The first room was the one with the oven. It smelled of cake and roasted almonds. Clara pulled Will along when he looked through the door. In the next room, a shawl was draped over the back of a tattered armchair, its red silk embroidered with a pattern of ravens. The bed was in the last room. It was barely big enough for both of them, and the blankets were moth-eaten, but Will was already fast asleep by the time Jacob pulled the gate shut outside.
The jade traced patterns on Will’s neck, resembling the shadows in the forest. Clara gently touched the pale green stone. So cool and smooth. So terrible and yet so beautiful.
What would happen if the berries didn’t work? Surely Jacob knew the answer, and it frightened him even more than the creature he had left to fight.
The bedroom of a Witch. Clara looked at the dust-covered lamp above her. The white porcelain looked so normal. Its ordinariness made the terror of the house even more palpable for Clara. She could barely breathe, though Will was sleeping so peacefully. He didn’t wake up when she freed herself from his embrace. A moth had landed on his shoulder, black-winged, like an imprint of the night. Clara chased it away. She couldn’t say why. It frightened her as much as the house. Everything in this world frightened her. How could Jacob prefer it to the one they came from? So much danger, so much darkness. All the magic, she didn’t want it. She preferred clarity, order, safety…
Even the night seemed to smell of cinnamon and clover, when she came out of the house. The vixen was nowhere to be seen. Of course. She had gone with Jacob. The house covered in cakes, the red moon above the trees—everything seemed so unreal that Clara felt like a sleepwalker. Will was the only familiar thing, but the strangeness was already growing in his skin.
The key was lying right in front of the gate, as Jacob had promised. Clara picked it up and ran her fingers over the engraved metal. The voices of the will-o’-the-wisps filled the air. A raven cawed somewhere in the trees. But Clara was listening for another sound: the sharp snipping that had darkened Jacob’s face with worry. What creature could be so terrible, that it turned even the house of a child-eater into a safe haven? Clara was not sure she wanted to learn the answer.
Snip-snap. There it was again. Like the snapping of metallic teeth. Clara backed away from the fence. Long shadows were growing toward the house, and she felt the same fear she had as a child when she was alone and heard steps in the hallway.
She should have told Will what his brother was planning. He would never forgive her if Jacob didn’t come back.
He would come back.
He had to come back.