Page 106 of House of Salt and Sorrows
“Annaleigh,” Cassius murmured as a small figure glided byme.
Verity was waltzing, her steps graceful and far surer than I’d ever seen them in real life. I fell back on the bed to keep her from running into me. As she passed through a beam of moonlight, she turned and smiled at me.
Her eyes were open. Wide open and pitch-black, weeping dark, oily tears.
“Care to cut in?” she asked, but it wasn’t Verity’s voice. It was the thing from my nightmares, somehow inhabiting my sister.
“Verity?” Tears of my own streamed down my face. What had happened to my little sister?
Cassius turned the gas knob fully on. Just before the sconces flared to life, the Verity-thing whipped around, glaring at him, but as the room lit up, the Weeping Woman’s face was gone, and it was just my little sister once more.
She collapsed to the floor like a marionette with slashed strings, up one moment and in a tangle of limbs and tulle thenext.
“Verity!” I howled, racing to her. I cradled her small body against mine, choking on my tears as her eyes flickered open. They were green, not black, and I brought her up to me, embracing her as tightly as I dared with a sob of relief.
“What are you doing in here, Annaleigh?” she asked, her voice thick and raspy.
Just as mine had been when Cassius woke me….
“Are you okay? Are you all right?” I asked, stroking her curls, needing to reassure myself it truly was her.
“I want to go back to sleep,” she muttered drowsily, her eyelids fluttering shut.
“No!” I patted her cheeks, trying to keep her awake, but she nuzzled against my neck and drifted off once more.
“What is happening?” I asked, turning to Cassius. “What’s wrong with my sisters?”
“I think it might be—” He paused, ducking back out into the hallway. “Do you hear that?”
I cocked my head toward the door, listening. I seemed to hear a series of knocks, but they were muffled, too far away to properly discern. “The front foyer?” I guessed.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, leaving us.
I sat in the middle of Verity’s room, clutching her to my chest. I was terrified to let her go, certain she’d rise up and start dancing again. I wanted to keep her safe and snuggled next to me, but as the minutes passed by, she grew heavy, pressing uncomfortably into my hip bones and fidgeting in her sleep. I staggered up, hoisting her prostrate body to the bed.
I brought the quilt up to her chin and watched the rise and fall of her chest. Her eyes danced beneath her lids. She looked so content, it was difficult to imagine she’d been waltzing about the room, with that thing using her face, moments before.
The knocks turned into indistinct shouts, and I heard footsteps race up the stairs. Someone must have been going for Papa.
I drifted toward the doorway, wanting to keep an eye on Verity but also hating to miss what the commotion was. I heard Papa’s muttered curses mingled with the thud of his feet in the stairwell.
“Papa?” I called down the long hallway. “What’s going on?”
“And you’ve woken everyone in the house!” he chided Roland. They were both still dressed in bedclothes. “Go back to sleep, child. It’s only a messenger.”
A messenger in the dead of night?
I threw a glance over my shoulder to Verity, still peacefully slumbering. Dimming the sconces—I didn’t want her to wake in total darkness—I dashed out of the room, bolting past my sisters’ doors. If they were still twisting and twirling with their phantom partners, I did not want to know.
By the time I arrived in the foyer, a crowd of cooks and footmen, maids and groomsmen, had gathered. They circled around a ragged-looking sailor. He was soaked to the bone, with a wool blanket thrown over his shoulders. Still, he shook, nearly frozen from the cold night. He frantically searched the room until he spotted my father.
“My lord!” the sailor cried. “I bring awful news. There’s been a shipwreck just off the northern coast of Hesperus. Many have died. They’re trying to salvage the cargo, but the clipper is taking on water fast. We need help.”
Papa stepped forward as those gathered gasped at the news. “Why have you wasted all this time coming here? Silas needs to light the distress beacon. Men from Selkirk and Astrea will come to your aid.”
“We tried Hesperus first, my lord, but something is wrong there. That’s why the clipper ran aground. The light was out. Old Maude has gone dark!”
“Our first priority is getting to the wreck,” Papa said, pacing in front of the large fireplace in his study. Above the mantel hung our family crest. The eyes of the Thaumas octopus glittered in the candlelight, as if it were amused by our predicament.
