Vivienne’s skin had gone clammy. March, when she’d gone chasing after a cottontail and tumbled headlong into the gorge. March, when she’d lain there in the dark, whistling the way Miss Marley taught her, and heard something horrid whistle cheerfully back.
“It would have been late morning,” Price went on. He’d gone back to watching her like a hawk, as though he could discern the answers in her expression alone. “Nearly quarter to noon. You couldn’t have been more than four years old. I’ll admit, I’m fascinated. Impressed, rather. How did you manage to survive at such a young age?”
A sickly sort of clarity swam into her stomach. She dropped back on her haunches, her thoughts spinning out like a top. She thought of the starry dark of the ravine, those cold eyes leering out at her as she wept and wept until her throat was raw, her voice all but gone.
Poor little lamb, it had crooned, winding thrice around her like a long black snake.Someone’s left you like an offering on the mouth of hell. I think I’ll snatch you up for myself. We’ll play for a bit, you and me. Would you like that? No more tears; we’ll make things nice and cheery.
“I have no living sons,” said Price, oblivious to the way Vivienne was frantically cycling through her memory bank. “Not in any way that matters. The House swallowed my firstborn whole. It took a pound of flesh from the second, leaving him cold and intractable, marred beyond all recognition. For a time, I thought the scales would be weighted. I thought that was enough. And yet each time I came here to plead with the House to grant me ascension, it saidnot yet. It was waiting, it told me. There was still more it was owed.”
He drew nearer, peering down the bridge of his nose as though she were vermin.
“Vivienne,” he said, drawing out her name. He made it sound like a curse. A malaise. “I had no idea you existed. Not until Philip called to let me know you were in trouble. That man has always been a wretched opportunist. I’m sure he salivated at the chance to use you to his own ends, once he understood the extent of your capabilities.”
It was all snapping into place. This man in front of her—this Mr. Price with his too-familiar stare—was ambitious and cunning and cold, willing to cut down whoever he needed in order to achieve his goals. Just like her.
She didn’t need a reflection; she was already looking into a mirror.
“You are all that is left,” said her father. “When you’re gone, I will finally ascend. All the wisdom in the known universe will be within my grasp. Do you know what a man can do with infinite knowledge? If he wants to, he can rule the world.”
Behind Price, she caught a flicker of movement in the rusted mirror. At first, it was only a shadow—a tiny, shapeless form small enough to appear as though it was yards and yards away. As it arced steadily closer, it began to take on a wretched shape. It rose up on battered toes, moving in tiny ballerina steps—arms elongated, fingers long and double-jointed, bare feet flickering in neat little bourrées.
Vivienne’s heart gave a horrible lurch. She glanced in the other mirrors and found herself reflectionless in every direction but that one—directly behind her father, where he couldn’t see.
The other Vivienne gave a great, bounding leap, surging through the air in a grand jeté. Next to Vivienne, Adrian Faber had gone all the way green. He’d seen it, too. She was sure of it. In the mirror, the other Vivienne’s smile stretched nearly to her ears. She bent forward and pressed a long, sharp goblin finger to her lips.Quiet.
“Mr. Price,” Adrian eked out. “There’s—”
“Not now, Arnold,” chastised her father, still peering down at Vivienne. “I want you to listen closely. There is a creature who sleeps at the heart of the House. We call it Charybdis, but no one truly knows its name. It has always lived here, rooting in the earth. The foundation went up around it, and it has dwelled here all this time.”
In the cellar, thought Vivienne, and again she saw that dark, open door from her nightmares. Heard that voice like a wagon wheel, beckoning her home.
“You will descend to the lower level,” said her father, “and you will offer yourself to him. I have already done the work of mourning my sons. As long as you live, their sacrifices will be for nothing.”
In the glass, the other Vivienne reached out and tapped the shoulder of her father’s reflection. He brushed at himself as though clearing away a horsefly.
“It’s for a magnificent cause, Vivienne, I assure—”
“Mr. Price,”said Adrian, desperately this time.
“What?” snapped her father. “What couldpossiblybe the trouble?”
“It’s— She’s— You—”
The other Vivienne winked and tapped her father’s reflection again, more insistently than before. This time, he felt it. He turned, his gaze closing in on the fiendish girl in the glass.
“Boo,” she said, elated.
Thomas came to slowly at first, his thoughts groggy and disjointed. And then, with a horrible pop of awareness, he sat upright. His head punished him for it immediately, pain jackhammering through the back of his skull. He took silent stock of his surroundings. The room he was in was as formal as it was dusty, the estate-green walls mildewing in wide black blooms.
The ceiling was coffered wood, rotted clean through in places. To his left, a vast bookshelf spanned an entire length of wall, waterlogged tomes tumbling from shelves gone bowed. To his right was a window, boarded over, its velvet drapery hanging partway off the rod. Directly in front of him sat an asymmetrical chaise, the upholstery faded to a moldering yellow. In the chaise sat Philip Farrow, wrists and ankles bound and sweating profusely.
“Good God,” he snapped, impatient. “It’s about time you came to.”
Thomas tried to poke at his scalp and found himself similarly bound, his wrists strapped to a spindled armchair, his ankles bound to a set of rotting claw feet. He craned his neck around and tried to find an exit. A door sat just over his shoulder, yawning like a mouth into a wide, water-damaged hall. There was no one out there. The house was swallowed up in a terrible silence.
“Where’s Vivienne?” he demanded.
“Elsewhere,” came Philip’s terse reply. “Get us out of here, Walsh.”
