Chapter 14
“The Breton fairies, like others of their race, are fond of kidnapping mortal children and leaving in their places wizened elves who cause the greatest trouble to the distressed parents. The usual method of ridding a family of such a changeling is to surprise it in some manner so that it will betray its true character.”
I am as wobbly as a newborn foal when I wake, but monsters wait for no woman. I have been attacked twice, and Father has been murdered. The monster must be stopped—and I am now the Hunter who must stop it.
When Rylan comes into my room, she says, “Isabeau was here. Mother turned her away. Do you want to send her a note now that—”
“No. I have more pressing tasks. I need to be in my laboratory. Help me walk.”
“Mother will not approve.”
“She has no voice in this. I am the Hunter, and I need to stop this faery.” I ponder my words, aiming for a delicacy that my sister deserves. “It killed three men, Ry, including our father. It killed our father.”
Rylan exhales. I feel like she knew that, but perhaps Mother was sparing her the details. Either way, my sister steadies herself and then asks, “May I assist you inside the laboratory, too?”
I hate that I am agreeing, but there is no other Hunter-in-Training, not until she or I have a child to inherit this duty. “You must obey my every order there.”
“Obey you?” she scoffs.
“In matters of the Hunter, we are not sisters, Ry. I am the Hunter, and you may assist me, but I cannot risk you being injured.” I stare at her, hating how I sound and hoping she’ll refuse.
“You sound like him,” she whispers. “I understand how you felt about him in this moment. I don’t like you very much right now.”
I nod. What else can I do? Rylan helps steady me as I walk to the laboratory.
The one we have here is smaller than the one at the manor, but it is still reasonably well supplied.
Salt crystals line the walls, and there are no windows.
To get into this room, a monster would need to tear through the wall of the house.
I used to think nothing was strong enough for that. The Beast of Brimmond has nearly severed the heads of grown men. That sort of strength is daunting.
The first door to the laboratory leads to a small foyer, no more than a door’s span in depth.
Inside it is a second door. The inside of the inner door is steel, but that is true of the door to the front of this house and the back.
The same is true at the manor. Father’s grandfather had them commissioned.
The core is steel or iron, but the exterior is a wooden facade. Our homes are safe.
This room is safer still.
I want to lock Mother and Rylan in here, sealed away from threats, and not allow them to be in a world where monsters rip holes in the skin of my family.
I want to insist Isabeau build such a room and hide away.
How did my father live with the fear? How can any person endure the crushing weight of responsibility for another person’s safety?
Mother stops us in the hallway and forces us to each take several bites of food and a half cup of tea before walking away. She says nothing, but her eyes are red from crying. I want to promise any and everything to make her pain end, but nothing I do will return Father to her arms.
“Come,” I whisper to my sister, pushing the door of my laboratory open.
Inside the room I open the safe where one of them, likely Mother, stored all the samples. My heart recoils at the thought of her carrying her husband’s blood and tissue here.
“I brought the box in here,” Rylan says from behind me. “She was holding it and weeping.”
“I am sorry. I was not prepared for the transition to . . .” My words fade away, as if saying it will make us both mourn again.
“Hunter,” Rylan finishes. Then my sister gives me a sympathetic look. “I cannot imagine being prepared. You were miserable.” She flashes her impish smile. “I would appreciate you never dying because I do not want to feel that sort of pain ever.”
“I cannot promise, but I will try.” I pull on an apron before I open the steel box of samples, trying to pretend that they were not collected from our father’s corpse.
Rylan stands waiting for instruction.
“Apron. Then, I need the etched microscope.” I point, dropping too heavily into a chair. I am not recovered. I know it as well as I know that it matters little if I am ready.
Rylan carries the device with both hands and lowers it to the table in front of me.
It’s my favorite microscope. I’ve collected six new versions of the devices to have here over the last few years, but this one was custom-designed by an ocularist here in Regina Centrum.
The man was a bit of an artist, so the barrel is etched with designs that have hidden reminders in the spirals.
I pull out a glass slide and a small thistle tube. The glass resembles a thistle, flared on top with a long thin stem. They are all hand-blown glass, so I treat them carefully even as my hand is still weak. I cover the top of the thistle tube with my thumb to use air pressure to draw up liquid.
“What are you looking for?” Rylan asks.
I adjust the focusing screw. “Saliva first.” I pause. “Sketching pad so we can draw anything we find.”
Once she has the pad and a set of charcoals, I recite the list of possible faeries I have so far as she writes them down on the page. Although some are less likely, I want to list all of them. The ground was wet the nights that Hugh and the nameless victim died, so perhaps we missed water.
Bean Nighe.
Phynnodderee.
Ankou.
Pooka.
Aughiska.
Far Darrig.
Mourioche.
I lower my eye to the lens. The sample shows no signs of irregularity consistent with the saliva of the more water-based feral sidh. Some faery animals also have an anticoagulation effect in their saliva. That, too, is absent here.
“Bring all my microscopes,” I order.
Sample after sample I line up and examine.
I have slides on each of six devices. “Not a one shows water infusion in the blood. Not the ones from my attack or from Father’s death.
That officially eliminates the Aughiska and Bean Nighe.
I was inclined to dismiss them after my earlier examinations of the body at the manor, but this confirms it.
They cannot kill without spilling water, and we have three victims with no watery residue on them. ”
Rylan makes a note in the journal, then draws a line through Aughiska and Bean Nighe on our list. No saliva, inhuman soil, or sidh blood is present in any of the samples I collected from our father’s body. “It’s not much of a decrease in the list,” she says. “Two eliminated.”
“The thing that attacked me . . .” I close my eyes to picture it. “There were claws. I’ve not seen such claws before.”
She slides a notepad toward me. I salt my hands and hastily sketch what memory I have.
“Those are peculiar,” Rylan muses, tracing the spiral of the claws. “Like thin rams’ horns.”
It’s an apt comparison, but as I scan my memory, I can think of no such creature. “Is there anything that can also curse people?”
“Do you think Isabeau’s curse is connected?” Rylan asks.
“No.” I pause as I think about the timing of everything. “However, the first body was found, and Isabeau was cursed shortly thereafter. The timing is close.”
“Her father died. The curse is more likely tied to that, is it not?” Rylan has read almost as many journals as I have. “Do we have any details on it?”
“It makes her sleep.”
“Like the spindle curse?”
“Yes.” I roll each detail in my mind. There was Hugh’s murder, my attack in the woods, the duke’s death, Isabeau’s curse, another murder, my attack in the city, Father’s murder .
. . but a sequence doesn’t mean everything is connected.
“I can think of no reason her sleeping curse would be connected.”
“Does anything in the journal curse and kill?” Rylan idly sketches a spindle on a piece of paper, not in the journal itself. She glances at me. “Can you picture Isabeau at a spindle or loom?”
“No to the latter.” I smile briefly at the welcome distraction.
“Unfortunately, the faeries strong enough to kill as this beast has—all of which are banned from our world—could also curse a person. The curse is so . . . mundane. I don’t know that it narrows our list of possible culprits at all, and Father said it was ‘new.’”
I look again at the book on the stand beside me, flipping pages as I consider what might be strong enough to nearly sever a head and what would drain the blood and be “new”—also whether the curse is a factor at all.
The baobhan sìth is reputedly a blood drinker, and they are among the list of creatures banned in the treaty between Queen Morag and Queen Gloriana.
They rarely curse anyone, and if they do, the curses are far more creative than . . . sleeping at night.
“The baobhan sìth drink blood,” I muse aloud, “but likely are not strong enough to behead a man. And is there mention of claws anywhere?”
The chiming of the oversize bell in the laboratory sounds, drawing our attention to the time. With a hurried obscenity, I gather the glass pieces with the blood samples and return them to the steel box.
Early on, I was splashed by faery blood often enough that the stuff makes my skin itch. I slow my motions, although they are rote by now. The glass is returned to its box, covered with a small iron cap, and the whole steel box is closed and latched.
Rylan watches as I return the box to the safe and lock it away. “So we eliminate one faery, and then add one? We could keep going.”
“Mother only summons me when she thinks it urgent,” I remind her. “Hands.”
“I didn’t touch anything, Gab,” Rylan huffs at me.
I stare at her until my sister extends her hands, and I pour salt over them. “Habit matters. You can never salt too often.”
I remove my apron, dip it into a vat of salt water liberally laced with iron filings, and hang it to dry. Then I dunk my hands into the same vat. Again, I look at my sister. “Apron. Then hands.”