Ransom’s nostrils flared, ears flattening against his skull as his lips pulled back from his bright white teeth. Rowen reloaded and watched the tree line as he stumbled over bits of river debris on his way to Jonathan. He didn’t dare go to his knees, didn’t dare turn his back to either the woods or the water as he crouched to check his friend for signs of life.
It took but a moment.
“Damn it!” Rowen shouted, rising. “Damn it all to Hell—it’s not supposed to happen this way!” He headed into the woods, hunting for the Merrow that couldn’t be too far ahead. He stopped, hearing noise behind him.
Ransom blew a burst of hot air out his nose, nearly baking Rowen’s face.
“Didn’t want to be left behind, did you?” Rowen asked, sparing a quick touch for the horse. “Me neither.” He stepped to his steed’s side and climbed into the saddle, mindful of the loaded pistol. “Let’s us go and see just where our slimy little friend got to, shall we? I have a bullet with his name on it.” He nudged Ransom forward with his heels, watching for any signs of either horse or the Merrow’s passage. Plants bent a different way than the rest or stems or branches broken—all were telltale signs of movement. As was the sudden noise of a terrified horse’s scream.
Rowen kicked Ransom forward and the horse barely even flicked an ear at being commanded into danger instead of being directed away from it. They plunged through the brush and thin briars lining the already torn pathway, bolting toward the source of the sound.
Ahead of them Silver stood and stamped, his eyes rolling and head lowered, focusing on something low to the ground and obscured by the bushes before them. They crashed through the last bit of brush and came to a sliding stop beside the horse, their haunches touching.
Silver broke free of his staring contest with the Merrow for a moment and Rowen lowered his pistol and took a shot.
The Merrow squealed and flew backward through the brambles as fast as if the bullet carried it. This time they tracked it the whole way from the noise alone and Rowen struggled to reload his gun as Ransom carried him after the beast to finish it off, leaving Silver back in the thicket. He would avenge his best friend, escort the damsel, and put things to rights in Philadelphia.
Blackpowder spilled from Rowen’s powder flask and his wadding was a sloppy job at best. But he dropped in the lead and rammed it home and was ready when they burst back to the river’s edge.
At least he had thought himself ready.
At the water’s edge three more Merrow crouched, petting and cooing to soothe their wounded comrade as they stuffed his wound with the gooey growth that always tangled Rowen’s line when he dared to go down to the Below’s dockside and fish.
They looked up at him, sitting there on top of his beautiful horse, and they gnashed their impossibly large teeth, drooling.
“Damn it,” Rowen repeated, letting Ransom dance backward beneath him. “I am fairly certain
The blow knocked a Merrow back into the water in a splash of blood. Something moved just below the surface, causing ripples and then another ripple, and another, as spines circled the rising blood in the river and then, in a furious fit of splashing water and high-pitched wailing the waters frothed with foam and blood as the Merrow tore each other apart.
Ransom carried Rowen another long slow step backward as Rowen reloaded and fired.
The Merrow shifted, anticipating his shot, but the ramrod sliced through one of them, launched from the pistol’s barrel in Rowen’s haste, and flew like a spear into the water beyond as the bullet went wide and grazed the other.
The remaining Merrow snapped their jaws together, teeth clicking wetly as saliva dripped and they scurried forward, propelled by their coiling and then stretching tails. They leaped at Ransom and Rowen swung his pistol like a club, connecting with a sickening sound with the skull of one of the Merrow and knocking it to the ground, unconscious and bleeding.
Distantly Rowen wondered if they’d drag that one down into the swirling waters for a fleshy feast, too, and he cursed and freed his sword, slashing wildly as the Merrow dug claws into Ransom’s flank and he squealed like a hog at slaughter.
He bucked and Rowen flew from the saddle, landing hard. Catching his breath and climbing to his feet, Rowen watched the prize stallion whip his spine so loosely that it seemed he had no bones in his back at all. His adversaries flew free of him, unable to maintain a grip with tail, tooth, or claw and Ransom spun on his hooves and, with one quick look at Rowen, bolted back into the dry cover of the woods they’d just come from.
Rowen stood his ground, slashing out with his blade and retreating into the woods the way Ransom had gone, his eyes on the snarling and still advancing Merrow, his last glimpse of the best friend he’d ever had the lifeless body at the river’s edge, the waters lapping at his side.
Far past the fringe of the forest, nearer to its light-dappled heart, the Merrow gave up the chase and slunk back to the relative safety of the river. They’d slip downstream soon, seeking saltier water.
When he was certain they intended no ambush, Rowen bent over to catch his breath, his sword quivering in his grip. He willed himself to release the weapon and watched it fall to the ground with detached interest. He set down his pistol and began to rub feeling back into his right hand. He crouched by his weapons, stretching and flexing and checking himself for wounds. His beautiful pants were ruined now, covered in dirt, Merrow slime, and blood. He tugged a small briar branch out of one leg and winced as the thorns pulled out.
But beyond all the small indignities of battle—the dirt, the grime, and the blood—was the loss.
He turned back toward the distant river and the place where Jonathan had gone down.
If he’d had any doubt before about going swiftly to Holgate to find Jordan, it was as gone as Jonathan’s life. Jordan was his last remaining close friend. Jonathan had not abandoned Rowen in the time of his greatest need, so neither would he abandon her in hers.
“Damn it,” he repeated for good measure. He stood, shook out each of his limbs, and rolled his head to stretch out the pinch of tension in his neck. He rubbed his face, surprised when his fingers came away damp. “Damn it,” he said again, this time the words but a whisper. He picked up his sword once more, slipped the empty pistol into his belt, and peered up through the overlapping canopy of thick leaves to try and find the sun. He decided he would again match his path to its own once he recovered the horses.
Caleb’s voice surprised Jordan. “You do not feel her there? With you?”
Jordan shook her head, confused. “I truly do not know what you mean … There is no one here with me.”
“Sybil is,” Caleb insisted. “You may not see her, but she remains. In the walls and in the water. She is a part of this place. She is rooted here.”
Jordan shivered. “A ghost?”
“The spirit of a little girl,” he corrected. “I might become a ghost someday, but she? She is Rusalka.”
Jordan tested the word on her tongue, rolling its foreign sound in her mouth. “Rusalka? What is that?”
“It is the spirit of a murdered girl bound forever to water.”
“How could that be?” Jordan’s finger traced the chink of mortar running between the weeping stones. “If she was a murdered Witch … would she not be tied to a soul stone? Not water?”
Caleb grew quiet a moment. “Why not both? I still feel her. Part of her remains there. I am certain. She was sweet. Just a scrap of humanity. Taken too soon from this world. Not I. For me the end comes not soon enough.”
The Warden slammed Jordan’s door open and grabbed the chain hanging between her leather shackles. At the top of the Eastern Tower, Jordan next saw the child who had called her an abomination as the Maker prepared to do the less than gentle parts of his job. The child carried a floppy-eared toy that seemed somehow less substantial than previous. The little girl looked at her with wide eyes and handed the Maker a bowl of some food and piece of bread so fresh and warm Jordan could smell it from where she stood with the Warden, eyeing the boards, the straps running across them, and the table that held a roll of dark-colored cloth.
Her mouth watered the tiniest bit but her stomach grumbled so loudly in response to the scent and sight of
