Algiz,Eustace had called it. The elk rune. A symbol of protection. The medallion inlaid into the floor wasn’t a medallion at all, but a bind rune. The elk rune repeated eight times in a circle, joined end to end.
She reconsidered the stained-glass window, with its depiction of the Garden of Eden—a common theme for Victorian times. But this was no forbidden fruit. It was Yggdrasil—the World Tree. Even she knew that story. And the serpent was no mere serpent, but a dragon. The very same that gnaws forever at the roots of the World Tree, trying to bring the Nine Worlds crashing down. How carefully her relatives hid their magic in plain sight. So carefully they’d hid it from themselves.
Certainty filled her, and Cordelia kept climbing until she reached and passed the third story. The house was quiet, the grand staircase empty. The tower held only a whisper of darkness, barely perceptible on the widow’s watch. But Cordelia knew whom she’d find up there. Morna’s disquiet was never gone, however still or bright the tower seemed. She was a hunger that never abated and a presence that would not rest. And she was waiting for something.
Cordelia was beginning to understand what.
She took the stairs two at a time, ready to confront the ghost that, like everyone else, she’d so misunderstood.
At the final stretch, she climbed to the widow’s watch, keeping a tight grip on the railing. The narrow landing wasn’t much toclaim. The boards were rough and dry from sun exposure and the windows drafty. Bright light filled the space as the windows gave her a 360-degree view of the property. But above her, just out of reach, shadows brooded in the corners like cobwebs.
“I know you’re here,” she said carefully, turning in a slow circle. “And I know you can hear me.”
Something darted by her field of vision. Cordelia spun but found nothing. “Hear me now,” she said to the gloom. She raised her arm that bore the silver bracelet. “You want your revenge? Well, I want something too.”
She gritted her teeth as a darkening mist began to gather in the corners, roiling against the pale glass, moving around her.
“I know what you are,” she ground out. “I know whatweare. And I know what someone did to you. Maybe notwho.Maybe nothow.But I know you’re innocent. And you’re angry.”
The mist swirled before her, twirling in and out of the shape of a woman.
“Tell me,” she commanded. “And if you can’t speak,showme.”
Arms pale as milk shot out from the mist and grabbed her about the head, pulling her into the spirit smoke. Cordelia’s mind spun in and out of her own consciousness, crash-landing at last into a scene from another time. She was still in the tower high above the property, but she was no longer alone. Her vision fixed on the acrid face of an older woman she didn’t recognize—stout and thick-shouldered with sloping eyes, heavy cheeks, and a nose like an osprey.
“Go on,” the woman was saying through a voice like ground glass. “No one will miss you. They’ll be relieved to be rid of you. You’ve brought nothing but disgrace to this house. And shame. You killed those birds, all those poor animals. And you blamed it on a ghost. They’re going to send you away. And you and I both know what’ll happen then. You won’t live a day if you live an hour. And it’ll hurt so much worse.”
Cordelia’s perspective shifted rapidly, and now she was facing a much younger woman, with a mess of auburn hair and weeping eyes of black, her face slick with tears, puffy and red and twisted in fear and confusion. The younger woman shook her head briskly, like she could shake the words free. “No. It isn’t true. It isn’t true! I loved them,” she cried, backing away. “They were murdered! Why won’t anyone believe me? Why are you doing this? Who are you?” She stopped choking on her tears long enough to stare darkly into the woman’s eyes. “Who are you really?”
Cordelia spun to see the old woman smile, slow and greedy. “What’s the matter? Don’t you remember? I’m Martha Togers,” she said with mock concern. “I’m your keeper, girl,” she added wickedly. “I’m your death.”
Morna shook her head dramatically, strands of wild hair sticking to her wet cheeks as she wept. “Please,” she begged. “Please stop. Please help me.”
The large woman stared her down. “I can’t help you now,” the woman told her. “No one can. Only you can help yourself.”
Morna glanced back, her shoulders hitching with her sobs.
“Can’t you fly, girl?” the woman asked her, taking a step forward. “Don’t you remember how?” She stepped forward again, and Morna stepped back. “Time to fly,” she was saying, like a skipping record, as Morna backed closer and closer to the window.Time to fly, time to fly, time to fly…
Morna cupped her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes tight. When she opened them, they were still, like tops that had finally stopped spinning. She took a breath and propelled herself backward. Cordelia wanted to reach for her, but she was no more substantial than a beam of light striking the glass. The casement windows gave behind her weight, flinging open, and Morna tumbled into the day, her face slackening in a sudden wave of shock and understanding. But it was too late. Cordelia heard herbody hit the drive below, a grotesquely hollow sound, the thud of a melon breaking apart.
The nurse smiled, like she was hearing a pure note being struck on a fine instrument. And then she mussed her hair, took a deep breath, and screamed at the top of her lungs.
Everything spun again, and Cordelia was rocking on her heels in her own time, gripping the rail to hold herself up in the glass box of the tower. She gasped for air, coughing and shaking her head, as the spirit let her go. And then she pulled the words up from her chest and gave them to the mist. “I want my sister, Eustace. Someone took her from me. And I want her back.”
The mist spun around her, frenzied and looking for release. “Give me my sister,” she told it. “And I will give you your revenge.”
The bracelet on her wrist burned hot, and Cordelia hissed. The mist dove at her, parting to flow around her just before contact. Cordelia turned as it slammed into the casement window at her back, blowing it open. The garden twisted beneath her, and the wide promenade lay like a blanket of pink and green. Behind it, the great hill rose, stunted on top, the peak lopped off.
That’s where the old woman waited.
She stood there staring back at Cordelia. Her sapphire dress rippled in the wind, her staff pierced the hill like a jewel on a spike. Cordelia watched her lower her hood, the shock of hair like a scarf of white, as if her head were permanently wreathed in clouds.
Cordelia blinked and stumbled back down the stairs, racing toward the first floor. When she hit the bottom, she was knocked forward to her knees, but she clambered up quickly and rushed through the dining room and kitchen, out the solarium, cursing the house’s architect for not plotting a straighter route.
The poles they’d found in the garden had yet to be dismantled and hauled away to burn where Eustace would never have to seethem. But the blood, at least, had been washed into the earth by the rain.
Blood and soil,Cordelia thought as she ran.
