Saul ignored him. “Well, Miss Wilson? What should I do?”
My mouth was dry. The long shadows had fallen over Saul’s cheekbones and down onto Halder’s slack face. Neither of them looked human, or holy.
If I were a good person, perhaps I would have argued for Halder’s life. I probably wasn’t a good person, so I decided to be an honest one. “Saul,” I said, “if you want to kill him, do it. I’m too tired to sit in moral judgment right now. I won’t stop you. I don’t think Icanstop you. I just want this to be over.”
Saul huffed something that might, under better circumstances, have been a laugh. “For me—for what Louisa went through—I should probably make you die slow. But we’re all very tired.”
He moved again, very fast, and Halder fell over on his side with a red ruin where his throat had been. I looked away as soon as I realized what I was seeing. My shoulder still hurt. I looked down and saw a splinter of wood sticking out of it. The bullet must have knocked a sliver loose from the wall and hit me. I pulled it out and it hurt and it was very important to focus on the pain, because the alternative was to focus on the sound bubbling out of Halder’s lungs.
And then Halder’s gurgling breath stopped, and there was only silence, broken, very faintly, by a whippoorwill.
“It’s over,” I said, in a high voice. “It’s finally over.”
Saul said nothing. He said it for long enough that I turned and met those pale, pale eyes. The whippoorwill called again.
It occurred to me, like a splash of cold water, that I was the only person left who knewwhatSaul was, or even that he was still alive. The only one who knew that he’d killed both Phelps and Halder. The last loose end.
It would be incredibly easy for him to tidy me away. No one would think it odd that I had been killed alongside the other two, and no one would suspect a man who had been dead for a year.
He took a step forward, and I took a shuffling step back.
“Miss Wilson,” he said, and I wondered what he read in my face, and whether it would make him more or less likely to leave me alive.
I was sure that Saul was grateful for my part in his rescue, but was he gratefulenough?
“It’s all right,” I said. “I’m all right. I’m fine. So are you. We can just go home.”
The whippoorwill called for a third time.
His eyes narrowed.
And then I heard the familiar sound of a shotgun being cocked and Mrs. Kent said, “Turn around slowly—” and we turned and Saul said, “Rose?” and Mrs. Kent said, “Saul!?” and I thought,Surely he won’t kill me in front of her?but then Saul was rushing toward me and I closed my eyes so that I wouldn’t see the blow coming.
At least I died in the woods.
A long, long moment crept by, and Mrs. Kent said, “Dear god, what’shappenedto you?” and it occurred to me that I wasn’t dead. I opened my eyes and saw that the world was at an unexpected angle, and then I realized that my knees had given out, but that Saul Gregor was holding me upright.
Jackson was carrying the lantern. He reached out and tookthe gun away from me before I could drop it.Of course he has the lantern and Rose would be the one with the shotgun.It only makes sense.
“Halder’s dead,” Saul said. “Phelps too.”
I looked up into Mrs. Kent’s face.
“Well,” said my friend Rose, swinging the shotgun away, “about damn time.”
CHAPTER 21
There were four of us around the kitchen table that night—or more accurately, three of us at the table and Rose cooking fiendishly as if she could unmake what had happened to us by sheer force of biscuits.
Saul ate them too.Does he digest them normally, or does he have to cast them up again, like owl pellets? I should ask. Later.
After two changes of bathwater, Saul looked infinitely better. His back was probably still a horror show, but if you couldn’t see that, he just looked like a very tired human. Rose brought him one of Halder’s dressing gowns, which barely reached his knees, but was probably an improvement over my apron. I took my own bath, heated with water from the big boiler in the scullery, and scrubbed with soap so harsh that it stung. My skin did not quite stop crawling afterward, but I was able to tell myself that it was only my nerves.
“Knew we shouldn’t trust Phelps,” Jackson said, for the third or fourth time. “He talked a good game, pretending to search for you, but I knew something was off… Love, sit down, for god’s sake, you’ve made enough food for an army.”
Rose muttered something uncomplimentary, but finally pulled the pan off the stoves. “All right, all right…” She dropped into her chair and folded her arms. “How long were you down there?”
“About three months, I think,” Saul said. I lifted my head at that. His expression didn’t change by so much as a fraction, but he met my eyes for a long, long moment. I took a slug of coffee and looked away.
