Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER NINE

Anne was sitting on the narrow bed, and Emily gave her a wide-eyed look as she stepped to the door and pulled it open. Keeper, his fur still bristly with dampness, lifted his head from the rug and regarded Branwell in the doorway with, Emily thought, a mournful expression.

In the glow of an oil lamp on the table beside the bed, Branwell’s face was pale, and it seemed to Emily that his eyes were even more sunken than they had been when she had talked with him on the front steps an hour ago.

“What time is it?” he croaked.

“You just passed the clock,” Emily told him, and Anne said, “About a quarter to eight.”

“Still Wednesday?”

Emily nodded. “The ninth of September.”

Branwell slumped against the doorframe. “You’ve told Anne everything, I suppose.”

“Of course. Change into dry clothes and join us.”

He sighed shakily and looked down the hall toward his own door. “I’ll try,” he said. “Er . . . pray that I can.” He nodded and walked away.

“Pray that he can change his clothes?” whispered Anne.

Emily shrugged and sat down in a chair by the bedside table. “Might as well.”

“And I’ll pray for you too. Consulting pagan goddesses!” Anne looked down at her hands.

“I learned it from our father.”

In two minutes Branwell was back, in a fresh white shirt and dark trousers and dry shoes, and he looked pitifully relieved to see his sisters still as he had left them.

“What have you done?” asked Emily gently.

“I believe I’ve damned my soul,” he said with, even now, something of his usual staginess, “not to Hell but to helpless oblivion.” He sat down on the bed beside Anne. “Don’t,” he said, looking up at Emily, “let them stick your hand with that two-bladed knife.”

“I won’t.”

He looked past her at the levels of pencil drawings on the wall. “You’ll think I’m mad, but—there’s an ageless little dark boy—”

“We’ve seen him,” said Anne.

“I saw him today,” said Emily, “on the moors west of Cononley. I believe he tried to kill me. By opening pots in the earth! Keeper killed one of the crows that he sometimes becomes.”

Branwell peered at both of them. Then he just muttered, “I’m surprised I didn’t feel it.” He seemed to brace himself, then went on quickly, “Emily, I took a drawing from your writing desk this morning and gave it to a . . . a bad man, who gave it to the crows so that they could track you.”

Emily nodded. “Why?”

“Can you forgive me?”

She considered him for several seconds. “Are you repentant? Do you have, as the Catholics say, a firm purpose of amendment?”

“I do, I swear. I’m so sorry! If I can get free—”

“Why did you do it?”

“Because I’m not like you—I ache at anonymity, insignificance! Oh, I’m sorry, but—you’re content with the fact that a hundred years after you die, nobody will remember Emily Brontë. Or Anne, or Charlotte . . . But I wanted to live on—I hoped even physically!—for a hundred years, more, and have influence, power, respect . . .” He clenched his fists and burst out, “I wanted to be Northangerland!”

Emily cocked her head. “From your stories? He was a villain.”

“He was—he is!—above virtue and vice. Sophisticated, cynical, worldly!”

And tall and handsome, Emily recalled, and arrogantly attractive to women. She saw tears in her brother’s eyes.

“I almost was him,” he whispered, “sometimes. But they cheated me. The thing that is that boy, and sometimes an adolescent and a grown man—”

“His name is Welsh,” said Anne. “He’s the ghost of a man—a creature—that our grandfather killed in Ireland in 1771.”

“Wha—are you sure? How could you know?”

“Papa told us,” Anne said. “You were . . . indisposed.”

Branwell scowled at them. “Perpetually indisposed?”

“Yes,” Emily said.

After a strained moment Branwell laughed, though not happily. “A ghost—that makes sense, God help me! He wants to possess me. Twice in the last hour!—I’ve found myself standing somewhere with no awareness of having gone there, as if someone else had inhabited me for a while.” He looked from Emily to Anne and back. “I was sober!”

“Where did you find yourself, after?” asked Anne.

“The first time, I was standing in the yard outside the kitchen—in my stocking feet!—holding Tabby’s carving knife. The second time, just a few minutes ago, I was suddenly in the church, and my throat felt as if I’d been shouting.”

“Shouting,” repeated Emily. “Were you alone?”

Branwell shivered and clasped his hands between his knees. “I don’t know. I heard a loud slam from out in the dark church, and I ran out through the sacristy.”

“A slam,” said Emily. “Like wood on wood, or—like stone on stone?”

“Like stone.” He shrugged. “I suppose it was that stone with the grooves on it. They don’t need me,” he added, touching his temple. “Not—me.”

Emily recalled what Curzon claimed the goddess had spelled out in bird bones this afternoon: The dead sister remains dead under stone, but the dead brother is up and taking the pledged host.

“Why did you want the crows to track me?” Emily asked once again.

I didn’t want it, Mr. Wright wanted it. And he only sent them after you because you were with that Curzon fellow.”

“Wright?” said Anne. “Adam Wright, the sheepherder?”

Branwell nodded.

“You were sitting on a grave,” said Emily, “in the rain, when I came home. You were surprised to see me unhurt and alive.”

Branwell muttered, “I was glad.”

“True, you were. Mr. Curzon is alive too—though only because of me, and Keeper.”

“Small loss if he weren’t. Murderer.”

Emily sat back. “We can be sure he killed some sort of werewolf king, six months ago. Whose word do you have that he has killed anyone else? Someone like Mr. Wright, or your Mrs. Flensing?”

After a pause, Branwell nodded again, miserably.

“Mr. Curzon has taken a house in the village,” Emily said, “and after a good deal of mutual acrimony he invited me to dine with him there tonight, at eight.”

“Emily!” exclaimed Anne. “Just the two of you?”

“I believe he’s Continental. I refused.” She looked pointedly at Branwell. “But I think I’ll go after all, and bring my brother with me.”

Branwell shook his head. “I couldn’t possibly.”

“If it weren’t for Keeper, I’d likely have died today. But yes, I forgive you.”

He sighed, looked around the narrow room, and sighed again; and at length gave her a twitching smile. “For that, I’ll go. If God is merciful, the man will kill me.”

“You’re family. Keeper wouldn’t let him. No, Anne, you stay. Curzon knows me, and Branwell is the lost sheep.”

“The sacrificial lamb,” Branwell said. He opened his mouth to speak, and Emily knew he was going to phrase some reason why he couldn’t go after all.

“I forgive you,” she repeated before he could speak. “Get a coat and hat.”


The house Curzon had rented was past the church and a hundred yards down the steep incline of Main Street, and Emily couldn’t remember the last time she had ventured this far down into the village. The sky was dark behind the rooftops, but the rain had stopped. Golden lights shone in the leaded windows of the street-fronting houses and gleamed on the wet paving stones.

Branwell hung back when Emily stopped at the house and rapped the door knocker, and Keeper stood behind him as if to prevent him running back to the parsonage or, more likely, the Black Bull.

There was the snap-and-slide of a bolt, and when the door swung open Alcuin Curzon seemed to fill the doorway, a tall, dark silhouette against the glow of a fire behind him. The air that billowed out around him was stingingly warm after the cold walk, and smelled of boiled mutton.

Curzon stepped back, and Emily saw that his eyepatch was casually flipped up on his forehead, and he wore an unbuttoned black silk waistcoat over a shirt with rolled-up sleeves. If he was surprised to see her, the narrowed eyes in his dark, seamed face gave no indication of it.

“Miss Emily,” he said; then, looking past her, “and . . . the brother. And Keeper.”

“Keeper has already had his dinner,” Emily said, stepping past him into a small whitewashed parlor. She took off her coat and hat and hung them on a peg by the door.

A table and three blue-painted chairs sat in the middle of the room on a worn rug, and several short logs lay on the sanded wood floor beside the fireplace hearth. A desk stood against the far wall beside a door that presumably led to a bedroom and perhaps a kitchen.

Emily and Branwell had clearly interrupted Curzon’s dinner—on the table was a plate with slices of mutton and a pile of peas on it, flanked by a pewter knife and fork and a bottle and a glass.

“You refused my invitation,” Curzon said curtly, “so I told the landlady that I’d be dining alone.” To Branwell he added, “Come in, then.”

Branwell and Keeper walked in, and Curzon closed and re-bolted the door. Branwell blinked around warily, and Keeper stood at the door.

Curzon sat down by the plate and picked up the knife and fork, then hesitated. “Oh hell,” he said, and pushed the plate to the other side of the table. “Sit, eat,” he told Emily. “You had an exhausting day.”

Emily pulled out one of the remaining chairs and waved Branwell to the other, then sat down and pushed the plate back to the middle of the table. “No, you’re right, I refused your invitation.”

“I’m not going to eat while you don’t.”

Branwell had hung up his coat and hat and was eyeing the bottle. Emily said, “Keeper doesn’t like peas, but he’ll be glad to take the mutton.” She laid her hands flat on the table. “We never finished our exchange of facts.”

Curzon looked speculatively at Branwell. “Sixpenny facts.”

“We need gold sovereign facts,” Emily told him. “I’ll start—a local sheepherder named Adam Wright sent that demonic flock of crows after us today. He gave them a drawing of mine as a—you might say as a scent.”

Curzon gave her a grudging nod. “How did he have a drawing of yours?”

Branwell shifted in his chair, but Emily said, “Your turn. What is the significance of the two-bladed knives?”

“How many have you seen?”

Emily stared at him.

Curzon sighed. “You saved my life today, Miss Emily, you and your dog, and I respect the efforts of both of you. I’d be pleased if you’d eat.” When she didn’t move or speak, he said, “Why is your brother here?”

Emily turned to Branwell.

He raised his sparsely bearded chin. “I appear to have been chosen, sir,” he said, “as the leader of a group, from London, intent on raising an ancient supernatural power in Yorkshire.”

“Oh, Branwell,” said Emily, “you’re being possessed by a ghost.”

“An old potent spirit—”

“Which pushes you aside when it acts.”

Branwell reddened, and shoved back his chair and stood up. “So who is this man? You’re convinced that he killed a werewolf, though nobody seems to have witnessed it.” He glanced toward Keeper, then turned a bold glare on Curzon, who was frowning at him. “There’s just as much evidence, sir, to suggest that you killed your fiancée.”

Oddly, Curzon’s instant response was to flip the eyepatch down over his left eye; but then his chair flew backward and clattered against the wall and he was on his feet, reaching across the table for Branwell.

“Peasant dog dung, you dare—!”

Emily had leaped from her chair to her coat in the same instant, and now leveled the barrel of her father’s pistol at Curzon’s face.

“It’s loaded this time!” she said loudly. Keeper was standing on Emily’s chair, his big paws on the table in front of Curzon and his bared teeth inches from Curzon’s face. “You won’t recover from this.”

But Curzon had stepped back and his one visible eye was staring at Branwell. Emily glanced quickly to the side, and then backed away, the gun now wobbling.

Branwell was hunched over, with his fists to his face, and his gingery hair was shifting, and darkening, as though invisible sooty hands were ruffling it. He spread his arms and raised his face, and Emily gasped—his fingers were shorter, and blunt, and his beard wasn’t scanty anymore.

Keeper barked furiously at him, but didn’t lunge. Curzon had retreated to the wall and was now holding his two-bladed knife.

“Emily,” Curzon shouted, “get behind me!”

But Emily stepped forward and leaned over the table. “Branwell!” she said loudly.

Branwell lowered his fists and glared at her with no recognition.

“Branwell!” she cried again.

Her brother suddenly stood up straight, with his eyes clenched shut. As Emily watched, the fingers of his outstretched hands visibly narrowed and lengthened. Blood dripped from the nails. He swiped one hand across his face, leaving a smear of blood even as it brushed some of the coarse new hairs from his cheeks.

Keeper whined at him.

Branwell collapsed into his chair so suddenly that Emily expected to see it break under him. He rubbed furiously at his face until it was streaked with blood and his beard was restored to its ordinary meager state. His hands fell limp, bloody and bristly with black hairs.

Curzon slid the knife away inside his waistcoat and leaned over the table. “Branwell,” he said. “Branwell, look at me.” When Branwell look up dazedly, Curzon said, “There’s a basin with water, and towels, in the next room. Get cleaned up, and then go home.” He frowned, then added, “Get the blood and hair off you before you use the towels.”

Branwell was panting through his slack mouth and his eyes stared blankly, but he got to his feet. He shambled to the inner door, pulled it open with some effort, and disappeared in shadow.

Emily realized that she had been holding her breath, and now exhaled. She laid the pistol on the table and hurried through the doorway, and found Branwell in a dim bedroom, hunched over a basin and splashing his face.

“When you’ve finished there, I’ll take you home.”

“I’ll go home by myself,” he wheezed. “I—God!—I told you I didn’t want to come here.” He lowered his face and rubbed handfuls of water into his hair.

Emily stepped back into the parlor. “What just happened to him?”

“You know what,” Curzon snapped. “He wasn’t so far into the change that he couldn’t hear you, and climb back out. He clearly loves you.” He raised his eyebrows. “Not silver, you said.”

Emily shook her head. “What?”

He touched the pistol on the table. “The ball in your gun.”

“Oh. No. Lead and rust.” Emily felt ready to vomit. It can’t have been what this man is implying, she thought. And whatever it was, my brother can surely be cured of it. “I have to get him home.”

“Come back once he’s tucked into bed.” Curzon raised a hand. “He wasn’t prepared—he’ll be exhausted, sleep for twelve hours, and be grossly hungry in the morning.”

“No—I don’t want to bring Anne back here.”

“What? Oh for God’s sake, girl, your brother’s soul may not be lost beyond retrieval! Nor yours. Are you such a slave to propriety?”

Emily crossed to the door and lifted down her hat and coat. She walked back to the table and said, “No. I’ll come back after.”

Her hands were shaking, but she got into her coat and tucked the pistol back into the coat pocket.

When she looked up, Branwell stood swaying in the bedroom doorway. “I can get home unassisted. Stay here with your friend.”

Emily carried Branwell’s coat to him and fitted his limp arms into the sleeves. She forced a light tone: “I’ve had to half-carry you home when you’ve been not as bad as this.” She set his hat on his head and unbolted the door.

On the cold walk back up Main Street to the church corner, Branwell said only, “I’m dying, you know. My hair’s falling out, did you see? And my fingernails bleed. Since the day I learned that I must never see Mrs. Robinson again, I’ve prayed for merciful death.”

Keeper snorted as he walked beside them, and Emily nodded at him.

It was true that Branwell frequently implored God to take him, but it was always when he knew his sisters or his father were nearby, so that they might pity him and excuse his indolence and dissipation. But Emily had never believed his story of being banished from his employer’s house and the whole village of Thorpe Green because of having fallen in love with his employer’s wife; and Emily had often wondered what offense had actually led the husband to threaten Branwell with “exposure” if he ever came near their village again.

A Dr. Crosby, evidently the Robinson family physician, even sent Branwell odd sums of money every month or so, contingent on him staying away.

Might Branwell have had a fit at their house, something like the one he had suffered tonight? Could Mr. Robinson have thought Branwell had been . . . changing into a werewolf?

Emily shivered from more than the cold, and again felt as if she might vomit.

Could that actually have been the case? To whom would Mr. Robinson have exposed Branwell? The townspeople, the magistrates, some awful Catholic inquisition?

All she said was, “You nearly got Mr. Curzon to give it to you tonight.”

“If I were Northangerland, I’d have—”

“Stop it.”

She had to take most of his weight as they made their way past the church and the churchyard wall to the parsonage steps, and it reminded her of the morning six months ago when she had half-carried the wounded Alcuin Curzon away from Ponden Kirk. My unnatural burdens, she thought.

When they had got inside, she waved Anne and Tabby back into the kitchen, and then, not for the first time, laboriously hiked her brother up the stairs to his dark room, where she got him out of his coat and let him fall onto the bed. She pulled off his boots and then stood with her back to the window. She could just make out his form by the diffuse moonlight—he was motionless, but snoring normally.

Downstairs again, she and Keeper simply left the house, and it took them no more than five minutes to hurry back to the corner and down Main Street to Curzon’s door.

He pulled it open before she could knock.

“Sit down,” he told her as she and Keeper stepped inside. “Why lead and rust?”

Emily resumed her chair without taking off her coat as he closed and bolted the door, and she explained her father’s reasoning about rust from the bell that had rung at Welsh’s funeral in 1771.

Curzon sat down across from her and picked up the fork. “That’s clever,” he admitted. He speared a slice of mutton and with raised eyebrows rocked his head toward Keeper. Emily nodded to both of them, and Keeper solemnly took the mutton when Curzon held it out.

“And you love your brother too,” Curzon said, sitting back. The eyepatch still covered his left eye. “You’d have shot me, wouldn’t you?”

Emily touched the pocket of her coat. “I still might.”

His smile was bleak, deepening the grooves in his cheeks. “When was your brother—obviously—bitten by a thing like a big dog?”

Emily pursed her lips, but answered, “He’d have been eight years old. Possibly nine. He’s a year short of thirty now.”

“That long ago! But what happened recently, then, to trigger it in him after all these years?”

“He—” Emily began, and then stopped. “If you try to kill him, Keeper or I will kill you.”

“I understand.” He waved for her to continue.

Keeper had laid down beside her, and she reached down to stroke his head. “My goal in this is to save him.”

“Of course.”

Emily sighed and spoke quickly: “At some time Mrs. Flensing did what she called a baptism, on him: pricked his palm with one of those double-bladed knives. And then—he was very close by when Keeper wrecked the werewolf skull that Mrs. Flensing brought here. He seemed to have some sort of fit when that happened.”

“I daresay.” Curzon shifted in his chair. “I believe I’ve told you who this ghost is, that’s possessing him.”

Emily nodded. “Welsh.” She sighed and looked at the low ceiling. “Poor Branwell hoped to become a character from his stories—a Byronic aristocrat he called Northangerland.”

“Northangerland,” echoed Curzon, shaking his head. “A properly adolescent cognomen.” Speaking more quietly, he asked, “Do you recall what the goddess spelled out for me, this afternoon?”

“If an old straw doll knows anything,” Emily said. Then, reluctantly, “According to you, she said the dead sister is still dead, but the dead brother is taking a host.”

Curzon just stared at her with his one exposed eye.

The host,” she amended; then, “The pledged host.” It was high time to change the subject. “The knife you carry,” she went on quickly, “it’s like Mrs. Flensing’s. Why do they have two blades?”

“She didn’t do that baptism on you?”

Emily shook her head.

“Good. I don’t know what would follow, in your case.”

He picked up the neglected glass of amber liquor and squinted at her over the rim. “There are some among us,” he began carefully, then tipped up the glass and took a long sip, “who heal from wounds very quickly. The nerves, tissues, respond to injury instantly, and the damage to the body is entirely repaired within an hour or so. But the two blades inflict two wounds, narrow and very close to each other, and so the specifically directed responses interfere with each other—like the overlapping wakes of two boats, they lose their shape, their coherence. Healing is impeded.”

Emily let her right hand slide into the pocket of her coat, and she felt Keeper shift against her leg.

“And,” Curzon went on, “some measure of the victim’s scattered healing energy is held by the knife—like electricity collected in a Leyden jar.”

Emily recalled what Mrs. Flensing had said in the back room of the Black Bull: A prick in the palm with these points—not even enough to draw blood.

“The baptismal poke,” Emily said, “doesn’t involve any sort of wound.”

“It would nevertheless have an effect on someone who’s been bitten or begotten by a—by one of these—”

“By a werewolf.”

Curzon raised a hand and let it drop. “As you say. The seeds are in the blood, ready to respond. And it would be a dioscuri that had wounded a . . . a werewolf, before, so that the blades are charged with that old misplaced energy. There would be resonance, alignment, discharge. I gather it feels like an electric shock.”

“Dioscuri,” said Emily. “That was Castor and Pollux, twins but half brothers. A bit grand, but why not.”

“You’ve got your hand on that gun, haven’t you? If you choose to use it, you have my forgiveness in advance.”

Emily had in fact drawn it from her pocket and was pointing it at him under the table; Keeper stood up and moved to the other side of her. There was one question, or rather one statement, uppermost in her mind, but she put off voicing it.

“You once told me that your eyepatch is just a formality,” she said. “But I understand you Huberti used to actually cut out one of your eyes.”

He exhaled and shook his head. “We were almost a religious order in those days—penance, ‘if thine eye offendeth thee, pluck it out,’ as it says in Matthew’s gospel.” He flipped a finger at the eyepatch that covered his left eye. “Now it’s just a salutary reminder of the principle.”

“You’re very observant of the custom, generally. As now. But sometimes you raise it.”

He gave her a warning frown and said distinctly, “To see better.”

“‘Rather than having two eyes,’” said Emily, completing the quote from Matthew, “ ‘to be cast into hellfire.’ ” Her hand was firm on the pistol under the table. “It’s not just a custom, and it has something to do with our troubles. And you owe me a fact—for my brother’s sake.”

He spread both hands and paused, as if about to regretfully push something away. “For your sake, say.” He sighed and went on, “What it is, child—it involves parallax. Werewolves have two eyes, and it—”

“So does everybody. Dogs, snakes, fish.”

“—it’s a necessity,” he pressed on, “in order for them to undergo the change. According to Paracelsus, in order for a mortal to—presumptuously!—step outside of nature without having been summoned by a god, he must first be standing squarely in nature, fully perceiving its dimensions. He needs traction if he’s going to jump out of it. A one-eyed man sees only two dimensions, like looking at a flat picture, and so isn’t able to enact the change.” He sat back and rubbed his eyes. “It’s true it often happens by the full moon, but that’s just because one can see clearly then, at night. Rage is what causes it.”

“The change.” Emily took a deep breath. “You’re a werewolf yourself.”

Curzon dropped his hands. His haggard face twisted, and he spoke hoarsely. “And one of my eyes is covered. You’re safe from me. But I’m . . .” He thumped one fist gently on the table. “I shouldn’t be what I am! We—yes, forcibly!—renounced lycanthropy centuries ago, and the tendency was effectively bred out of us, so that the eyepatches, as you say, became a formality.”

The fire wasn’t so warm that Emily was uncomfortable in her coat, but beads of sweat stood on Curzon’s forehead.

“I discover, though,” he said, “that I’m a throwback.”

Emily cleared her throat, then asked, “Discover?”

“Goodbye, Miss Emily Brontë! I’ve sadly come round to owing you all truth. I . . . did kill my fiancée, near enough.” Curzon’s big hands were knobby fists on the table, and pushing each word past his teeth was a visible, painful effort. “Her brother wouldn’t stand for her marrying a Catholic, and one night six months ago—the night before you found me on the moor—I was at a dinner at their family estate near Allerton, and I had dispensed with my eyepatch. Her brother was drunk, and he smashed an oil lamp over my head. The oil all ignited—I was on fire . . . and bleeding, possibly concussed, possibly . . . but my vision was unimpaired.”

For several seconds he didn’t speak.

“I came to my senses,” he went on finally, “perhaps five minutes later, standing outside their house, below the turret balcony.” He leaned back and stared at Emily, and the naked anguish in his eyes made her look away.

“Madeline was dead on the paving stones at my feet—showing only the injuries from her fall, not—”

Not from teeth or claws, thought Emily. She nodded.

“But obviously I had chased her—she was running from a monster, and leaped to her death—I fled into the night, back to the room I had rented in Allerton a mile away, and at dawn I was above Ponden Kirk, ready to plunge a dioscuri into my heart. And I met . . . another of my kind, didn’t I? I had the dioscuri . . .”

He picked up the bottle and filled his glass. “Madeline’s brother was found . . . torn to pieces. At the inquest, the servants reported seeing a thing like a wolf bounding down the stairs after the crashing and screaming, and I—I claimed to have been insensibly drunk throughout.” He tipped up the glass, and when he put it down it was half empty. “The inquest dragged on, but the servants were sober, respected, and insistent, and the brother’s wounds were clearly not caused by knife or axe.” He shrugged. “Wolves in West Yorkshire.”

This was abominable—incalculably worse than what he had told Emily this afternoon: Miss Madeline Atha, my onetime fiancée . . . she fell to her death from the turret of her family home—but now she was able to say what she hadn’t said then.

“I’m sorry.”

Curzon stood up. “You trouble me, Miss Emily.” He paused, then said, “Your brother’s condition can be controlled. Prevent parallax—make an eyepatch for him, and when he won’t wear it, take his spectacles from him. Try to have him habitually keep one eye closed. Walk him through running water every day.”

He crossed to the desk, and she heard a tiny clink and then the scratch of a pen nib on paper. When he straightened and turned around he was waving a small card to dry the ink on it.

“I see no real hope for you or your family, but a letter sent to me at this address will reach me,” he said, holding it out.

Emily stood up, now visibly holding the pistol. Keeper padded out from under the table and stood beside her. “You just confessed to a murder,” she said. “Two.” But the inquest had already been closed—and who would believe an explanation involving lycanthropy?

Curzon didn’t move or speak.

With her free hand Emily reached out and took the card.

“Will you kill my brother?” she asked.

“For your sake I will try not to be the one that does it.”

“You can’t prevent it?”

His silence was a clear answer.

She stepped back, half raising the pistol. “Will you try to kill me?” she asked.

His lips curled down in a bitter smile. “No. I will not.”

Emily glanced down at Keeper. The big mastiff was watching Curzon, but only warily, not as if he sensed a threat.

“And so we part, Mr. Curzon,” she said. “May God grant we never see each other again.”

“Amen,” he said.

Emily turned and pulled the door open, and Keeper followed her outside. She closed the door slowly, and didn’t let go of the cold latch until several seconds after she had heard it click.


Back | Next
Framed