I grip the stone lip of the sarcophagus and wriggle my toes, testing if anything broke besides my sanity. The digits move, which I take as a good sign.
I get back to trying to seal her shut, wiping the sweat off my brow and grunting like a pig. Finally, the lid slides back into place.
I toss bones back into the other coffins and piece together lids like I’m working a jigsaw puzzle. When everything’s sort of fixed, I pick up the wine bottle and limp out into the fresh night air, banging the heavy door shut behind me.
My actions don’t make me feel better, but they do make me feel slightly less monstrous.
A thin skin of ice has formed over the snow. My feet punch holes into it, each step sounding like the crunch of breakfast cereal. I focus on the sound, hoping to numb my mind of any real thought. Or should I say, any thought that thisis actually real. It’s such a nightmare, almost worse than when I lived with Vincent. Except this time, no one’s waking me up with an earful of insults and a sharp crack across the cheek. I almost miss the guy, and he was a pitiful human being.
I instinctively bring the wine bottle to my mouth for a swig when I feel cool, grainy dirt against my lips. Damn it. I forgot the bottle was the one from the crypt. I spit, then wipe my mouth on my sleeve and crunch across more snow, passing headstones and spindly trees. When I find myself back on a winding cobblestone road, I chuck the bottle into a trash bin, the thick glass clanking against the iron can, then head to the tavern. I take a new route down a narrow alley bent like a crooked arm where the stone walls have crumbled in places and the wooden shutters are gray. Yet even this neglected corner of Brume, with its scraggly evergreen boughs nailed above doors like overplucked eyebrows, holds more quaintness than the places I grew up in with their misspelled graffiti and soundtracks of gang fights and police sirens.
As I skirt the historical well in the town square, the small hairs on the back of my neck rise the same way they used to when I walked around my old neighborhoods.
Three girls clutching copper goblets and taking drags off cigarettes stand beside the entrance of the tavern, pointing to a couple sitting on a bench groping each other.
“Get a room!” one of the girls shouts to the couple, while her two friends break into giggles.
None of them look my way, yet the sensation of being watched strengthens. My gaze sweeps higher, to the second and top floors of the buildings. No eyes shine back at me from a shadowy window. No figure is crouched on the rooftops. Nothing seems off. Nothing that should get my spidey-sense tingling. Shaking off the sensation, I take another step, and it’s like someone injected my veins with liquid fire.
I stumble, catching myself on the edge of the well. My breaths come in hard, raspy pants, as though the fire is spreading and has begun to char my lungs. I cling to the cold stone as mind-shredding pain cramps my muscles and wraps around my joints. It’s enough to make me grit my teeth and let out an involuntary snarl.
My insides feel like they’re melting, like the time I got a stomach flu and spent two days sprawled on my cool bathroom floor, wishing I were facing a gang armed with deadly knives instead of a torturous virus. I heave, but nothing comes out.
Maybe I drank too much wine. Or maybe—more likely—Cadence poisoned my wine.
My muscles seize, and icy sweat lines my brow. I grunt and groan, and the well echoes and amplifies the animal sounds.
Wait . . .
I stumble away from the well, hobbling to the far side of the square. Even though my toe is still throbbing, my joints and stomach aren’t. I rip the glove off my hand with my teeth and stare at the fugly ring. Then, swallowing a breath of frigid air, I approach the well again. The girls standing outside the tavern are watching me now. I salute them, which makes one smile and the other two whisper.
The burning in my veins starts up again. Then the cramping in my muscles and a general creepiness, like a spider’s egg sac has just hatched on my spine and the creatures are skittering all over my vertebrae. The closer I get to the well, the stronger the sensation. The ring flares, the stone glinting like a giant drop of luminous blood under the garlands of holiday lights trussing up the square.
Putain.De Morel was right when he said the ring was an artifact detector. If the thing came with a battery and sound effects, right now it would be goingbeep . . . beep . . . beep . . . beep beep beep beep.
A piece of the Quatrefoil is in or near the old well.
I study the shiny cobbled rim, the pointed, slate-shingled canopy shading it, the rusted chain wrapped with ribbon, and the hanging bucket filled with poinsettias—probably fake ones, unless someone took the time to stick a real bouquet in it. Wouldn’t put that past these weird-ass townsfolk. Either way, I’m guessing no one uses this well to get their water anymore.
I need to get closer, but the girls are still watching me. And the pain . . . The mere memory of it makes me grit my teeth.Fuck it.I need to know if one of the leaves is in there. I lunge toward the well, bones burning beneath my skin, blood blazing. I clutch the damp ledge and shine my phone’s flashlight down into it, feeling like I’m about to retch again.
There’s a grate at the top—probably to stop drunks or stupid kids from falling in. Below, the empty cylinder stretches far and deep. I’m guessing it leads straight into hell.
With shaky fingers, I dig a coin from my pocket and toss it in. It plinks wetly, breaking water.
Does this mean it’s my piece? Unless it’s Cadence’s . . .
If it ismineto get, and if I could get it tonight, we’d be ahead of the game. I eye the rusty chain. Would it hold my weight?
I reach out, close my trembling fingers over the icy metal, and tug to test the chain’s sturdiness. It groans like something’s coming loose, and ochre flakes chip off. Yeah. Not happening. If I’m going to do this, I need to do it right. That means decent equipment. That means not hurling myself into a black pit on too much wine and too little sleep.
On that note . . .
I could use more wine to help me sleep.
I release the chain, then back away, rubbing my palm over my jeans.
My breathing quiets the farther I get, and the fire in my veins subsides.
