And maybe it’s this that makes them truly and terribly alike, this refusal to run, this mad urge to dig their nails into the dirt and stay. None of the other Gravelys had risked it, but Opal had.
She makes a small sound beside him, and Arthur notices that his fingers have curled into a fist, tugging her hair. Her head tilts up to his and this time she does not flinch when his lips touch hers.
This time he holds himself over her, looking into the ravenous black of her eyes. This time she slides her wrists beneath his palms and whispers: don’t let go. He doesn’t, even when she twists and cries out, even when she sets her teeth to his throat. He can feel the trembling in her, the fear of her own appetites, and wants to tell her so many things: that there’s nothing to be afraid of, that he will take care of her, that he’ll hold her and never, ever let go. But he was never a good liar. So he doesn’t say anything except her name, at the end.
This time when she falls asleep against him, it feels like trust. This time, he follows her.
Arthur dreams, and this time he isn’t sure whether they belong to him, or to the House. It’s a series of small, ordinary scenes: a pair of mugs side by side in the sink; a voice humming a song he doesn’t know, just around the corner; hair spilling across his pillow like poppy petals. A life that isn’t lonely, a house that isn’t haunted.
Arthur wakes with a sharp pain in his chest, because he knows he’ll never have any of those things.
Because the mist is rising, and he’s out of time.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I’m not dreaming; I’m remembering.
I remember the water, the terror, the glove box spilling into my lap, the riverbank, the mud beneath my nails, the cold. I remember the feeling of arms around me, but this time I remember more: a rib cage pressed against my back and a boy’s desperate voice saying “Shit, shit, I’m sorry” over and over. The glare of headlights and the sudden chill at my back when the boy left.
Later the nurses told me it was shock, and I believed them. For eleven years I thought that memory—that moment when I was held close, cared for, kept warm against the cold—was a childish fantasy. Until I fell asleep in the familiar shape of Arthur’s arms, and learned better.
A shattering boom wakes me up. At first I think I must have dreamed it, but I can feel the noise reverberating in my bones, ringing in my ears. The floor itself is trembling with it.
I reach for him thoughtlessly, instantly, choosing not reflect on what that might mean—but he isn’t there. His half of the bed is still faintly warm, indented by the shape of his body, but Arthur is gone.
In his place there’s nothing but cold silver: the Starling sword, laid carefully beside me.
I recoil from it, half falling out of bed. The hellcat hisses and I see her arched in the window, glaring down at the grounds with her ears pressed flat to her skull. I stumble over to her, trailing sheets, and for a dreamlike second I think Starling House has taken flight, and I’m looking down at the quilted cotton tops of clouds. But it’s not clouds, of course; it’s mist. For the second time in a single night.
My first reaction is shameful relief, because if the mist is rising then Arthur didn’t run from me. He ran to do his duty as Warden, and send the Beasts back to whatever hell they come from. But why would he leave his sword behind?
I reel away from the window. My own name catches my eye, written neatly on the back of a buff-colored folder. Inside I find a stack of double-spaced documents that I can’t make any sense of. The words seem to lift from the page and swim in menacing circles: codicils, encumbrances thereon, executor, sole beneficiary. My name recurs again and again, and so does the word Starling. It takes me too long to realize they exist in conjunction, a pair of disparate nouns yoked together: I leave my residuary estate, Starling House, and all assets, to Miss Opal Starling.
It’s a will, signed and notarized, with a deed attached.
From somewhere outside of myself, the thought comes that I am not homeless any longer. Starling House—every nail and shingle, every gold mote that hangs in the afternoon light—belongs to me. I test it out, lips moving silently: home.
But it’s not the house I’m thinking of.
It’s the boy who kept me warm when I was cold, who gave me a coat and a truck. It’s the man who left me a will I don’t want and a sword he doesn’t need anymore, because he isn’t going to battle the Beasts. He’s going to befriend them, and follow them down to Underland. Just like I told him.
He must have planned this long before he let me in the door, maybe even before he cut his deal with Baine and Gravely. He was never planning on sticking around. A small, mewling part of me wants to know if what happened between us mattered to him at all, if he wanted to stay or if he was just running out the clock until the mist rose—but most of me is too busy cussing him out and digging through his dresser.
It occurs to me, as I roll the overlong sleeves of his shirt up my arms, that I could run. I could take the deed and walk out the front gates. I could catch a bus to Louisville and maybe in a few months I’d see a headline about a man missing in Muhlenberg County. I could sell the land to the power company and get an apartment so new it still smells like sawdust and fresh paint. That’s who I am, isn’t it? A survivor, a cut-and-runner, a pragmatist.
Except if that’s really who I was, I would have bought a second Greyhound ticket and left with Jasper hours ago. I would have walked right past that amber window last February and kept working at Tractor Supply. I would have let go of my mother’s hand and saved myself. But I hadn’t saved myself, that night; Arthur had.
And now he’s gone into Underland, and it’s my turn to save him.
I can feel the attention of Starling House like a weight in the air around me, a gaze facing inward. The windows rattle in their frames and the pipes howl in the walls. There’s a tremor in the floor, like the house has suffered some secret wound and is holding itself upright through sheer stubbornness.
“Tell me what I have to do,” I say.
The house doesn’t answer, but a stray shaft of moonlight falls through the window and finds the silver edge of the sword. It flashes at me, a vicious wink, and I remember Jasper’s voice, oozing disgust: some kind of blood oath.
The hilt is cold and heavy, already familiar. I cup the blade with my left hand, laying the edge along the first scar Starling House ever gave me. I should have known, then, what it wanted from me. I should have known I would wind up here, with the house leaning hungrily around me and my pulse beating loud in my ears, no matter how hard Arthur tried to drive me away.
I close my eyes, shout a swear word, and draw the sword across my palm.
It cuts deeper than I meant it to, falling through the strata of my skin, biting deep into the wet muscle at the base of my thumb. Blood fills my palm and spills between my fingers. It falls to the floor in a syrupy stream, pooling at my feet.
Nothing in particular seems to happen, except that I feel queasy and stupid.
Maybe my blood is tainted in some way. Maybe the house can taste the Gravely in me, every sin I inherited from my ancestors. But honestly, screw that: I don’t know my name, but I’ve never been Opal Gravely. My mother shed her name like a skin and raised the two of us to be no one, or anyone. I have no name but the one I choose.