“If someone is robbing us, come back after business hours!” Calla’s voice came from upstairs.
“Do you know what has happened to my mother, foul branch?” Gwenllian ripped the lamp free from the door so that she could smash it against the surface once more. The crack widened. “I will tell you what I saw in my mirror mirrors!”
“Go away, Gwenllian,” Artemus said. “I can do nothing for any of you! Leave me alone!”
“You can tell me where my father is, little shrub! What hole did you throw him in?”
Shwack
The door cleaved in two; Artemus shrank back into the darkness. He was folded over among Tupperware and reusable grocery bags and sacks of flour. He shielded his long face from her as she wielded the lamp.
“Gwenllian!” Blue said. “What are you doing? Doors cost money.”
Here was Artemus’s little daughter – he did not deserve her in any way – come to rescue him. She had caught hold of Gwenllian’s arm to stop her from cleaving his coward’s skull with the lamp.
“Don’t you want to riddle him, blue lily?” Gwenllian screamed. “I’m not the only one who wants answers. Did you hear my mother’s scream, Artemussss?”
Blue said, “Gwenllian, come on, it’s early, we’re sleeping. Or we were.”
Gwenllian dropped the lamp, pulled her arm free and instead snatched Artemus by a hand and his hair. She dragged him from the closet as he whimpered like a dog.
“Mom!” Blue shouted, her hand cupped over one eye. Artemus sprawled between them, peering up at them.
“Tell me how strong this demon is, Artemus,” Gwenllian hissed. “Tell me who it is coming for next. Tell me where my father is. Tell me, tell me.”
Suddenly, he was up and on his feet. He ran for it, as Gwenllian pawed and grasped for him, slipping and sliding on the shattered glass bulb. She went down on one hip, hard, and clawed her way back up. He was through the sliding glass door to the backyard before she found her footing, and by the time she burst into the foggy backyard, he had already made it up to the first branch of the beech tree.
“It won’t have you, you coward!” Gwenllian shouted, although she feared it would. She hurtled after him, beginning to climb herself. She was no stranger to trees and their branches, and she was quicker than him. She snarled, “You schemer, you dreamer, you —”
Her dress caught on a branch, rescuing him for half a moment. Artemus threw his hands up, found a branch, and clambered up a level. As she began to climb again, leaves clattered urgently and smaller twigs snapped.
“Help,” he said, only he did not say it like that. He said, “Auxiril!” The word came out rapid and terrified and desperate and hopeless.
“My mother,” Gwenllian said. Thoughts to words without pause. “My mother, my mother, my mother.”
The dead leaves of the beech shuddered above them, raining down around both of them.
Gwenllian leapt for him.
“Auxiril!” he begged again.
“This won’t save you!”
“Auxiril,” he whispered, and he hung on to the tree.
The remaining fall leaves rattled down. Branches thrashed. The ground buckled as roots tugged urgently through dirt. Gwenllian snatched for a handhold, got it, lost it. The branch beneath her shrugged and bucked in a violent wind. The dirt whispered down below as roots heaved – they were too far from the corpse road for this, and Artemus was going to do it anyway, typical, typical, typical – and then Gwenllian fell free as the branch twitched below her.
She crashed down heavily on her shoulder, all breath escaping her, and looked up to see Blue and her dead friend staring at her. Others stood in the doorway to the house, but Gwenllian was too dazzled by the fall to identify them.
“What!” Blue exclaimed. “What just happened? Is he —?”
“In the tree?” finished Noah.
“My mother was in a tree and she’s dead,” Gwenllian snapped. “Your father is in a tree and he’s a coward. You’re the unlucky one. I’ll just kill you when you come out, you poisoned branch!” This was in the direction of the tree. Artemus could hear her, she knew, his soul curled inside that tree as he was, damned tree-light, damned magician. It infuriated Gwenllian to know that he could hide there as long as the beech survived. There was no reason for the demon to be interested in a tree so far outside Cabeswater, and so even after everyone else and everything else had died, he would once again emerge unscathed.
Oh, the fury.
Blue looked at the beech tree with her mouth gently agape. “He’s … he’s in it?”
“Of course!” Gwenllian said. She pushed herself up from the ground and took big handfuls of her skirt in her hands so she wouldn’t trip on it again. “That’s who he is! That’s your blood. Didn’t you feel roots in your veins? Curses! Curses.”
She stomped back to the house, shoving past Maura and Calla.
“Gwenllian,” Maura said, “what is going on?”
Gwenllian paused in the hallway. “Demon’s coming! Everyone dies. Except for her useless father. He’ll live for ever.”