Chapter 19
The grotto of Monterris Court was located on the ground floor.
Grand doors led in off the old style-wing entry hall, the front doors of which had long ago been bricked up to keep out the worst of the weather.
Moss tumbled in over the bricks and leaked across the flagstones, and the only light in the hall came from cracks high in the outer wall.
“These became the front doors when the central rooms were thought too old-fashioned,” Nic said as they entered the hall armed with a lantern and heavy candlestick.
“Until one of my ancestors switched back to using the current entry when the hook wing was added, abandoning this side of the house because it had become old-fashioned.”
“I think that’s the story of every old house in the country, although usually with less decay and no automata.” Leaf crossed the floor toward the closed grotto doors—two normal-sized doors set within a faux door large enough to fit a giant. “Will these be locked?”
Nic adjusted his grip on the candelabra he’d liberated from the ceremonial dining room. “Not usually, but my father might have locked them before your arrival to be sure no one would see it. He hates the place.”
He’d been in the grotto any number of times, spending hours digging through the piles of automata pieces.
He and Dashiell had explored the place often as boys too, pretending its obsidian walls were portals to other worlds.
Now, for the first time, fear trickled down his back as they approached its doors.
“I don’t like this,” he said. “If that thing is in there, we have no idea what it’s going to do.”
“And if it’s not in there, we’re going to have to make a search of the whole house until we find it. But just think, if we can get its reel, we should be able to solve at least one mystery, if not stop all this awfulness before it goes any further.”
She was right, yet still Nic’s steps slowed, his reluctance a visceral tension against which his legs pulled.
Somewhere in the distance, a door slammed. Leaf lifted her candelabra. “What was that?”
“A door, but—”
Another banged shut and Leaf spun, the sound seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. A third slammed with the finality of a crypt cover, yet its very hollowness sounded all wrong.
“I’m not sure where that’s coming from,” Nic said, staring at the closed grotto doors, their heavy rings like round eyes. Old spells that lay dormant, his father had said, but Nic knew the house like he knew his own palm and he’d never seen anything stranger than the piles of automata themselves.
He strode toward the doors with renewed determination. “Come on. Let’s get that reel.”
“Nic, wait. Look!” Leaf had grasped his arm and gestured toward the base of the grotto doors with her candelabra. “Does that mean it’s in there?”
Darkness leaked from beneath the wood like heavy smoke, billowing slowly.
“It must be.” Nic stepped back, the memory of the service passage all too close.
“What do you think it is?”
He shook his head, retreating another step as it began oozing across the floor. “I don’t know, but it swallowed me entirely, like I ceased to exist. It even went down my throat. I hate to think what might have happened if you hadn’t been there that day.”
A new, even more horrifying thought followed. Would he have been its next victim?
A similar thought must have occurred to Leaf, for her hold on his arm tightened. “Do you think that’s how it gets people? Some… magic that incapacitates?”
Except it wasn’t magic, at least not sigil magic, the air once again tainted with only stickiness and a whisper so faint he had surely imagined it. Something smothered. Old. Dead.
“I think maybe,” Leaf said, swallowing hard, “it doesn’t want us to take its reel.”
As though in response to the suggestion, the darkness lashed at them, whipping like a velvet hand. With a fearful cry, Leaf flinched back, still gripping Nic’s arm as though she feared to let go. “We need to get out of here,” she said, tugging him away. “Come on!”
Terror had lodged in Nic’s throat like it owned spikes, and it took a fierce yank from Leaf to get his feet moving.
Together they fled across the stones toward the stairs, where he thrust her on ahead and glanced back.
Before, the darkness had been like swirling clouds, but now night rose from the floor like a boiling sea, faces forming on its shifting surface.
Nicholas.
The name shivered through his skin more feeling than sound. It came again, seeming to call to him, and Nic lingered on the bottom step staring out at the rising darkness.
“What are you doing, Nic! Come on!” Leaf pulled him up the stairs in her wake, not slowing even when she reached the upper landing.
Sprinting as though her life depended on it, she sped along the passage, her soft shoes skidding as she turned the corner, floorboards protesting.
Together they ran on through the style wing’s abandoned rooms, not stopping until they reached the front antechamber, where Leaf tore open the door.
She darted through into the main house without looking back, leaving Nic to close and lock it behind them.
For a long minute they stood catching their breath, both staring at the gap beneath the door.
“Are you all right?” Nic asked when no darkness materialised.
“All right?” she repeated, the words possessing a manic edge. “There’s an automaton down there that probably wants to kill us, and we can’t even reach it. So much for your house not being like that castle in The Mysteries of Udolpho. What happened to no black veils?”
“At least I was right about there being no Italian counts?”
Leaf threw up her hands, amusement tugging at the tense line of her mouth. “Oh, well, that’s all right then.”
Nic grinned, needing to ease the tension ratcheted in his chest before it unravelled him. “There aren’t any ghosts in The Mysteries of Udolpho either. Although, thankfully, we’re not in a book.”
“It might be better if we were. At least in a book you can usually be sure of a happy ending.” She sighed, looking along the hall to where weak winter sunlight bathed the worn carpet.
“We need a new plan. Whatever is going on, that thing is dangerous and we have to figure out a way to stop it. You”—she jabbed his chest with the tip of her finger—“need to decipher that sigil tape we found because it might be related. I am going to warn Lisbeth and Millie not to go anywhere on their own no matter what. If I was able to save you from… whatever that darkness is, then so long as we all keep together, we’ll be safe, right? ”
“Right,” Nic said, and wished he couldn’t hear the doubt in his own voice.
Having promised not to go anywhere alone, Nic spent the afternoon in his rooms trying to read the sigil tape and failing. Dashiell had been right: it read like neither vow law nor conjuring work nor even automata instructions, the mixture of sigils wholly bizarre.
When it came time to make the daily trek down to the drawing room for dinner, Nic enlisted Ambrose’s company, yet even his new valet’s imperturbable calm couldn’t keep Nic from glancing at every shifting shadow.
He arrived to find Lord Ricard the only guest present, the man sitting at one end of the room while the duchess sat at the other, Silla hovering nearby.
“Good evening, Mama,” Nic said, receiving a distant smile as he sat beside her.
“Oh, Nicholas,” she said. “Are you well? It feels like an age since I saw you last. At the Seftons’ ball, was it not?”
He couldn’t decide whether he was glad or sorry she had once again found the safety of her daydreams: glad for her smiles, sorry for their lie.
“I am very well, Mama. And yourself? After last night’s strange dinner.”
Silla didn’t speak, but the intensity with which she stared at him from behind the duchess’s chair caught Nic’s attention like a hook, her warning no less forceful for being silent.
“Strange dinner?” the duchess said, a notch of confusion cutting between her brows. “I… don’t remember that. Why don’t I remember that?”
Nic glanced around to be sure Lord Ricard could not hear and found Leaf arriving with her father.
“You probably don’t remember because it wasn’t so remarkable.
Shall I come sit with you tomorrow? We could read; it’s been a while since we did that.
I think we were partway through Bougainville’s Voyage around the World. ”
“Ah yes! He was going to Patagonia!”
At the second opening of the door, Nic turned again and his gaze lingered on the welcome sight of Dashiell’s arrival.
He had changed from his plain black smithing attire into evening dress, his coat the one with the cinched waist he had worn the first night—the night he had hauled Nic out of the pond.
They had shouted at each other then, but now when their gazes met, it was a soft, fond smile they shared across the distance.
Nic held it longer than he ought, only to turn back and find his mother watching him.
She leaned forward, taking his hand. “I’m trying, my love. The only thing I ever wanted was for you not to end up like me.”
“What do you mean, Mama?”
“We aren’t all prisoners for life, but we are all still prisoners.” Her grip tightened, fingers digging into the back of his hand. “When you own me, will you set me free?”
Her words tugged upon his heart, the bright hopeful light in her eyes pricking tears into the corners of his own. “Yes. Yes, Mama, I will.”
She let go and sat back with a sigh, leaving Nic to blink away tears he dared not let fall.