Page 42 of Cursed Shadows 5

I catch it with a small, satisfied smile. Then I shut the door on the landlord’s face.

I can do that now.

I can close doors and open them when I like, on whoever I like. It’s a small thing, but I am quickly fond of it.

“I want to check something.” Eamon draws back to the lounge, his determined steps aimed at the windows.

I press my back against the front door with too many locks just in time to watch Eamon open the window, pulling the handles into the dwelling, and it opens like a set of doors.

He climbs out onto the small terrace.

I rush to catch up with him.

I decide when I reach the window that this is not so much a terrace as it is more of a metal fence made to stop tenants from tumbling out of the window after too many drinks.

Eamon uses the fencing to boost himself up onto the overgrown vine lattice, then climb onto the sagging, thatched roof. He perches on the edge and, with a grin, reaches down for me.

I slap my hand to his before he hoists me up.

I could climb it myself, of course. I’m agile, fast, and one hell of a climber. It’s the wound in my thigh that slows me down these days, courtesy of Mika spearing an arrow into my flesh.

It has only been one and a half phases since the Sacrament ended—and no matter the balms that Niamh has spared on me in that time, I feel the ache of it in my bones, like a whisper of wounding lingers.

The minuscule amount of powder Daxeel spared on me for the arrow cut, it did enough to stitch it at the surface, but not through the layers.

Eamon’s grip is firm as he draws me closer to him on the gutter. “Remember the tavern?”

I lower myself cautiously, as though to drop down that bit too hard will dislodge the gutter and we will plummet to the street below.

“The one we viewed before the second passage?” My hand finds the ache and rubs. “My head injuries weren’tthatbad. Of course I remember.”

He looks out at the roofs dotted around Cheapside. “We couldn’t possibly afford it.”

I trace his gaze to the rooftops.

Thatched, straw, sloped stone. The further out the roofs reach, the better condition they are in—until they reach the town centre. The roofs are slated there, seemingly plaited. And beyond it, the wealthier homes weaving through winding, hilly streets, where Hemlock House resides.

But if I turn my cheek to the wealthy, and I look in the other direction, I can make out absolutely nothing more than sheer darkness. It’s the smell that gives that direction away, the faint stink of farms.

Eamon points to the darkness. “See that building there, the one with the boarded windows—and the yellow door?”

My eyes squint on the murky outline.

The thickness of fresh darkness makes it harder to see in the faint light of Kithe. Even with the streetlights, the lanterns bolstered to stone walls, the balls of luminescent algae that are zigzagged on clothe-lines from window to window, the darkness is just… denser, now.

Takes me a moment longer than Eamon and his half-dark blood, but I finally make out the silhouette of a bloated building, not terribly unlike the ones surrounding it. But it does stand out among its neighbours for the yellow door.

“It’s an old tavern,” he tells me. “It went out of business years ago. No one has taken it over.”

“Because it’s in Cheapside,” I say with a grimace.

All sorts of shady characters in Cheapside, particularly with a fondness for drink. And it’s not like there is a lot of coin to run through a place like that so far from Kithe’s better half.

“And it’s a lot of work. Years abandoned, whatever is left inside will either be falling apart or rotted by well-fed termites.”

I consider it from the distance.

A small public house that stands alone. Nowhere near as grand as the Gloaming, or the other taverns in Kithe’s centre. This old public house stands empty. Its windows are boarded with black, rotten slats, crates stacked at the front door, shattered glass littering the path at its front.

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