Cogling (5 page)

“Where is Lady Rachel?” the hag wheezed.

“She’s within.” Ice from the hag’s stare crawled over Edna’s skin. Keeping her eyes lowered, Edna waited until the hag entered Lady Rachel’s chamber before she took to the back stairs, passing the sunroom, and hurried through the yard to the stable.
May the seven Saints keep me safe despite the evil within my soul.

Inside her chamber, Rachel sat on her settee, crossed her legs, and smoothed her skirts over the velvet cushion. “For my wedding, I would like to be blessed with artistic talent. Every
proper
Lady knows how to paint for her husband, but I’m afraid my landscapes aren’t”—she puckered her lips—“realistic enough.”

Mother Sambucus set her basket on the marble table beside the door. “As you wish, Lady Waxman.”

“Of course, I also want to have a handsome son. My husband would love that. Father will pay any price.” Rachel folded her hands in her lap. “How does this work? Will it be like when you gave me silky hair?”

“That was a special potion. For these blessings, you must dream.”

“I always dream.”

“Then you must dream extra hard.” From her basket, Mother Sambucus lifted out a metal box and a pocket watch.

Should I keep the dropped muffin?
Edna’s family could use the food, but it’d been soiled.
I don’t need noble handouts. We’re not that poor yet that we have to eat garbage.
Dumping the muffin by a woodpile, she hid the linen napkin in her apron pocket and stepped through the stable doors.

“Hello?” Edna called. A horse whinnied. The grooms must have been helping park the locomobiles in the carriage house. Perfect. Excitement tingled along her nerves and the darkness refrained. Straw crunched beneath her boots, perfuming the air with an earthy aroma. She pushed back a bouncy curl that refused to stay in her braid.

“Foxkin? Where are you, little guy?” She peered into each stall hoping to spot a cage. The horses eyed her before returning to their hay. Only Rachel’s favorite mare came to the stall door to butt at Edna’s hand. Edna patted the horse and moved on.

Soot demon nests, wads of straw and leaves stuck together by saliva, hung from the corners of the ceiling. The grooms would have to knock them down before one of the soot demons bit a horse. A soot demon, the size of her hand, scampered across a beam, flicking his forked tail. Seeing their bodies always unnerved her—despite their pinched features and bony limbs, the soot demons resembled humans with bloated bellies.

Once, Cook had caught a soot demon in the kitchen. As she’d bit off its head, the animal screaming, Edna had pictured herself in its place. If she were tiny, with a long tongue and tail, would Cook eat her?

She shouldn’t try to free the foxkin, shouldn’t risk being fired, yet her conscience wouldn’t allow her to turn back. Last time the lord had bought a foxkin to hunt, she’d hidden in a closet until it was over and Cook was skinning the body by the stove. This time, the foxkin wouldn’t perish.

Dust motes danced in the sunlight pouring through the stable windows. Glancing at the stable entrance to ensure no one approached, she ran to the stable master’s office door and knocked. When no one answered, she tried the brass knob. It opened and she slipped inside through the crack.

Aha!
A silver cage stood beside the master’s desk. A red foxkin crouched in the corner, looking up at her with bulging eyes, his three tails poking through the bars. One tail hung limp, as though broken, but the other two stuck upright. The foxkin’s body quivered as he whimpered. A sob rose in Edna’s throat—the poor little creature!

She pressed her finger to her lips for silence and knelt beside the cage. The tiny creature leaned away, flicking back his pointed ears. White tufts sprouted from his cheeks, but grime matted the rest of his long hair. A tear ran up the side of the foxkin’s blue jacket. Last time, Lord Waxman had removed the animal’s clothes. Would they hunt the critter fully dressed? Her stomach clenched and she bit her fingernail, tasting dust. The darkness whispered in her mind. If she gave in, it might attack to end it all. Dire things would happen if she ever surrendered; dire things she refused to imagine.

The foxkin twitched his long snout and lifted one paw, curling his nails around a metal bar.

“I’ll get you out.” Edna searched through the papers and riding crops on the desk until she found a letter opener. She pried the point into the cage’s lock, wriggling it until the gears snapped.

The foxkin tugged on his tails, straightening and fluffing the clumped fur. If she had her brush, she could help the animal feel cleaner, but she didn’t have time to look through the horse supplies.

“Come on, little guy. Run before they get you.” She reached into the cage to pull him out, but his hackles rose and he hissed. Edna jerked back. “I have to get back before I’m missed. When I go, you must run, all right?”

The foxkin hissed again. Edna raced from the office, her boots thumping the stable floor. If he thought she was fleeing, he might too. She wished he would speak to her, but foxkins didn’t speak around humans unless they felt safe.

How could people put the critter through a hunt, where he would know fear and pain?

Nudging the kitchen door open, she opened her mouth to ask Cook where Rachel’s cake was, but Harrison stood in the corner.

Her heartbeat sped. “Odds bobs! Harry, what are you doing?” Not more trouble from him. It would be nice to not worry for a short while.

Cook stirred a pot on the stove with a long-handled spoon. Black moles stood out against her floured hands. “Teddy told him to git home, but he stands there.”

Edna groaned. “We need your brittin, Harrison. You gotta work or you don’t get paid.” As she approached him, his brow didn’t crease and his nose didn’t wrinkle. He had to be really sick, but his color looked good. If he could muster out the day, he would still get paid.

“Cook…” Edna began, but the tomtar shook her head.

“Gotta send him home.”

Edna gasped. She couldn’t allow him into the streets alone. “Some gin-addict might jump him hoping for a few pennies.”

Cook tapped the spoon against the side of the pot. “Take him. I’ll cover the party for an hour, but no longer.”

“Thank you!” Edna pulled Harrison toward the dressing room. He changed his clothes at her orders, tucking the pocket watch beneath his shirt. She hustled him from the manor and refrained from mentioning the theft until she pushed him into their apartment a half-hour later. The evil coiled through her body as though it had become one with her blood. Her breath quickened at the tightening around her lungs.

“You owe me, Harrison! If anyone finds out I had to bring you home, it’ll be my job. Not to mention I had to waste money on trolley fare. I’ll have to walk home tonight, and tomorrow night, too. It’ll take longer to get your medicine. What hurts?”

Harrison stared at the wall.

“Give me that wretched watch. Where you got it is beyond me, but it ain’t ours!” If he behaved, the evil wouldn’t make her shout at him so.

He wailed as she tore open his shirt, seizing the pocket watch. Color drained from his face and his eyes adopted a dark glow. A moan escaped his lips.

“Stop it!” Edna yanked the chain over his head.

The sound of grinding gears filled the apartment. Harrison gurgled, his howl ceasing. Black smoke puffed from his ears and nostrils, pouring from his mouth, and he burst apart in a shower of sparkles.

A pile of metal cogs remained.

You are nothing, I am more.

dna’s mouth dropped open as she circled the pile of cogs, poking it with her foot. “This is a dream. Hag magic.”

Harrison would pop back up and laugh. He
had
to.

She held a gear to the light filtering through the dirty kitchen window. Triangles were engraved into both sides of the metal. The evil vanished as though ice water had washed it away.

He fell apart.
She shook her head. It couldn’t be him. Some cruel joke, sick entertainment,
something
. “He had an earache. That didn’t make him a machine.” She pictured the automation in Rachel’s bedroom. Harrison didn’t look anything like that.

Edna’s eyes watered. “Are you hiding? Come out now, please!” Her voice quaked. “This isn’t funny.”

A motorcar honked in the street, and in the apartment below, a man laughed. The sounds vanished into a whirling hollow that consumed her head. Edna stepped over the pile of gears and cogs, grabbing the edge of the table to keep her balance.

She had to be delirious, still in bed dreaming. Edna breathed deeper to quell the erratic beating of her heart, but her head felt lighter, dizzier. She had to find him.

“Harrison!” She staggered into the living room and parted the paisley curtain screening her parents’ bedroom. No one. The evil winked back like a sadistic reminder:
I’m here, I’m playing off your emotions.

Edna threw open the door to the bedroom she shared with her brother, empty as well, and checked the normal places he hid: beneath the beds, behind the trunks. Empty. She dropped to her knees, twin thumps against the floor. Her hand gripped the splintered doorframe, forehead bowed to the wall. A soot demon scurried toward a hole under the window. Its backbone stood out in a row of knobs against its golden skin.