It hadn’t come to kill the entire family. It had only come for Grandad, but why?
Kessian, thinking along the same lines, whispered, “I think … I think the wraith took on the mantle of Keeper from him.”
“What?”
“The way it lit up. That’s what happened when the wraith touched me, in Lunaris when we were fleeing from it for the first time.”
I’d never thought the wraith was cognizant enough for that. We’d thought Shearwater had chosen Kessian. If the wraith was an avatar of the strid and those who’d died in it, perhaps we hadn’t precisely been wrong. But it made sense now, how Kessian had inherited the mantle when it usually passed through families.
Amelia was saying, “What have you got cooking in here?” Then she entered the kitchen.
Her eyes fell on the body. She fell to her knees, crying, “Grandad?” She touched his neck, searching for a pulse.
Lettie appeared next, shrieked, then Marlowe rushed to see what was the matter.
“He’s dead,” Amelia sobbed.
As my family broke down, so did I. My ribs seized around my lungs like a vise, making it very hard to breathe. “It wasn’t Warwick. It wasme. It was my fault.”
Kessian denied it with a shake of his head and a quiet, “No.” His arms squeezed and squeezed, the pressure releasing some of the stress from my body, but my head still hadn’t caught up with it all.
I didn’t understand what any of this meant. Grandad’s ghost told me to find the one who poisoned Shearwater, and the truth behind the wraith.The true face of the one who killed him.Those were his words. Marlowe poisoned Shearwater, but if he wasn’t the face behind the wraith, who was?
I didn’t know, but one last memory, one last death, could hold the answers.
We couldn’t leave the confines of the pantry amongst the noises of grief and Lettie announcing they needed to call the rest of the family, the funeral director, and oh, Marlowe, who should be the one to tell Fae, what with the wedding so close?
In all the chaos, I didn’t notice the temperature in the pantry dropping until something wet dripped onto my bare arm.
I shuddered, touching it with my fingers. They came back smeared with an inky darkness. The room got quiet, as if the world beyond the little pantry had fallen away. Enough that I heard another drip on the floor.
I didn’t want to look up, but I knew what I’d find. I tilted my head back.
The wraith clung to the ceiling, watching.
I let out a yell and grabbed Kessian, intent on fleeing with him, but the wraith descended upon us. Its weight bore us down. I anticipated the hard crack of my body against the parquet, but upon impact, the parquet splashed as though it had been a mirage on the mirror of a lake.
We plunged into deep, dark water.
Chapter 36
Istill had a hold of Kessian, but the wraith had a hold of us.
In the depths, it was hard to see the creature, but I felt it. The ice of its touch was a needle under the skin, bringing back sharply the first time I’d fallen into the strid’s cold waters.
I fought its grip, but it was iron. I tried to kick up for the surface, but the water weighed me down like a lead curtain. I clawed at the wraith, hoping to harm it, hoping to free Kessian.
Instead, my hand grazed the muddy bottom of the spring, or the strid, or wherever we were. Something cold and metal grazed my fingers. Rough, engraved. Thoughtlessly, I grasped onto it. It seemed to be embedded in the ground, and I tried to use it as leverage to pull myself out of the wraith’s clutches. Whatever I held, it budged. In the dark, I saw a glimmer of silver and rust, attached to a chain. With another tug, it came free.
It was my pocket watch. It had been here since the day I’d nearly drowned, but the panic of drowningnowblocked out any speculation as to the grander reason for finding it.
Gripping it in my fist, I lashed out with a punch at the wraith. My arm went through the thick molasses of water and shadow. With a swooping sensation and the rush of water in my ears, I found myself vomited up onto the runner carpet in the hallway of 37 Culpepper Avenue. Kessian tumbled out of the grandfather clock after me, water still spewing from its door. He crawled on his arms, dragging his legs.
I scrambled back, too, whipping my head around in search of the wraith, but it had gone. Kessian sat with his back against the staircase banisters, blinking water from his eyes.
I checked him over for wounds, but apart from red impressions on our arms where the wraith touched us, we were unharmed.
“You’re all right?” I said.
