Gretchen’s eyes flicked, searching for an escape route. The intruder lunged forward with something in their hand. Whatever it was imploded, their hand clenching around empty air. A shockwave of force hit Gretchen in the chest and sent her sprawling. Briar’s teeth ground together seeing her head clip the chimney. She landed heavily on the roof tiles, then rolled, her limp body tumbling over the edge. In the seconds before she hit the concrete below, her murderer summoned a portal and stepped through it. Briar only got a glimpse of something glittering brightly on the other side before the portal vanished. The vision severed the second Gretchen hit the pavement.
The ghost of her still stood with her hand in the chimney. She withdrew it. A cold horror overcame her features.
“Gretchen, I’m—”
“Don’t.” She dropped to her knees at the exact spot where she’d hidden something under the roof. Her last act. She pried at the tile, fingers leaving trenches in the moss grown over it, but it didn’t budge, sealed by her own magic.
“Help me!” she said shrilly.
Briar startled into action. He moved carefully, balancing next to her. Brushing away the moss, he found the faint scorch marks of the hair used as a tithe. “We need magic to open it.”
“Then get something!”
“I don’t have anything for unlocking something like this, and if I use a flesh tithe, I’ll fall off this roof, too.” He said it gently, which only made her angrier.
“There has to be something.”
A stir of memory hit him. “A secret. Tell me a secret, and that’ll undo it.”
Gretchen started to say, “I have no secrets because I can’t remember—” She stopped. She looked at the edge of the roof where she’d fallen. “I do remember.”
Briar put his hand over the tile. He didn’t speak, afraid to derail the threads of recollection she’d been gathering since laying eyes on the siphon.
“I remember,” she said again, “going to the woods with Éibhear to harvest red carnellas. There was something special about them. This time was different, though. The forest felt… sick.” Her eyes glazed, caught in memory. “We went to the place carnellas bloomed and found a crater. Everything—the carnellas, the trees, their roots, gone. Just scorched earth and that siphonthingat its center. Éibhear took the siphon to study and sent me to look for more carnellas.”
“Why were the carnellas so important?”
“I… can’t quite remember? They had special properties, but they were difficult to harness as tithes. We were studying them. Working on something with them? I looked for a long time and found only three, so I picked them.” She folded into herself. “The forest reacted. It was all wrong. It lashed out at me, tried tokillme. I barely escaped. It had never done that, not in all the times we’d gone before.”
Briar listened, his heart thudding like the unusual, rhythmic cadence of her speech.
“I found Éibhear in his study. It was in tatters. Everything trashed. God, everything was so wrong. Éibhear didn’t have time to tell me what had happened.” Her face was stricken with misery. “We heard noise on the stairs. No one else was supposed to be home. Éibhear told me to take the carnellas and hide them where only he would find them.
“Then I turned to go, and I sawhim.”
Briar shivered. Somehow, he knew it was her killer she spoke of.
“That mask. I had to run past him to get away, and he lashed out with a knife.” She gripped her shoulder, where the fabric was torn, the cut underneath obscured. “I don’t think I’d have made it if Éibhear hadn’t struck him. He used some kind of magic I’d never seen before. Like he’d called the forest up to fight for him. I think that’s when I knew how much danger I was in. Thatmask.” She shuddered. “I ran. That’s the last time I saw Éibhear.”
The rest of the story they both knew. They’d just watched it play out.
Between them, the roof tile juddered as the secret, now told, worked its magic. Neither of them removed it to check what was beneath. Not yet. Gretchen sat frozen, racked by memories. Her murderer had chased her down. Not to take the carnellas—he’d left without them—but to get rid of her. Like she was a loose end that needed trimming, a stain to rub out of the carpet. Whatever she’d seen, she was never meant to.
Gretchen sniffed. “We should get that out.” She pointed at the loose tile.
His fingers were going numb with cold, but Briar pried it up. There, just as she’d left it, was the box. It had cracked open, compelled by the powerful secrets in her story.
Inside, the carnellas, decades old, had wilted to papery shrapnel.
“We should keep them. They could still be useful,” Gretchen said. Seeing him shivering, she added, “And you should get inside.”
Briar made his way down, grip tight on the tiles, taking it slow. Images of Gretchen falling over the edge played in his mind in a nauseating loop. He climbed back inside, trekking dirt and moss onto his bed covers.
“Briar.”
He turned around at the sound of Gretchen’s voice. She floated there, just outside his window, when he and his cravat were inside.
He held the small box of carnellas tightly. Her tether, now unlocked.
