Page 120 of House of Salt and Sorrows
A marble bust of Pontus slid along the edge of a higher shelf, pushed by unseen hands. It balanced precariously for a moment, as if waiting to make sure everyone was watching it, before plunging to the ground.
Honor and Mercy shrieked, racing away from the broken bits. Neither had on shoes—they’d staunchly refused to go about the house in the sailor boots Papa had issued—and they wailed as the wicked shards sank into their feet.
Echoing them, a prolonged scream sounded from upstairs. The hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention as the pitch grew higher, trailing off to a ragged end.
“What now?” Papa groaned.
Lenore straightened, sitting at the edge of the chaise. For the first time since the morning Rosalie and Ligeia went missing, her eyes looked sharp and present. She pointed to the ceiling.
Another cry tore the air apart.
“Morella,” Mercy said, following Lenore’s finger.
It punched through my stomach, clearing my thoughts—and that awful laughter—from my head. “The twins.”
“Stay here. All of you,” Papa ordered. Morella’s howls swelled louder, ripping through the house like a tsunami, bathing everything in their pain and misery.
“With her?”
I turned back to what remained of the Graces. They were scared of me. Tears stung my eyes as I watched them cower from my gaze. “Mercy?”
“Papa, please don’t leave us,” she whimpered, holding her arms out, clearly wanting to be carried out of the room.
With a growl of impatience, he doubled back and knelt beside Mercy and Honor, folding them both into his arms.
I grasped my fingers, twisting them together in painful knots, ashamed to meet my sisters’ faces. I’d frightened them. They truly believed I’d done something to Verity.
My breath hitched.
The night of the moths, Eulalie’s ghost had accused me of murdering her. I’d passed it off as a bad dream, a case of sleepwalking gone horribly wrong.
What if it wasn’t?
What if Kosamaras had used me to push Eulalie from the cliffs? And Edgar from the shop—I’d obviously not been with Cassius when it occurred.
But no. I would never have hurt my sisters, no matter what. This was just the beguiling.
Wasn’t it?
If Kosamaras could bring a dead man back to life, create dozens of balls from thin air, and make me believe in a person who wasn’t real, I shuddered to think what else she had in store for me.
What had I done to my little sister?
Papa broke their hug. “Morella needs me, and I need you to be brave right now.” He kissed their foreheads, one after the other. “My brave little sailors. Camille…I’ll likely need yourassistance.”
She blanched. “But I don’t know anything about childbirth. Annaleigh takes care of her. She’s the one who’s been talking with the midwife. She helped with Mama’s deliveries.”
He looked me up and down, then sighed. “I’m not taking her up there in this state.”
I hated the way he spoke over me, as if I wasn’t fit to be included in the conversation. Studying the butter knife in his hand, I supposed he might be right.
I opened my mouth, forcing my voice to remain even. “The midwife left a book the last time she was here. There are pictures in it. You and Camille should be able to follow them. They’re very detailed.”
A wave of relief washed over Papa’s face. “Thank you, Annaleigh. Can you get it for us?”
Feeling like a marionette being jerked and tugged by strings against my will, I crossed to the bookcase the statue had fallen from. I pulled the thick volume off the shelf and ran my hand over its worn cover.
On my way back to Papa, I skirted around the mess of porcelain and marble, then froze. Written in the dust, by an unseen fingertip, was a message.
