Either way, the basement is a place you don’t want to end up.
“And Simon,” I say, my mouth tasting sour at the thought.“He said his mother lived in the basement.Do you think she was…in that room?Or are there other rooms, other basements?Did he have to visit his mother while she was hanging from a giant spiderweb?”
“For the sake of our sanity,” Crane says, getting to his feet and peering out the window.“Let’s assume there are other basements, ones that don’t have giant spiders in them.The sun is almost up.”
I groan, relieved that the day is breaking, but I’m so dizzyingly tired that I just want to sleep for days and days.
“Promise me,” I say, leaning my head against the wall.“When Brom is free from the horseman and we leave this place, that we find an inn somewhere with the largest bed in the world, and we proceed to stay on that bed and sleep and have sex for days on end?”
Crane lets out a groan as he fixes his eyes on me.“That is music to my ears, sweet witch.”
Brom, however, doesn’t say anything.I turn my head to look at him beside me on the bed, and he’s staring straight up at the ceiling.A cold finger of panic works its way down my spine.He hasn’t been all right for a while now, and it’s not just the horseman.Ever since our tryst in the barn he’s been quieter and more despondent than usual.
Or maybe it is the horseman.Brom has always been mercurial, but who knows what it’s truly like to live with someone else inside you?
“What do you say, Brom?”I ask, tapping his leg with mine.
“Mmm?”he says, blinking.“That sounds like heaven.As long as we can eat on the bed too.”
“No crumbs,” Crane grumbles as he stares down at Brom.“The only thing we’ll be eating is Kat, and possibly my—”
A bloodcurdling scream fills the air, coming from outside.
Crane presses himself against the window as Brom and I spring out of bed.
“What is it?”I ask.
“I don’t know,” Crane says, eyes darting around the landscape.
He shoves away from the window, grabs his coat, and pulls out his boots, as Brom and I do the same.Then we hurry out of the room and into the hall.As we go down the wing toward the mezzanine, Crane pauses by an open door.
“Daniels?”Crane asks as he peers inside Professor Daniels’s room.There doesn’t seem to be anyone in there.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Crane mutters, and then quickens his pace as he strides to the mezzanine and down the stairs.
We burst outside into a dark gray mist and out into the courtyard where a couple of students have gathered.
There, in the middle of it, surrounded by a pool of blood, is a man in his pajamas.
Missing a head.
“Oh hell,” I swear, covering my mouth in case I vomit, and turn around into Crane’s chest.For all that the horseman hasdone, this is the first time I’ve actually seen one of his victims after they’ve been killed, and I don’t think I have the stomach for it.
Crane puts an arm around me, holding me tight.“It’s Daniels.It’s Daniels,” he says over again, sounding as if he’s in shock.“The horseman killed Daniels.”
I raise my head to look up at Crane, thinking the same thing he is, and then we both look over at Brom.
“I didn’t do it,” Brom says, raising his hands, shaking his head vigorously.“I swear to God, I swear, I didn’t do it.”
“The horseman did,” Crane growls at him.“And you knew.”
“No!”Brom says adamantly.“I did not.The whole night you were with me, you saw me, I didn’t know what the horseman was doing, I don’t know where he went.”He gestures to Daniels’s lifeless body.“This is not my doing.I had nothing to do with this.”
The two other students nearby give Brom a curious look.
“Keep your voice down,” I hiss at him.
“You have to believe me,” Brom says, the anguish clearly visible in his dark eyes as he presses his palms together as if in prayer.“I didn’t know anything about this.This wasn’t me and I didn’t know.I didn’t know!”
