Chapter 16 #2
"Yes," Minerva said. "Something is there.
I won't tell you otherwise." She folded her hands on the table.
"But I will say this. Whatever is upstairs in that empty room has had every opportunity to harm us and has not.
Perhaps it does not wish to, perhaps it cannot.
Either way, it makes you afraid. But you are afraid of something else, as well, Nessa.
A man who has empty pockets and a heavy hand and will be waiting for you the moment you return to town.
And while whatever is upstairs has not harmed you, the man in town has.
" She held Nessa's gaze. "Which of those two monsters would you rather sleep under the same roof with? "
Kitty exhaled a soft huff at Minerva’s question.
The fire settled with a collapse of embers. Nessa looked at the door to the yard then at the ceiling then at her hands.
"When you put it that way," she said quietly.
"I do put it that way," Minerva said.
Kitty reached across the table to take Nessa’s hand.
"We're here," she said. "All three of us.
And Min's right. Whatever's up there, it's not him. It hasn’t blackened your eye or left you bruised and battered.
It has done nothing at all to harm you. To harm any of us.
" She offered an encouraging nod. “My mam always said that not all ghosts are bad. Some are simply lost or confused.”
Nessa let out a long, unsteady breath. "All right," she said, as though making an agreement with herself as much as with them. "All right."
"Good," Minerva said, and pushed back from the table.
She took her candle from the shelf, lit it at the fire, and turned to face them. "I'll go first."
She spoke without allowing herself to think about it, because Nessa needed to see her walk out of this kitchen without hesitation. So, she did not hesitate.
"I am going upstairs to bed," she said, "in my own house, because I am tired and the hour is late and I have absolutely no intention of sleeping in this kitchen." The words came slow and weighted with fatigue, but her voice was steady and she was glad of it.
As she did every night before she went up, she went to the cellar door and made certain the latch was dropped. It was a habit she had begun the day she and Kitty had gone down to the cellar. Then she left the kitchen and ascended the stairs.
On the landing, she paused. The door to the third room was closed. She stood for the span of three slow breaths and listened.
Silence.
Once inside her room, she set the candle on the washstand and went to the window. Darkness swallowed shadow, the night impenetrable. But intuition held her there, and after a moment, her eyes became used to the dark. It was then she saw it, a silhouette, tall and wide. Bulky.
Leaning close to the glass, she strained to see, certain in that instant that a man stood there looking up at her window.
No specter but a man of flesh and blood.
And then she blinked and he was gone. She stood a moment longer, waiting, but saw nothing more.
Then she drew the curtains, went to sit on the edge of the bed, and held her palms flat against her thighs, holding them there until the shaking stilled.
Finally, she climbed between the sheets and lay on her side and thought, I will not be able to sleep. Not tonight.
For long minutes, she counted the seconds of each exhalation, slow, steady.
And at some point, she slept.
The air was flavored with woodsmoke and herbs.
Through the window, she saw only darkness.
She was in the sitting room, she realized, a single candle flickering at her side.
The pendant lay at her throat, always that familiar weight.
Her fingers ached, the joints tight and stiff.
She glanced at them to see swollen knuckles and skin dotted with age.
She understood then that this body was hers but not hers, and the fear this body felt belonged to another.
Catherine. She was afraid and she held that fear under tight rein; Minerva recognized this as the shape of her own life.
She recognized, too, that both the fear and her thoughts were blending with Catherine’s until it was difficult to distinguish to whom each belonged.
Beneath the fear was knowledge so deeply ingrained it was indistinguishable from bone or organ, sinew or muscle—the knowledge of what she was, what those of her line had been before her and those who came after would be when she was gone.
Some women of her bloodline saw things others did not, felt things others did not.
Not because of the pendant; it did not confer such skills.
The pendant was a protector, not a summoner.
The sight was in her blood, in the blood of those who had come before her and those who would come after, and always it belonged to the keeper of this house.
When the keeper died, it passed to her heir.
It had passed to Minerva when Catherine died and would pass to Minerva’s heir when she died.
Minerva stilled. Her heir.
She had no children. She did not intend to have children.
She had decided never to marry, never to put her fate in the hands of a husband, never to produce progeny whose welfare would depend on said husband.
She had thought about the ramifications of that choice and made her peace with it, but she had not considered this specific consequence.
The sight would pass to the next woman in her line. But she did not know who that was. She had no sisters, no aunts, no cousins. Mama had known about the inheritance without ever being called upon to bear its full weight; she had died before Catherine.
Minerva heard the words from her memory. Not yet.
Mama had wanted Minerva to remain blissfully ignorant until the time came that she could no longer be kept unaware. She had made a deliberate decision not to involve Minerva before she had to.
A thousand questions swirled now in Minerva’s mind, but as she tried to voice them, to beg Catherine for explanations, she found herself mute, only a watcher in this moment, aware but trapped in a body not her own.
Unease prickled through her. Her head jerked up.
Something was here, a slick, oily coil of malice and vile intent pressing against her, into her, probing for the smallest gap, searching for weakness.
The Occupant. That was the name Catherine assigned it, this thing that had existed in this place before the house was built, before the town rose up—ancient, patient, requiring a living doorway because it could not create its own.
The Trevelyan brothers, those selfish, greedy men had fed its malice even as it fed theirs. But they had not created it. It had been here long before they were born.
The pendant warmed against her skin, and she felt it then, the power of the stone she wore always.
Protection. Minerva understood it fully now from the inside, from the well of Catherine’s experience.
The pendant did not call or summon or reach.
It protected, sealing the gaps where otherworldly things dwelt, the places where the Occupant tried to slither through.
It kept the wearer separate from what pressed against her, kept her mind her own, her will her own.
The difference between a door with a lock and a door without one.
Without it, she was open, vulnerable. With it, she was defended.
But not invulnerable.
The power of the stone waned under sustained pressure, and the body wearing it tired with it, both drained of resources until rest recharged them.
Minerva rose and saw herself—no, saw Catherine—reflected in the dark window, a woman of late years, her dark hair gone to silver at the temples, the green of her eyes undimmed by age. But as she continued to look, she saw her own face, Minerva’s face, flickering in the glass, wan and drawn.
Catherine’s eyes widened. She looked directly at Minerva. Saw her.
And then Minerva was in her own bed, in her own body, in the dark. She lay still for a long moment, the house quiet, the pendant cool against her skin.
For three years, doubt had been her armor.
You are imagining this. You are having an attack of nerves.
You are anxious and grieving. You are a woman prone to dark thoughts in dark places and what you see and feel is a product of that.
She had worn this explanation, this knowledge like a cloak, staving off a kind of madness.
But she was not mad. And she was not imagining.
She let the armor go.
She did not tell herself it had been but a dream. She was past that now.