Chapter 41

41

Farryn

The sensation in my stomach rose up into my throat. I hit the water with a crash that sent an explosion of needles across my spine. Down, down, down.

Bubbles expelled upward, the last bits of air rising toward a surface too far to reach. I clawed at the aqueous walls that pressed down on me.

Pressure tugged at my chest, beating with desperation.

Breathe. Breathe!

I shot upright on a sharp inhale to find myself tucked in bed, the book I’d been reading the night before propped to the page where I’d left off. My mind rewound to what’d happened: the conversation with Aurelia and her going into labor.?The details of what followed seemed blurry and out of focus, but I recalled screaming. Horrible screams. The cluster of women.

And Anya.

Muscles jolting, I scrambled toward the edge of the bed, right as the door clicked open and the devil herself peeked into my room. There, I halted, contemplating whether, or not, I could barrel through that door and knock her down along the way.

“Good morning, dear. Just thought I’d check to see you’re feeling well, seeing as you didn’t show up to the kennels this morning.”

“You …. I saw you. I saw what you did.” As soon as the words carelessly tumbled from my lips, my eyes shot to the lock on the door. Would she dare lock me inside? The door stood far enough away that I’d never reach it before she did.

“Saw what?”

“What you did to Aurelia. And her baby.”

Brows furrowed as if confused, she tipped her head. “Aurelia? I’m afraid I don’t know an Aurelia.”

“Oh, no. No, no, no. You are not playing this game. Aurelia was here. She was pregnant. I’ve dined with her every night since I got here.”

Stepping inside the room, Anya cleared her throat. “Miss Ravenshaw, you’ve supped alone since the first night you arrived. One of the kitchen staff mentioned that you called her Aurelia that first night, but I simply chalked it up to the bump on your head and the fact you weren’t well-acquainted with anyone quite yet. There is no one here who goes by Aurelia, and I surely wouldn’t have had you keep company with someone I’d never met.”

“You’re lying! You and the others …. I watched you devour her. You ate her and her unborn baby! I saw it all!” I glanced down toward the floor, where there surely should’ve been blood. A speck in the cracks of the wood, or something, but I didn’t notice anything, at all. Kneeling, I looked closer, under the bed, and on the sheets on which I remembered the blood having sprayed. There was nothing. Not a damn drop of it.

Even if the evidence of Aurelia was nowhere, I hadn’t hallucinated what’d followed. “I ran. I ran across the yard to the cliff, and I jumped. But I forgot to eat the flower, so I fell. And I thought I was going to die, but Mister Van Croix, he caught me midair.” I was rambling. I never rambled, but damn it, Aurelia wasn’t just some figment of my imagination. Backing myself onto the bed once more, I felt a tickle of panic in my stomach, which reminded me of falling the night before, the absolute terror I’d felt in that moment.

The expression crinkling Anya’s face, tinged with worry, told me she didn’t believe a word I was saying. “Are you feeling all right? Admittedly, you’re frightening me, a bit.”

“Aurelia. Was. Real! She had a baby, and she was bleeding! There was so much blood that you and others fed on!” Again, I scanned over the floors, completely absent of any evidence.

They had to have cleaned it up while I slept, though it would’ve taken quite some time and effort to get that much blood sopped up. I should’ve recalled that at some point in the night, heard them scrambling about, but I must’ve slept hard.

Nodding, Anya stepped back toward the door, setting an alarm off in my head. “Very well. I’m fetching the doctor.”

“Yes, you were going to fetch a Doctor Venable. But you didn’t!”

“Doctor Venable? I don’t know a Doctor Venable, either.”

“Enough of this! You’re trying to make me look like I’m crazy, and I’m--” A piercing pain struck my skull, and I pressed my fingers there, clamping my eyes shut to jagged light. Dizziness and nausea swept through me, as if the room spun around me.

“Miss Ravenshaw, I’m urging you to lie back down before you hurt yourself.”

“I’m fine. I’m …, It’s a migraine. I get them …” I opened my eyes to floating objects in my field of view and Anya’s form blurring on the fringes. “Please stop messing with my head. Aurelia was … here. She was kidnapped.”

Warm hands guided me toward the bed, and as much as I wanted to push her across the room, the scent of Anya reminded me of Aunt Nelle’s perfume. It was called Nights in Paris and I remembered her sitting at her vanity, the evening wind billowing the long. white curtains, while the sounds of Chicago’s streets played a distant backdrop. She always had a jazz record going, and loved to smoke a cigar with a glass of wine as she performed her nightly rituals. The rich, tobacco scent, mingled with her perfume, had always set me at ease.

The memory of it, so vivid in my head, sent a calm through me, as Anya tucked me under the covers.

“Listen to me, I didn’t want to frighten you, but it’s best you know. This cathedral is riddled with spirits, past and present.”

“You’re telling me it’s haunted?”

“Very much.”

“No. I don’t know what you get out of making me look crazy, but Aurelia was not made up in my head. She was real.” Was she, though? Could I remember her face, even then, as I recalled the night before, cradling her head on the floor of my bedroom while she bled out? Was her voice so clear in my head that I could distinguish it from any of the other girls who worked there?

If I were being honest, the answer was no. The edges were both wispy and grainy, out of focus. I stared off, focusing hard on the visual of Aurelia’s eyes--I couldn’t remember their color.

I’d stared into the girl’s face as she lay dying, and yet, I couldn’t say if they’d been blue, or brown, or purple.

“The times you sat eating alone, I’d often catch you talking to yourself,” Anya added, not helping my state of mind, whatsoever. “Figured it might’ve just been thinking aloud, or something.”

Exhausted by the conversation and the argument for my sanity, I rubbed my forehead. “Look, you’re taking the joke too far. Just tell me where she is.”

Pushing up from the bed, Anya patted my leg. “I can see you need a bit more rest. I’ll take care of the mongrels this afternoon.”

What if Aurelia had been nothing more than just a figment of my imagination? That certainly didn’t bode well for my state of mind in this place. “I need to get out of here. I want to leave. Now.”

“If that’s what you choose, but I would urge you to rest before you travel, fair?”

For whatever reason, I was exhausted, which only made me question everything more. And, in turn, had my head pounding harder. “Fine. I want the key to this room, though.”

“Pardon?”

“You’re not locking me in here, but I do intend to lock all of you out.” Hand outstretched, I flicked my fingers for her to hand it over. I couldn’t even think of a reason why they’d want to keep me there, unless to devour me, as well. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t be taking any chances.

Lips pressed to a hard line, Anya reached into a pocket of her dress and retrieved a set of keys on an oversized hoop. She removed one of them and held it up for me to see. “The key to your room. As strange a request as this is. I’ll ask that you return it to me promptly before you leave.”

“Of course. What need would I have for a key to a random room?”

“There are a number of things I question at the moment, dear. But again, I understand you’re not feeling well. I’ll have some food brought to you. It’ll be set outside the door for whenever you’re willing to open it.”

As she ambled out of the room, I stared after her, trying to wrap my head around the events of the morning. I hadn’t lost my mind, right? I could still remember who I was. In a panic, I sat at the edge of the bed recalling Camael. Her fur. Her scent. The sound of her purr. Aunt Nelle’s house and the ferns she’d tasked me to care for. Aunt Nelle looking peaceful as she lay in her casket. The inside had been pink satin, and I remembered having laughed inappropriately at the thought that she looked like she was being buried inside a clam.

I hadn’t yet lost the memories of my life. Why? Had I not been here long enough? Every detail remained so vivid inside my head.

Yet, I still couldn’t quite recall the pitch of Aurelia’s voice that I’d heard just the night before.

I kicked myself back toward the headboard, my arm knocking into the book lying beside me, and the page flopped opened to the picture at the beginning. The one I’d examined back in the library.

Something new caught my eye, though.

Frowning, I leaned in, gaze anchored on the young girl, who I’d come to realize from my reading was Lustina. Only, she didn’t look the way I remembered her looking when I first picked up the book.

As I recalled, when I began reading the night before, her face had been blurred by a smudge of paint. Suddenly, it was as clear as the possibility that I had truly lost my mind.

I pressed a trembling hand to my mouth, tendrils of panic curling down my spine in vines of terror.

The girl in the picture was me.

Worse still, a young woman standing beside me, fully garbed in a nun’s robe, was Aurelia.