He smiles at my realization. At the scent of blood on the air. Something creaks above us, and I feel Bram at my side. Ransom’s eyes rove madly, laughter cracking out between his rotten teeth.
“He’s coming, Adelaide. They both are. Your mother thought I might be able to sway you, but now your time is up.”
Bram’s hand is in mine, warm and solid. The fear rising in my throattastes sour and sick. I hurry a hand to the bell, but it is still. Cold. Rascal whimpers, and Clara buries her nose in his neck.
Ransom’s laughter echoes through the dim chamber.
The door is thrown aside, hinges ripped from the wall like splintered wood, and Death stands in the shadow. A Reaper and his Lady.
thirty
Shadows make quick work of Ransom’s bindings. They slip from Father’s fingers, wrap around the bitterbloom vines, and shred them to dust. There is nothing to be done for it. No quick fixes, no means of escape. They sweep inside—Father and Mother, Death and death alike. Just two more devils to sell my soul to.
It is Mother’s hand I feel first, gentle on my neck, her fingers soft yet solid as iron.
“I knew you’d be back. Love does funny things to a person, does it not?”
I hardly recognize the woman who stands before me. Her hair, as waxen as ever, slips down around her shoulders, but where her skin and bone should be, the flesh is pale and half-eaten. An iridescent beetle climbs from beneath her exposed collarbone, its miniscule feet trailing up to rest at the hollow of her throat, where beats a black, bloody hole.
My fingers tighten in Bram’s, and he holds me there, steady.
“What wouldyouknow of love?” I finally ask, screwing my courage to the sticking place, though the emotion itself feels soft and delicate. Like a single word or glance from this monster could send me to my knees, trembling like a sapling in winter wind.
There is a sneer to her lip, a peeling back, revealing sickly gums beneath. “All I have done, I have done for love, Addie. Can’t you see that?”
“You killed women! You killed girls and unburied them to steal their faces, and when you couldn’t any longer, Ransom followed.” I fling a hand in his direction. “And for what?”
Black puddles in Mother’s eyes like oil, slipping down her cheeks. Poison tears. I draw away when she lifts a hand to my face.
“Don’t fucking touch me.”
Pain blinks across her face. A shadow of something akin to betrayal. And then what is left of her twists, nothing behind her flesh but charred bone. I stare into the night-sky eyes of Death.
“I did it for you, Adelaide. I did it so that we could live together. I knew one day you would inherit the darkness that ran in your father’s veins, and I could not bear the thought of leaving you or letting you go through it alone. Seeing the creatures of the rowan wood and not knowing what they were. Letting them drive you mad.”
I raise a finger to my throat. Feel its beating. And in the moment—that brief and fleeting time—I realize it is not a sickness. It never has been. The way my heart leaps against my ribs, the way it feels like a fish on a broken string, a caged bird caught between bones, it isnotweakness. It is a remembrance of life. That despite the evil in the world, the shadow and those who wear faces that do not belong to them, I amalive.
“You were sick,” I tell her. “But it was not the sickness of your body that got you to kill Dinah Bo, Rosalyn Eckers, Frances Gordon. It was obsession and fear and everything you are made of.” I back away from her, once more running into the warm wall of Bram’s chest.
He puts a palm to my waist, steadies me. Mother’s face puckers, the scent of brine filling the air.
Father—Death—comes to Mother’s side. Ransom is now like a whipped hound at his heels. The pin on his cloak glitters in the golden light of the bell, his eyes trained on my hand. I tighten my fingers around it, and he looks at my face. Hunger breeds there beneath his brows.
“Join us, Adelaide. You belong here, with us. I was wrong. Your mother doesn’t want the bell. She just wants us, together. A family.”
The word cracks along my surface like glass.Family. All I have ever wanted. The three of us sitting before a fire, weaving stories of our days spent together and apart. Adventures had.
I look about the room. The shadows dancing in the corners, the rot spilling from Mother’s face. There is greed there, hunger.
Something tells me shedoeswant the bell, the power over death. I pull away from Bram and study his amber eyes, the way they already seem to hold so much of me in them. His hand trails my waist.
“What are you doing?” Concern knits his voice, thick and rasping.
I look down at the bell, feel the way it pulses against me. Clara and Rascal come beside Bram, Clara with tears in her eyes.
“Don’t do it, Addie. Don’t listen to them. Come home with us.”
The woman who has only ever wanted to be my friend, share my sorrows, and bring me a basket of baked goods to warm my heart. I smile at her, a sad thing made from too many years spent hidden away. Kept apart.
