Eustace frowned. “Her stupid rules are starting to make more sense now. No cemeteries. No music. No pets. I just thought she was being a bitch all those years.”
Cordelia laughed and had started to drag her hand away when Eustace gripped her wrist.
“What is this ugly thing?” she asked, holding Cordelia’s arm up to stare at the bracelet from the nursery.
She tugged her hand away and laid it on the table. “I found it,” she said. “In the nursery, of all places. I’ve tried to remove it, but it won’t come off.”
Her sister’s eyes widened. “Did you use soap?”
She nodded. “Even olive oil. It’s stuck fast. I don’t understand. It seemed so easy to slip on.”
Eustace leaned over her arm, examining the details of the cuff. “Cordy, this is old,” she said at last. “Reallyold.” Her eyes lit with wonder. “I know what this is. I’ve read about it in my research, seen a few pictures.”
“Did you read about a way to get it off?” She felt suddenly self-conscious. She cradled her wrist against her chest like it was broken.
“This design—the twisted bands—is very common,” Eustace began. “But these are different than anything I’ve seen.” She ran a fingertip over one of the duck-footed ends. She looked at Cordelia frankly. “It’s an oath ring. The Vikings used them to make promises, swear fealty. Something like this, it’s binding.”
Cordelia looked down at it, conspicuous only in its crudity.“But I was alone.” Her voice had become a whine. “I tripped and found it on the floor. I didn’t make any promises to anyone.”
“Didn’t you?” Eustace asked.
Cordelia swallowed, the stream of emotion she’d released in that room coming back to her, the dread. The message on the mattress. “I heard something, and I followed the sound. It led me to the nursery. There was a woman inside. But then she was gone. It was our grandmother Violetta. I recognized her from the picture, the creepy one.”
Eustace nodded, listening.
“I thought I was losing my mind. And I broke down, started crying. Things in the room started moving—”
“Moving?” her sister questioned.
“By themselves,” Cordelia recounted. “I became angry. I stood up and asked them what they wanted. I know I wasn’t supposed to—Mom told me never to speak to them. But when I walked over to look inside the crib, someone had written a word in the dust.”
Eustace’s staccato breath hitched between them. “Whatword?”
“Revenge.”
Her sister fell back in her chair, her face a maze of thoughts. “Then what?”
“Then I was backing out of the room when I stepped on this and almost fell. I picked it up, and when I walked into the hall, Arkin was there.”
“Arkin?” Her sister’s face contorted. “Wait. I’m confused. What does Arkin have to do with any of this?”
“I guess he came with Mr. Togers. I forgot to tell you they stopped by. Anyway, he was being really weird. Weirder than normal, I mean.”
“That’s saying a lot,” Eustace said dryly.
“He was just kind of looming and staring at me like he wantedto grab me or something. I was startled, and the bracelet was in my hand, and in my panic, I slipped it on.”
Her sister drooped over the table, head in her hand.
“What?” Cordelia asked, concerned. “What did I do?”
“You agreed,” Eustace told her.
“Agreed to what?” By her reckoning, Cordelia hadn’t agreed to any of this, not that it seemed to matter to anyone but her.
“Whateverrevengemeans. You put that bracelet on. That’s the old Norse equivalent of signing a contract.”
“I don’t understand,” she whispered, staring at the band, a shackle.
