House of Salt and Sorrows (Sisters of Salt #1)

“Cassius.” I turned back to my sisters. “He’ll explain everything, Camille. I didn’t do anything to Verity, I promise you—”

“Who are you talking about, Annaleigh?” Camille’s voice was calm and measured, as if she were talking to a madwoman. The real glint of fear in her eyes gave me pause. She was looking at me as if I was a madwoman.

“Cassius…Cassius Corum. Captain Corum’s son.”

“Captain Corum is dead.”

“I know that. His son took his place at Churning. Why don’t you remember any of this?” Despite my best efforts, my voice rose in pitch as I spoke, verging dangerously on hysterics.

“It’s like Elizabeth all over again,” Papa murmured. His face was ashen. I’d never seen him look so old. He offered Sterland a look of spent resignation. “I’m so sorry, old friend. Would you allow us a moment with just Annaleigh?”

Sterland edged away from the chair, patting Papa on the back with remorseful condolence. “Of course, of course. Family affair and all that.” His eyes lingered on me, deep with sorrow. “If there’s any way I can be of assistance…”

Papa thanked him and waved him away.

“You’re just going to let him go?” I asked, watching him leave the room a free man. “Papa, he—”

“Sterland isn’t the issue here.” The look on his face said everything his words did not.

“I am?” I asked, aghast. “Me?”

“No one else is seeing people who don’t exist.”

My dagger clattered to the floor as the room swam in and out of focus. This was a mistake. It had to be. Cassius was real. I’d been with him. All night. He was the one who told me everything about Viscardi and the bargain. Kosamaras and her games.

Her games…

She’s the Harbinger of Madness, creating so many false visions and skewed realities that the poor soul takes his life just to end the torment.

With his words ringing in my ears, I sank to my knees, shivering uncontrollably. Had Kosamaras made me imagine Cassius? Was she powerful enough to create an entire person from thin air? We’d had so many conversations, shared so many kisses. I remembered the look in his eyes when he said he liked me best. I could still feel his hands on my body. That couldn’t be manufactured, could it? He was real. He had to be.

I remembered talking about him with my sisters. They’d seen him—I wasn’t the only one! But as quickly as my triumphant thought came, it was snatched away, like trying to hold on to the changing tides with your bare hands.

Rosalie and Ligeia had spoken with him. They were dead and couldn’t vouch for him or me.

“Honor! Mercy! You were with him at the tavern in Astrea. He bought you cider.” They stared blankly at me. “The day that Edgar…the day we got new slippers to replace the fairy shoes…”

Even as I said this, I spotted a twinkle of jade. Incomprehension flooded through me as I pushed aside my skirts, staring at my fairy shoes, whole and intact. They looked as new as the day we’d unwrapped them. I quickly covered them back up, wishing I’d never noticed them.

“Camille, you’ve seen him, I know you have. He sat right next to you at Churning! He was at the ball in Pelage….” I shook my head, trying to dislodge that thought. The balls weren’t real, and Cassius hadn’t been there.

The truth crashed through me, falling from above like an anchor settling on the seafloor.

Cassius hadn’t been at the ball in Pelage, even though I was so certain of his presence.

Kosamaras had made me see him there.

She’d made me see him everywhere.

Slowly, watching Papa for approval, Camille crossed the room and knelt beside me. She rubbed soothing circles across my back, the way you would comfort a frightened horse, crazed from a storm. “You mean the triplets’ ball? Annaleigh, no one named Cassius was there.”

“Not that ball. Stop saying my name like that.”

“Like what?”

I shoved her arm away from me. “Like I’ve gone mad. Like you’re trying to calm a mad person.”

“No one thinks you’re mad, Annaleigh,” Papa said. “We’re just worried about you.”

“And Verity,” Honor chimed in.

I whipped around to her, a snarl rising in my throat. “I told you, she wasn’t with me!”

Camille bit her lower lip, eyes shiny with growing tears. “But maybe she was with…this…Cassius?”

A sharp blade of fear stabbed into my stomach. “How could you think I’d do something to Verity? It’s absurd! You know I could never hurt her!”

“I’m sure there’s an explanation for all of this,” Papa said, snatching the dagger from the floor. Now in his hands, it was clearly nothing more than a butter knife, no doubt plucked from breakfast earlier that morning. The memory shimmered in my mind, bright and clear. I saw myself pick it up from the buffet and hide it in my skirt.

“No,” I murmured, staring at the tiny bit of brass. “No, no, no, no.” I curled into a ball, gripping my arms over my head, trying to make the pieces fit together. “What’s happening to me?”

The dark cackle rose up again in the corner of the room. Camille stared at me, worry etched on her face. It was obvious she heard nothing. Just as suddenly as before, it sounded now from the right. I knew without looking Kosamaras would not be there. The laughter continued, creeping closer and closer to me until I realized it had been inside my mind all along, fusing itself into my brain until I broke.

I smacked my temple to dislodge this most unwelcome intruder, but the cackling only grew. I hit myself again. And again, using more force. Part of me was aware of Papa and Camille rushing in to wrestle my hands away, deterring the strikes, but I couldn’t stop. When they pinned my arms back, I flailed forward, trying to smash my head on the floor. If I could just break it open, even a little, the voice could escape and leave me in peace.

The sound of porcelain shattering momentarily broke through my fit, causing me to pause. A vase from one of the bookshelves had exploded into hundreds of sharp pieces across the floor.

I was so relieved to see everyone’s heads snap toward the noise, I sobbed.

A marble bust of Pontus slid along the edge of a higher shelf, pushed by unseen hands. It balanced precariously for a moment, as if waiting to make sure everyone was watching it, before plunging to the ground.

Honor and Mercy shrieked, racing away from the broken bits. Neither had on shoes—they’d staunchly refused to go about the house in the sailor boots Papa had issued—and they wailed as the wicked shards sank into their feet.

Echoing them, a prolonged scream sounded from upstairs. The hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention as the pitch grew higher, trailing off to a ragged end.

“What now?” Papa groaned.

Lenore straightened, sitting at the edge of the chaise. For the first time since the morning Rosalie and Ligeia went missing, her eyes looked sharp and present. She pointed to the ceiling.

Another cry tore the air apart.

“Morella,” Mercy said, following Lenore’s finger.

It punched through my stomach, clearing my thoughts—and that awful laughter—from my head. “The twins.”

“Stay here. All of you,” Papa ordered. Morella’s howls swelled louder, ripping through the house like a tsunami, bathing everything in their pain and misery.

“With her?”

I turned back to what remained of the Graces. They were scared of me. Tears stung my eyes as I watched them cower from my gaze. “Mercy?”

“Papa, please don’t leave us,” she whimpered, holding her arms out, clearly wanting to be carried out of the room.

With a growl of impatience, he doubled back and knelt beside Mercy and Honor, folding them both into his arms.

I grasped my fingers, twisting them together in painful knots, ashamed to meet my sisters’ faces. I’d frightened them. They truly believed I’d done something to Verity.

My breath hitched.

The night of the moths, Eulalie’s ghost had accused me of murdering her. I’d passed it off as a bad dream, a case of sleepwalking gone horribly wrong.

What if it wasn’t?

What if Kosamaras had used me to push Eulalie from the cliffs? And Edgar from the shop—I’d obviously not been with Cassius when it occurred.

But no. I would never have hurt my sisters, no matter what. This was just the beguiling.

Wasn’t it?

If Kosamaras could bring a dead man back to life, create dozens of balls from thin air, and make me believe in a person who wasn’t real, I shuddered to think what else she had in store for me.

What had I done to my little sister?

Papa broke their hug. “Morella needs me, and I need you to be brave right now.” He kissed their foreheads, one after the other. “My brave little sailors. Camille…I’ll likely need your assistance.”

She blanched. “But I don’t know anything about childbirth. Annaleigh takes care of her. She’s the one who’s been talking with the midwife. She helped with Mama’s deliveries.”

He looked me up and down, then sighed. “I’m not taking her up there in this state.”

I hated the way he spoke over me, as if I wasn’t fit to be included in the conversation. Studying the butter knife in his hand, I supposed he might be right.

I opened my mouth, forcing my voice to remain even. “The midwife left a book the last time she was here. There are pictures in it. You and Camille should be able to follow them. They’re very detailed.”

A wave of relief washed over Papa’s face. “Thank you, Annaleigh. Can you get it for us?”

Feeling like a marionette being jerked and tugged by strings against my will, I crossed to the bookcase the statue had fallen from. I pulled the thick volume off the shelf and ran my hand over its worn cover.

On my way back to Papa, I skirted around the mess of porcelain and marble, then froze. Written in the dust, by an unseen fingertip, was a message.

I EXIST.

Mercy and Honor were the only two who’d been near the mess, but they’d run away as soon as the bust fell. They wouldn’t have had time to write this. A faint flicker of hope warmed my heart. Had Cassius somehow written it? My head swam as I realized Kosamaras could have just as easily written it, wanting to drive me mad with uncertainty.

“Annaleigh?” Papa prompted.

I glanced back down at the floor before giving him the book, certain the words would be gone, that they were only in my mind, just as everything else had been. But they remained in place.

“Papa, there’s something you should see—”

A fresh scream cut through the air.

“Not now,” he said, rushing from the room with Camille.

A hot flash of lightning shot across the sky, followed seconds later by a rumble of thunder. It echoed in my chest, knocking my breath away. Even it could not drown out the sounds coming from the fourth floor.

“Someone ought to send for the midwife.” Honor crossed to the window, watching another bolt of lightning. “Do you think they’d make it in such a storm?”

“I’ll go,” I volunteered. It was a fool’s errand, but I was desperate to show my sisters I wasn’t the monster they now believed me to be. “I can take the skip, or the dinghy if the winds are too strong.”

Before anyone could talk me out of it, the gold clock sailed off the mantel, smashing to the floor in a pile of cogs and gears. Across the room, the piano came to life, clanging and clunking out an ugly series of notes as the keys pressed down on their own accord. It looked as though someone was walking down the length of ivory, stomping their feet. Our poltergeist had returned.

Mercy howled, bolting from the room, with Honor fast on her heels. Lenore silently looked to me, clearly uneasy.

“You should go after them. They’re likely to run right up to Morella’s room, and they don’t need to see anything that’s going on there.”

She bit her lip, then nodded.

“Lenore?” I asked as she got to the doorway. “You really don’t remember Cassius?” She shook her head. “What about the balls? The dancing? Did I make that up too? You were with me at nearly all of them.”

She opened her mouth, looking as if she was about to deny the memories, but paused. She shook her head once, twice, as though clearing it from a fog. For the first time since the funeral, she spoke. “I do remember dancing, but—”

Another crash of thunder interrupted her train of thought, then a pair of shrill screeches.

“Go. I’ll stay here, I promise.”

She turned and raced down the hall after the girls.

Lightning danced dangerously close to the window, and the responding boom was so loud, I ducked, covering my ears. The glass panes rattled in their casings. Had that bolt struck the house?

An unearthly howl came from upstairs. Memories of Mama’s labors sprang to mind, but it was far too early for Morella, wasn’t it? Even if the twins were conceived before she’d married Papa, as Camille was so very certain, she was only six months along. Maybe. It was too soon. Far too soon.

I paced the room, feeling like a caged animal.

Morella’s cries of anguish grew louder and louder, spilling into my mind as pervasively as Kosamaras’s laughter. Were the twins part of the bargain? Was Morella? How many people were fated to die today?

One loud, long scream rang through the house before it fell into an eerie stillness. The storm raged on, with flashes of lightning and rumbles of thunder, but there was only silence from the fourth floor. I dared to cross into the hallway, straining my ears for the sound of a baby’s cry.

Only silence.

Then Camille. “Annaleigh? Annaleigh, we need you now!”