Ghosts of Weirdwood--A William Shivering Tale by Christian McKay Heidicker

Author:Christian McKay Heidicker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

15

ROSE

Breeth was too smart for Lady Weirdwood.

The old architect kept moving the impostor to quiet parts of the Manor, hoping that she, Sekhmet, and Rose could have a private conversation. But Breeth found them every time, giving that Rose ghost multiple scares she would never forget.

Finally, Lady Weirdwood led Breeth’s body to the smithy where Rose had once forged weapons for the Wardens. “So she might remember the loyalty she once had toward us.” But Breeth didn’t want Rose in her comfort zone. She wanted her in a discomfort zone, hoping to pop the unwelcome spirit out of her body as easy as an avocado pit.

She creaked right after them.

It was hot in the smithy. The air wavered like a desert. Sweat gleamed on Lady Weirdwood’s and Sekhmet’s foreheads. The scales of the old woman’s limp snake shone dully.

Breeth possessed the crackling wood of the forge and ignited it in an explosive blaze of flames, raising the temperature in the smithy by several degrees. Rose tumbled back, fearful of catching fire. But Breeth had been careful not to singe her own hair.

“Hello, Breeth,” Lady Weirdwood said pleasantly.

She said it so casually that Breeth let the fire die down a bit.

“I need you to please stop assaulting my prisoner for a few minutes.”

Breeth politely refused by smoldering black smoke into the room.

“I understand your frustration,” Lady Weirdwood said calmly. “But I’m not going to get any answers out of my old Warden with you constantly attacking her. You draw more flies with honey than vinegar.”

Breeth, who had once spent a short lifetime as a housefly, resented the comment.

“Don’t you want to know what happened, Breeth?” Sekhmet asked. “Don’t you want to know why Rose did this?”

“No!” Breeth shouted in an explosion of flames. But then her rage softened to embers. “Maybe.”

Lady Weirdwood sat on an anvil and looked at Rose, who sat near the bellows. “Now that we have discovered who you are, Rose, there’s no reason not to talk to us.”

“She warn’t s’posed to stay dead,” Rose said, her face as hard as steel. “That little girl. It were Colson’s idea from the start.”

Colson. That must have been the Rook’s real name.

“He said if we could see a person die, we could follow its spirit into the next life,” Rose continued. “He could see his wife. I could see my Max. So he set out and borrowed a child from the city and brought her back to the Manor where we hid her in the Thorny Passage.” She gazed into the fiery reflection of a sword and saw the face of the girl she’d murdered staring back. She quickly looked away, her expression softening a bit. “I did the thing meself. Done it gentle-like and stitched up her hurts afterward.”

Breeth wanted to scream fire at this. To remind this impostor they’d done a lot more than borrow her. She wanted to erupt in a great conflagration and declare that it was impossible to kill someone gentle-like. But there was something strangely comforting about hearing the story of her murder from her own lips.

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