I did not tell my brother how the tallest shadow found me in the hall, peeled away from his master like a long summer day. I did not tell my brother how he looked straight at me with those near-black eyes and pointed to the closest door, to the garden and the wall, head cocked. I did not tell my brother that the shadow let me go.
The entry ends. Olivia’s hands are already turning the page. The next entry begins:
I wrote to him last night.
I went back, expected to find it gone, stolen like everything else that falls through the cracks, but it was still there, tucked between the iron and the stone, and I could tell by the angle it had been moved, and when I checked, I found that he had written back.
Another page, another entry.
I have lived at Gallant all my life. But home is meant to be a choice. I did not choose this house. I am tired of being bound to it.
Olivia turns, hoping for more, but the next page is torn, and the next, and the next, the following entries all ripped out, leaving only a few black beginnings near the binding, the inky curl of letters broken, words ripped in two. A breadcrumb trail of half-formed words.
Not comi—
a prisone—
togeth—
we can f—
tonigh—
Olivia lets out a frustrated breath and turns back to the beginning.
Her mother went beyond the wall. She saw death, and four shadows, and a dozen shades. The tallest shadow helped her home. It is the stuff of fairy tales. Or something darker. A girl losing her mind? And yet, she was well enough to know how it sounded written down. And hasn’t Olivia herself seen shades? The half-there girls back at Merilance. Her own mother and uncle trailing her through the halls of Gallant. Did Grace Prior see ghouls, too?
But what is the difference between a shadow and a shade?
Is it a riddle or a code?
She closes her eyes, trying to assemble the pieces, but her mind is too tired to find the edges, and nothing seems to fit, and eventually she blows out the candle with an exasperated breath and falls back into the bed.
And in the dark, she dreams.
Perhaps you are haunting me.
What a comforting thought.
Maybe it’s you in the darkness.
I swear I’ve seen it move.
Chapter Fourteen
There is a man in the garden.
He stumbles, as if sick or drunk, falls down, and gets back to his feet, dragging his tired body past the flowers, pale in moonlight, past the trellises and hedges, past Olivia, who sits watching on the low stone bench, unable to move. He surges by, legs unsteady as he passes the final row of roses, and heads for the sloping stretch of grass toward the garden wall.
“You cannot have me!” he shouts, words shattering the quiet night. His voice is hoarse, exhausted. “You will not win.”
He glances back over his shoulder, at the house, at her, and the light cuts across his haunted gaze, his hollowed cheeks. His face is half in shadow, but she recognizes that jaw, those deep-set eyes, the echo of Matthew’s, but older. Her uncle. Arthur.
She watches, helpless, as he stumbles again, but this time he doesn’t get back up. He sinks to his knees in the grass. An object glints in his hand, and at first she thinks it is a spade, but then the moonlight strikes the barrel. It is a gun.
“You say that you can make the nightmares stop.” He looks up at the wall, eyes glassy in the dark. “Well, so can I.”
The gun swings up against his temple.
Olivia wakes with the bang.
The sound rings through the room, and she is already up, racing barefoot toward the door. It was just a dream, she tells herself, but it felt so real. It was just a dream, but her dreams seem to reach into the waking world, and the gunshot is still echoing in her ears as she rushes into the hall. Matthew’s door hangs open, lamplight pooling on the wooden floor, but there are no sobs, no signs of Hannah or Edgar wrestling him back onto the bed.
That bed is empty now, the sheets thrown back, the leather straps hanging to the floor.
Dread rolls through her. It was just a dream, but Matthew is not here, and she is certain that if she looks out into the garden, she will see a body slumped in the grass. Her window faces the front and the fountain. Matthew’s room is across the hall, so it must look onto the garden and the wall. But when she goes to the window, the shutters are not just latched—they’re locked.
Olivia hurries back down the hall, is halfway down the stairs when she hears it. Not a scream, or a shot, but a soft sequence of notes, rising and falling in scale.
Someone is playing the piano.
The melody wafts like smoke, thin and wispy, and Olivia’s heart struggles to slow as she follows the sound down the stairs and through the maze of halls to the music room, the light spilling from the open door, and there is the glossy black shell of the piano, and Matthew, head bowed over the keys.
At first glance she almost mistakes him for a ghoul, hunched forward so far he looks nearly headless. But a ghoul wouldn’t be able to touch the keys, let alone coax such music forth, and when he shifts, the lamplight falls on firm but narrow shoulders, limns the edges of his hair. He is solid enough.
Her gaze goes past him then, to the bay window, the moonlit garden sprawling beyond the glass. She searches the darkened lawn, but there is no body. Of course there is no body. It was just a dream.
Olivia shifts in the doorway, and the movement draws Matthew’s notice.
He glances up, meeting her gaze in the glass. For a moment, his hands stop, the melody suspended, and she holds his gaze, waits for the annoyance to flash across his reflection. But there is no anger in his shoulders, no frustration in his jaw. Only weariness. He looks back down and starts again.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he says, and her eyes go to the bruises around his wrists. She knows his dreams are just as vivid as her own, images that taste and feel and sound like truth. Three nights in this house, and already she feels rattled. Judging by the cast of Matthew’s skin, the hollows beneath his eyes, he has dealt with them far longer, and the dreams have been far worse.
There is no rest in sleep. These dreams will be the death of me.
“Don’t hover,” he says, but there’s an invitation in the words, to come in or to go. Olivia drifts forward.
There are only two seats in the room, the bay window and the piano bench, and she cannot bring herself to sit in the window with her back to the garden, so she sits on the edge of the bench, watching his fingers drift over the keys, hands moving with the ease of practice. The song that wafts through the room is soft and winding and lonely. She knows that isn’t the right word, but it is the only one that fits. The notes are lovely, but they make her feel like she is back in the garden shed.
“Do you play?”
Olivia shakes her head no, wonders if he can see the sadness in her face, or the hungry way she looks at the keys. But Matthew isn’t looking at her. He isn’t looking down either. Instead, he keeps his gaze on the window, on the night, on the moon-soaked garden and the distant wall, its edges traced with silver light.
He takes a long, slow breath and says, “My father showed me, when I was young.”
He softens, a ghost of a smile crosses his face, and she does not recognize this Matthew.
He was a kind boy once.
His hands are so gentle on the keys. “My mother loved to hear him play. I wanted to learn, too, but he didn’t know how to teach, couldn’t remember how he had learned himself, so he sat me down one day and nodded at the keys and said, ‘Watch and listen and figure it out.’”