A red haze clouded Magdala’s vision as she gripped the drainpipe and shimmied up. The casement opened and Asherton stuck his head out. “Magdala Devney, what is wrong with you?”
Magdala glared at him. Her hands burned, but she pulled herself up.
“You’re going to break your stupid neck!”
“Shut up!” she hissed. “I’m concentrating.”
She reached the windowsill and gripped it with her fingertips. Asherton’s lips twitched. “You are reckless.”
With that, he turned back into the room … and shut the window.
Magdala gasped. “HEY!”
The rock had left a jagged hole in the window, but not enough for her to climb through. She hung a moment, unable now to get her body onto the shallow windowsill.
Her hands itched to throttle him, the stubborn, stupid, conceited … how dare he lock her out when she’d put up with his constanttalkingand cooked for him and mothered his man-eating plant? Not to mention thethreeassassination attempts she’d foiled.
Grunting, her arms burning, Magdala scooted back to the drainpipe and slid to the ground.
Chapter 28
With four rooms echoing between her and Asherton, Magdala spent the night in restless wakefulness. She’d grown accustomed to his breathing, the sound of his blankets rustling, and Anton curled against her side. She felt safe with Asherton an arm’s length away.
In the darkness, his words under the influence of the amenite haunted her.
Did you come to torment me with your cunning smiles and that wit that makes me want to kiss you more than I want to breathe? Did you come here to torture me with your powerful, beautiful body that lights me up whenever you move?
He thought she was beautiful. No one had ever said she was beautiful before. Powerful, intimidating, impressive, but never beautiful.
But Asherton had called her lovely the first day she met him.
What if the assassin got into his room and slit his throat while he slept? With the window broken, he might manage to unlatch it and slip inside. What if, when she woke, she found Asherton dead in a puddle of blood?
Anxiety boiling in her stomach, Magdala threw the covers aside and got up. Gathering her pillow and blanket, she tiptoed down the hall to Asherton’s door and lay down at the threshold.
She lay there a long time, listening under the door for rustling sheets, for footsteps, for anything. But sleep evaded her, and Asherton’s room was silent. She slept fitfully and only awoke in the darkest hours, sweating in the tight corridor. What difference did it make sleeping here? The door was locked. If someone did burst in, she could only listen helplessly.
Miserable, Magdala returned to the spare room. As she stepped inside, something clicked, and she thought she saw the door of the armoire move.
Magdala stood frozen in the doorway, half expecting the horrible ghoul of her girlhood imaginings to run at her with long, bony fingers. Her blood whistling in her temples, Magdala crept to the armoire and threw the door open.
It was empty, except for the blood-stained jacket Asherton had been sent her first day at Elegy. Magdala knelt and pulled it out.
In the days since she’d come to Elegy, Asherton had carried his grief quietly, like an old scar. But she saw flashes of it sometimes. At night, hidden by darkness, she would hear him sniffle. Sometimes he fell suddenly quiet or stared at the same page of a book for too long, and she knew he was thinking about his lost brother. If someone washed the blood away from the wool, she wondered if he would wear the coat. If its weight would comfort him.
Only a day ago, she’d imagined reaching across a ravine and Asherton reaching back. They’d brushed fingers, and she thought they might hold onto one another, like friends. She’d peered into his heart for an ephemeral beat, and then he’d closed the door against her and thrown away the key.
Now, she sat literally and metaphorically out in the hall, and the pang surprised her. With all his mess and moods and shifting tempers, she’d gotten so used to him that she didn’t know how to be alone anymore. He had hovered ghost-like in her peripheral every moment of the day, and she missed his haunting.
She wanted him back. And she was going to win his trust, even if she had to yell at him to wipe up his muddy footprints for the rest of both their most likely very short lives.
The full moon was up, bathing the grounds and forest in icy silver light. If she slipped outside, it would be easy to find her way without a lantern. She could watch Asherton’s window from down there better than she could in this musty room.
She gathered the jacket, took a bar of soap from the spare washroom, and tiptoed down the corridor. She paused in front of Zephyr’s door, listening for snores, but the immortal must have been sleeping heavily, because not a breath stirred.
Magdala hurried down to the kitchen and gathered baking soda, vinegar, and salt. Thus armed, she made for the woods. She followed the babble of water to a broad, shallowstream. From here, she could still see the light in Asherton’s window through the trees, and the back of the house.
Taking off her boots, Magdala waded into the cold current and settled on the smooth surface of a rock. Dipping the jacket in the water, she scrubbed soap on the stained collar.
