12. Chapter 12
Chapter twelve
Riselda wasn’t home when Lux stumbled down the stairs, reaching for the stool to rest her head in her hands.
She took several steady breaths before lowering quivering fingers to her lap.
“So stupid. So, so stupid…”
Her vision faded to unfocused colors and shapes, the lone lamp flickering weakly. Night had fallen and she had missed dinner, but the thought of food now only sent her stomach roiling.
A quiet tap, and the room sharpened.
A gentle knock came again upon the door. She wasn’t used to the type, and especially not at night. Warily, she rose. Her knees buckled, and she steadied herself on the table only for the wood beneath to send her reeling back over the forest’s memory. Lux shook herself.
“Quit it, you ninny,” she chided, climbing the steps.
The door creaked open against her hand.
Honey-colored hair tumbled into Shaw’s eyes as he stood on her doorstep. Eyes that widened in shock at her state and then at the door being slammed in his face.
Lux strode back down the steps.
“Necromancer! I need to speak with you.”
His muffled voice reached her ears, and she rolled her eyes. Now he wanted a conversation? She huffed a humorless laugh, stoking the fire. He could yell through the night for all she cared.
A fist pounded on the wood. She ignored it.
Until it creaked .
Her jaw dropped, the poker falling to meet hungry, meager flames. “How dare you!” She charged around the corner, glaring up the stairs at Shaw closing the door behind him.
“How dare I? At least I had the consideration to knock first.” He quirked his lips as she stomped up the steps.
The landing was nowhere near big enough for two people, but Lux wasn’t going to give him the benefit of towering higher above her than he already did. He backed away, but there wasn’t anywhere for him to go but out. Bodies nearly touching, she flushed with rage.
“Get out .”
His gaze roved over her face, the mockery of a smile vanishing from his mouth. “Are you all right?”
She jabbed a finger into his chest. “No, and I have nothing more to say to you. You want to ruin your life, blacken your soul? Fine. Fall to the darkness for all I care. But don’t think I won’t be keeping track of your excursions . I’ll discover the mayor’s secrets on my own, and I may even report you to the Shield in the process.”
Lux didn’t think she would actually give them his name. Not unless his murderous tendencies shifted toward the innocent as well. She noted on an afterthought that perhaps he would kill her for the threat she posed. She smirked.
He could try.
“You look dreadful.” His brow furrowed as he glanced down the cramped space between them, her threats seemingly ignored.
“As well I should! I was almost swallowed by a tree, alive, saved only by the bravest crow.” A pang of guilt leaked into her chest at her unfortunate treatment of the bird. She should have been kinder. “There is a phantom in the wood doing something to the dead before the trees claim them. And I hate that I hate my aunt’s returned!”
A look of doubtful speculation crept over Shaw’s face, and Lux pressed sharp nails into her palms to keep from slapping it away. Finally, he shook his head, wiping it clean from his features on his own, and strode down the steps.
She sputtered at his retreating back. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I need time with this.”
She dashed after him.
Around the kitchen table, he settled into the rocking chair, running his fingers along the armrest with a thoughtful turn of his brow. “Do you like this chair?”
“Obviously not. Riselda threw mine out. As I’m about to call someone to do for you .”
He shifted in the hard seat, unperturbed. “I see now why you hate her.”
“I never said that.”
Shaw shrugged, his attention drifting over her in a lazy manner. “Your stockings are ruined. And I think you’re bleeding. For sure, you’ve bled .” She crossed her arms, and his features shadowed. “Why would you enter the forest? A death wish?”
She ground her teeth. Whirling, she strode to her bedroom. He could stay there all night for all she cared. He and his infuriating questions and irritating observations would make for good company well enough without her.
“Lux.” She stopped in the doorway, though she didn’t know why she had. Maybe the vein of hope threading through her name on his lips. The possibility pricked her skin. “I need your help.”
She laughed. Not a chuckle, but long, loud and deep. She crossed her arms over her middle until her muscles ached. Finally, her laugh diminishing to hiccupped giggles, she turned. He stood just feet away, one eyebrow raised. His expression almost sent her laughing anew, him being so hopelessly bewildered by her outburst. She bit it back.
“Only if you have gold with which to line my pockets.” She gestured to her ruined skirt, one pocket torn and gaping, a still-fresh wound oozing somewhere beneath.
An unexpected flash of regret swept across his face. “I’m sorry I spoke so harshly that day.” The words grated on his tongue. It would seem the prowler didn’t apologize often.
She didn’t bother with a reply, and he studied her a moment more. “Are you invited to the mayor’s birthday party?” If she expected anything to come from his mouth, this wasn’t it. And it certainly wouldn’t have been followed by, “Will you bring me with you?”
“You—” She paused, her mind attempting to right itself. “You want to go to the masquerade? As my escort?”
“If you must call it that. I can’t very well go on my own. Those of the Dark are rarely remembered, let alone invited to such things.” Lux allowed him to finish his lamenting without comment. He blew out a breath. “I want to know what the mansion hides.”
Ah, there it is . “I’d thought of the same. But, alas, I prefer to work alone.”
“Take me. I can help.”
“No, I—” But a sudden idea pushed all others aside, and gleefully, she changed her mind right then and there. “Will you let me borrow your grandfather’s journal?”
Shaw’s lips thinned, and Lux straightened her spine. She’d go alone. It didn’t bother her any. But his gaze turned calculating as if reading the turn of her thoughts, and, at last, he nodded.
“Excellent. We should hire a carriage, though. I’ll have the driver take me to your apartment, and we can ride the rest of the way together.”
He exhaled through his nose. “I should be retrieving you.”
“Oh, I think this route will do just fine.”
Shaw rolled his shoulders, and she grinned, feeling sure she could manage the sacrifice of this victory. Before he could scowl much more, likely unsure now if what he promised was worth the cost, frantic pounding interrupted the silence.
Skirting around him, Lux jogged up the steps.
Now this knock she knew quite well.
A dripping bundle lay wrapped in a ragged blanket. The sobbing woman held it tight and clutched close to her chest, while a man stood behind her. Tears ran down his bearded cheeks as he lowered a hand a second away from rapping on Lux’s nose.
“Come in.” Lux backed from the sense of heartbreak that billowed around her. Always so much heartbreak—and always laced with a threadbare shred of hope. She glanced at Shaw, urging him to say nothing. With hooded eyes, he obeyed.
Lux entered the workroom and turned up the lamp. Twisting back, she watched the parents, observed as they didn’t even look at her, their hands laying the little body ever-so-gently upon the table. It looked so small.
“How long?”
The woman raised her eyes. A gaze filled with so much sorrow, Lux felt instantly sick. “Eight hours, nine at most.” She bit her lip against a sob as the man fished through his coat. “We’ve been searching most of the day. We finally found her. In the marshes. She’s only just reached her second year. She—”
Tears poured from her eyes, yet she didn’t look away. Begging.
“How much?” the father asked, hoarse.
Lux relayed the sum, and the color drained from his face. He frantically searched again, turning up a button and a roll of string. Desolate eyes found hers.
“I don’t have it.” He laid the single goldquin on the table. Followed by a silvdan. Five coptons.
The woman’s mouth opened and closed, staring at the child as if she could will the life back. Her skin paled to ash.
“We must. We must. We must.” The mother rocked back and forth, holding her middle. She shook her head, unwilling to believe. “We must.”
Lux stared at the unmoving bundle on the table. She should turn them away. Would turn them away. Exceptions were always a mistake: a rule in dark business.
She opened her mouth to tell them to go—but something else tumbled out. “My door creaks terribly. It’s been years now.” The man’s eyes snapped to hers. “Perhaps you could fix it for me? I’d pay you well.”
Understanding swept the despair from his features. “Of course, oh , of course. Of course, I could fix that.”
She nodded and her attention left him. “Put the money in the crock.”
Stepping toward the body, she carefully unwrapped it. The blanket gave way to rounded features: a soft face beneath a head full of dark curls, and a little body in a sodden, dirty dress. She was cold and wet and blue, her limbs rigid in death. Lux undressed her carefully.
She remembered that proprietor’s daughter now. The one she couldn’t save. They’d been nearly the same age. And she’d lain just like this. But it had been too long. Too wet, too blue, too cold. Lux couldn’t have brought her back.
She wouldn’t have been the same.
Lux draped the small body in a sheet much too big for it before turning back to the shelves, to The Risen propped just as she’d left it. She allowed a moment for the greeting plants to wrap their vines about her fingers in welcome.
“That’s enough.”
Normally, she would never allow family to watch, but she didn’t know if Shaw had managed to sneak out her front door yet. She gestured them to the stool resting in the corner instead, handing the mother a dress that dripped. The woman snatched it to her, where she clutched it so tightly to her chest, Lux was sure her hands would be left aching long after their release.
Lux took one of the precious howler teeth from the jar. Grinding, measuring, stirring, she settled the paste beside the child’s face. Then she painted.
“ Back from Death we beckon,
A guide between Life and Fate.
Mend what has been broken:
Time
Mortality.
Through the veil between realms,
shall you follow this road.
May your eyes become mine
Until you return home.
Time of death, death in time.
From untimely death, we bid you Rise.”
Waves of pink crashed and receded and crashed again. Until the bloom of life remained.
Lux removed her thumbs.
But, for some inexplicable reason, her hands remained still. They laid there, cupping the girl’s face, as bright green eyes met another’s. Tiny, pink lips trembled. A single tear ran from the corner of the child’s eye, seeping into Lux’s skin.
“Shh, you’re all right.”
The girl calmed at her voice, and Lux stiffened, taken aback she’d spoken at all.
She glanced to the parents. They needed nothing further. Rushing forward with deep cries, they scooped their daughter up together.
Lux watched on as plump, little arms encircled the mother’s neck, before her gaze met the father’s. With tears running down his face anew, he nodded a promise, and she turned away. Though what she feared he’d see, she didn’t know.
Bundled in her softest blanket, Lux ushered the child and her parents out of her home on a threat to maintain their silence. She shut it after them, resting her back against the rough wood. Sure she’d never been so drained in every aspect, she pushed from its surface.
Shaw threw a log onto the fire, brushing his hands along his trousers when she stepped to his side. Exhaustion had stolen the heat from her skin; she wanted to be near something—some one— warm.
Even if that someone was him.
“I thought you’d left.”
The family had seen him, sitting with his back unnaturally straight, fingers steepled, in the chair. But they’d been much too focused on their returned child to bother with a second glance.
Shaw stared at the fire, his expression distant. “I know I don’t have a good reason for staying.” He turned back to the chair, grabbing his coat. His thumb traced along its faded edge. “Curiosity, perhaps.” His gaze flicked to hers, and Lux covered her mouth against a yawn, her eyelids fluttering.
She was too tired to truly care.
But when she focused on him next, his jaw had hardened, his eyes boring into the bloodied tear of her skirt. She snapped her fingers in his face, and he sneered.
“What?”
“Don’t forget our bargain.”
“I don’t often forget what I dread most.” Ignoring her own sneer now, he pulled on his cap. “Until the masquerade.”
“No.”
Shaw caught himself midstep, shadowed eyes sharpening and ready for battle. “ No? ”
“I want that journal beforehand.”
She had errands in the Dark Market anyway. The image of three howler canines resting in their jar demanded her to try her luck at acquiring more. It had been years since she’d run this low.
“Suit yourself,” he said. “You know the way easily by now, I should think.”
She scowled at his retreating back.
A death-cart rumbled along the cobblestones, and he stiffened on the stairs, listening to its path. “How did the bodies appear? In the forest.”
“Black boils.” She stared at the break in Riselda’s horrid curtains, thoroughly unwell. “Just as before.”