at whomever or whatever might be waiting on the other side. I followed quickly behind him, passing over the threshold with no weapon other than my wit. What I wouldn’t give for the Snider–Enfield Thornley carried!
The chamber was dark, devoid of life.
But it was the rank odor that hit us first.
It was a scent I had grown unnaturally familiar with—damp earth and death, mildew and rot.
Vambéry quickly covered his nose and mouth while pivoting about, ensuring we were alone. “It reeks of a tomb in here. This must be where she rests.”
Aside from a chair against the far wall next to a narrow window, the space was vacant.
“The tomb is not here,” I said, “it’s over there,” pointing to a thick oak door at the back of the room. My arm had begun to itch incessantly, and I felt the tug of Ellen all around me. I glanced at the ceiling, expecting her to be tucked up in the wooden rafters, but she was not there; the only life was the hundreds of tiny spiders clinging to the ghostly maze of webs adorning the ceiling.
Vambéry went to the door. “Are you sure? Is she in there now?”
I couldn’t tell, and I told him so. I felt her touch, her breath, the slow beat of her heart all around me, surrounding me. If I closed my eyes, it was as if she held me in her arms and pulled me to her chest in an embrace. A blackness swooned around me, and the room seemed to fade away until there was nothing but me and her.
“Bram!”
Hearing my name was like sustaining a swift kick to the chest, and my eyes snapped open. Vambéry was standing at the heavy oak door, glaring at me.
“Stay with me, Bram,” he implored. “Do not let her take control.”
Vambéry turned back to the door. The thick oak was sealed securely in place by a heavy iron lock built directly into the center, with bolts branching out to both the left and the right into the frame, not unlike the one I remembered from the tower in Artane. He knelt down and peered into the large keyhole for a second, then dropped his leather satchel at his side and began rummaging through one of its pockets. From it he retrieved two thin blades and soon began tinkering with the lock.
A pain shot through me, and I fell to the floor, my knees cracking against the cold stone. Ellen’s presence squeezed me, and all at once I felt the heavy weight of fear. Fear for myself, fear for Vambéry, and fear for—
“Matilda and Thornley.” I had blurted out their names without realizing it, and Vambéry glanced up at me, then went back to work.
“What about them?” he mumbled, twisting one of the blades in the lock. The mechanism began to give.
I struggled to breathe, sucking in air.
It was then that Patrick O’Cuiv appeared in the doorway. He was larger than I remembered, an imposing presence that blocked any possible chance of exiting the room. His skin was as white as a blank sheet of paper, his eyes were glowing an unnatural shade of red.
I dove for the sword at Vambéry’s side, but before I could get my hand around the grip, Maggie O’Cuiv was in the room, her movements so fluid she appeared to float rather than run. She was but a blur as she crossed the space and kicked the blade away from me while lifting my body like a rag doll from the floor with her small child hands and pinning me against the stone wall, her feet somehow leaving the floor. I felt her icy breath at my neck.
I saw Ellen then. I saw Ellen Crone as she came in from the hallway, moving with the same ease Maggie had, moving so fast she didn’t seem to move at all. One moment she wasn’t there; then she was, her red eyes glaring at Vambéry.
“Away from that door!” she shrieked.
* * *
? ? ?
17 AUGUST 1868, 6:54 p.m.—Vambéry jumped aside; then Ellen was upon me, only inches from me, her