feet, but I swept the darkness before me. As if seeing could help me defend myself. I was raw and vulnerable, a lamb before slaughter.

And the house knew it.

“Yes. I think Do?a Encarnación and Do?a María José were rightly impressed with your hosting,” he continued. “I do think, however, that . . . some things need to change around here.”

Beatriz, Beatriz . . .

We drew near to the staircase. As we took the first step, my eyes drifted to the doorway leading to the north wing.

There, in the hall, a body lay facedown on the floor, clothed in ripped, moth-eaten rags. It was pale, streaked with blackened blood from a wound in its back. I shouldn’t have been able to see it in the darkness of the hall, but there it was, clear as day.

Someone had been killed.

I jumped, colliding with Rodolfo, who reached out for the banister to balance himself.

“What?”

“Do you see that?”

“See what?”

I looked to his face—the creases of concern deepened with shadow—and back to the hall.

The hall was empty.

“Oh, a mouse.” My voice came out so high it nearly cracked. Rodolfo’s expression deepened to a frown. “I’m jumpy because it’s so cold in here, querido,” I babbled as he led me up the stairs. “It’s quite drafty, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think so.” He reached to his collar to loosen it. “If anything, it’s too warm. Keeping a fire like that in that small parlor on a night as mild as this was too much. You must speak to Ana Luisa about that.”

I nearly tripped over the next stair, stunned. Ana Luisa is dead, I wanted to shout. I told you. I wanted to seize him by the arm. I wanted to scream at him, to shame him. How could he not remember? How could he not care?

But the cold paralyzed me. It clawed at me as Rodolfo and I ascended, as if it wanted to draw me down, down, down . . .

As we reached the top of the stairs, I glanced over my shoulder.