It was more than grim to find that Poppy had not exaggerated. Miss Amelia Canny was in fact dead, lying on her back in her bed, hands curled up on her chest as if she were an insect, her skin an oddish gray color. I had never seen anything quite like it. It was as if every drop of moisture had been squeezed from her body, or sucked out through her mouth somehow. That same mouth was open permanently in terror and her eyes were shut, though thick liquid oozed out of the creases.
As I looked at her, my guts twisted sharply, that ghostly woman’s voice filling my head again, emerging as if it were my own thoughts and not that of an unseen, unwanted interloper.
This will be you, it said. Run.
“Her eyeballs exploded,” Poppy whispered. I couldn’t tell if she was horrified or impressed. “I don’t think we’ve cleaned up something like this before.”
We certainly hadn’t. I felt more and more sure that I needed to find a way to protect Poppy, Chijioke, Mary, and Lee, especially if there was some kind of murderer on the loose. Just because they were touched by magic, it did not mean my friends were invulnerable. I closed my eyes, trying not to imagine myself dead and desiccated in my own bed. We stood in a semicircle around the bed with Chijioke in the middle. He groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Och, this was not supposed to happen,” he muttered. “They were to marry first.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why does it matter? She was going to die here eventually, yes?”
Poppy leaned around Chijioke and stuck out her lip at me. “Did you do it?”
“Me!?” I laughed with exasperation. “Of course not, I was in the barn mucking out the stalls and then with Chijioke. I couldn’t have done it.”
“It wasn’t any of us,” he cut in flatly. “Unless you have some secrets I don’t know about, Poppy. This doesn’t exactly look like your work.”
She tiptoed closer and leaned over the body. I shuddered, my stomach growing weak at the sight of Amelia. I had not liked her, certainly, but the look of a dead body was still nausea inducing. That, and it was hard to believe that a girl so young could deserve this end. She looked like a husk of a body, shriveled and frail.
Gradually, it dawned on me that this meant we were all in danger. If nobody on the staff had done this to Amelia, then who had? What would stop them from coming for us?
“We should tell Mrs. Haylam and search the house,” I said, turning away from the gruesome sight. “There must be an intruder or—”
“Or it’s one of those bloody Adjudicators,” Chijioke bit out. “Odds are this is their idea of a joke.”
“Come now,” I scolded, pointing to the bed. “You really think Finch could do something like this? He risked his life to help Mary and me last night. I know you don’t like him, but—”
“Sparrow is very mean,” Poppy said. “She could do it.”
“Exactly.” Chijioke began to pace, then went to Amelia’s writing desk and began rummaging through it. We had closed and locked the door behind us on the way in. “You don’t know them, Louisa. You don’t know what they’re capable of.”
“Ha. Fine. If you know them so well, could they do that?” I asked, still pointing at Amelia. “Are they known to fly about sucking the life out of people?”
Chijioke paused with one of Amelia’s letters in his hand. He tilted his head to the side, eyeing me over his shoulder. “I . . . Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Perfect!” I threw up my hands and stormed past him. It was time to alert the rest of the house.
“I’ve never seen a Judgment, but they can and do kill, Louisa, that much I know.” He slapped down the letter and followed. “Poppy? Stay here. Don’t let anyone through.”
“All right,” she said lightly, sitting down next to Amelia’s corpse and swinging her legs.
We locked the door behind us and left. Fortunately, the corridor outside her chambers was empty. The men had gone down to the spring for a soak, allowing us a narrow window to decide on a plan. Two Residents drifted down the stairs toward us, then turned and hovered outside Amelia’s door as if on guard.
“I need to ask you a question and I don’t want you to judge me for it,” I said softly, giving the Residents a wary glance. “Is it . . . possible that Lee could have done this?”
I felt guilty even considering it, and while I still worried about Lee, part of that worry extended to what this house and its dark secrets had done to him. What the book had made him become. Maybe finding a way to release him from the book’s power was as much about protecting all of us as it was about protecting Lee from himself.
Chijioke chewed the inside of his cheek and went swiftly down the stairs with me. I was at least happy to find that he wasn’t offended by my suggestion. Before Lee’s death and resurrection, he had been a gentle young man, but it was clear that coming back had changed him. I didn’t relish the idea that he was randomly killing guests, of course, but it seemed foolish not to at least entertain the idea.
“That’s a question for Mrs. Haylam,” he replied as we reached the foyer. “You best prepare yourself for her fury. This will not be a pleasant afternoon.”
“It’s just so strange,” I said with a sigh. “Finch and Sparrow were told to keep out of our business. Would they really do something so . . . so inciting?”
“I’d ask Mrs. Haylam that, too, lass.”
We did not find the housekeeper in the kitchens, but as we left and turned toward the dining room we heard her come in behind us. She must have read the urgency on our faces, for at once she stopped wiping her hands on her apron and squinted, then marched right up to us.
“Something strange has happened.”
“Amelia is dead.”
Chijioke and I blurted it out simultaneously, then both fell immediately silent. I had no idea what to expect from the old woman, but for an eternal moment she glared hard at Chijioke. She inhaled deeply through her nose and then pressed her hands together.
“Where is she?” Mrs. Haylam finally asked. I was not foolish enough to mistake her calm tone of voice for anything but the deepest disappointment. Her entire body was rigid, like a hound that’s scented a rabbit.
“In her chambers,” Chijioke said. I let him explain the rest, too. “Poppy found her, but it’s none of us that did it. I don’t know what could have done it. She’s all dried up and wrinkly, and her eyeballs, well, they popped.”
Her good eye glittered at that.
“And the men?”
“Still taking the waters,” he said.
She nodded for what felt like an entire minute, and then she took Chijioke by the forearm, pulling him closer. “You will go to town and raise Giles St. Giles. Louisa, you will help me forge a letter. Miss Amelia has cold feet and fled the house, we do not know where she has gone. That will keep the men busy looking while we clean up this mess.”
“But why? You’re going to kill them anyway.” I couldn’t help myself, and the words just came tumbling out stupidly. Mrs. Haylam reeled back as if I had slapped her. “Why not just have done now and get it over with?”
“That is not how we do things in this house,” she hissed, baring her teeth. “Now do as I say, you idiot girl.”
Chijioke shot me a warning look and then hurried away. I decided it would be best to heed that warning, and followed Mrs. Haylam as she swept through the foyer and up the stairs. The front door closed in our wake, and Chijioke was gone, off to rig up the cart and ride to Derridon. While we climbed the stairs, I fretted with my apron, feeling naked without the spoon around my neck.
“It pains me to ask this,” I said carefully. “But does Lee have powers now? Powers we haven’t seen him use before?”
Mrs. Haylam did not wave me off or chide me; she weighed the question, head swaying back and forth as we reached the first-level landing. “The gift of shadow can be unexpected,” she told me. “Unnaturally long life is assured; greater strength is a common boon, too. I have never heard of one imbued with shadow turning healthy beings to husks.”
“But it’s not impossible,” I pressed.
“He will be questioned, girl,” Mrs. Haylam said irritably. We climbed another staircase and another, then found ourselves outside Amelia’s locked door. The housekeeper fished her huge key ring out and found the proper one. “And I will be having a long talk with our Upworlder guests, too.”
The Residents hovering outside the door came closer as if drawn by her mere presence.
“Go,” she told them calmly. “Alert me when the men are returned.”
The shadow creatures billowed away, off to find windows and vantages. They paid me no attention as they went, but the hall felt warmer in their absence. I watched her fit the key in and give a shove with her shoulder. At once, the smell of death wafted out to meet us and I winced.
“Chijioke said it could be something called a Judgment,” I said, hesitating to go in and be met with more and worse odors.
It did not seem to bother Mrs. Haylam, who locked us in and marched right up to the bed.
“Long has it been since I beheld a Judged body,” she said, leaning over Amelia. She inspected her so closely that it made me feel ill. I couldn’t imagine putting my face that close to a corpse willingly. “The Adjudicator seeks a confession and the soul will give it no matter what. All guilt is revealed. I do not know if death arises from the extraction or from the Adjudicator’s will to annihilate.”
“That sounds awful,” I whispered. Again, I could not imagine Finch doing such a thing. Chijioke could warn me a hundred more times about him, and still I would only be able to judge Finch on his actions toward me. By those standards, he had been nothing but kind.
“Do not be fooled by pretty words and shiny halos,” Mrs. Haylam murmured, peeling one of Amelia’s eyes open. I turned away. “They are the shepherd’s violent hand of justice, seekers and executors of truth. Amelia Canny’s crimes would more than justify her doom in their estimation.”
“Her crimes . . .” I shook my head, going to Amelia’s desk and looking at the scattered letters and books there.
“Killed her rival,” Mrs. Haylam said coldly. “Her servant saw it happen, and confessed her suspicions to a priest. She was not believed, of course. What does a silly serving girl know, mm?”
“Lottie.” Amelia’s diary sat at an angle on the desk, but I had no urge to look inside. I did not want to know what lurked in the mind of a girl twisted enough to kill for marriage and money. “Amelia was awful to her; I would have a vendetta, too.”
“Poppy, go and tell Mr. Morningside what has happened. Please assure him that it is all under our control now, and that he will need to provide a bird to Giles St. Giles and Chijioke.” Mrs. Haylam stood up from her inspection and crossed to the desk, rifling through the letters for a clean piece of parchment and a quill.
“Did Chijioke go to Derridon?” Poppy asked, hopping down off the bed and skipping toward the door.
“He did; now be quick, child.”
When we were alone, Mrs. Haylam reached for Amelia’s diary, opening to a random page and setting it before me.
“You have steadier and younger hands,” she said, shoving quill and parchment at me. I was beginning to resent being forced to write for the owners of the house. “Do your best. Not too much or they may notice the penmanship is wrong.”
I sat down and puzzled over the note, listening to Mrs. Haylam wrap Amelia in a bedsheet. What would I say if I were her and I had doubts about the marriage? But Amelia didn’t have doubts, did she? She had wanted Mason and his fortune so badly that she had killed for it. Then I remembered the fight at dinner we had witnessed, and I bent over the parchment, dashing off an apology.
My dearest love— Your father’s rudeness has given me pause. Why does he hate me so? If I am to be a part of your family, then I demand respect. I must think, Mason, my love. I must be certain that this is what I want.
“That will do just fine.”
I jumped, startled by the old woman appearing at my shoulder. She found a vial of Amelia’s perfume and dabbed it on the letter, then returned to the bed. The dead girl had been covered, wrapped up, and rolled into her bedsheet and two blankets.
Mrs. Haylam waved me over, taking up the body by the shoulders while I hesitated near the foot of the bed.
“Help me carry this to the kitchens, Louisa, then be off and have a bath. You stink of manure.”