Three drops of blood.
Three drops of blood on a handkerchief.
I’d pressed my bleeding finger to a handkerchief three times, and given it away.
To Whitaker.
I remembered that night’s cool darkness. There hadn’t been enough starlight for me to make out the pattern embroidered on the corner of the cloth, but I had felt the textured threads. Something had been stitched into Whitaker’s handkerchief. Had it been Sam’s initials?
And if so, how had that handkerchief made its way to Rebecca’s farm? Into a summoning circle? Into Simon Briard’s hand?
I broke away from the group, my head spinning and knees buckling, before sinking to the parched earth. My stomach lurched, bringing up a hot splash of bile, and I had to press a hand to my lips to hold it back.
Blood was needed to seal a bargain. I had thought I was pledging a marker to Whitaker alone, but he had used it for a far darker purpose.
My blood had been used to bring these creatures to the Falls.
This was all my fault.
His fault. He summoned them.
Every death, every misfortune these things had wrought was because of me.
Because of him.
I’d…
He’d.
Who was he?
The vomit came then, fetid and as thin as gruel. I’d had nothing of substance to eat since the afternoon before, and it felt like knives razing my throat as it fought free.
The stagnant air pressed upon me like stones. My temples pounded and I couldn’t stop my limbs from shaking. Thoroughly hollowed out, I curled in on myself, wanting to die.
No one noticed my plight.
I listened in a listless daze as Simon continued his recriminations. The parson joined in. A search was to be organized. They would root through every nook and cranny of Amity Falls until Sam was found and brought forth to stand trial.
“No,” I gasped, struggling to push myself up. I remembered with far too much clarity what had happened at the last trial held in Amity Falls. I could not let my twin pay for my mistakes. I’d brought these things to our town.
But even if I was to confess my crime in front of everyone, here and now, I was not certain it would save Sam. This crowd was far too riled to listen to reason’s appeal.
I needed to go to the source of the discontent. I needed to find the Dark Watchers and make them stop this. It was my brother’s only chance.
I stood on trembling legs, stumbled to the back of the tent, and grabbed at Merry. “We have to get out of here. We have to get to the farm—now!”
As if he heard me, Parson Briard cast his gaze toward us with a fiery fury. Hot spots of righteous indignation burned across his cheeks. For just a second our eyes met, and his nose wrinkled into a feral snarl. “The Devil has come to Amity Falls. And Samuel Downing has brought him here.”
* * *
“She was there; she was right there in the tent with us,” I cried as Merry, the Fairhopes, and I fled town, racing home. “What are we going to do?”
“We need to get the little girl and get all of you out of town,” Ephraim said.
I stumbled to a stop. “Leave? That’s your big plan? I thought you said you were here to fight them? To stop them. If we leave—”
“We survive.” Ephraim cut me off with a weighted finality. “We survive to fight again another day.”
“But…what about everyone else? The town, they—”
“They’re all able to make their own decisions. You owe them nothing, Ellerie.”
“We can’t leave without Sam—they’re going after him. They think he summoned the Dark Watchers here.”
Ephraim shook his head in disgust. “They’re not demons waiting to be called upon. That’s not how they work. They just…exist here, in our world. Like water-hounds and krakens, ahools and thunderbirds, shucks and tatzelwurms. Dark Watchers aren’t things to be manipulated or controlled.” He paused, considering. “Unless, of course…”
“What?” I asked, leaping onto his uncertainty.
“Unless he somehow knew their names…”
“Sam didn’t bring them here. He couldn’t have,” I insisted.
Ephraim nodded. “Of course not. Judging by how far their darkness has spread—to the forest’s creatures, the farm animals, even all of you—they’ve been here for years, watching, waiting.”
Merry frowned. “You really think they’ve been here that long? Simon said the summoning circle was only a few months old. And the handkerchief—”
A roar of recognition filled my ears, and I didn’t hear the rest of what Merry said. I’d made that marker in October, long after the men in Jeb McCleary’s supply run had been killed. The wolves, or whatever animal they had begun as, had been tainted well before my bargain with Whitaker.
Out of the stifling, suffocating haze of the revival tent, I could see that now.
This was not my fault.
My blood had not unwittingly brought the Dark Watchers to our town.
I wanted to sink to the ground as relief poured through me and hollowed out all the places where dread had been. “How…how many of them are there?”
“According to our records, two made the initial crossing from England, but they’ve increased in number. The Queen. A young girl—”
“Abigail,” I said unhappily.
“An older woman and two men.”
“Five Dark Watchers?” I gasped, tallying them on my fingers.
A sweat broke across Merry’s brow that had nothing to do with the heat of the day. “There are Dark Watchers who are men?”
Ephraim nodded as though that should have been obvious.
“Are you…are you all right, Merry?” Thomas stepped forward to place a hand gently on her back.
“I thought…You only ever spoke of the Queen—the woman Ellerie and Cyrus saw. And then Judd’s daughter at the revival, she saw the little girl that Sadie has….I just thought they were all women.”
Thomas and Ephraim exchanged concerned glances.
“Merry?” I asked.
“You said…you said they offer to give people things, right?”
Ephraim waited a beat before responding. “Whatever you want, whatever you long for most.”
She lowered her head. “Like…a chocolate cake?” Merry murmured, so quiet, I almost didn’t catch it.