For instance, I have a pounding headache right now, and I blame half of it on the ghosts hissing and moaning all around me, the rest of the headache I attribute to Natasya and her kiss.
Someone pounds on the door, and I flinch, reaching up to rub at my forehead. I get to my feet wincing as they pound again, then a third time. I swing the door open, glaring. “What?” I demand.
Outside I find the older woman who I spoke to when I rented the room in this inn. She is ringing her hands as she stands next to a very bedraggled looking Natasya.
Fair Natasya’s curly flame-colored hair hangs in her face, and her cloak is half hanging off her shoulders. The bottom of her skirts are stained brown from mud. But the thing that draws my attention the most is that she appears to be even angrier than I feel.
I feel my eyebrows rise to my hairline as she shakes a fist full of paper in my face. “What have you done to Brom?” she demands.
I’m so distracted by the fist being waved around in my face that it takes me a second too long to process her words.
“Brom?” I ask glancing from her to the innkeeper. “What’s wrong with Brom?”
“That’s Lord Bones to you,” the innkeeper says with a huff. “And to think I gave you my best room, you person snatching fiend.”
I fold my arms. “With all due respect, it was your only room.” The best thing that settles for an inn in this small of a town is the backroom of the run-down tavern that had a few pieces of furniture thrown in.
The “innkeeper” narrows her eyes at me, but I turn my attention to Natasya. “Now what is it that you’re trying to accuse me of?” I ask.
Natasya narrows her eyes, fire sparking through them as she regards me. “Brom is missing, not that I need to tell you that since you’re the reason for it.”
“That’s a lofty accusation, especially since I know you have no proof,” I growl, but even as I say it my heart drops in my chest. What does she mean that Brom is missing? Missing how? Since when?
I’m struggling to maintain my composure when Natasya thrusts the crumbled-up note in my face.
I open the note, my eyes skimming over the hastily scrawled penmanship. Finally, I look up at Natasya. “I don’t know the nature of this note, I don’t even know that it isn’t a forgery to make me look bad, but I assure you I had nothing to do with Brom’s disappearance. From the look of this note, it seems as though you would have been the only one to know where Brom was heading.”
Natasya’s mouth drops open. “Do you dare accuse me of my own fiancé’s disappearance?”
“I’m simply pointing out the obvious,” I say as I sweep my cloak over my shoulders. “But I intend to get to the bottom of this disappearance. You had best hope that I don’t actually find cause to accuse you when I do.”
I grab my bag, still packed up neat and tidy and toss the tavernkeeper a coin. “You can have your room back,” I say, and then I nod to both the women and stride out of the room.
Something dark is afoot at Sunder Hollow and I intend to get to the bottom of it, and if I can happen to save one of my oldest acquaintances in the process, then the so much for it.
I know exactly where to start my search for answers because there is far more to Brom’s bright eyed betrothed than meets the eye.
Chapter Twelve
Natasya
Icould claw my hair out with my frustration. I let out a little shriek as I send the upturned drawer flying across the room before I turn to kick the gutted desk. No amount of searching through Brom’s house has offered any clue as to where he has gone.
And worst still, it seems as if he had his spellbook on him when he disappeared.
I reach up, gripping the side of my head as I let out a little growl and begin pacing. Where could Brom be?
This is a small town and by now every inch of it would have been searched. He isn’t hiding here in Sunder Hollow. There’salways the woods and graveyard in the wilderness, not to mention a great big world outside this sleepy little town.
He could be anywhere by now and after hours of fruitless search I still have nothing more to go on than that single note.
I pull it from my satchel and crush it between my fingers. It’s the only lead I have and it implicates one person. “Evengi,” I growl. Fine, if he won’t talk when I ask him nicely, I’ll just have to make him talk by asking not so nicely.
It’s bad enough that he took my fiancé from me, but to add insult to injury he took the spellbook as well?
The whole reason I am in this town is for that spellbook! I willnotbe leaving without it. I won’t be the sister to fail my father, especially not when Bronwyn has already brought him a spellbook. I refuse to be shown up by my twin.
I sweep my skirts behind me as I stride from Brom’s house, making sure to lock the door behind me with the spare key he gave me. I don’t want any well-meaning townsperson meddling in there and finding something I might have missed.
