CHAPTER 34
Though Grandad didn’t have a clock labeled for himself, it stood to reason his would be the grandfather clock in the front hall, but with the pocket watch cheating us out of an hour here, two hours there, an entirely different problem presented itself.
“I don’t know his exact time of death. If we arrive the morning of, but he only died in the evening, we could run out of time before we even see the murder.”
Kessian glanced warily at the spiteful pocket watch, ticking away the last hours of our lives. “It seems to skip time faster when we jump between memories. Let’s arrive at noon on the day he died. If he’s already gone, we skip back twelve hours. If not … we wait.”
It was as close to an estimated guess as we could get. I nodded in agreement, and we faced down the grandfather clock. The pendulums ticked ominously as we opened the glass face to change the hands.
Kessian said, “Are you ready?”
No. “Let’s get it over with.”
He input the time and date. Gong. Gong. The clock chimed loudly once, twice, thrice …
On the twelfth, the hallway metamorphosed. Shelves and new clocks grew from the walls like moss and lichen. The wallpaper yellowed with age. When it had finished, silence fell, except for the incessant ticking and the sound of muttering from the living room.
We entered to find Grandad with a mug of tea in one hand, a newspaper in the other. It was dated nine years ago, the headline covering the shame of Shearwater’s high street and its falling fortunes. He had it open to the obituaries.
He was still here like he’d never died.
I jumped as Kessian’s fingers threaded through mine. “You all right?”
“Yeah. Yeah, fine. Looks like he’s reading up on every death in Shearwater around the time everyone got taken.”
“Probably hoping for a clue as to what really happened,” Kessian said. “I imagine by now new leads were fairly threadbare.”
We observed in silence as he finished the paper, folded it up, then got up with his empty mug to go to the kitchen. We followed, but at once encountered an issue.
It was a small galley kitchen with only enough space for two people to pass each other. The door opened with a view of the refrigerator, but the rest of the space couldn’t be seen. If we wanted to keep a close eye on him and how the wraith got to him, we couldn’t do so from this vantage.
While I didn’t have to fear bumping into anybody, Kessian was another story. A fact made abundantly clear when his hip bumped the kitchen towel hung on a hook off one end of the counter, and it dropped to the floor.
We backed out of the doorway as Grandad turned to appraise it. Anyone else might have assumed they’d brushed it by accident, but he stared out into the hallway with a heavy, scrutinizing eye.
After years of investigating wild magic, wraiths, and a ravenous river, he didn’t trust these things were just a trick of the light or a draft.
After a moment of waiting, he seemed satisfied it was nothing to worry over, and returned to his business in the kitchen. He pulled a roasting joint from the fridge, then vanished out of sight.
“We can’t see much from here,” Kessian said.
“We could hide in the pantry. The doors are slatted enough to see through.”
“What if he needs something from in there?”
“He always gathered everything he’d need and laid it out on the countertop before he started cooking. We should be safe.”
We stuck our heads through the door. Grandad was collecting all the spices, duck fat, and potatoes he’d need for his roast. Once he’d finished and started greasing the chicken, we snuck by him. While his back was turned, we slipped silently into the pantry.
The inside was cramped and smelled potently of herbs and spices. Kessian leaned his cane against a shelf and, to keep from bumping anything, drew me in close with both arms around my waist.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
Oh. Maybe he wasn’t hugging me just to keep us from bumping into things. “Do I seem not okay?”
“You seem like you’re only half here. Operating on autopilot.”
Our purpose here didn’t inspire intimacy, but being read so well made an ember in my chest glow. It reminded me of the moment at the wedding when Mum misread me, and Kessian had played translator, untangling the gnarled knots in nine years of familial tension.
“Grandad used to make us a roast every Sunday. Used to always give me the chicken oysters,” I said.
“Must have been hard missing them when you first left.”
“Every Sunday, I knew they’d be gathering around his table without me. I wondered who got the oysters instead.”
“Are all your memories of him good?”
“Mostly. That first memory, with Mum and Marlowe … I’ve never heard him talk like that.”
Kessian leaned his ear against my chest. “Is that what’s been bothering you?”
“Part of it.” I inhaled the damp smell of Kessian’s hair, citrus shampoo mixed with strid water. “I guess I’m trying not to think of what might happen if we fail.”
“So let’s not fail.”
“Trying. We can time travel here, but it still feels like time is working against us.”
Kessian warily consulted the pocket watch. He frowned, staring at it. “That can’t be right.”
My stomach dropped. “How much time have we lost?”
He turned the clock to face me. I struggled to register the total lack of movement. After a long delay, the second hand ticked forward. Once. I kept watching, and it felt as though minutes passed before the second hand progressed a second further.
“None,” Kessian answered. “We’ve lost almost no time at all. It’s like we’ve entered a pocket dimension where time moves slow rather than fast.”
I wondered how that could be, but whatever the reason, relief settled over us both.
It was unlikely to be more than a temporary reprieve, but we’d had so little time to breathe.
The pantry was a sanctuary by comparison, with the comforting kitchen noises, the smell of spices, and Kessian’s hands warming two brands against my ribs.
Grandad sipped from a cup of tea he had on the go while chopping vegetables.
I could almost forget this was the day he died.
Kessian shifted a little.
“How’s your leg?” I asked.
“Sore.”
“And … how are you otherwise?”
A sad smile played across his lips. “Wishing we’d gone back to Lunaris together.”
The wraith might have got us anyway, but … “Me too.”
We were fortunate the clock had slowed to the extent we didn’t have to worry about losing time. Less fortunate that there was no place to sit. I held Kessian to support him, but it wasn’t the same as letting him lie down. He didn’t complain, but from the way he ground his teeth, he was in pain.
An hour into our wait, when he’d started to look particularly pale, something strange occurred.
The pantry transformed.
Just a shelf. It jutted out farther, the contents shuffling to the side, and a cushion was conjured so Kessian could comfortably sit.
He stared at it for a second. While I passed through most things here like a ghost, he could sit. The cushion held him.
He sighed. “I have never known relief like this.”
I stared, intuition prickling.
“Did your grandad have a magic pantry?” he asked.
“No … I have a feeling it might be— Never mind. Probably not. Nothing makes sense here.”
The sound of glass shattering splintered through the quiet.
Scattered shards of Edwin’s teacup lay strewn across the parquet, tea seeping into the cracks. He stood back from the oven, chin quivering.
It was the sort of oven that had an arch of bricks like old cottages often did, with a large range hob and a grated extractor fan in place of the chimney flue. Soot rained down from the flue, disturbed by something rattling inside.
I knew what it would be before it emerged, one smoky limb at a time, crooked like a spider. The wraith melted through the narrow grate, unfolded onto the floor, and rose above my grandfather.
“How did it get here? It follows me. It only followed me, and I was nowhere near Shearwater at the time.”
With terrible gravity, Kessian whispered, “But you’re here now.”