Worlds of Ink and Shadow by Lena Coakley

Author:Lena Coakley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2015-10-19T16:00:00+00:00

CHARLOTTE

CHARLOTTE’S MIND WANDERED ALL THROUGH evening prayers. She jumped at every sound and twice caught herself chewing her nails, a habit she had broken herself of years before. Even Tabby remarked on her nervousness, and, before Charlotte went upstairs, made her down some of the beef tea she had made for Emily.

She’d heard the laughter once more that afternoon, but a fierce wind had arrived with the rain, battering the house and whistling around the chimney, and she told herself it was only its blowing she had heard. If it weren’t for the broken mirror in the bedroom, she might have been able to convince herself she had imagined that awful woman as well, but every time she saw its empty frame, she knew with a sinking feeling that it wasn’t true. When she tried to tell Branwell what had happened, he only snapped, and Charlotte didn’t wish to burden the girls. And so, with no one left to confide in, she found herself standing in front of her father’s door.

“Come in,” he called, when she had worked up the courage to knock. He was sitting in a high-backed wooden chair loading his pistols for the night. “And how is dear Emily?”

Emily. Wandering about in a rainstorm. Making everyone sick with worry. Dear Emily is as selfish and thoughtless as always, Charlotte thought. “Recovering well.”

He motioned her toward the chair opposite, and she sat down. Beyond him was a small mirror over a chest of drawers. She dreaded seeing a glimpse of that woman’s face in its depths, and yet Charlotte’s eyes were drawn to it again and again throughout their conversation.

Papa looked up at her expectantly but resumed his task when she didn’t speak. He detached the ramrod from the barrel of one of his guns and used it to tamp down a round ball and some paper wadding, the pistol’s one shot. Then he primed the pistol with powder from his horn and set it carefully on a side table next to its mate. He looked up once more, but still Charlotte couldn’t find words. I am hearing voices. I am afraid of mirrors. I made a bargain with a creature out of one of Tabby’s stories, and now I might be lost. How did one begin such a conversation?

“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.”

Charlotte froze. The windows rattled like something trying to get in.

“There are demons on the wind tonight,” Papa said. He didn’t mean this literally—he was a modern man—and yet he touched the nearer pistol when he said it, as if part of him believed there was something real to fear.

Charlotte made an attempt at a smile. “Yes. Aren’t there.” The awkward silence dropped over them again.

Papa gestured to the two weapons. “You know, every night I load these, and every night they go unfired. And yet in the morning when I awake I feel as if I have left my family unprotected, as if something has been taken in the night.”

Charlotte blinked in surprise, sure he had divined that all was not well in his home.

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