In the back of my mind, the bells jingled as the moon rose, and I dropped my carding brush. “Matthew, the bells did come. Last night—did they not? Tell me, where is your sister?”

  He closed his eyes. “The bells shook the air last night, and the Ringers walked among us. I thought they’d come for you—” he said, stopping to look on me with tearful eyes, “—but they’d come for C-Charlene.”

  This was my fault. I’d encouraged Charlene to talk against her better judgment, and because of it, she was gone. “I-I’m sorry, I did not mean—”

  “Didn’t mean what? To talk Charlene into her death? Because of your talk of schools and magics—as if such things were possible in Dekwood—she went home and begged to be sent away. Can you imagine? She asked our father to be sent away so she could learn!”

  Anger flushed my cheeks. “Matthew, I never intended for your sister to be taken, but asking to learn should not be a crime. Where exactly has she been taken? By whom? What are Ringers?”

  “The Ringers ensure the peace and prosperity in this town. They make sure everyone serves their purpose. When they...they—when they take you, you’re dead, Elise. Gone.”

  I did not recall when I stood, much less when I fled that room, but my running ceased when I reached the smallest building near the center of town: a lone house befitting someone who served Magistrate Revoir de Leunt. Its bricks crumbled a little less, were a little less faded than those around it, and instead of a single-floor dwelling, the house was its own two-story abode. The wailing from inside—a harsh, keening of pain that carried on with few gaps for breath—confirmed my suspicions.

  The front step creaked beneath my foot when a shadow moved behind the window, and the same slip of a man from our second day in town leaned out the open doorway to wave an empty fist at me. “Go away! Haven’t you done enough to this town?”

  “I’m sorry—”

  When he laughed, the wailing inside grew louder. “You watch it, girl. They’ll be coming for you next!”

  His words should have scared me, but the fluttering inside my stomach ceased as the earth beneath me hummed. Somewhere out there, someone called on the magics deep within the soil. Someone out there was not as backward thinking as the villagers. Someone out there was educated.

  But not Nicolas. For all Charlene’s belief that her father owned magical texts, not a single drop sang in his blood or whispered in his breath.

  To him, I said, “I am quite sure they will seek me out, sir, and when they do, I have questions for them.”

  “You won’t be able to ask.”

  “Why?” I asked, and the crying inside paused.

  “Because when they come, they suck out your soul.” He retreated and slammed the door behind him, but not even solid oak could drown out the cries inside.

  Death magic. It had to be.

  If the Ringers took ownership of people’s souls, then for what purpose? Fuel? Something to power the dark magics required for the undead to walk the earth? Who would do such a thing? Who could?

  I stared at the shadowed mansion that hovered in the distance. The only person people feared outside the Ringers was the magistrate. He possessed power and money enough to control an entire town. And if the rumors were true, he was ancient and learned—learned enough to make my knowledge of magic a mere thimbleful.

  The thought filled me with dread.

  No matter what words were uttered, Papa stood firm. “Their ways aren’t ours, but we’re here now. Keep your head down until we send you to the Academe. ”

  “But Charlene is missing.” My mother’s chair scraped across the floor as she excused herself, and I asked, “What reason do we have to remain in this town?”

  “Just a smidgen longer, Elise.”

  “Papa—”

  He closed his eyes a moment. “We owe the magistrate for putting us up here. To leave would be a mark against us.”

  “Do we need his favor so much then?”

  Papa sighed. “A man like that—he’d keep you from school with only a frown. Don’t court trouble. By mid-spring, summer at the latest, we should have the means to leave.”

  I fled, crossing the hall to my room. He had never been a man of excuses before, any more than my mother had allowed her appearance to falter or her tongue to still. Sleep avoided me as I stared, opened eyed, at the cracks in the ceiling until long after the hum of my parents’ conversation changed to snores. When snowflakes tapped against my room’s tiny window, I rubbed the sleeve of my nightshirt against the pane to stare out across the town below.

  The street should have been bare this late hour, but diminutive twinkles danced in the air, cast off from the shimmer below. Rather than look away, I gaped as five white horses took form beneath my window. Five muzzles snuffed the falling snowflakes. One shook his head and sent up an eerie peal as the bells on his harness jingled—less a jingle and more like the scream of cold air across one’s skin.

  These weren’t mere horses, and the five men astride them weren’t mere men.

  Red coats clung to gray flesh that stretched too taut over skeletal frames, and the mouth that grinned at me tugged at the corners until it might have split the near-translucent skin. This Ringer—his blue eyes ghostly and glowing—bore a sash across his red jacket, decorated with symbols burned black into the fabric.

  Even from the inn’s second floor, far from the touch of the earth, the thrum of magic in the air seeped into my feet. The bells rattled my ears as the horses stepped forward.

  I flung my heavy jacket over my nightshirt and stuffed my socked feet in my boots. I threw open the door. Halfway down the stairs, I recalled the hour and slowed my steps to a creep.

  The bolt was thrown over the inn’s entrance; I shoved it upright with a grunt.

  By the time the bitter chill outside blustered my face and threatened to rip the air from my lungs, the Ringers were gone.

  Snow filled in the edges of the hoof prints. I followed them down the main street and around the corner toward the edge of town. In the distance, the forest darkened an already dark night, and I closed my eyes before I stepped across the town’s threshold.

  If they’d crossed into the forest, I’d never find them. Something...or someone whined to my left, and I followed the sound into a partially fenced yard. Tucked back against the trees lay a house made of lean-to boards and half-rotted wooden planks. A sagging roof groaned under the snow’s weight and out front stood five white horses. I hurried my steps.

  Inside the house, another whine, then a cry, and the air outside warmed. The snow stopped, and my feet sweated inside my leather boots. Magic. Dangerous magic.

  I didn’t know what kind, but the power of it made my vision swim. I stepped sideways to avoid the horse droppings. Horse droppings? Where they real beasts then? One of the horses shoved his muzzle into my shoulder blade, and I flinched.

  The horses were living creatures. But what about the Ringers themselves?

  My hand paused on the curtain that served as a door to the house. When a child screamed, I stumbled over my boots as I pushed my way through thick wool. Five beings who had once been men shimmered in the main room. One stood over a child no older than four, who cowered in his mother’s arms. Tears stained the child’s reddened cheeks and snot gummed up his nose, but no sound or breath escaped his blue lips.

  His mother screamed at the Ringer, and when he touched his knotted hand to her flesh, her lips parted round.

  I snapped my eyes shut, and inside my boots the soles of my feet burned.

  Outside the air split with a cacophony of jingling bells, and when I pried open my eyes, two corpses lay in the corner, their hands tangled in one another’s.

  They weren’t vanished or disappeared as Charlene had implied. They were dead.

  2 Days until Yule

  “What did you do?” Papa’s voice carried more than a warning with the question, and I winced.

  “There was magic; I could feel it! I needed to see what these Ringers were about,” I said. My mother tore apart the roll in her hands, leaving little breadcrumbs scattered across the table’s edge. Preoccupied with watching her, I failed to see Papa move until his hands seized mine in too tight a grip as he stood beside my chair.

  “Don’t follow them again. Leave it alone. Promise me now.”

  “But—”

  “Do as you’re told!” he snapped, and I tugged my hands away. “I’m-I’m sorry I snapped, Elise, but this is dangerous. This isn’t growing a tree in the backyard or blossoming a flower in a vase. It’s dangerous magic—the kind that comes with decades of learning and leads to evil beings and death. A-and I can’t lose you.” His voice caught, and what was left of my mother’s bread fell to her plate with a thud.

  “I need more time to clear our debt to the magistrate. Please mind me,” he begged, and I nodded. After that, neither of my parents ate.

  When my mother and I walked to the factory that morning, we passed the coroner’s carriage. A trio of men moved two bodies wrapped in blankets—one child-sized and both bundled with care.

  “Is that...?” my mother asked.

  “Yes.”

  She wrapped an arm across my shoulder and squeezed. “Listen to your father, Elise. Please.”

  Up ahead, Papa spoke to Mr. Ashton. Whatever words Mr. Ashton spoke caused Papa’s face to pale.

  “We’ll be late, Elise.”

  “I’ll catch up,” I said to my mother, who placed a hand over her swelling middle as she clambered through the snow without me. Papa furrowed his brows when he spotted me, but I hid in the shadow of the coroner’s carriage until Mr. Ashton retreated.

  “Why aren’t you with your mother?” Papa asked when I finally approached.

  “I forgot something. Was that Charlene’s father?”

  Papa nodded. “We’re moving out of the inn in a few days’ time. Probably after Yule. Magistrate Leunt has found us a place.”

  My stomach sank. “Where?”

  “Just at the edge of town. It’s in rough shape, little more than a lean-to at the moment, but they’re going to repair it for us. Can’t have your mother expecting in a place as drafty as that. Now hurry along to work.”

  If the cold air hadn’t made my teeth chatter, the news would have done so. The home that would be ours had belonged to the two victims, and the thought of dwelling in such a place sickened me. Would our taking such a home further indebt us to this magistrate?

  Papa watched me until I had turned the corner, but I waited twenty heartbeats—long enough for him to leave—before I returned to the statue at the town’s center. There was something about this mysterious magistrate we never glimpsed—this magistrate in charge of a town of fear and death.

  Animating the dead wasn’t impossible, but it was forbidden for a reason.

  I glanced into the statue’s face. Are you behind this?

  The stone eyes blinked.

  I tumbled backward to land on my rear in the snow.

  “It’s how he knows.” The voice belonged to a man buried in rags reeking of body odor. He ran a hand through graying, oily hair that hung a few inches past the tips of his ears.

  “Who? The magistrate?”

  “Who else? The man in control. He watches. He listens. And when you ain’t right, the red men come.”

  “The red men? You mean the Rin—”

  The hand he clamped over my mouth soured my stomach; it stank of blood and earth. I wriggled, and he pulled his hands away. “Don’ say their name. Gives them power.”

  “What are they? Are they reanimated corpses or something more?”

  He shrugged. “Does it matter? Until Yule passes, no one is safe.”

  “I know things, sir. Magics. Basic practice, but I

  could—”

  The man shrank back at the word. The coroner’s carriage stopped beside us, and a gentleman in a crisp, black suit approached. “Mr. Henry, come with me. It’s time to see to Elizabeth and the boy.”

  The man’s face crumpled at the name, and he allowed himself to be ushered into the carriage and away from the watching eyes of the statue.

  The carriage set off in the direction of the mansion. If there were answers to be had, they would be there.

  No magician worth his salt worked without a library. No one. It was long past the hour to discover what this magistrate was hiding, though it would have to wait. Another day’s work missed would be noticed.

  The hours dragged along as I carded wool in silence. Everyone gave me wide berth, and for once I did not mind. Papa spent dinner alternating between peering at me from behind his soup spoon and pausing with his mouth open, though he said nothing at all.

  That evening, when I watched behind the frosted glass of my window, the Ringers and their horses materialized directly below me. The shortest one, with green eyes of a color that could melt hearts, peered at me beneath his red cap. When he hooked a finger and beckoned to me, I threw the shutters closed with a snap and fell beneath my covers until the jingling bells faded, and the sun crept over the horizon.

  Yule’s eve had begun.

  I abandoned the inn before the town awoke and sought the lone path to the mansion. While I thought myself alone, red weaved itself against the drift covered trees and cobble. In the light of my oil lantern, I thought the trees painted with blood until the red moved. A person perhaps?

  The figure ahead turned his green eyes on me.

  He was alone, Ringer though he was, and when he beckoned for me to follow, my boots crunched in the fresh snow as we approached the mansion.

  A grand porch of white stone led to wooden doors bearing stained glass depictions of angelic figures. Circular turrets framed the house on either side, topped by clay-tile spires and iron finials. When the Ringer’s boot heel touched the first of twelve steps, the stone didn’t shift, nor did the snow depress under his weight.

  “Wait!” I whispered, but he gestured at the darkened porch. “I know, you want me to follow, but...are you real?”

  His deep green irises marked his sorrow, and he inclined his head once. I reached out a trembling hand to touch his coat’s fabric, but he leaned away from my grasp. His breath came in little puffs as he pointed again to the front door.

  He did not progress beyond the first step, though his muscles strained and tugged as if he wished nothing more than to proceed. A small eight-pointed star was burned into the left side of the door frame, and when I touched it, it burned my thumb through my gloves.

  “You can’t pass...because whatever ties you to this world is here? In this mansion?”

  His direct look intensified the burn that coursed through my thumb. “S-s....” He grimaced as his tongue hung from the side of his mouth. “S-s-sa-save....”

  “Save? Or safe?”

  “S-save us. All.” The bells called out in the distance, and he clenched his hands at his side. “Save.”

  His figure wavered before it disappeared, and the snow fell in earnest. The doorknob turned beneath my hand, and the door swung open to an entryway of shadows and silence.

  Was I expected? Or had the Ringer opened the door?

  I muffled a cough in my sleeve as my dry mouth choked on the dust floating through the air. The steps of a grand staircase were draped in rugs long since faded and crushed. When nothing beyond the dust moved, I released my breath in little puffs that danced before me in the chill.

  Melting snow left droplets along the wooden floor as I approached the first door on my right. A seating area, followed by a dining room with a table long enough to fit our family, cousins included. Beyond that lay the kitchens and pantry, a smaller eating area, a second living area, and a music room. My fingers lingered on the grand piano, leaving dust trails across the black and yellowed keys.

  My breathing quickened, and the wind creaked through invisible gaps in the walls as I approached the grand staircase. The old rugs muffled most of my footfalls as I ascended to the second floor, and once there, I paused outside a room whose open door left a sliver of light in the hallway.

  I nudged the door an inch, and when no one shouted or leapt at me, I opened it to a room clear of dust and loneliness.

  The library.

  Shelf-lined walls held books with gilded covers and lettering in more languages than I had ever seen. In the center of the room, a single desk rested, its velvet-lined top devoid of stationery or ink. The first bookshelf held histories of one kind or another, and I had almost skipped it when I spotted the eight-pointed star near the top: a heavy volume whose cracked spine read The Accountes & Affairs of the Famile Revoir du Leunt.

  Once I had coaxed the book from its shelf, I settled into the corner with an unobstructed view of the doorway. Not that there was anywhere to hide, but it might have been possible to tuck myself underneath the desk. I squinted at the cramped handwriting on the first dozen pages. Mostly accounts of births and property acquisition, I skimmed first paragraphs until I spotted the pattern of dots in the top right corner of each page.

  16: 05, 06, 07...the counting of years or months? The code was familiar to me from my studies. The halfway point of the book held the date of 1693, so supposing the dots’ arrangement meant years.... I flipped to the last page, which was blank.

  Was the magistrate adding to this book? I backtracked until I reached pages bearing a style of loose-flowing handwriting that was lengthy in stroke. The last entry was dated almost a century ago in the year of 1743. Blotch marks sprinkled their way across the yellowed page, and the handwriting shifted as his emotions overwhelmed him:

  My boys—all dead—Nothing good and pure and wholesome comes from a woman, this one more than most as her wyld and evyl ways brought my young Eli to ruin. There is naught more foolish than a young boy in love, and doubly so when in love with a sorceress. She thrice scoffed him before the town and his brothers rose to his aide, as brothers should. For nigh two hours they battled this sorceress and sought to drive off her evyl spells from this village, but ne’er had they fought with such a foul creature.

 

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