Page 80 of The Secret of the Three Fates
But the words died in my mouth as I took him in, his expression as stricken as my own. He reached down, running his thumb down my cheek, his finger coming away black with soot. He sighed, muttering to himself before pressing me hard against the wall and kissing me as if his very next breath relied upon it.
It took a remarkable amount of willpower to pull myself away from his embrace. I laid a shaky hand on his chest to steady my own galloping pulse. I missed the strange way he could ease my mind. The peculiar way he’d touch my brow, and that rush of cold that would ricochet through my body, easing each bit of tension and fear. I could have used a dose of that now for what we were up against.
My throat burnt from the smoke. “Ruan, we have a problem.”
He straightened, rubbing his hand over his face, leaving a smudge of my own soot on his skin. “Only one?”
“Several,” I admitted. “But at the moment the one most concerning me is that I have reason to believe that Mr. Owen’s wife might yet be alive and that she and Genevieve mean to kill him.”
His breath hitched and he paused, hanging on to the center column, the width of his shoulders taking up most of the narrow castle stair. “You what?”
“Well, it’s that or he’s been killing women one by one over the last oh… forty years… And I must admit I really don’t care for that option.” Either I’d placed my trust in a murderer, or I was about to lose the man I’d come to love as a father just as we’d truly begun to know one another.
In the few minutes that I’d been inside the ruins, chaos descended upon Manhurst. Most of the new castle was embroiled in flames, licking at the hazy sky overhead, all the old wood and varnishes and lacquers having fed the blaze into an uncontrollable inferno. The scent of burning timbers and fabrics coated my lungs. I couldn’t pause to think of what—who—might be left inside. Ruan placed his palm low at the center of my back—a quiet bolster to my flagging courage—as we approached the White Witch where she remained crouched over the inspector’s body.
“Did you find anything?” I stooped down on the stony ground beside her.
She rocked back onto her heels and wiped her sweaty brow, leaving a streak of pale flesh amidst the ash. “More glass.”
I pulled out my filthy handkerchief and gently lifted the inspector’s coat. Inside his jacket was a leather folio strapped across his body. It’d come open at some point, leaving fragments of broken negatives scattered on the ground around him. Gingerly I unhooked the case from the strap and withdrew it from his body. “Do you suppose he’s our thief?”
Ruan caught the inside of his cheek in his teeth and shook his head. “He must be. But why, what does he stand to gain?”
I pulled some of the large pieces from the folio, attempting to reassemble the old glass plates, but they were broken beyond repair.
“He must have found them here,” Ruan murmured. “He or the other one.”
“Elijah?”
He nodded. “I heard the pair of them arguing when I came out this morning to find the body. I wasn’t close enough to make out what the quarrel was.”
I sniffed the air tentatively. After the fire, I’d nearly forgotten that Ruan had come to the ruins to find the dead woman. “It doesn’t smell…”
Ruan winced as he shifted his weight. His shoulder aching from where he’d caught himself against the stones earlier. “I doubt you could tell over all the smoke, but you’re right. There is no body. I found the spot you described. The hole reeked of death, but it was empty.”
“The killer must know I found her.”
Ruan nodded. I tucked the Webley revolver back into the holster and stood, dusting my hands on my ruined skirt.
“Go. I will take care of things here. But you should leave before too many questions are asked about how this came to be.”The White Witch turned back to the dead man between us, yes, a wise idea.
I gave her a curt nod and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to make sense of what had happened over the shouts and the ferocious crackle of the fire. If Elijah and Genevieve were working together, that meant he would be headed to Rivenly as well, and I was not certain if I hoped or feared I was right.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-FOURThe Bitter End
WITHHecate left at Manhurst to sort out the dead inspector, Ruan and I set off on foot. The fewer people who knew we had left the castle grounds the better. It was an eight-mile walk into the nearest town, but mercifully after two of them, Ruan flagged down a farmer who agreed to let us ride in the back of his truck alongside his produce—a mean trick considering I was covered in soot with a revolver strapped to my chest and Ruan didn’t fare much better.
“We need to think this through, carefully…” Ruan began, tracing circles on his thigh with his thumb.
I leaned my back against a sack full of turnips, drawing in greedy lungfuls of clean country air. My throat was raw. “None of it makes sense. Why would she come back after all this time? It’s been over forty years.” After what I discovered in Genevieve’s room, I had a growing suspicion that Mariah had not died that night on the bridge at all. That she’d simply run away. But why come back and kill her own sister? No. Lucy’s death did not fit neatly into any scenario I could concoct and I’d grown tired of guessing. Tired of the what-ifs and wrong turns and dead ends.Grumbling, I picked up a lopsided turnip that had rolled free of its sack and tilted it to the sun. “I detest turnips.”
Ruan arched his eyebrow, far more amused at our current predicament than I.
“If I never saw another I’d be content. They taste like dirt.”
“And you’ve eaten much dirt to compare?”
Cursing him beneath my breath, I shook my head.
