Emma Holloway - A Study in Ashes

Imogen wasn’t sure that was true anymore, but she was too tired of the whole business to argue. “Whatever you say, Anna.”

“Not even a wee little protest? Some show of spirit? You’re no entertainment today.”

The dead body vanished, and Imogen groaned. Was that how it was going to be now? Just brief episodes of mockery?

She slumped back to the velvet, her head on her knees. Maybe she could escape into another of Bucky’s dreams. Maybe she could make it last awhile, and just rest in his arms. It would be easier than grinding through this nonsense. No. You can’t escape. You have to see this through if it means taking the clock apart gear by gear to corner her . A tear slid out from under her lashes. She felt like a trapped animal slowly turning vicious, and she didn’t like knowing that much anger was inside her, but she could feel it rising like a storm-swollen river and was more than a little afraid of what it would do.

A cold wind pulled at her clothes, making her shudder. Imogen lifted her head in surprise, then gasped in shock. The clock was gone, and she was sitting on cold stone steps, looking out at an alpine winter view. It looked like their old home in Austria, which had been a castle perched on a mountainside just like this. Imogen looked up, not wanting to be right—but she was. The black stone edifice was all too familiar, and the topmost tower was where Anna had been locked up and died.

Imogen got to her feet, her shoes slipping on the icy steps. “This is an illusion, Anna! I refuse to be entertaining for you.”

And yet … Imogen gazed out at the landscape, feeling its power. Her childhood home had been beautiful, even if it was the fertile ground where the seeds for all their tragedies had been sown. Maybe it was fitting that things ended there. At least she didn’t have to listen to the wretched ticking.

She turned to ascend, but lost her footing on the ice and stumbled down a few steps. Grabbing the stone handrail, Imogen began to climb more carefully, wondering what horrors Anna had for her inside. She’d always wondered whether the place had a dungeon.

When she reached the top of the stairs, the double doors of the castle swung wide. Imogen approached the threshold, already lost in memories of the place. They’d had a huge, shaggy black dog, and between banquets Papa had turned the great hall into his workshop, with sawdust littering the flagstones. There had been happy times here and there.

But Anna had ignored all their true history. As Imogen crossed the threshold, she beheld a brocaded fantasy of banners and tapestries and still, silent pages with long trumpets raised to their lips.

Anna’s voice came from behind her. “Do you like it? You always were the good little princess, whereas I was the interesting one.”

Imogen spun. Anna was wearing a tall, pointed hennin with a cloth-of-gold veil, her gown of peacock silk embroidered with silver stars. Her gray eyes were as flat as ever.

“What do you want, Anna?” Imogen snarled, her voice barely like her own. “It’s bad enough this isn’t real, but it’s not even a ghost of our past.”

As soon as she spoke, the image collapsed, leaving nothing but a heap of silks on the floor. Unnerved, Imogen took a few steps forward and kicked the cloth on the floor. She half expected something nasty to run out—spiders or snakes—but nothing.

Imogen considered. Anna’s anger was over her death, so there was only one logical place for this to play out. Without wasting another moment, she began looking for the door to the highest tower in the castle, where Magnus had trapped Anna’s soul.

Unfortunately, the castle wasn’t quite as she remembered it. It was oddly disproportionate, with the doorknobs too high up as if from a child’s perspective. She found the first set of stairs going up, but had a hard time with the second, as if Anna hadn’t been sure where they were supposed to be. The next two floors were like a treasure hunt, each one lined with a series of doors leading to empty rooms. These were the servants’ quarters. Anna would barely remember these at all .

But eventually she found the low, humped doorway that led to the tower stairs. They would originally have been used by soldiers defending the mountain pass below, but Dr. Magnus had claimed the tower for his own during the time he’d stayed with the Roth family. Later, her parents had made it Anna’s sickroom until she died. Imogen had fuzzy memories of this tower, but Anna had provided minute detail, from initials scratched into the stone by long-dead lovers, to a dead spider in the corner of the winding stairs. Imogen wondered how much was fact, and how much was Anna’s imagination.

At the top of the stairs she found an arched wooden door into the tower room. She grasped the old iron ring and pushed. It swung open with a sepulchral creak, showing an empty room with whitewashed walls. The stone floor was painted with symbols, and Imogen remembered her father’s tale of how he’d found Magnus with Anna’s twisted body, and the crude automaton where he’d imprisoned her essence in lonely darkness.

Pity wrung Imogen. For all that the seeds of Anna’s insanity had begun in the cradle, what had happened to her hadn’t been fair. But it didn’t make Imogen’s will to live any less.

She stepped across the threshold, the knife Evelina had given her in her hand. The round room was ringed with pointed windows, chill sunlight spilling through with diamond brilliance. It was cold enough that Imogen could see her breath, and she began to shiver, but fear kept her focused.

There was a door on the far side that hadn’t been there before. By Imogen’s reckoning, it would have led to thin air.

“That’s the way home,” said Anna. She was sitting in a plain wooden chair against the wall to Imogen’s right. She hadn’t been there a moment before.

“And what happens if I walk through it?”

“If you try, I kill you.”

“Or I kill you,” Imogen returned.

“I don’t think so. I was the one who should have lived.”

Imogen had lost by hesitating before, so this time she took the first step. Anna rose from the chair, and then—she wasn’t Anna anymore.

Mouse had said the longer a soul lacked a body, the harder it was to maintain a face. Now Imogen knew what the creature meant. The closest words she could come up with was that Anna melted and a thing took her place. It crouched like a dog, three legs on one side and two on the other. It shuffled side to side as if seeking shadows to hide from the sunlight, fading into translucence where the light was brightest. In fact, it looked as if it were made of shadows, with a melted head and two pits for eyes.

Imogen’s first instinct was to scream and run, but desperation made her slash with the knife. It was an ungainly, awkward slice, but then she’d never fought like this before. The thing dodged, scuttling to the side in an unnatural crab-walk. It made a sound that was half a wail, half a savage snarl.

Imogen swore under her breath. The thing that was Anna was so hideous, Imogen couldn’t figure out if it had an expression, much less what it looked like. Drool dripped from it, as if it was starving.

Maybe it was. The thing lunged, the shapeless gash of a mouth opened wide to show needle-sharp teeth. But Imogen was ready, and raised the knife, letting the misshapen thing skewer itself upon the point. The Anna-thing howled, struggling backward. The knife slid out with a slurp, something wet oozing over Imogen’s knuckles. The substance—whatever it was—burned her with cold.

Imogen staggered back, her back bumping the embrasure of a window. It was a bad position, because there was no glass and the shutters were wide open. A fall would easily snap her neck. Something in the posture of the Anna-thing said she had come to the same conclusion. Imogen scooted to the side, her eyes glued to the remains of her twin.