she was going off to a 'haunted' house that had never registered anomalous empirical data.
Mason grabbed her arm, squeezed hard enough to hurt. 'Listen to me. When I was six years old, my mother bought be a package of modeling clay. It was like magic, digging my fingers in that stuff, twisting it and shaping it however I liked. For the first time in my life, I could control something.
'I made my mother a dinosaur, copying it from a picture in a book. I even put a row of little bony plates up its spine and spikes on its tail, two long horns and eyes that looked like they could stare down a T. Rex. Mama loved it. For the first time ever, I'd done something that really made her proud.'
Mason squeezed harder, and Anna feared that he'd lost his mind, was going to snap her arm as if it were one of his whittling sticks. He talked faster, face red, eyes dark and faraway. 'And my dad came in, saw the dinosaur, knocked it on the floor, and stomped it flat. Called me a goddamned useless daydreamer, a lazybones sack of crap. I can still see that imprint on the floor, the tread of his boot in the clay. Made me feel real special, all right.
'And you're special because you see things that don't exist. Well, let me tell you something, Little Miss Strange. This isn't one of your campfire tales. This is happening, this is real.' He pulled her closer to the painting. 'You can see it.'
She twisted away, retreated with the lantern. The motion of the light made the shadows shift, gave the illusion that the statue had altered its position among the boards and wires that supported it. She gazed into the small flame of the lantern, where the orange gave way to blue and then to yellow. Maybe if she burned out her retinas, she'd never have to see another ghost in the short time she had left to live. Blinded to Second Sight or any sight.
'That's not me,' she said, commanding her tears to evaporate. 'It's my mother.'
'Your mother?'
'She's here. She's dead. She's one of them now. And they can have her, for all I care.'
'One of who? Wait a minute. You're losing me.'
'Join the club. I've lost everybody else along the way.'
She slammed the lantern onto Mason's worktable hard enough to rattle the glass. The shadows jumped as the flame bobbed, then the darkness began its slow crawl toward Anna. 'Here. You're going to need this, because it gets awfully dark when your head's up your ass.'
She headed for the stairs, welcoming the cool air that drifted over her skin like fingers of fog. The pain came again, in gentle prods, reminders of the sand that poured through the narrow hourglass gap between present and past. Soon the sand would run out and darkness would claim her. Soon but not nearly soon enough.
On each wooden step, she stomped out her ritual countdown.
Ten, round and thin.
Nine, loop and droop.
Eight, a double gate.
'Anna. Wait.'
Seven, sharp and even.
Six, an arc and trick.
'I'm sorry.'
She was sorry, too.
Five, a broken wing.
Four, a north fork.
'I'm scared.'
Join the club.
Three, a skeleton key.
Two, an empty hook.
One, a dividing line.
'Help me.'
Zero.
Nothing.
She opened the door and went down the hall, into the arteries of the house, aware of its patient and held breath, its warm and welcoming heart. Acceptance brought peace. This was the first and last place she had ever belonged. Sylva Hartley was right. She had come home.
She had come home. Sylva ground the dried blood-root, pulse working her veins like a snowmelt busting through rocks at the tail end of winter. Only a handful of hours until sundown, and then the rising of the blue moon. Sylva had prayed for this night for nigh on a hundred years, and the ashes of a prayer were stronger than the hottest fires of hell.
The spirits shifted in the dirt, turned in their tunnels, restless, disturbed by Ephram Korban's rising power. She knew Ephram better than anybody, better than even Margaret did, or 'Miss Mamie,' as she'd taken to being called. Many was the night Ephram's voice haunted the wind of Beechy Gap, whispering to Sylva, sending her scuttling for the charms. And he was fetching up a storm now, had already called over George Lawson and one of them new guests, with more soon to follow. By the next sunrise, Korban would have them all. Even Anna. Especially Anna.
Sylva clutched the clay jar of catbone, sprinkled some on the hearth. Her hand ached from gripping the stone, but the powders had to be fine as grave dust. She crushed the mixture again, worked the dry herbs, trembling. The fire spat, which she took as a good omen.
Would her faith be enough? She had the spells down, all her life had been dress rehearsal for this one magic night. Mighty long had she walked these hills, collecting roots and legends, crossing over to commune with the dead, even when the dead just wanted to be left alone. The spell hung on her cracked lips like a fevered drool.
When the time was right, she'd say it. Frost and fire. Ephram Korban was frost and fire. Dead and alive. Both exactly the same, when you got right to the heart of it all.
She pulled a small cedar box from a chink in the log wall. The scrap of cloth was gray with age, stained with the soul juice of the one who had worn it. Sylva brought it to her lips, whispered, 'Go out frost,' kissed it, and placed it amid the pile of powder.
She ground the stone against the cloth, the threads fraying, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, frost to fire.
CHAPTER 20
Roth licked his lips. This was the good part. The bird had fallen for his line of poppycock. Swallowed it as if it were a worm. Which gave him an idea about what he would get Lilith to do when they got to her room.
She had led him through a small door in the pantry, a door he hadn't noticed before, a place of drafts and shadows that seemed spot-on for the common class. Come to think of it, the servants were ever-present, as if they never needed to sleep. He'd seen one of the maids tending the fire in the sitting room at three in the morning, and the hired hands were in at all hours with their loads of firewood.
Roth followed Lilith down a narrow set of stairs. This was a separate section of the basement, walled off from the part where Mason worked and where Roth had developed his negatives. When the door swung shut above them, they were in pitch-darkness. Neither had a lantern, and the inability to see excited Roth, made his skin tingle in anticipation. Or maybe it was the chilly dead air, the sense of enclosure, that caused his heart to pump faster.
She'd been easy and eager, all right. Most women acted like the old in-out in the middle of the day was an affront to the gods. Lilith didn't even need to finish her first glass of filched wine before she was leaning on Roth, giving him that special happy smile, looking into those smoky gray eyes that no woman in her right mind could resist.
He reached in front of him, keeping one hand on the wall so he wouldn't lose his balance. He touched Lilith's hair. He slid his hand down to where her shoulder should be, but she managed to stay a few steps ahead of him. She hadn't spoken since he'd made his suggestion, only smiled in submission and tilted her head to her secret door. She was one for games, she was.
Roth stepped off the creaking wood onto a hard, flat area. Then he heard a match strike a few feet away,
