Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

October 1798

Their hands blistered and their blisters had bled by the time the hole was deep enough, wide enough.

Long enough to hold the body wrapped at their feet, little more than a shadow in the high grass.

Truth be told—but who dared to speak the truth in times such as these?—their hands had already blistered and their blisters had already bled, hours before, days before. 

Months before Mother had fallen dead in the garden. 

She died, so far as they could tell, around mid-morning. They’d found just after the village clock struck three, tolling through the dales like a funeral bell. Neither had thought to question her absence before then; there was only an exchange of grim glances, their shared relief that she was finally out of the house, saving them a morning’s torment.

They buried her by the banks of the Hawkwillow, so near the running water that her soul wouldn’t dare stir. If they were to look out the attic window of Windham House, they’d just be able to make out her plot when the last rays of sunlight touched the reeds. If they followed the river path, they’d pass it by when they descended from the hills into the village of Hethpool. 

It was the only place to bury her, really, and the worst. 

When the deed was done, they stood opposite in violet eventide, shivering and panting. Sweat had soaked through their shifts, leaving them to the mercy of the October chill. They’d stomped down the dirt with their kidskins, stained their hems brown with mud. Neither spoke a word; only the wind worried between them, carrying with it the sounds of the forest. The low warble of the nightjars, the shiver of voles darting through the underbrush.

Voices…

“Lucy?”

In the pale aspens above them, the magpies had gathered. A piebald flash at the corner of her eye, a trading of snickered calls. 

Stealing herself, Lucy looked up.

Thirteen grinning birds had alighted on the boughs.

Watching them.

Mocking them.

Always, he was mocking them. 

A chill breeze stirred the curls at her temples. “Let me help you.”

Lucy tore her gaze away from the birds, hatred squeezing her chest with an invisible fist. She’d never thought it possible to feel so for anyone, anything. She hadn’t even hated Mother as much as she hated him.

“What if someone comes calling?” Mary finally whispered. 

They hadn’t spoken of the aftermath, hadn’t spoken much at all, really, only simple, straightforward instructions. A tablecloth fetched to wrap the corpse, spades retrieved from the barn. There hadn’t been time for it, racing against the sun’s swift descent.

Lucy released the breath she’d been holding. “We make sure they don’t. No one comes to the house anymore.” 

She was beginning to wonder if they should have left the mound to the winds and rains of autumn. Packed so with footprints, anyone who climbed the hills to Windham House would know the dead had been buried on its slopes with neither the vicar’s blessing nor a silver cross to ward off Mother’s Visitor. Never mind that the river would be enough, especially in spring, when the banks overflowed. Never mind they’d slid a cast iron skillet between her cold, stiff hands. 

Others had hung for less. 

“Lucy…”

“No one comes to the house,” she repeated, as if doing so would mend the holes fast appearing in her plan. “No one finds out. That’s how it’s got to be, Mare.” 

“Someone will,” Mary insisted. “Someone always does. They can never leave well enough alone.”

“Then we’ll drive them away. By any means necessary. Winter’s coming. No one in their right mind would venture into the hills when the snow comes. We have the preserves. We can make them stretch until spring.”

At least, she dearly hoped they could. Otherwise, April would find them merry corpses in their beds.

She didn’t voice the obvious, that the solstice would be upon them before their food stores had a chance to dwindle.

That with the solstice, he would come.

No, she chastised herself. It would be different this time. It had to be. 

Her sister nodded, but the action was wooden, stiff. “I don’t think I could face anyone if they did. What if…what if they thought…”

“No one would ever think ill of you.” Not of Mary Carlyle, bell of the downs. Of herself, Lucy wasn’t so convinced. A witch, by definition, could never be loved.

“I can make them love you.” Nasal, impish, the voice tickled her ear. “Or fear you. The choice is yours. All you have to do is ask…”

What she would give for actual power…

Lucy scrubbed her throbbing, soiled hands on her cloak. The pain wasn’t new, but it cut through the spell of the voice. She’d made her choice. “Don’t worry about Hethpool. I’ll go when spring comes.”

“All by yourself?” Alarm wavered in Mary’s wide doe eyes. Blue as hyacinths, her suitors used to pen in their letters, filled with sappy verse.

Nobody sent letters anymore.

“I’ll be careful. Really, it’s not so different to how it was before...”

Around them the shadows pressed in. The sun sank below the tree line, swallowed by the forest. 

Mary's lower lip trembled and she ducked her head, letting her bonnet hide her face. “Shouldn’t feel something?” Marigold ribbons twined over her shoulder. “I feel like I should be crying or…” An odd little noise escaped from under the bonnet’s rim, someplace between a laugh and a sob. Clenching her jaw, Lucy skirted the mound to stand side by side with her sister. Their hands laced, tentative so as not to aggravate their wounds. Mary rested her head against hers.

Mother didn’t deserve their tears, their whispered prayers, but Lucy murmured one all the same, for Mary’s sake, who had always been the better of them. Kinder, gentler, more grounded. 

Simply more. 

The one who, between the two of them, actually deserved to survive the solstice.

“Our Father, who art in heaven,”

With a sharp intake of breath, Mary joined with her. “Hallowed be thy name.”

It felt sacrilegious. Lucy didn’t think she believed in a god anymore, after everything. If there was one, he’d abandoned them long ago.

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

The thought of outsourcing her will to another, be it god or man, sickened her. No man had ever once cared for her will, none save—

Lockwood.

No. His name was forbidden to think of. She’d made it so, seven years ago, lest in doing so she damned him, as she herself was damned. 

Better that he’d left.

Better that he never came back.

Better that the man in the woods never found him ever again. 

“Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

That was Mary’s domain; forgiveness. It was probably why she could still bring herself to look Lucy full in the eye, even after all she'd done. There was never any censure there, only love and affection. 

“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…”

The final words of the prayer caught in her throat. Anger churned in her stomach. Deliverance. What tripe. Their promised deliverance was nothing more than a pretty lie, a means of control. Laughable now. No one was coming to save them.

Anyone who could was already dead.

“For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever.” Mary finished softly. “Amen.”

Above them, the magpies took to the wind, screaming their cackling cry. Mary shrank against her, hare-like, but Lucy only glared at their retreating wings.

“We ought to get back to the house,” her sister breathed. “The others will be getting worried.” 

“You mean Diana will be worried.”

“Well, that’s more than enough worry between the lot of us, don’t you think?”

Lucy tugged her hand away, still watching the birds. “You go on ahead. I’ll catch up. There’s something I need to do first.”

Apprehension swept across her sister’s face, but she nodded. “Don’t take too long.”

“I won’t. Do you mind putting the kettle on? I could use a cup after today. And there’s still the spinning to finish...”

She waited until Mary had disappeared over the crest of the hill before turning west to the wood. Crimson slashed low across the horizon, the day succumbing fast to night. Scarlet leaves cycloned around her as she skirted the river, submitting to the dark embrace of the forest.

“I know you can hear me.” The voice wafted against her ear, plaintive and small, speaking as if from a great distance. That would be on account of the iron filings she’d stuffed into the pocket tied around her waist. Incidentally, she had heard him, despite her best efforts, wheedling and needling at the back of her mind as she dug and bled. She just hadn’t wanted to listen. If she listened, she might change her mind. 

“Lucy, what are you doing?” 

She kept her gaze fixed on the dirt path, minding the roots and stones. More than one of the forest spirits had met their deaths tumbling down the ravine. She wasn’t so stupid as to follow them, even as she sensed them peeking out between the boughs. Iron flashed in the half-light as she brandished her spade, and they recoiled, trailing into streams of shadow. 

“Please. I ’ve said I was sorry. Truly, I didn’t mean to do it. It was an accident.” 

“That’s a lie.”

The sound of rustling parchment filled her skull. Finally, “Well, I wouldn’t have done it if I'd known it would get your short-stays in a twist.”

“Yes, you would have.”

“Really,” he was panicking now. It gave her a vicious, sadistic thrill to see him reduced to begging. “There’s been a misunderstanding. I’ve done you a favor!”

“That’s a fine way of putting it. If they suspect us at all, we’ll hang.” 

“I’d kill them for you.” His childish glee sent a violent shiver down her spine. “I’d kill them all.”

“You’ve killed enough.” Fishing an object from the pocket tied around her waist, Lucy stretched her hand out over the gorge. Far below, the Hawkwillow raged, frothing white. A rapid, rabid beast of a river. 

Ruthless.

“Don’t do this,” the voice wailed at her back. Gooseflesh riddled her neck as she sensed him behind her, reaching for her. Prepared to strike her dead in his desperation. They’d be together always, then, in his twisted reasoning. “Lucy, wait! Let’s talk about this.”

“I’m done talking.” A year ago, her voice would’ve frightened her, cold as the wind whipping at her cloak, dark as the Shades huddled in the foliage. A year ago, she would’ve caved to guilt. Pity would’ve welled up in its place, filling the cracks in her chest. 

Funny, how so much could change in a year. But then, too, how nothing ever did. 

He was screaming now, cursing her, begging her, as though she were some sort of goddess to placate, or a queen of old with power of her own and the will to wield it. 

She was neither. Only a girl. 

Helpless in all but this.

Frost fanned across her bonnet, silvering the black crepe. 

“Don’t come back here again.” 

She tipped her hand. 

His screams cut off abruptly. 

“You’re no longer welcome.”

Chapter Text

“Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray,

And when I cross'd the Wild,

I chanc'd to see at break of day

The solitary Child.”  

~ William Wordsworth

Lockwood had promised Lucy, back when they were children, that one day he’d marry her. 

It had been the foolish, innocent conviction of a child just turned nine, one who knew only that he liked her best of all, and that marriage must mean a lifetime playing make-believe in the woods. Perhaps too, there was something in the way the sunlight dappled across her pixie nose and threaded copper through her long, tawny braids. Tucked high in the branches of the great hawthorn tree, she’d considered his proposal. She might have been a fairy queen, the soft blue of her skirts floating around her bare toes. Finally, because at the tender age of seven, this seemed an adequate arrangement, she nodded her acquiescence after a moment’s solemn stare. 

He told Uncle as soon as he’d returned that evening to Sedgewick Park. Debonair as ever in an embroidered frock coat, Erasmus had regarded him seriously; Lockwood had been too young to glimpse the smile feathering his lips. “Is that so, young Anthony?” Tall and wiry, he stooped down to Lockwood’s far lesser height, resting his forearms upon his knees. “And what did young Miss Carlyle have to say to that?”

“She said she would.” Pride swelled in his chest without him fully knowing the reason. Only that Lucy was his, now and forever.

“Donald, do you hear this?” Erasmus called over his shoulder, grinning. “Your boy has got his future all sorted out. Best time to do it, when you’re young,” he winked at Lockwood, ruffling his hair. “Else you’ll end up a grizzled old bachelor like me.”

“Grizzled?” From behind his desk, Father glanced up from his work with his familiar, distracted smile. “You’re nine and twenty, Erasmus. What does that make me?” 

“Ancient as the hills, brother.” He beckoned Lockwood to follow after him. “Come lad, we’ll discuss your betrothal over a stiff cuppa.” 

“You’d better not slip brandy into my son’s tea again, Erasmus,” Mother scolded, appearing at the door of the library, the gauzy skirts of her chemise à la reine drifting around her like a cloud. At her side, Jessica carried half a dozen dusty books, ever eager to throw herself into her studies. Mother eyed the dirt on Lockwood's trousers, the leaves tangled in his hair. “I won’t have him turning into a dandy like you.”

“Bit late for that,” Uncle whispered low so that only Lockwood was privy, before he clapped his hand over his chest, affronted. “Celia, you wound me.” 

In the kitchens, Uncle made a great show of removing his frock coat, draping it over Lockwood’s shoulders. The heavy emerald brocade engulfed him like a cloak, smelling of shaving soap and cigar smoke and the mineral oil Uncle used to polish his rapiers. “I’m afraid we’ll have to listen to your mother’s orders, lad.”

“I suppose we must,” Lockwood agreed, sensible. Mother would have approved.

“No brandy for you.” Winking, Uncle retrieved a tiny, bejeweled flask from up his shirtsleeves. “But she’d said nothing about a drop of whiskey.” 

Transfixed by the play of light across the sapphires, Lockwood was reminded of Lucy’s wide, solemn eyes.

Fourteen years had passed since that day, a full seven since he had seen her last. 

Mother and Father were dead.

And now Uncle was too.

The coach hit another rut in the road, jolting Lockwood from dreams uncanny and strange. He swallowed, throat dry, his neck stiff, his shoulder numb. Scrubbing the sleep from his eyes and the chill from his nose, he flicked aside the curtains on the windows. Slivers of citrine light hatched across the dim interior of the stagecoach. 

On the opposite bench, Jessica dozed beside George, her head lolling onto his shoulder, his temple pillowed against hers. His unruly curls flopped over both their brows and his spectacles had slid precariously low. A thick tome lay open between them. 

Lockwood smiled, working out the kink in his shoulder as he sipped water from the flask he wore on his hip. They’d both been grand since the letter had arrived, packing swiftly and upending what was left of their life in London days before. Not that they were leaving much. 

And with Jessica’s ever precarious health…

Behind him, a small wooden hatch slid open. “Mr Lockwood, sir?” 

He gulped down another mouthful of water. “Yes?”

“You told me to tell you when we’d reached the boundary of Hethpool. We’re nearly to Sedgewick Park. Just a few miles or so, now.”

“Good man.” Lockwood leaned over to retrieve the book from Jessica’s lap, setting it safely on the bench beside her. He paused to gauge the quality of her breathing and frowned. Dry and rasping, just as he feared. Days of travel had taken their toll. She’d insisted on coming north, and he couldn’t shake the worry that the hills would finish what the fever had started.

Shaking off the morbid thought, Lockwood opened the coach door and swung up to sit beside the boy. The lad had made a nest of his cloaks and blankets, bundled against the morning chill. Eager to reach Sedgewick Park by mid-morning, they’d left for Hethpool on the first available coach, long before the rooster crowed. Though risky, for Visitors still roamed, the horses wore tassels of silver, and the coach was banded with steel. The boy carried a long, iron-tipped pole, which he’d propped against his shoulder. He must have pressed his team of Clydesdales hard, for the night was only now just releasing its hold on the world. Tangerine light strained through the trees surrounding the valley. Morning dawned, the moorland silvered with dew. Mist scudded over the land like waves breaking on a shoreline. Forested hills loomed hazy and dark below the blushing clouds. 

Lockwood watched the sunrise, emotion swelling in his chest. It was so like he remembered, like stepping back in time, that he expected to see a slight figure clad in blue, walking through the blooming heather.

Soon, he promised himself. He’d find her again and all would be well. The years would fall away and it would be just as it was, the two of them.

I’m home, Lucy.

“Are you new in these parts, sir?” The boy asked, curiosity filling his brown eyes. Censure, too. Lockwood knew the look. He’d been on the receiving end of it often enough during their brief season in London. Are you one of us, the look demanded, or an outsider? 

He felt like one, seven years gone. But he smiled down at the boy. “I grew up at Sedgewick Park. I was about your age when I left to finish my education.”

Some of the suspicion fell away. “And now your back because…well, beggin’ your pardon, sir, but because Mr Lockwood is dead?”

The words struck him as implausibly as they had in Selina’s letter. He kept waiting for the new to reorient itself, to make any sort of sense. He’d memorised the letter. It had been polite, apologetic even, an uncertain exchange between strangers. Uncle had married quickly, when Jessica’s affliction had been at its worst, keeping them confined to Lyme. Yet even knowing the words, they flew high above his head, refusing to land. Uncle simply couldn’t be dead. 

Nonetheless, he swallowed. “That is correct.” 

“And you’re his heir.”

“Yes.” He’d trade it all if it meant seeing Erasmus open those doors one last time. He cleared his throat. “Remind me your name again?”

A sidelong glance. A point against him: forgetting. “Danny, sir.”

“That’s a fine name.” Jess had warned him not to pry, for there was nothing more loathsome than a gentleman pestering villagers with questions best left unasked, but Lockwood couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t very well badger Selina, not with the death still raw. “And did you grow up in Hethpool, Danny?”

“Aye, sir. Lived here my whole life, I did.” There was a slight edge to his tone. Another point lost. Lockwood, after all, was the one who’d left. 

“Then…” Lockwood hesitated, “Do you know of the Carlyle’s? Up on Hawkwillow Ridge?

An odd expression crossed the boy’s thin face. He bit his lip, bobbled his head from side to side. “Of course, I know of them. Who hasn’t? It’s just…my mum says we shouldn’t talk about them.” He sniffed. “It ain’t right, gossiping.”

“Well, I promise not to tell your mum.” Lockwood drew a half-penny from his pocket he boy’s eyes widened. “Sure you’ve got nothing to tell me?”

Danny looked from him to the coin, shocked. Sighing, Lockwood procured another, dancing them over his knuckles. “That’s as good as it’s going to get, lad. I’m currently short on funds.”

“They never come down from the hills,” the boy blurted. “No one’s seen hide or hair of ‘em—beggin’ your pardon, sir. That be farmer’s speech for you—since before Michaelmas. Not in town, not in church. Completely vanished.”

Lockwood's stomach gave a great lurch. He knew the scope of the hills like the back of his hand, the bend in the road just ahead, the fork that would take them down to the village. Even when winter settled over the land, there had never been a time when the hills had been made unpassable. The river path led to a stone bridge that spanned the Hawkwillow, connecting the land surrounding Windham House to that of the Hethpool and Sedgewick Park. If Lucy and her sisters had wanted to venture into the village, they would have.

So why...?

“Vicar Jacob’s mighty mad about it, that he is. His whole sermon Sunday last was about how the unfaithful will be damned to hell.”

“Cheery,” Lockwood said, lost in thought.

“Nah, he’s a right old bastar. He's not from here. He’s a southerner.” Warming to the idea of coin, Danny leaned in conspiratorially. “Scared to go up into the hills what with all the ghosts springing up these days.

"All the ghosts?"

"Oh, yeah. Loads of them. Especially now that Mr Lockwood’s dead. Mum says he was always sweet on Miss Cassandra, but no one’s seen her in years and Lottie White thinks she’s run off with some Scottish laird.” 

Vaguely, Lockwood remembered the eldest Carlyle sister. Mousy brown curls. A kind, heart-shaped face. The shortbread she’d slip into his hand, taking the opportunity to comb decorum back into his wind-swept hair. 

“What do you mean, no one’s seen them?” 

“I should think that’s obvious.” An exasperated pause. “Sir.”

“Humor me.” 

“One by one, they all stopped comin’ to town. First Miss Cassandra, then the others. Now Miss Mary and Miss Lucy. All of them gone. Their Mum too, but nobody misses her much. Withered old harpy.”

It shouldn’t have been possible for a heart to startle so, yet her name was the vixen, his heart the hare.

Lockwood fished another coin from his purse. “And what do you know about L—Miss Lucy?”

Danny sighed. “You won’t like it much, sir.”

Dread coiled tight in his veins, and he looked over his shoulder in the direction of Windham House, wishing he could steal one of the Clydesdales and push the horse as fast as it would run. 

Her letters had stopped just before his twentieth birthday. Once, she’d written to him so faithfully, her words a balm to his soul as he struggled through his classes at Eton and the epidemic that had nearly taken Jessica. He’d always feared the worst, that she’d accepted another’s proposal, or that she’d succumbed to the same illness as Jess and perished. Not knowing had driven him mad. Only Uncle’s assurances had kept him from running away from school. Only the weakness of Jess’s heart that kept him from the north and its chill winds. 

Far in the distance, a pale horse galloped across the moors, the rider astride its back small and dark, silhouetted against the rising sun. 

Lockwood tore his gaze away, forcing down his panic, unable to shake the sensation that he’d been gone far too long, that though Hethpool seemed caught in a spell, forever the same, everything had changed beneath the surface. “The coin’s for information, lad, not whether or not I happen to like it. Please.” He added when Danny didn’t so much as offer a peep. “It’s vitally important I know.” 

The boy eyed him shrewdly. “You sweet on her or something?”

Lockwood was inordinately glad that the brisk morning would account for the flush reddening his cheeks. “Or something.” 

“Hmph. That’s how I feel about Lottie, I think. Well…” Danny turned back to the road as the land began to rise steeply towards the hills. “If you really want to know, well, I heard Mr Young telling Mrs White that Mrs Bell…” There was a whole slew of names that Lockwood only vaguely recognized. 

“...that Becky Steele is telling everyone who’ll listen that Lucy Carlyle is a witch.” 

Deep in the heart of the forest, far from the serpentine banks of the Hawkwillow, a free-standing door rose in the centre of a clearing. Whether it had once led to castle or cloister had long been forgotten, only that it had once led to someplace, and now led to someplace else.

Overgrown with lichen and moss, warped with rain and rot, it stood alone. Violent red toadstools grew thick around its perimeter, forming a perfect circle. Asphodel burst from its rusted hinges, ageless and blooming no matter the season. No trees, not even the ghostly birches dared to enter the threshold of the glade. Sensible creatures, the forest animals knew not to venture near. Only the magpies flew freely across the boundary line, for they possessed neither sense nor conscience. 

It was an uncanny door, a wicked door, a door not altogether sane. Darkness dwelled beneath its lintel, and whatever lived within, lived alone. 

Watching, waiting, biding his time. 

Lucy stumbled through the door at break of day, swathed in a cloak of silver. Gasping, wheezing, she slammed it behind her, wrenched the iron key in its lock until she heard it click. Her worn slippers made a series of uneven prints in the frosted grass before her legs failed her altogether. She collapsed, face down on the earth. Still as death.

In the trees, the magpies traded secrets.  

The sound of her own, laboured breathing. 

The roar of blood in her ears. 

Wetness pressed into her face, but she couldn’t yet find the will to move. Everything hurt, as though she were an old rag, wrung out and discarded. She didn’t even have the strength to cry, though the backs of her eyes burned with the pressure of unshed tears. 

It should have worked.

It was supposed to work. 

After everything she’d done, this time should have been different.

Wordless weeping filled her mind. With a groan, Lucy lifted her head.

At the rim of the toadstools, a child crouched. Slight of figure, he hid his face in his knees, tufts of alabaster hair floating around his ears like milkweed. Frost patterned out from where he sat, delicate white lacework.  

Gritting her teeth, she shoved up to her elbows, ignoring the stab of pain shooting up her right arm from the shallow cut on her palm. “We’ve been over this before,” she rasped. “I can’t help you.”

The child gave no indication that he’d heard her, sinking deeper into himself. His soft whimpers became muffled sobs, brought upon by the cruel hands of his mother. How she despised him, the ninth of ten needy, grasping children. He ought to have known not to trouble her. But he was so hungry, always so hungry.

Blood began to drip from her nose, then stream. Cursing, Lucy pinched the skin of her wrist, shaking off the effects of malaise. 

The waif looked up. 

Nausea lurched in the back of her throat. 

An oily black substance welled in place on his eyes, dripping down his cheeks in grimy trails. 

“I can’t help you,” she repeated, cradling her throbbing hand against her stomach. 

She couldn’t even help herself.

From a distance, hidden from view, came the soft chime of bells.

Gasping, the waif scrambled to his feet and raced for the tree line, little white feet flying over the grass. The other spirits stirred. Shadows cavorted in her periphery, stretched thin as sinew. The heart of the forest was a world forever trapped in twilight. Visitors found reprieve from the sun and though their spirits were weak, the limbo allowed them to walk by day, twisting the laws of nature. The forest was their haven as much as it was their jail. 

It was hard not to sympathise with her fellow prisoners. But then, nothing good came from putting her trust in the dead.

Relief flooded Lucy's breast when a pale, white horse appeared, head held high even as his ears pressed flat against his skull. He picked his way through the wall of Shades and Wisps, swinging his head to and fro, snorting with menace. Silver bells rang from his bridle, and a fine net of woven links lay beneath his stable. His iron hooves left deep prints in the soft earth, and Visitors cowered in the wake of his passing, clapping spidery hands over their ears, faces stretched long and thin with pain. 

The beast stopped just outside the circle of toadstools, lowering his head to regard Lucy with large brown eyes. His breath steamed in the cold, his sides heaving like the bellows of the village forge. With a low nicker, he nuzzled her forehead with his velveteen nose, smelling of sweet hay and clover. 

“Hey, Falada,” Lucy rasped, head spinning as she rose to her knees, palm pressed to her raggedly beating heart. Still sluggish and weak from a night spent behind the door. Gritting her teeth against the ache in her limbs, Lucy tangled her fingers in Falada’s bridle, letting the horse pull her to her feet. Her knees buckled immediately, and she clung to his mane, wheezing. Falada snorted, swinging his great head to press his cheek to her side. 

“I know, lad. Give me a minute.” Head spinning, she dragged her muddied slippers through the stirrups. She'd barely gotten a leg over his back before her muscles gave out and she slumped against him. “There’s a good darling."

Bells pealed as Falada fell into a steady walk, the gentle sway of his body lulling Lucy to a doze. Until a wordless cry sent her jolting up in the saddle.

When she turned to peer over her shoulder, the door stood lonely and wrong. Waves of ghost fog spilled across the ground, consuming bramble and thicket in its flood. 

The child hovered before the circle toadstools, a blur of milkweed and pitch and violent red. He lifted a tremulous hand, reaching after her.

Lucy blinked and he and the door were swallowed up by the mist. 

Deep in the heart of the forest, the magpies took up an eerie song, and she swore she heard him laughing.

Otherness pervaded the halls of Sedgewick Park. It plastered over its walls, sank deep into its marble floors. Lockwood had felt it immediately as they crossed the threshold, following a portly, grim-faced butler into the receiving hall. His address was all politeness as he took their capes, but his expression was cold as the March winds outside, eyeing Lockwood as though he hid a wolf beneath his frock coat. He’d left them alone in the dim, echoing hall, departing with a short, stiff bow. Servants skirted around them as if they were predators in their midst, eyes cast to the floor. 

“Fine reception,” George muttered under his breath, his voice swallowed by the high ceilings. “Are your relatives always this hospitable?”

“George, they’re in mourning,” Jess chastened, but she plucked nervously at her sable gown, adjusting the matching lace fichu at her neck. Lockwood was glad to see that she'd worn Mother's shawl, even if the black only emphasized the sallow cast to her features, the violet circles carved beneath her eyes. 

He looked away before Jess could see his worry, for above all else, she hated to be pitied. The old crystal chandelier hung directly over their heads, cold and unlit. Had it always been so dark within the house, Lockwood wondered, and so cold? He backed up a step, looking again to the hall above. Every door stood closed; every curtain drawn. What little light filtered through shifted in the wind, so to give the impression of figures moving along the width of the house. He followed the tilt of the staircase, the panels carved with forest scenes. A young hart leaping over a fallen log, leverets in hiding. Partridge taking flight, a lynx prowling through the underbrush. 

A faint smile touched his lips at the sight of blemishes on the curling banister. He and Uncle had made menaces of themselves sliding down its length when his parents were too occupied in their studies to scold a pair of hellions. Only old Mrs Sykes had been around to chastise them, but even the old housekeeper’s stern face would break with laughter at their antics.

“I didn’t know how much I missed it." Jess's reflection swayed in the white marble, sinking down and down into the depths of the polished floor. “But…do you get the sense that…oh, I don’t know, it’s not very scientific, but…”

“Something’s foul,” George muttered. 

“You feel it, too?” Lockwood tugged off one of his gloves, trailing his fingertips down the newel post. Though his sense of Touch had never been as strong as George or Jessica’s, unease crawled up his fingers, plucked along his nerves. From somewhere deep below, a presence stirred, waking. He snatched his hand away, reaching instinctively for his rapier, ice prickling down his back. 

“It’s like it’s rising up from the earth,” George nodded towards the window, as though he could glimpse evidence of wickedness revelling on the lawn. “I’m getting faint waves of nausea. Whatever happened here…” He exchanged a pointed look with Lockwood. 

“We’ll discuss it later,” Lockwood whispered, pitching his voice lower still as a young serving girl darted past them, disappearing up the staircase. 

“Poor Selina," Jess murmured. "All alone in a place like this.” Warning flashed in her sorrel gaze. “You won’t pester her with…whatever this is?”

“Sister, please. Contrary to popular opinion, I do in fact know how to hold my tongue in company. Lecture George, if you must.” He didn’t add that he’d already procured information from Danny, even though the hearsay had only stoked his anxiety, offering more questions than answers. The talk of ghosts becoming more and more active in the area, the Vicar’s incompetence, though he should have been the first to protect the village now that Uncle was dead. 

Lucy.

No one’s seen hide nor hair of them since Michaelmas.

One by one, they stopped coming to town.

Lucy Carlyle is a witch. 

As soon as he was able, he’d ride to Windham House. Until then…Danny had seemed eager enough for the task he’d given him once he'd glimpsed the silver involved. By tonight, he'd finally have answers.

Steady on, Luce. Foolishness, to pretend his thoughts could reach her, but they echoed through his mind all the same. I’m coming. 

Misreading the frown tugging down the corners of his mouth, Jess slipped her palm into his. “It’ll be alright.” Her grip wasn’t as it should be, not as strong as it had been in Lyme, braced by the fresh sea air. "We'll manage. We always do."

Lockwood forced a brief smile, squeezing her hand, tangled up in whispers of missing girls and the malaise thick on his tongue. 

“You’ll be the nephew then.”

All three spun at the icy voice, not spoken as a question, but a stated offense. Prim and squat, grey-haired woman stood in the doorway leading to the East Wing. She wore a neat black frock that would have perhaps been fashionable sometime in the 1770s, a starched white apron that seemed never to have seen one measly speck of dust. Sunlight fell in harsh beams at her back, splintering the gloom of the hall. Though he hardly could have hoped to expect kindly Mrs Sykes after all these years, Lockwood’s heart fell.

She’d be dead too, then, for nothing else in the world could have persuaded her to leave her post, he was sure. 

“Anthony Lockwood, ma’am.” Donning his customary smile, sombered for the occasion, Lockwood gestured to the others. “My sister, Jessica Lockwood, and our friend, George Karim.” 

“Hmph.” The woman sniffed, heavy jowls trembling with barely suppressed indignation. “You may call me Mrs Hope. Come with me. Mrs Lockwood has been waiting on you.”

She turned on her heel, brisk as she swept deeper into the house. The trio exchanged a look of apprehension before following after. 

“If I be waspish, best beware my sting.”

“Hush, George,” said Lockwood and Jessica in tandem.

His sister hissed under her breath. “Shakespeare?”

“Katherine seems to me an apt archetype.”

“Oh, honestly.”

They made it only to the end of the hall before Jessica’s breathing became laboured, her pace stilted. Hiding his alarm, Lockwood deftly tucked her arm through his, taking her weight. White-knuckled, she clung to him, not quite meeting his eye as they turned down another dim corridor. Tremors coursed through her frame, thin as a Wisp. 

"I'm fine," she murmured, panting. "Just a bit lightheaded, is all."

"I know." Lockwood met George's worried gaze above her head. "But humour me and rest awhile after this?"

“That’s probably...” she struggled to catch her breath. “A good idea.”

Servants watched from corners and doorways, little more than Shades at their backs, a ghostly procession by the time they stopped before the parlour door. Mrs Hope glared pointedly at Lockwood before rapping sharply. 

“Ma’am?” Honey replaced vinegar as she pushed open the door. “Your niece and nephew have arrived.” 

Through the crack, Lockwood glimpsed a rustle of black crepe, a glint of russet braid. "Send them in, Agnes."

Unlike the rest of the house, golden morning illuminated the parlour, falling gently over sofas, shining over a porcelain tea set. A fire crackled in the hearth, cutting through the oppressive chill. An armchair of burgundy brocade had been drawn close to the flames, and Lockwood could just make out the profile of a woman. The sharp, elfin chin, a long, aquiline nose. 

Lockwood softly cleared his throat. "Aunt Selina?"

Auburn curls shivered around her temples as she rose, slowly rounding the chair. Sucking in a breath, Jess stiffened, her grip tightening around his arm.

"Hello." Her belly was swollen with child, the black skirt of her mourning dress stretched tautly across.

That hadn't been in the letter.

Pressure built in Lockwood's chest, as though a great fist had clenched around his heart. He resisted the urge to look away, instead meeting the woman’s red-rimmed eyes. Uncle had always wanted children of his own. And for his wife to be left all alone, so close to the child's birth...

Selina stared at him flatly, knuckles white as she clasped her hands over her stomach. A portrait in grief, she seemed to be looking through him, willing another to walk through the door in his stead. Just one more time. Sympathy welled in his chest. 

"Thank you, Agnes," she said, stiffly, lifting her narrow chin. "You may leave us."

“You let us know if you need anything, ma’am. Anything at all.” The housekeeper dipped a curtsy, spearing Lockwood with a look that promised murder if he so much as breathed in a way her mistress found offensive. When the door clicked shut behind her, he knew that she’d be listening at the door, the butler and maids hovering close behind.

“Aunt,” Lockwood dipped his head, choosing his words carefully. “Please accept our deepest condolences. Uncle was like a second father to us.” 

“He spoke well of you,” Selina allowed, sinking down carefully on the edge of one of the settees. Her attention returned to Jessica. “Are you unwell?”

“Only my heart, ma'am. I caught scarlet fever when I was two and twenty.” Jessica tugged on Lockwood’s arm, and he guided her to the sofa across from Selina. They sat, the tea tray between them. “I’m afraid I haven’t been the same since. But it’s nothing catching, only my own trouble. Nothing that will harm the baby.”

The woman visibly relaxed. “You poor thing,” she murmured, though her guard was still raised, darting between the three of them like a sparrow's, settling finally on George, who had tried to scrunch unnoticed into one of the armchairs. 

“This is George Karim,” Lockwood said. “The family friend I wrote to you about. We don’t mean to intrude on your hospitality, but—”

“My hospitality.” There it was, the hostile edge, the rattle of china as she reached for the tea pot. “The house is yours now, Anthony. What need do you have to ask my permission?” The exaggerated capillaries around and in the whites of her eyes had turned them a remarkable shade of blue, bringing to mind a summer sky, and Lockwood thought he understood why Uncle had married her so quickly. She was beautiful, yes, but that beauty was backed by a fierceness, a pride. Despite her grief, she held herself like a queen.

It reminded him of another girl he once knew. 

“We don’t mean for our coming to cause you further grief,” Lockwood said as gently as he was able, willing her hackles to lower, for her to grant him his trust. He took a deep breath, addressing the Phantasm in the room, the reason for the servants’ ire. “We want to be of help to you. This is your house, and,” he nodded discreetly towards her stomach. “If you are to have a son, he’ll be heir to the estate. If a daughter, then we'll work out the legal stipulations. Regardless, the house is yours. We have our apartments in London, and one home is plenty for our needs.”

There was a muffled intake of breath from the other side of the door. 

Wide-eyed, Selina stared at him, the hollowed, dull expression in her eyes giving way to shock as his words registered. She set the tea pot down with a porcelain clatter. Hectic spots of red coloured her cheeks, and she glanced down at her hands, the emerald and silver on her left ring finger. “That is…you are kind. Erasmus said you were, but I confess, I did not expect such generosity. If your reception has been less than welcoming...” 

"Think nothing of it," Lockwood assured her. "Their loyalty does them credit."

“I’m afraid we’d prepared for the worst. I…I did not mean to cause offense. The rest of my family is dead, you see. I have nowhere else to go.” Tentatively, she reached out, her hand brushed the cuff of his frock coat. Fresh tears gathered at the corners of her eyes. “I am in your debt, Anthony.” Softening, she turned to his sister. "And you, Jessica." 

“Not at all,” Lockwood insisted, warmly pressing her hand before releasing it. “Please, let there be no debts between us. We’re family. And it's what Uncle would've wanted.” 

"You look just like him," Selina attempted a tremulous smile, but it fell short. "It's uncanny, really." Sniffing, she drew her shoulders back. “But if we are to be family, then you ought to know the truth.”

“The truth?” Beside him, Jessica leaned forward, fingers tangled in her shawl. "What do you mean?"

"What happened, Aunt?" Lockwood asked, the hairs on the back of his neck rising, as though the presence from before had woken fully, and meant to join them for tea. "I don't wish to pry, but the hunting accident…”

"The hunting accident," Selina laughed, mirthless. Bitterness twisted her mouth. “Please forgive the lie. I did not know who would be reading my letters. My husband did not die in a hunting accident.” Her anger returned, stoked like live coals. “He was murdered.”

Chapter Text

No Mate, no comrade Lucy knew;

She dwelt on a wild Moor,

The sweetest Thing that ever grew

Beside a human door!

~ Wordsworth (1799)

The geese were her first warning. 

Lucy looked up as the gaggle descended from Hawkwillow Rise, a flurry of white against the grey of the sky. They fell upon Falada, weaving between the horse’s long legs. Silver bells jangled from his reins as he picked up his hooves, affronted, but the geese paid no him no mind. They were worse than a Visitor, in that regard. 

“Give over,” Lucy kicked at them, but her limbs were leaden still, and the fowl dodged easily. Gleeful, they huddled close, and with a triumphant honk, the bandy-legged gander landed on Falada’s rump. The gelding bucked, skittering forward, and it was all Lucy could do to hang on. 

“Oi,” Lucy dug her heels into his flanks. “Easy. Easy.” She flicked one of his ears. “You've got to show them who’s in charge. You're ten times the size of them. Squash one if you have to. And you,” she turned in the saddle, ignoring the warning hiss as she snatched up the gander and dropped him unceremoniously to the ground where he fluttered about indignant, but otherwise unharmed.

“Wretched thing. Quit bullying him. Honestly, what’s gotten into the lot of you? Shoo.” Holding fast to Falada, she dismounted, driving away the geese with the sheath of her rapier. The ground rocked beneath her as though she stood in a rowboat upon the river. Cold sweat slicked her forehead. “Damn it,” she groaned, clutching at her temples.

That was when she saw them. 

Among the webbed markings, fresh hoofprints sank into the earth above Mother’s grave.

Lucy stared at them; far too large to be Falada’s.

Blood roared in her ears. On the sly, the gander sidled up to her, poking at her skirts in search of greens, but she ignored him. 

Someone had been to the house. 

Someone might be there still. 

“It isn’t him,” she told herself firmly, seizing Falada’s reins and marching towards Windham.

It couldn’t have been him, the dweller of the woods. However great and terrible his power was, he was unable to cross the boundaries line; she’d witnessed his fury often enough to know the truth.  

But the image of that creature sitting in their parlour filled her with dread. She saw it as one of her sketches. The charcoal smear of his shoulders looming over the back of Cassandra’s armchair. His back hunched against the low ceiling; ankles crossed like a gentleman. One of Grandmother’s forget-me-not teacups clutched in his white, spidery hands. 

And when he saw her standing on its threshold…

An icy raindrop stung her cheek and Lucy glanced up at the sky. Though the day had dawned clear and citrine, the low, guttering clouds promised a storm before noon. 

If the inhabitants of Sedgewick didn’t hurry, they’d have to put off burying the body. 

Muffled cackling drew her attention back to the forest. She blanched, her pulse like a hammer driven into the forge’s anvil. 

The magpies had gathered, five in a row, along the fence rail. 

Her second warning.

Cursing, Lucy spun on her heel, following the geese.

The yard was swept barren by the persistent wind, the earth hard packed beneath her boots. Lucy crossed the open ground, eying the back door to the house. Though both it and the door to the stout stone barn were shut fast, she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had stood where she had stood, pondering the locks.

She told herself she was being ridiculous, but when she reached the barn, she found the padlock hanging loose, the pins undone. Silently, she drew her rapier, counting to ten before easing the door open. Never ones for stealth, the geese rushed in, making a beeline for the empty stalls, the bandy-legged gander leading the charge. Falada merely planted himself over the threshold, refusing to go further. Most days, she allowed him his foibles; that he was fearless in a cluster of Visitors, but fretful and timid anywhere was an irony not lost on her. But today of all days, with her most-recent failure hanging over her head, she lost patience with the beast and squeezed around him, keeping low against the wall. Scanning the shadows, she seized a horseshoe hanging from a nail before venturing deeper into the barn, blade held at the ready. 

“Hello?”

The soles of her boots rasped over the stone as she crept down the aisle, peering over the partition walls. No one answered her, but then, she'd hadn't expected them to.

She paused halfway down. If she strained, she could just make out a drag of breath, syncopated to her own. Lucy bit the inside of her cheek, staving off the small, panicked sound rising in her throat.

There. 

A presence at her back, tucked beside one of the stall doors. Bunched muscles; a cowering ball. The shadow of fingers braced against the stone. 

Whirling, she brandished her rapier. A slight figure sprang up from the gloom, hurtling over the partition, making a mad dash for Falada. With a yell, Lucy hurled the horseshoe, striking the intruder between his shoulder blades. He cried out, stumbling and his knees crashed to the stone. The geese descended on him in an instant, striking out like adders. The intruder squealed, shielding his face. 

“Call them off!” He shrieked again. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean no harm.”

“What are you doing here?” Lucy snarled, stalking up to his side. The geese parted, though the gander loomed just out of sight, long neck held at the ready. Lucy retrieved the horseshoe and nudged the prone figure with her slipper. “Get up!” 

He peeked out from between his arms, one large, cowish eye blinking up at her in fear. Lucy sucked in a sharp breath, recognition replacing her fear. A boy. Only a child. Her rapier hand shook as she stared at him, chest heaving.

“Beggin’ your pardon, Miss. I—I…” 

“Danny,” Lucy snapped, roughly sheathing her blade. “What is wrong with you? You scared me half to death.” She grimaced at her choice of words. “Who put you up to this? Ian Bell? Miss Steele?” How her old schoolfellow would love this. Lucy Carlyle, witch and hellion, holding a mere child at sword point. 

“N-no,” Danny squeaked, swatting goose feathers from his trousers and coat. He floundered for his cap, shrinking back when the bandy-legged gander thrust his beak close to his nose, hissing. 

“No sudden moves. That one bites.” Lucy warned, making no move to discourage the goose. “Has a taste for blood, too.” 

“Bu-But—”

“Who sent you? The Vicar?” 

“N-n-no,” the boy stammered. “It was…um, well, you see Miss…”

“Get on with it.” She clucked her tongue, and Falada finally entered the barn, snuffling distastefully at the boy. “I don’t have all day.” 

“He paid me to come see you. A whole silver piece. Said I’d get another if reported back right quick.” Tears glistened in Danny's drooping brown eyes. With his ill-fitting clothes, he put a person in mind of a gosling, malnourished and small for its age. “Please, Miss Lucy. I didn’t mean you no trouble. Honest.”

“Just answer the bloody question!”

“Mr Lockwood!”

The name was a slap to the face that left her ears ringing. Breathing hard, she closed the distance between them and hunched down, channeling venom into her next words. It wasn’t hard, what with all the poison of the forest still coursing in her veins. “Don’t be stupid. Mr Lockwood is dead. Even I’ve heard of that. So, unless you’ve been taking orders from a damn corpse, I suggest—”

“No, no!” Thrusting out a placating hand, Danny scrambled to his feet, edging away from the gander. “The other one!” 

“What other one? There is no other…other…”

It struck her, iron chains flung at her chest, and the world didn’t just spin, but tumbled on its head. She shoved up to her feet, swaying as she reached the barn door. Earth and sky became a grey blur, the forest a wall of darkness.

The carriage on the heather road. 

She'd watched it not an hour before, convinced herself it was only the solicitor arrived from London.

She could count on one hand the people who’d come to Hethpool via that road. The only road in, and the only road out.  

Selina Lockwood, upon her marriage. 

Hateful Vicar Jacobs, sent north to corral their heathen ways. 

The young boy with eyes as rich as river silt and a grin straight out of a Midsummer’s dream. She’d been with Mary and Anne, gamboling through the heather like spring lambs when they’d glimpsed the carriage in the distance. So rare was the sight of a newcomer that they’d abandoned their play and raced after it, breathless when it had finally approached. Sleek ebony horses at the fore, silver inlays around the windows. Her little heart had tumbled when a young boy leaned out the window, waving wildly. That puckish grin flashing in the sunlight before his mother had snatched him back into the carriage.

No.

It couldn’t, mustn’t be him. 

He was safe. She’d done everything in her power to make sure he was safe. 

“His nephew, Miss.” Danny appeared at her shoulder. “Mr Anthony Lockwood. Him and his sister arrived today all the way from London with some other, foreign chap. I drove them up myself.” 

“They can’t be here,” she rasped. “They should have never....never...”

“Well…that may be so, but they’re here now and I don’t think they’re going anywhere.” Disconcerted, Danny shoved his hands into his pockets. “Please ma’am, could you…I didn’t mean to cause you trouble. Only he asked me to check on you to make sure you were..." He eyed her uncertainly. "Alright. Mighty worried he was. And you see, the silver piece…” 

No, no, no, no, no. 

Distantly, she knew she was hyperventilating. A lump materialized in her throat until it was as if she dragged each breath through a sieve.

The cackling sounded again, directly above. Lucy tilted her head back.

Four magpies sat on the barn roof, huddled close against the wind.

Four for a boy…

Another droplet spattered on her nose.

He already knew.

“Bugger off,” she hissed. 

“What was that?” 

“You need to go. Now.” The man of the woods would have no qualms harming a child, not if he believed him a threat. And Lucy couldn’t bear to have one more death on her conscience. 

Not after Erasmus Lockwood.

“Are you alright, Miss? You’re awfully pale.” Fingers brushed her sleeve, and she recoiled, stumbling back. 

The birds took wing, ascending into the gale.

“Leave.” Lucy breathed, watching until they crossed beyond the treeline before rushing towards the house. Raindrops fell faster, harder. In moments, her slippers were soaked through.

“Miss, wait up!”

“Go away, Danny.” She hiked up her skirts, breaking into a run. 

“But Mr Lockwood was insistent.”

“I don’t care!” She yelled over her shoulder, projecting her voice towards the woods. He was surely watching now, hunched like a carrion bird in the old hawthorn tree. “He means nothing to me!”

Believe me believe me believe me believe —

“He’s not going to like that.”

Neither would Judith. Her sister would never forgive her for this. 

Lucy would never forgive herself.

She bounded up the stone steps that lead to the porch, adrenalin chasing away the malaise in her limbs. “Don’t come back here, Danny.” She seized the doorknob, dropping her key in her haste. “And tell your new Mr Lockwood not to bother with us again. We don’t need his help, nor do we want it.” Before Danny could reply, she slammed the door, bracing her shoulder against the jam, half-terrified he meant to force his way in.

The dark of the foyer rose at her back, blessedly quiet. Wheezing, Lucy pressed her ear to the wood. She heard the brief scuffle of shoes, Danny's muttering under his breath. She recognised only a handful of phrases, the ones, she suspected, he meant for her to hear. Crazy. Moon-eyed. What did Mr Lockwood even see in her?

Witch. 

She could live with ‘crazy,’ so long as it meant he’d leave. She might even live with ‘witch,’ so long as they were all too frightened to return. 

Go. Please just go. Don’t draw his attention.

Deep within the forest, the magpie’s chorused, discordant. 

Leave. Run. 

Never come back. 

When at last he'd departed, Lucy slumped down to the floor, staring listlessly down the hall. Cobwebs draped thickly between every corner, strung the finials of old and battered furniture. A fine layer of dust coated every service. 

Dust motes swirled in the rain-drenched light filtering in from the parlour. 

With apprehension, Lucy rose to her feet, approaching the small room, checking each murky corner. 

No one.

Not the man or one of his vile, spying birds. 

She was safe. Safe for now.

She sank into the armchair, pressing her face into the worn brocade. Cassandra’s perfume still clung to the fabric, and she breathed in anise and cloves and buttery shortbread. But relief didn’t come. 

“Judith?” She called, working off her sodden slippers with her toes. They fell to the carpet with a wet thud. Pressure built at her temples, behind her eyes. 

Only silence answered her. Judith, for all her machinations, had nothing to say to her.

Again, as ever, she had failed.

“I didn’t know,” Lucy whispered. “I swear it.”

Down the hall, a concerto drifted from the piano; Mozart, A minor, wildly out of tune. She’d been meaning to reset the pins, if only for Diana’s sake, but it hardly seemed to matter now. Above her head, floorboards groaned in Susan and Anne’s room, as if one of them paced the floor. Pots and pans knocked together in the kitchen, Cassandra's domain. Even with Mother dead, the house was never quiet.

“Anthony,” she whispered in a voice so small and muffled that even he wouldn’t catch wind of it. For a selfish breath, she closed her eyes, relishing the feel of it on her lips, even though it awakened a terrible ache within her chest.

When she opened her eyes, a slim shadow had appeared at the door.

All in a rush, she released her breath, a whispered scream. 

“Right,” she said, standing on shaking legs. “Let’s get on with it.”

The storm kept on for two full days, raw and relentless, scoring the grounds of Sedgewick Park until the new grass turned waterlogged, the fine, hair-like roots exposed. The servants assured Lockwood that this happened every year, the sudden, violent torrents, driving any sane fellow indoors, making the roads and fields impassable. But the knowing didn’t make it any less bearable, and like a caged wolf, he roved the halls, desperate for release.

Lucy was a mere three miles away, but she may as well have been three hundred for how the storm divided them. He’d received no word from Danny, despite the silver he’d promised him, and though common sense suggested the rain slowed their correspondence, Lockwood couldn’t dissuade himself of the feeling that something was terribly wrong. Always, when they were young, she would come to him, and he to her, in their hour of need. 

More than ever, he needed her now. 

On the morning of the third day, the sun mustered its forces and finally breached the clouds. Uncle’s body had been kept in a coffin of holly, banded with silver and surrounded by a circle of double chains. Plagued by sleeplessness, Lockwood had kept watch with George, pacing the length of the spare drawing room until he was driven to a deep, dreamless slumber in the small hours of the morning. He’d wake to George’s prodding, a new crick in neck from a night spent sprawled on the sofa and the necrotic taste of death on his tongue. Even with the bushels of dried lavender strewn around the hall, it pervaded, settling in the weave of his clothes. It was a relief when the townsfolk came bearing their iron-tipped poles. Lockwood joined the black-clad men, supporting one corner of the heavy coffin, trying and failing not to imagine what was left of the man inside. He was no stranger to remains, human or otherwise. 

But to think of Uncle as such…

My husband was murdered. 

The truth was a phantom, ceaseless in its haunt. Conjuring questions that the servants were reluctant to answer, though he’d succeeded in winning them to his side. 

Murdered. 

Selina stood alone at the head of the gathering, still as the Grecian statues that filled the gallery. They hadn’t spoken at any great length since that first day, Selina lost in the limbo of grief and Lockwood to the inner workings of Sedgewick Park. 

Murdered.

Just like his parents, though he’d never been able to prove it. He’d never believed in the existence of curses, but now he was beginning to think that that had been a grave mistake. One lay over Sedgewick Park, upon his family line.

Murdered.

What madness had he returned to?

“Egad, that’s the third conjugation he’s missed,” George muttered into his scarf, his expression hidden by the fog gusting across his spectacles. “Never mind the abominable pronunciation.” 

“Quiet,” Lockwood and Jessica murmured together. 

“It’s an affront to language and organized religion.”

“George.”

Thin as a reed and cadaverous besides, Vicar Jacobs intoned the liturgy over the open grave. The younger, unremarkable son of a baronet, Frith, the butler, had told him. Forced into clergy regardless of affinity, forced to the north to conceal a scandal. Lockwood had met his fair share of lesser nobility, and he knew Jacobs’s kind. Grasping at the barest hint of power, resentful towards any who sought to deny him. 

“Do you think he has anything to do with… the hunting accident? ” Lockwood had asked Frith, throwing back a shot of whiskey the night before.

Frith ran a stout finger around the rim of his own glass, though he remained stone-faced as ever. 

“All I’m saying, sir, is that he never approved of the master. Hated how he was always intervening, how we all looked up to him.” He set his fist on the table, the white of his knuckles the only tell of his anger. “I have no proof, sir, but he can’t be trusted. Mark my words.”

His anxiety only grew as the service dragged on. Out of the corner of his eye, Lockwood searched the funeral, confirming again what he’d come to expect over the last hour. The seven Carlyle sisters were nowhere to be found.

Lucy was nowhere to be found. 

He recognised her old school fellows, auburn-haired Norrie White and dark-skinned Joy Young, huddled close in the sea of black. But the girl with the tumultuous, Hawkwillow eyes was conspicuously missing.

He could only assume the worst, that the Vicar had something to do with her disappearance. If she’d been able, she’d have come.

She wouldn’t have let him face Uncle’s death alone. 

On a second pass, he spotted Danny beside a wiry man who must have been his father. The boy’s shoulders shot up to his ears when their gazes locked, the tips of his overly large ears turning red as currant jam.

Lockwood ground his teeth. Damn it all, what did the boy know?

“Anthony,” Jess whispered, gently tapping his elbow. The smooth fur of her beaver skin hat brushed the underside of his chin as she linked her arm through his. “You’re fidgeting.”

“I’m fine.” He reached for his rapier with his free hand, clenching the hilt in his grasp. He’d been betting on Lucy’s presence to steady him through the ceremony, as she always had when they were children. A small, soft hand in his, her head resting upon his shoulder. 

Selina suddenly stirred, gloved hands clawing to fists at her sides. A fissure splintered through Lockwood’s chest when she pressed her handkerchief to her mouth, stifling a sob. 

Regardless of circumstance, Lockwood at least had his sister and his dearest friend at his side, if not Lucy who had always been something more.

Selina had no one now.

“Aunt.” Lockwood pulled from Jessica, wrapping his arm around Selina’s shoulders. She stiffened briefly, before crumpling against him, turning her face into his chest. Even then, her sobs were silent, made evident only by the shaking of her shoulders. 

“Poor lamb.” A woman murmured, only to be hastily shushed by another. 

“It ain’t right.” This time a gravely brogue. “Goin’ on pretending like this. We all know what it was. The Master deserves justice, not this tosh.” 

“Oh good,” Lockwood heard George mutter. “So, everyone knows. That's grand.”

“Quiet Owen.” Another hissed. “Don’t borrow trouble.” 

At the fore of the gathering, the Vicar paused in his liturgy, turning sharply towards the crowd. His pale, colorless eyes scoured the gathering for signs of dissidence. 

“Now you’ve done it,” someone hissed. “When will you ever mind your tongue?” 

“When he’s clapped in the stocks, I suspect.” 

“Dear God,” Selina whispered. "Anthony, please."

The baleful gaze fell upon him.

“Why have we stopped?" Lifting his chin, Lockwood smiled grimly, flourishing a dismissal. "Continue, Vicar."  

Loathing flashed like a drawn blade, and Lockwood’s smile turned canine, predatory. 

“Best watch yourself around him,” George muttered into Lockwood’s ear when the Vicar finally looked away. “That one’s trouble for sure.”

For once, neither Lockwood nor Jessica attempted to correct him. 

That night, upon Judith’s insistence, they kept vigil over the cemetery where Erasmus had been laid. A fine, chill mist quilted the open field, a blanket drawn up over the head to hide from the things of the nights. 

Lucy shivered, sparing a glance at the dented old pocket-watch she'd set upon the stone. The hands had stopped just half eleven. A thin rim of frost patterned out from the golden face, fine as Venetian lace.

“We owe it to him,” Judith had insisted when they’d all gathered in the kitchen after sundown, drawn together from their usual haunts. “And Selina, too.”

“Give over.” Susan scoffed, drumming her fingers along the table for the express purpose of rattling Lucy’s tea. Creamy liquid spilled over onto the saucer, drowning the tiny blue forget-me-nots before Lucy snatched up the delicate cup. Susan smirked. “What do you think will happen, Jude? It’s not going to change anything. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but—”

“No, you don’t.” Anne smiled innocently as the salt cellar abruptly tipped over. Granules cascaded into Susan’s lap. With a shriek, their sister leaped from her chair. Stray crystals fell to the floor as she shook her skirts, glittering like embers in the clementine glow of the candles. 

Haunting his grave isn’t going to bring him back,” she snarled.

“Maybe not, but he might be there,” Lucy regarded them all. “And if we can find out why he’s targeted Sedgewick…”

“Oh, because that worked so well the last time, poppet.” Susan groused, scowling at the grey, smouldering stain spreading down the front of her dress. “I’m not going.”

Midnight, however, found them all atop Bamber’s Ridge, seven shadows upon the crumbling stone wall. None of them could ever resist Judith for long, and she held sway over the sisters like a general over his troops. She would’ve made a fine match for Napoleon and his conquest of the Continent had it not been for the obvious; that she was a woman and that they were cursed. 

“Do you see anything?” Mary whispered, her voice pitched low, lest the wind courier their secrets elsewhere. 

“Not a Wisp,” Lucy slid off the wall, snatching up the pocket watch before wading through the high hedgerow.

“You’re not actually going down there?” Diana drifted after her, leaving a dark trail of footprints through the parting grass. “That wasn’t part of the plan. What if someone sees you?” She rung her hands, keening. “Oh, Judith, tell her!” 

“Christ, Diana,” Lucy clapped her hands over her ears. “Would you relax? I’m hardly walking up to their front door, only as far as the stables. No one will see me.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” Mary ran after her, and Lucy flinched as she drew near. 

“No, you stay with the others. I’ll be grand.” Lucy offered her the semblance of a smile, discreetly widening the gap between them. 

“It was bad enough coming out here in the first place.” This from Susan, for she would beat a dead horse. “Wait for the boy to come to us, if he even remembers now that Erasmus is buried. He’ll be up to his ears in estate affairs and every mother in Hethpool will be throwing their daughter at his feet. Show him a pretty face and he’ll forget all about you.” Her teeth gleamed cruelly in the moonshine. “You’re no Becky Steele, poppet.” 

Gritting her teeth, Lucy ignored her as she’d ignored the truth looking back at her from the looking glass that morning. Death clung to her like a second skin, glazing her complexion grey, drawing gossamer lines between her brows. No doubt Danny had glimpsed it, and she shuddered to think what yarn Becky had spun from the rumors. 

Down the river twisting path, a long-limbed figure peeled away from the squat oaks. Lucy drew her rapier. 

“Begone Lurker,” Anne waved her arms theatrically as they approached. “Get thee to an exorcism.”

“That would be for the best, admittedly.” Judith bent to avoid a low-draping branch. 

“What, an exorcism? Far beyond my talents, sister. You could ask our Sue, perhaps. I suspect she’s part demon. Becky Steele, my foot.”

“Don’t be coy. Forgetting. He needs to forget all about her.” Judith continued, relentless. “It’s the only way forward.”

Only half-listening, Lucy eyed the spirits appearing along the river path, mottled grey in the naked white embrace of the birches. It reminded vividly, painfully, of Lockwood, their hunts by moonlight, the river path.

The shaded clearing where they’d practise for hours. Patient in his instruction. Effervescent in his charms. His slender, well-formed hands grazing her shoulders, her waist as he corrected her stance. Sparks of lightning fizzing through her veins when he leaned in close to whisper…

Anne glanced at her sharply, her gaiety spoiled. “Lucy.”

“What?”

“Jude is right, you know.”

She set her jaw, for the ache in her chest had returned, cleaving open her ribs. She nodded, just once, for she knew her sisters were right. “I understand.”

One of the magpie’s chittered, the call echoed first by another, then a third. The girls stilled, though none dared to look to the boughs.

“Did anyone happen to count them?” She heard Mary ask.

“What, and ruin the moment? Might be the devil himself.”

Lucy left her sisters at the wood's edge, passing through the veil of mist. Droplets clung to her skin and dampened her cloak, and by the time she reached the manor, her skin was clammy with chill. Goosebumps riddled arms as she gazed up at the clean, Palladian limestone. No candle shone from its mullioned windows. The stables, too, were unlit. No better than a Shade, she wavered in the middle of the lawn, unsure of how to proceed.

If she was honest with herself, her mission was pure cowardice, selfishness too. 

Had she been truly brave, she’d have stood between the entry columns, daylight at her back, and knocked upon the door.

Had she been truly selfless, she wouldn’t have come at all. 

Truth be told, she wasn’t certain what she hoped to achieve; unless she meant to pick a lock or pry open a window, there was no way into the house, no way to ascertain if Danny’s words were true. 

Foolish hope guided her steps. Dread kept her keen.

She ran her hand over the wooden fence surrounding the barn as she would when she was a girl. How often they’d meet at the gate, she and Lockwood, madcap as they raced for the hills.

A flicker of light spilled through a crack in the stable doors. Her heart began to pound. She couldn’t imagine that Mr Bell or Mr Morgan would be out so late, not after the burial this morning. Neither could it be any the staff…

Hesitating only a moment, she hiked up her skirts and clambered over the fence. If it wasn’t him, she’d slip back into the mists, and no one would know of her passing.

And if it was…

With bated breath, she crept to the crack in the stable doors. A lantern hung from a hook on the wall, patterning the wooden beams with auroral blooms. The sweet smell of fresh hay filled her lungs. Weariness tugged at her eyelids, and she'd have liked nothing more than to sink into the flaxen mounds and sleep until the winter solstice.

At the back of the stalls, someone began singing a familiar melody. 

‘O’ where are you going?’ ‘To Scarborough Fair.’

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme;

‘Remember me to a lass who lives there,

For once she was a true love of mine.’

She shouldn’t have recognized the voice, for it was deeper than it had been at sixteen, a rich baritone to a boy’s tenor. But she did recognize it, as she’d longed to for years, and knew immediately to whom it belonged. 

So caught in the spell of the ballad, the velvet with which he sung, she didn’t think to mind her step until it was too late. 

The toe of her boots struck a stray iron spike. It rolled across the flagstones, jangling as it went.

The singing ceased; the timbre turned threatening.

“Who’s there?”

Lucy fled without thought. Only that he must not see her. He must not—

A slender hand clapped over her shoulder. She squeaked, spun around with an ease that left her unmoored, reeling upon rapids of emotion. 

Lockwood.

He towered over her like the hawthorn tree, taller than she’d remembered, a full head taller, and she suddenly felt very small and vulnerable by comparison. He'd removed his coat, bearing his waistcoat and shirtsleeves; the floral brocade stretched taut across his narrow chest; linen billowed over his broadened shoulders.

Her heart tumbled when she lifted her gaze, so caught between dread and elation that she feared it soon to be torn asunder.

In the amber bloom his lantern, he was all angles, his features sharper, gaunter than they'd been as a boy, a study in marigold and plum. Circles of strain cross-hatched his under eyes, and her fingers itched for charcoal, to immortalise his lines in vellum.

“Lucy?” Shock stole away his earlier threat, rendering his voice insubstantial. He took a step closer.

A mirror to him, she retreated. Her back collided with the wooden rails.

That boyish forelock fell into his umber eyes, untamed by the hour and his labour. Breathless as she, he reached out his hand, and a vivid, burning spark rushed through her when his calloused fingers grazed her cheek. 

“Hello,” he said softly, in the way one might soothe a spooked mare. His gentleness rushed through her like a cup of cinnamon tea, and as though she’d gulped down a mug-full. Heat prickle across her cheeks, radiating from his touch, and it was all she could do not to lean into him. God, it'd been so long since anyone had touched her.

Like something out of Titania's court, that puckish smile returned, both crooked and kind. Gold-dust glimmered in the depths of his eyes, as though she'd struck upon a vein of quartz in the pitch-black of a cavern.

Lockwood remembered himself then, and his hand fell away. A tide of cold flooded in, breaking the trance.

"You came." Soft laughter escaped him, as wondering as it was self-deprecating. His gaze darted briefly aside, abashed, before riveting upon her face. “I knew you’d come.” His voice caught with a longing echoed deep within her own breast, and the pain returned, so acute she thought she'd faint from it. “I should never have doubted you.”

He was wrong; there was no reason to trust, only those to fear and despise her.

To see his face again had been all she’d ever wanted for as long as she could remember. 

But now it was all she could do to hold back her tears. 

He hadn’t escaped after all. 

And it was all her fault.