The Nightshade Cabal by Chris Patrick Carolan

Author:Chris Patrick Carolan [Carolan, Chris Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781953539434
Publisher: The Parliament House

14

“This place is rather horrid, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Barrow?”

Barrow nodded absently as he peered around a corner. The west wing of the sanitarium had held little of interest. Proceeding to the east wing had not turned up much of note, either.

“My mother almost had me committed here last fall.”

“Yes, your sister mentioned something to that effect when we met earlier in the week.” He tried a door, but found it locked. Security seemed to be tighter on this side of the sanitarium, with more of the patient’s rooms bolted. Looking through the window, he spied a young fellow with his arms bound tightly to his chest, rocking back and forth on the edge of a bed with a threadbare coverlet. He felt a moment’s pity for the man, but pressed on down the corridor.

Emily seemed more preoccupied with the sanitarium itself than its patients, looking from the ceiling’s flaking plaster to the worn tiled floor and back again as she followed along. “Coming here would surely have been worse than death,” she said quietly, picking at some paint peeling from the wall beside a doorframe. “Beside this, life at the nunnery looks decidedly less dreadful.”

“Nuns aren’t so bad as all that,” Barrow said. “I spent some years with the sisters at Saint Joseph’s orphanage as a lad myself.”

“Is that so, Mr. Barrow?” Emily seemed surprised.

Barrow shrugged. He felt no shame in his humble origins, even if he rarely spoke of them. “It’s true, Miss Skye. I started out as a foundling.”

“And you know nothing of who your parents were?”

He eyed her for a long moment before he replied. “The sisters told me that my mother had come to them in the night, carrying me in her arms with little more than the blanket I was wrapped in. She was young, they said. Not much older than yourself, come to think of it, and weeping with fright.” He chuckled. “I realize it sounds like something out of a penny dreadful, but there you have it. The curious tale of Isaac Barrow.”

It wasn’t a story he had told many people, but he felt the need to be open with the young woman who stood before him. Like her, he had found himself cast adrift in the world and in possession of abilities he couldn’t understand, abilities which many found abhorrent. Emily had come close to the darker aspects those abilities courted; if he was going to help her find a better path, he realized, he would have to be honest with her.

Whatever reaction he might have expected from her, the look of pity on her face made him distinctly uncomfortable. The sentiment was not one he was accustomed to seeing aimed in his direction. He coughed, and turned his attention back to the corridor. “Shall we continue along, then?”

They walked to the end of the hallway in silence, coming to a large double door. Like the small doors in the east wing, this, too, was locked. “Miss Skye, do you happen

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