House of Salt and Sorrows - Erin A. Craig Page 0,26

became my departed sisters creeping in, ready for me to join them. When a bar of soap bumped my thigh, I nearly screamed.

“You’re being ridiculous,” I chided myself before scrubbing my hair. The soap smelled of hyacinths, and as I breathed it in, I felt my body relax, releasing its worries.

Fisher was coming.

I hadn’t seen him in years, not since Ava’s funeral. We weren’t allowed to leave the estate while mourning, and Silas kept him too busy for frequent visits. But he’d been a constant fixture of my childhood, eager to play elaborate rounds of hide-and-seek or go fishing in the little skiff Papa let us use if the weather was good.

He was twenty-one now. Try as I might, I couldn’t imagine him as a grown man. Fisher had been such a lanky beanpole, with a mop of sandy brown hair and twinkling eyes, always ready for mischief. I couldn’t wait to see him again.

“Are you still in there? Hurry up!”

“I just need to rinse my hair!” I shouted at Camille.

She groaned and stomped away.

Plunging under the water, my head cracked against the back of the tub. It knocked the wind out of me. I came up crying in pain, and as the stars cleared from my vision, I let out a shriek.

The water had turned dark purple, nearly black. Murky brine burned in my nostrils, sharp and bitter. I struggled to push myself out of the tub. The bottom was slick with a silky viscosity. I tried to stand, but my feet slipped from under me, and I fell with a spectacular thud, splashing black water over the floor. I rubbed at my hip, already feeling a bruise.

I tried to scream for Camille but was suddenly yanked under by an unseen force. The dark water raced into my mouth, filling it with a brackish bite as I sputtered out a cry for help. I pushed upward, gagging on the fishy tang.

It was a surprisingly familiar taste. One of Cook’s favorite dishes to make in the summer months was a black risotto, full of clams, shallots, and spot prawns. The rice was an exotic obsidian, dyed with squid ink.

Ink! The tub was impossibly full of ink.

Without warning, a tentacle shot from the water, snaking around my torso and constricting tightly. It was mottled red and purple, with lines of orange suckers latching on to me. Another arm attacked my leg, winding up it with a fierce possession. I flailed and kicked, but nothing could pry the beast from me.

The bulbous head of an octopus broke the surface, intelligent amber eyes surveying me through slit pupils. With my free foot, I lashed out at them, praying it would release me.

The creature reared back, and I could see its muscular underside. Dozens of suckers pointed directly to its wickedly sharp black mouth. It opened once, twice, as if pondering which part of me to attack first.

It launched at me, and just before I felt the beak sink into my thigh, I woke up. My heart pounded, echoing its racing rhythms up through my chest and into my throat as I gasped for air.

I’d fallen asleep.

It was a dream.

An awful, awful dream.

Lowering back into the cooling waters, I let out a sigh of relief but immediately jerked up as pounding sounded against the door.

“Annaleigh, I swear, if you make me late, I’m going to murder you!”

“Coming!”

I pushed myself out of the water, wondering how long I’d dozed. Looking at the white porcelain as I toweled off, I couldn’t remember why I’d been so scared in the first place. It was just a bathtub. Elizabeth dying there didn’t change that.

Standing in front of the mirror, I twisted my wet hair up and spotted something on my back. A set of red marks raked down my spine, almost as if I’d been scratched.

“Camille?” I unlocked the door.

“Finally!” She burst in, arms full of towels, soaps, and oils.

“Would you look at this?” I turned, showing her my naked back. “What does it look like to you? I can’t see it very well in the mirror.”

Her fingertips on my skin were cold, pushing at the tender spot. “You scratched yourself.”

“But I didn’t.”

“Hmm?”

“I didn’t scratch myself.”

She turned back to me, her face deadpan. “It must have been Elizabeth, then.”

“Camille!”

“Well, what do you want me to say? It’s a scratch. I get them all the time. It probably happened while you were scrubbing.” She pulled her shift over her head and paused. “You did scrub, didn’t