Emeline ducked her head to keep it from hitting the ceiling as she continued downwards.
“That’s how this world works,” Grace said, her voice heavy with longing. “You have to give up something precious if you want something precious in return.”
Emeline’s foot suddenly hit hard, packed earth instead of a wooden stair. The darkness congealed around her. Lifting the lamp, she squinted, deciphering their location: a damp underground room with dirt floors. Two slotted wooden racks ran the length of the walls on either side, filled with grass-green bottles.
“A wine cellar?” Grace mused.
A shape in the darkness, near the back of the cellar, caught Emeline’s eye. She moved towards it until the lamp’s glow illuminated a mattress covered in blankets. A bucket stood beside it. From the dark substance glistening at the bottom, Emeline had the distinct impression it was used as a kind of chamber pot.
“It looks like wine isn’t the only thing she keeps down here,” said Grace, her voice strangely flat, staring at a spot on the wall above the mattress.
Two heavy iron shackles dangled down the bricks, fastened with chains.
“It looks like she keepspeopledown here.”
A chill swept through Emeline, making her shiver. She was about to turn around. To tell Grace they were leaving—right now—when something made her pause.
“Hold this?”
Handing Grace the lamp, Emeline stepped closer to the mattress. It looked like it was decomposing, the moldy insides crumbling out of its seams and onto the floor. The blankets, too, were damp and old. And when she examined the manacles, she found them rusted shut.
“I don’t think anyone’s been down here for a very long time,” she said.
A tiny object glittered near the floor. Emeline picked it up to find a copper hairpin pinched between her fingers. It was twisted and bent out of shape, as if used to pick a lock.
The pin had the dull quality of something mass produced. Something that might come in a package of ten at the dollar store. There was a copper butterfly at the end of the pin, with little swirls in the wings, and it was achingly familiar to Emeline.
Only she couldn’t think why.
A door slammed in the house above, making them jump. She met Grace’s gaze over the lamp flame as slow, squeaking footsteps echoed overhead, followed by a low murmuring.
We left the latch open.
The footsteps moved to the stairs, descending slowly towards them, the murmuring growing louder.
Pocketing the pin, Emeline quickly scanned the room. There was no other exit than the way they’d come. Grace pointed towards the two wine racks along opposite walls. There was space beneath each for one person to lie down.
Seeing her plan, Emeline nodded, quietly moving for the farthest one. Down on her hands and knees, she lowered herself beneath it. The earth was packed hard beneath her palms, damp and cold beneath her cheek. As she pushed herself as far back as she could, cobwebs brushed across her skin and stuck in her hair. She tried not to shudder.
When they were both good and hidden, Grace turned out the lamp.
The cellar went dark—except for the bobbing light coming down the stairs.
“Come out, come out,” rasped a scratchy voice. “I can hear your beating hearts.”
TWENTY-THREE
THE MONSTER WAS INthe cellar with them.
The creature set down her candle on the dirt floor, giving Emeline a perfect view of Grace stretched out on her back beneath the wine rack, her face tilted towards the ceiling, fists tight at her sides.
The Vile—if indeed this was the Vile—was a black shape in the darkness. Emeline caught a whiff of a familiar smell: rot and bones.
Emeline saw a flash of gray tendons and gleaming black claws as the Vile moved towards Grace. If the Vile heard their hearts beating, of course she knew where they hid. Grace and Emeline were sitting ducks.
This is my fault.Emeline watched, frozen in terror, as the Vile crept closer to her friend.Grace wouldn’t be here if not for me.
But what could she do? Panic immobilized her, stiffening her limbs, turning her to stone. Her heart thumped painfully fast as her body refused to do as she bid. She couldn’t move.
