Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Anthony
Saltwick House
The Undercroft
Roderick led him deep into the undercroft underneath the house.
They ventured through the cellar, past the neatly ordered shelving for cans and jars.
Past the barrels of apples, potatoes, and edible supplies.
The air was dry and dusty. Haphazardly stacked trunks and crates held the forgotten treasures of yesterday.
Rooms were filled with abandoned furniture.
One room held barrels with a distinctive sulfur and metallic scent. He had no idea how long the barrels had been down there, but a humid cellar was not the ideal storage location for gunpowder.
They went deeper. The air grew damp. Moisture trickled down stone walls, forming puddles. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling. The flames on the candelabra flickered from a breeze. The floor became dirt. They were no longer in the cellar but in the smuggler’s tunnels.
What had seemed like adventure to Anthony as a child was now a mildewy, filthy ordeal. He had already experienced a face full of cobwebs, which was a sensation he’d rather not repeat.
The ceiling lowered, forcing him to crouch. “I’ve never been this far before.”
“You were remarkably obedient as a child and followed all the rules,” Roderick said, not turning around to face Anthony as he spoke. “We never had to worry about you wandering into something you shouldn’t.”
Something in his tone shifted. Perhaps the need for concealment and carefully chosen words was gone.
“What sort of things?” Anthony asked.
“Things a child couldn’t understand. It took me years to understand the truth. Not without sacrifice, mind you,” he said.
“Do you mean the family curse?”
“How tedious it must be to have everything explained so exactly while you navigate the world. I suppose it’s a trait suited for the military, so well done, you, for finding your calling. Of course I mean the family curse,” he said, then disappeared, vanishing into the shadows.
“Roderick!” Anthony dashed forward, holding out his hands to avoid slamming into the tunnel walls.
Light flickered, catching the edge of a concealed opening in the wall. He followed his cousin into the darkness for a second time. The floor sloped downward dramatically, transitioning from dirt back to stone.
“Hurry. She’s waiting,” Roderick called.
The light from the candelabra was a distant pin point. Anthony held out both his hands, feeling his way through the dark as he navigated the tunnel.
This was a mistake. He knew that. It was obvious.
He could hear the insults Nina would throw at him when she found out he chased his clearly insane cousin through a tunnel in the dark.
The only thing worse would be to hear her despair about his lack of curiosity.
Roderick might have a questionable grip on reality, but perhaps he knew something useful about the family’s curse.
Madeline was dead. Anthony was certain of it.
She had grown ill and died. Perhaps Roderick had removed her body from the crypt and hid her in the tunnels.
Perhaps he suffered from a delusion that she returned from the grave.
The twins had always had a particularly close bond.
Perhaps losing Madeline sent Roderick down this path, but perhaps not.
Anthony had always known Roderick to be dangerous, even as a child.
The details were of little importance at this point.
Roderick waited at the end of the corridor. The candelabra sat on a ledge carved into the tunnel, casting a sickly light over him. He stood in front of a massive cast-iron door emblazoned with a familiar finfolk image.
The crypt door.
“It doesn’t have to be a curse. That’s the secret,” Roderick said.
“Where are we?”
“The family crypt. Don’t you recognize our dear old grandpapa?” Roderick pressed on the carving. The thunk of a mechanism unlocking echoed down the tunnel. The door swung open, gap black and unknowable. “It’s all connected.”
“Where’s Madeline?” Anthony asked.
“Home, where she belongs.”
“Right now, this very moment.” Anthony pointed to the open crypt door. “Is she in there? Is her body in there?”
“Her body?” Roderick laughed, the edge sharp and high. “Don’t be so narrow -minded. She swims with the ancestors. This is for you, my dear cousin.”
“I don’t understand.” He did, though.
“There can only be one, I’m afraid. Your kind is awfully territorial.” Then, as if an afterthought, he said, “It was horribly complicated work getting the extended branches to return, you know. Invitations to parties. Holidays. But I got them, one by one, and put them here.”
“How many?—”
“About two dozen or so. It’s only you and I now.”
“And Madeline,” Anthony said.
“Always Madeline.”
“This is Madeline’s territory,” Anthony said, choosing to focus on Roderick’s slightly less horrifying confession. “You did tell me I shouldn’t have returned.”
“I thought you were harmless. More likely to get yourself killed in the line of duty than ever return home.” He chuckled. “Little did I know.”
“I’ll leave.”
“It’s too late for that, I’m afraid. Madeline won’t come back with your stench all over Saltwick. Bringing your bonded mate here, fornicating like animals.” The disgust in his voice was thick enough to cut with a knife.
Anthony should have brought a knife. Some soldier he made. He said, “Madeline’s not coming back. She died. I was a child, but I remember.”
“You know nothing,” he spat. “She is! I made the sacrifice for her return.”
Roderick tore off the eyepatch, flinging it to the ground. His left eye was a misshapen void, filled with scar tissue and shadow.
Anthony gasped. He had seen enough battlefield injuries to know when a wound healed poorly. “What did you do?”
“I had to prove I needed her, didn’t I? She wasn’t going to come back otherwise.”
“Roderick—”
“Don’t,” he warned, pointing a finger at Anthony. “Don’t you pity me.”
“Madeline was bitten, wasn’t she? That was her illness. She transformed into this.” Anthony gestured at himself. “That’s why you were not surprised at my appearance.”
“And they put her in there .”
“Who? Your parents?” Anthony’s memories of that time were hazy. The adults had kept him confined to the nursery and under no circumstances would he have been allowed in Madeline’s sick room.
“The Marshes !” Roderick yelled.
“Our housekeeper?”
“Our jailers!”
That made no sense at all.
“I’ll end this curse,” he spat. “Erase us. All of us. You. Me. This house. The witches that kept us imprisoned here. All gone—and I know just how to do it.”
Anthony mentally shook himself. There was no reasoning with an unreasonable man.
He would balk at the foolishness of continuing to use the same strategy in a losing fight, so why was he here?
Roderick was dangerous. He needed to find Nina and depart Saltwick at once.
“I’ve seen enough. Nina and I will leave as soon as the weather permits. ”
“I can’t allow that, cousin.” Roderick reached into his coat and withdrew a pistol. It was an antiquated model that Anthony recognized from the display cabinet in the study.
“The dueling pistol? That thing hasn’t been fired in decades.”
“That thing took our great-grandfather’s life.” Roderick waved it, the light catching the barrel. “I wager it can take yours too.”
“And Nina?” He knew the answer. “You’ll kill her too.”
“The witch must die, sadly?—”
Anthony lunged before Roderick could finish. They fought for the pistol. He was younger, but Roderick did not have a wound in his back radiating pain at the sudden movement. He swept his leg, causing Roderick to stumble backward.
He slammed into the wall. The pistol went off, the shot echoing off the stone. Debris rained down from the ceiling.
Anthony hesitated and pain flared through his shoulder. He had taken the bullet.
Roderick reached for the candelabra. “I’m sorry. I was always fond of you, but it’s time for the curse to end once and for all.”
The candelabra hit him in the side of the head.
Nina
Saltwick House
Anthony never returned to their room.
The storm continued all night. She slept poorly, unable to find a comfortable position and waking with every clap of thunder.
How did people live with such weather? Sweetwater Point had its fair share of unpleasant weather—freezing cold winters, boiling summers, and volatile storms in the spring and fall—but nothing that lasted all day and night. Nothing that filled her with such dread.
When she heard a clock in the hall strike six, she gave up pretending. She bathed with a bowl of cold water, dressed in her own clothes, and checked the probable spots. Anthony and Roderick could have drunk and reminisced all night before eventually sleeping on the floor in the drawing room.
No such joy.
The study was likewise empty, the fire cold in the grate. She walked around the massive desk on the off chance someone was knocked out on the floor.
Empty.
The desk, however, was unlocked.
She drummed her fingers on the polished surface. Unless Roderick wrote a note that explicitly stated his intentions to go for a midnight walk along with a map, she had no reason to rifle through his desk.
Yet the family kept such secrets.
Roderick had behaved so oddly during dinner.
Anthony wanted answers, and Roderick may very well have some vital information in his desk.
It would be an invasion of privacy to pry, both morally and legally wrong. She shouldn’t.
Damn it all. Roderick and Anthony were clearly not in any of the easily accessible parts of the house. Perhaps the man did leave a note and a map. It’d be irresponsible not to search.
The center top drawer was nothing but loose pencils, pens, and a pot of ink.
The top left drawer held bundles of correspondence tied neatly with ribbons.
The first packet she examined appeared to be from a solicitor’s office.
She set it aside and kept searching. Another drawer held nothing but loose sheets of paper, all blank.