Bram does not reply at first and curls up on the floor, the ground his pillow. I should reach out, offer at least the stretch of dusty velvet. But I don’t.
“It’s fine,” he mumbles. “Just get some rest.”
Guilt swarms my stomach. I roll toward the wall and study the black lines drawn in coal. Countless numbers of them trail the stone, and while I fall asleep, I realize what they are.
Bram has been marking each day since the moment he died.
fifteen
I wake in a cloud of red light. For a moment, I can’t recall where I am, and the panic sets deep in my bones. My fingers claw the cot, and I gasp for air.
My eyes adjust to the dim.
Four walls, a break in the roof above, velvet curtain, tally marks on the wall. One for each day since Bram Avery died. The knowledge hits my gut anew. I cannot fathom how awful it must be for him, how long he has waited for someone to notice.
How long he waited formeto see him. Guilt weighs heavily on my shoulders, but I push it away.
My fingers slip down my sides and into the pocket where the bell rests. It is still a mystery to me—how I came across it. Fate has a funny way of dealing hands. I clamp my own around the bell.
Beside me, the floor is empty. Bram must have taken watch. I go to slip from beneath the velvet covering, but something weighs heavy at my feet. When I look down, Rascal is lying there, curled into a ball, the pale velvet of his belly rising and falling in a gentle rhythm.
A smile curves my lips, and I reach to scratch his ears. His eyes blink sleepily, but he only nuzzles his nose deeper into the makeshift blanket.
“As long as one of us can get some sleep.” I shift my feet to the chilledstone floor. My boots topple over beside the wall, and I lace them tight, then stand gently. Pain slices hot up my leg before subsiding to a dull throb.
At least I can walk.
The church is cold and empty. The only sound is of my boots scraping the floor. I exit the vestry, spilling out into the nave. It is lit with so much red there might as well be a veil of blood over my eyes. The doors are shut, and for a moment, anxiousness swells inside me.
What if they have left without me, gone to rescue Ransom’s mother, leaving me behind to fend for myself? To find Mother on my own?
My fingers go to the bell. No. They would have taken it with them if they were to betray me. I push the niggling thoughts from my brain. A pew creaks, and a current of ice rips up my spine, sending my heart racing.
Scattered and dead leaves crackle beneath my feet when I go to look, finding Ransom asleep on the hard, curved wood, his jacket acting as a blanket, one arm tossed over his eyes.
Here, in the murky red light streaming in through the stained glass, he looks like a saint. An oil painting of a martyr revered for all his spilled blood. The broken man. Something like awe overwhelms me, and all I can think about is sinking my hands into his hair and tasting the gin on his lips.
There is a splintering noise outside, and my spine straightens.
Haunts.
No, I would smell them. The sulfur and lick of red phosphorus. And the air hints at nothing but dry leaves. I inch toward the door and slip into the chill of morning. Or whatever time it truly is.
Bram holds a splintered maul, cracking the dull blade against blackened logs. He brings the blade down, and the wood tumbles over either side, making my ears throb. Bram looks up when he hears my boots scoring the damp ground.
“Good morning.”
“Are you sure about that?” I squint up at the sky—nothing but the pale moon and swirls of black, red, and silver gray.
He follows my gaze, shrugs. “No, guess I’m not. But I had to figure out a way to survive. Told myself if there was day and night back home, there was day and night here too. Helped me keep track of time.”
The tally marks on the wall. All at once, it strikes me how futile thisseems: the bell, rescuing Bram, my mother, Ransom’s mother, stealing them from Death. I can’t stop thinking about the fear I saw in Bram’s eyes that first night in my bedroom, the same fear that matched my mother’s when she held my hand limply and floated into nothingness.
What kind of daughter am I? Thinking I can enter the domain of Death and bring her back to what? Back to life? What if she is naught but bones? What if she crosses the line of rowan trees and crumbles to dust?
I study Bram in the bloody light,. For a moment, I picture him as he lies in his grave. Flesh dry and slack, teeth too wide for his mouth, eyes empty and black. Is that all he will be? All any of us will become?
I can’t stop thinking about it, the death, the chaos. It is all-consuming. I want to deflate. Want to pool at the ground and cry to the skies. What is the point of it all?
