“Yeah. Yeah, it didn’t hurt me.”
I sighed with relief and sat back to appraise the house. “Why did it bring us here? Isn’t this where we’d end up if the memory had ended as usual?”
“Maybe not.” He pointed through the arch into the living room, which was teeming with clocks. We were further along in time than the Culpepper Avenue of the Bloodstream.
Kessian pulled the spectral pocket watch out and let his head fall back against the banister with a painful knock. “We only have five more hours.”
I might have despaired, but something about the entire situation struck me differently from our other encounters with the wraith. I opened my own fist to show him what I’d found at the bottom of the spring.
Kessian’s eyes widened. “That’s the watch we found in your grandad’s study.”
“It was at the bottom of the strid. That must have been where the wraith took us. Presumably the watch has been there since the day I nearly drowned.” I ran my fingers over the engraved edges, trying to wrap my head around two strange elements to this development.
“I’m going to say something crazy,” Kessian said.
“All right …”
“Maybe this is the day we’re meant to plant the watch, and the wraith brought us to the correct time after ensuring we found the watch in the first place?”
I shuddered. “That makes it sound like the wraith is helping us.”
“Maybe it’s been trying to? If you think about it, the only way this whole mess gets fixed is if we went into the Bloodstream. It’s been trying to lure you in by taking your loved ones.”
“Why not just take me?”
“I don’t know if it can. It’s a part of you. It can get through your wards. Maybe that means it can’t enthrall you, either.”
It did sound mad, but I’d begun to wonder if the wraith wasn’t as malevolent as it seemed. Grandad had spoken to it as if he’d known who the wraith was. He’d transferred the powers of the Keeper to it, and it had given them to Kessian.
Kessian had somehow held on to his cane throughout the whole ordeal. Probably tried to give the wraith a beating with it. He used it now to help himself to his feet and make his way up the stairs.
I followed. Anticipation of what we’d find warred with my desire for a hot fire and dry clothes. In these brief moments of quiet between harrowing memories and near-drownings, I remembered that this had started with a kiss under a tree. The prospect of going home and falling asleep in his arms kept my body moving in spite of a bone-deep need to lie down.
That feeling would be all the more pressing for Kessian, who moved stiffly and slowly up the stairs with an iron grip on the banister and his cane.
No one occupied the study except the dervish of notes and clutter, which had expanded from our last visit. Kessian rooted through a few drawers until he found a letter opener. “Use this to engrave the watch. And maybe try to make it quick. We’ve lost another hour.”
I sat down to carve the combination to Warwick’s safe. I’d cursed the ambiguity of this message before, but with time ticking away, I didn’t have the hours to spare or the space available in the small watch for anything longer. The fire set in his office would burn away any message I left on paper. The watch would at least survive.
Once finished, I set the rusted pocket watch in the center of Edwin’s desk. The moment I did, the world blurred, sucking us back into the Bloodstream once more, back to the version of the house lost in time on the edge of a river. Consulting the watch, its hands seemed to race compared to the sluggish tick of the second hand in the pantry. We had three hours left.
We didn’t prevaricate over where to go next. The wraith was at the center of all this, and the first time it had been seen was the night it took Laurelie.
In Edwin’s study, we turned the hands of the floral clock to the numbers corresponding with the date of her death. It didn’t thrill me to revisit every death in my family like the world’s most morbid pilgrimage, but happy memories wouldn’t yield answers to our questions.
The office washed away, once again replaced with my teenage bedroom. For a moment, I thought we’d accidentally entered the same memory as the last. I still slept in my bed, one foot kicked out to keep cool, Laurelie curled up around her crocheted egg. Her dark hair puddled around her on the pillow, disconcertingly like blood.
Her eyes opened and stared across at me like she’d never been asleep. Slowly, she rose from her bed and went to the window. Her own familiar, a long-haired tortoiseshell cat named Mari, followed her, its tail like a feather duster held in the air. Laurelie whispered to my sleeping form, “Taliesin?”
I didn’t stir. Convinced I was truly asleep, she padded out of the room, turning the door handle so softly it barely creaked.
Unlike my father and I, she moved with determined steps. Her eyes were bright and alert. No music lured her out of her bed. She went willingly.
Kessian and I only lingered long enough to glance out the window to see what had drawn her attention. I let out a soft gasp at the sight.
The spring was alive with dancing lights. Red stars like comets flitted through the mirrored surface, gathering most densely around the shore in a glowing foam. It looked beautiful and deadly, the magic of the strid made bloody by the deaths of all who’d drowned a few days ago.
There was no sign of the wraith.
