Father’s shadows wheel around when he collapses to the floor. Mother is quick beside him, but already, he is nothing. Already, Death has found a new home.
It wriggles between my bones, pressing deep into the tissue of my chest, my throat, the gauzy space above my lashes. I thought it would be cold, this power, but it is like a sunburst growing inside me. Filling me up with so much warmth I could be a woman tied to a stake.
But no ropes encircle my skin. No longer am I tied down by men who wish to subdue me. Make mebetter. I am no monster, and I am no witch. Neither am I a god. I drag the honeyed air into my lungs while the thing that is no longer Mother cries out, kneads the shadows between bleeding knuckles.
I am the breath of life.
“Adelaide.” Ransom’s voice comes from the floor where he lies, nothing more now than a tangle of ratted clothing, jumbled bones, flesh melting waxy into puddles beside him. He is not dead. Ransom is something far, far worse. A tethered soul. “Please,” he says, voice a puff of putrid smoke. “Finish it. Kill me.”
The words draw pity from the darkest parts of me, but Mother’s fists pound the ground. Her cries have turned to black bubbles on her lips, screams cracking from rotten teeth.
“This is you! Your destruction.” It takes her three strides to cross the room, to tower over me with a tongue that smells of old blood.
I do not move or cower. Instead, I hold the bell tight in one hand, Bram’s fingers in the other.
“We could have had everything, you know?” Her lips are pale and swollen, pustules ready to burst. “You held the power to keep your family together, and instead, you ruined it.”
“You’re wrong,” I say, Bram so fiercely real behind me. “I do not need you. I never needed you or Father. We were never a family.”
Her eyes go wide, the poison leaking into the glassy orbs. Clara’s hand wraps around my arm, and Rascal growls. Mother stretches tall, gathering the darkness to her while Ransom groans on the floor.
“Addie.” Bram’s voice is hot in my ear. “Ring the bell.”
The metal thrums in my hand, but when I look down at Ransom, writhing on the floor, my skin stills. I should never have brought him here, should never have followed my mother into the dark. And now, there are ghosts haunting me. My name spelled on too many lines.
My eyes flash to my mother, and I see the truth. Her lips form a sneer, a black line across pale flesh. Opening, opening, opening. The Haunts rise, two at each hand, stretching for me.
There is only one thing left to do.
I ring the bell.
The sound is clear and sharp as crystal. Snow against autumn leaves. Everything goes black. The moon and sky above go out. Clara gasps behind me. Mother’s screams turn to hollow echoes. Bram’s hand is tight around mine.
“Hold fast,” he whispers, reaching through the darkness for Clara’s hand.
It starts at my back. A wind like the first kisses of winter. Slowly, it turns, growing warmer, filling with the scents of rose hips, pumpkins harvested from the fields. The air begins to swirl, a wave of red light bursting forth around us. I am thrown back, head cracking against Bram’s shoulder when we are flung to the ground.
The bell blinks in the blinding light of a ripped opening, the sudden warmth making me nauseous, and I fumble the brass. My fingers tense around the collar of Bram’s shirt, and I turn into him. All swells to silence.
And then the screams.
My mother’s screams.
She is bent over Ransom, his skin almost whole. Almost as though he is once more himself. Real. Alive. But he is anything but. Gray as a corpse in winter, lungs hardly moving.
Do not make deals with these people.
Mother’s eyes flick to me, but they are not hers any longer. They glow bright red. As crimson as apples. She scrambles to her feet, claws outstretched.
“What have you done?”
I stare down at my hands, where the light from the bell is shining so bright my eyes cross, then look back up at her. My mother. Not Mother. A beast. A twist of wishful thinking turned obsession.
I struggle to my feet. Leaving Bram behind, Clara, Rascal. The bell vibrates in my palm, and I drop it to the far reaches of the pocket. The light from the door is blinding, beyond it, the scent of rye in the sunlight. I look to Mother. The way her hair sways like wheat about her face. Not her face. So many features that do not belong to her.
I feel them, the ghost women. Eddying at the back of my neck. But it is not pain, not really. For the first time, it is strength. I have found their bones where the bitterbloom grows, can feel each soul passing to peace while they give me the last of their power.
When I stop before Mother, I reach out a hand and run a finger down the crooked line of her jaw. The unevenness of all the sewn skin.
