The scar at the base of Mallory’s throat burned, sharp and sudden. Words rose unbidden in her mind.A false marriage. A coming betrayal. Death. Get out, get out, get—
She gasped, pressing her finger against her throat. Even her pajamas were high-necked, and the cotton was soothing as the pain slowly ebbed.
“What is it?” said Anaïs, concerned.
“Nothing,” said Mallory. “Just… something in my throat. Go on.”
Anaïs’s expression was dark. They both knew it was an ominous spread, but that was coincidence. Meaningless paintings on paper. Nothing more. Julie was a paying customer, and Anaïs’s job was to give her what she paid for.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Julie said, a tremble in her voice as she hovered over the cards, inspecting each one.
“Not at all,” said Anaïs. “In fact… this is quite promising.” She pressed a finger onto the first card, a majestic depiction of a stag with enormous antlers. It stood in a forest glen speckled with foxglove flowers and moonlit briars. “This indicates your past—your life before. A resignation, so to speak. You were not searching for love… would, perhaps, have been content to go on as you were, despite bouts of loneliness, and a yearning to find connection. But here we see a change in your path.”
As Anaïs pointed to the second card, Mallory exhaled a slow breath, relieved that her sister was following the script for the romantics. The Empty Coffin was a good omen, Anaïs said, lying through her teeth. A symbol of hope and love everlasting. The Untouched Feast suggested desires unfulfilled—but that would surely be changing now that she had such joy. And Velos?In this reading, it referred to the god’s dominion over wisdom, for surely this marriage was a wise decision… and an inevitable one.
Mallory knew the predictions so well that she had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from mouthing the words along with Anaïs, as she talked about a love that was pure, a union fated by the stars. And so on and so forth.
By the end of it, Julie was enthralled, grasping at every word.
“I made the right choice, then?” she said once the reading was finished. “In marrying him?”
“Were you in doubt?” asked Anaïs.
“Well… no. But also, a little. He is such a good man, and can be so thoughtful at times. But other times… so distant. I’d hoped it would change, after the wedding, but…”
“Did you really?” Mallory said. A warning was ringing in her thoughts now, despite the sludge her sister had spoon-fed to this girl. Inconstancy was a telling character flaw, as far as she was concerned. One that suggested dishonesty at best—and cold depravity at worst. “I’ve never known marriage to change a man as much as most women would like to think.”
“Oh, I don’t wish to change him. Truly, I don’t. It’s more… our situation. But the heart wants what the heart wants. And the cards… they have comforted me. You have comforted me.” She beamed at Anaïs—but faltered when she looked beyond Anaïs. “What is that?”
Mallory and Anaïs followed her look to a wardrobe, the doors propped open. Dawn was approaching, painting the room in pale gray light, barely illuminating a piece of cloth that dangled out from the armoire’s shadows.
Anaïs stood. “No doubt a ribbon left unfastened. Mallory never did learn how to properly hang up her—”
She froze.
The ribbon was moving. Writhing and flicking along the carpet.
Anaïs stepped back. “Not a ribbon.”
Julie stood abruptly. “Another monster? I’ve been chasing around lutins and matagots and salamanders all week.”
Mallory shook her head. “That is no salamander.”
The cabinet doors shifted, and the not-ribbon wriggled farther into the room. It reminded Mallory of a snake, but as wide as her arm, and much, much longer, as it reached for the floor and extended toward the fireplace.
Not a snake. A tentacle, she realized, as a second one appeared, emerging from the depths of the cabinet.
The door squeaked open, and the light hit the creature. Thick gray tentacles, as long as Mallory was tall, dotted with wiry hair and excreting an oily substance. They writhed along the carpet, originating from a giant snail shell, covered in clumps of fuzzy lichen. As the tentacles pulled the shell from the cabinet, it landed with a thud on the floor and tipped back, far enough for Mallory to glimpse a gaping black mouth lined in two rows of jagged teeth.
A lou carcolh.
Julie screamed and stumbled away, putting her chair between herself and the creature. Then, abruptly and without warning, the color drained from her face and she fainted onto the carpet.
Mallory and Anaïs gawped at the maid’s limp form, then at each other, then at the creature.
With a screech, the lou carcolh shot three of its tentacles forward. They wrapped around Julie’s leg and started dragging her body across the floor. Its shell raised up, revealing that horrifying maw, the unearthly rows of jagged teeth.
Anaïs screamed and dropped to the floor, locking her elbows beneath Julie’s arms, trying to fight against the monster’s strength—though the maid’s body was so small, Mallory worried her entire body would be torn in two.
