He sprang up. Gretchen looked bewildered as he ran to the desk and reefed open the drawer. The siphon rolled around inside.
“Have you seen this thing before? Do you know who made it?” he asked.
Gretchen floated next to him, her head tilted to the side. She looked closely at the object, face scrunched in confused concentration. Then her jaw slackened, a strange mix of recognition and uncertainty coming over her.
“I used to go on the roof,” she said. “I used to go on the roof to clear my head.”
She glided toward the window. Briar had seen her move objects before, but it was something else to watch her curl her fingers in the handles and, in one hard pull, open the window. She leaned out but seemed to encounter glass and could go no farther.
“Do you still have that curtain?” she said.
Briar fetched the cravat and tied it around his neck. He put his cloak on, climbed across his bed to the window, and looked out at the sloping roof. It wasn’t too steep, traversable, but the shingles were frosty with January cold. Briar held on to the frame and stepped out, making his cautious way up. The clay tiles would be easy to roll an ankle over, but he climbed on top of the dormer window, which was flat enough to sit on.
Gretchen waited there, knees tucked to her chin. “I used to come up here when I was stressed and too busy to take a walk, but I needed the air.” She recalled it hazily, squinting into the night. Her memories seemed to return to her like drips from a leaky faucet.
Briar followed her gaze. Over the rooftops, the forest swayed, a dark inkblot seeping into star-dappled sky.
“I think it does bother me,” she said. “Being dead.”
“Why are you so determined not to care about that?”
“Come on. It’s such a cliché.”
Briar couldn’t imagine not caring.
“I worked so hard, Briar. So damn hard, and for what? I thought I was doing good things, making healing potions. But I’d come up with one brilliant recipe, and it wasn’t enough. I’d move straight on to the next thing. Never stopped.”
The words felt sharp. They prodded Briar in places he didn’t want to examine.
“I think the worst part about being trapped in this house,” Gretchen said, “is that I hardly ever left it when I was alive anyway.”
She hugged her knees. Briar understood the feeling—he’d come to Coill Darragh wanting to make something of himself. To do something that mattered. Now, with his breath coming short in his lungs, he sometimes found himself wanting something simpler. Happier.
“Did the siphon jog any other memories?”
She shut her eyes. “I saw it before, but not here. In Éibhear’s office? Then he gave me something.” Abruptly, she stood. “Something to hide.”
She was moving again, gliding toward the chimney. It was an old thing of brick and chipping mortar. She stopped on the other side of it, staring. Briar made his way slowly, some of the roof tiles wobbling. When he’d crested the top, he saw what Gretchen was looking at.
There, shimmering on a corner of the flanching, was a purple scar.
They knew without speaking what they’d found. Gretchen moved to touch it, but Briar called for her to wait. “Are you sure you want to see?”
In answer, she slapped a hand to the scar. Briar sat back on the roof ridge, one leg to either side of it for balance, as movement reined their attention toward the dormer window.
Gretchen, the living Gretchen, emerged from it.
She wore everything her apparition did, but her cheeks burned red with exertion as she scrambled up the roof. She reached the spot where her ghost stood and, getting to her knees, started prying at the roof tiles until she found one wiggly enough to free. She pulled something out of the pocket of her jumper and, in the recess beneath the loosened tile, set a small wooden box. A rune glowed on its lid.
A noise from the street, and she whipped her head around, terror in her eyes. With harried movements, she covered the gap with the tile again. The noises sounded closer, beneath them, emanating from Briar’s flat. Only it was her flat.
She said out loud, “Think, think, think!”
In a burst of inspiration, she tugged a few strands of hair from her own head, pulling her bun messy and looser. Her fingers trembled as she tied the hair into a knot. She pressed this to the tile, and the hair scorched and vanished, sealing the tile beneath.
Shaking, she made her way back toward the window, but someone else emerged from it, blocking her path. A tall figure, hooded and wearing a mask of ebony filigree, as if arriving from a party. A long tear in their cloak was soaked in blood from a cut to the shoulder. They stood on the eave. From the look on Gretchen’s face, she was considering pushing this person, except there was a good chance they would pull her down with them. Behind her, the fall was treacherous.
Briar gripped the roof tiles beneath him. A charge ran through him that had nothing to do with magic or memory. He knew what he was about to see.
